Birthdays are tough for John Pragalz.
When he was an infant, he was left on the doorstop of a disreputable workhouse outside of Rome, where he grew up sickly and pale on a diet of thin gruel and moldy bread crusts.
On his ninth birthday, for the offense of whinging about his hunger, he was banished to the coal cellar, where he lived in darkness until the soot-smudged urchin escaped to the city and joined a gang of cutpurses.
If not for a kindly old pizzaiolo who took him in and taught him a trade, Pragalz might have never reached his 18th birthday.
That was when his life started to parallel an older, completely different tale that also happened to become source material for the Walt Disney Company.
Emancipated, Pragalz struck out on his own with a mobile, restaurant-sized, wood-fired, brick pizza oven named Belle, and a three-quarter-ton extended utility Yukon XL 2500 called the Beast, making Roman-style pies for everybody’s birthday but his own.
But this story isn’t really about him.
It’s about August 18, which marks the fourth birthday for Monday Night Foodball, the Reader’s weekly chef pop-up at Frank and Mary’s Tavern in Avondale.
That’s correct. Foodball, which started at the late, great Kedzie Inn, has reached this auspicious milestone: 175 individual pop-ups since August 2021.
For that, Pragalz and his traveling crew of pie-slinging miscreants are returning for their third Foodball, firing up Belle alongside the patio at F&MT’s and throwing a rager of a fourth birthday party.
Their gift to you—and to the greater good—will be giving these pizzas away in return for donations to Mercy Home Heroes, the Chicago Marathon fundraising arm of Mercy Home for Boys and Girls, the local charity that supports abused, neglected, and at-risk children.
There’s no question the young guttersnipe Pragalz would have benefited from such an organization when he was terrorizing the streets. And he knows it. Therefore, proceeds of this patio pizza party will go toward Bad Johnny’s Good Runners, the 11-member Mercy Home team he founded, now just over a third of the way toward hitting its $35,000 goal.*
Pragalz—running his fifth marathon for Mercy Home this fall—trains all summer on the festival circuit by peeling pies in and out of Belle’s 950-degree Fahrenheit hellmouth. He figures he clocked 12 to 13 miles each day during Lollapalooza two weeks ago.
Please help him get those steps in this Monday, lest an older, slower, and fatter team member smokes his ass come October 12.
That’s entirely possible, since this Monday, the particular old caprid in question will be carb loading Bad Johnny’s hybrid of Roman pizza al taglio and pizza tonda.
What’s on the menu? A fennel sausage and Caruso “Chicago caviar” giardiniera pie; a vegan pizza rossa oregano bomb with chili and Sicilian extra virgin olive oil; a Four Star Mushroom medley with ricotta and fior di latte mozz; pepperoni with tomato, toasted chili de arbol, and buckwheat honey; pizza bianca, with rosemary, ricotta, creamy Cacio de Roma formaggio, and two-year aged Parmigiano-Reggiano; and finally, a classic, lusty margherita.
Also, look for a special appearance by Pretty Cool Ice Cream, who will be selling an assortment of their classic pops and donating a portion of the proceeds to Mercy Home.
Of course, this being a birthday, there will be cake, befitting the appetites of any unruly four-year-old that eats with their hands, while DJ Caspian from the Vinyl Break Collective, starts spinning old-school house at 7:30 PM.
This very special Monday Night Foodball fourth birthday blowout, benefiting Mercy Home for Boys and Girls, kicks off at 6 PM this Monday, August 18, at 2905 N. Elston in Avondale.
Meantime, August 25 features the Foodball debut of Itzel Hernández, aka @hija_de_maria, before we take a Labor Day bye week.
Look for a brand-new fall Foodball lineup to drop that week.
*Full disclosure, I am a member of said marathon team, but I have already hit my personal fundraising goal. All monies donated this Monday go toward hitting the goals of other team members.
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(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
