Bungalow by Middle Brow, the Doc’s take: No Diet Coke OR that one “Office” cold open. (Maybe bruschetta.)

 

It’s a Friday afternoon, and the Maestro and I are sitting in “Bungalow by Middle Brow,” a little pizzeria on Armitage that was recently hailed by Chicago Magazine as having “shifted the paradigm for what makes good pizza in Chicago.”

But we are not reflecting upon the allegedly paradigm-shifting pizza.

Rather, we are trying to remember what year the Martin Scorsese movie “King of Comedy” came out.

Most underrated Scorsese movie ever.

I mean, the pizza’s fine. The crust, which was the linchpin of Chicago Magazine’s rave review, is chewy, which I kinda like in a pizza crust.

But it’s also…pretty salty.

Which isn’t inherently bad, I figure, as I chomp on my slice of mushroom pizza (yes, the crust was the kind of chewy that requires chomping— again, not necessarily a knock, in my book). I like salty food enough.

Though, if we’re being honest, if crust is going to contribute significantly to the taste of a pizza, I’ll err on the side of, like, buttery rather than salty, you know?

But still. The pizza was fine.

(I wonder why anyone ever uses the phrase “if we’re being honest.” The existence of the phrase itself kind of acknowledges that part of the social contract is casual deception— which is obviously true, but it just seems, like, rude to call attention to it, you know?)

A quick Google search (which I just did, hoping in vain to find a menu for the place, because I don’t actually remember what else was on my pizza) reveals that Bungalow by Middle Brow is what they’re calling a “brewpub.” What I infer this to mean is that the restaurant, Bungalow, is kind of ancillary to the artisan brewery, Middle Brow.

According to one review, “On a deeper level, Bungalow portrays a reclamation of the middle class ideal based on a business model that corrects inequality through community investment.”

Wow. I had no idea the Maestro and I were correcting inequality. I’m suddenly quite proud of us.

Basically us.

I’ll tell you what I’m not so thrilled about: there was no Diet Coke.

You know what there was, though? Regular Coke.

I mean, that doesn’t strike you as a little weird? Regular Coke on hand, but no Diet Coke? What rationale led to that decision? Like, I can’t tell if this is a hipster elitism thing, or what. 

But, whatever.

I had water with my pizza. And I hate drinking water with pizza.

The space itself is bright and kind of open, lots of sunlight and light wood. It has kind of a modern, minimalist vibe. Which, of course, lends itself to the Maestro’s and my animated conversation about whether the movie “Joker” went too far in leaning into the established Batman mythos or not.

(The answer to that question is: it did not lean too far into the established Batman lore. For my money, “Joker” got that balance pretty much exactly right.

I’m a fanatic Superman fan— which, I’m just now realizing, is a redundant descriptor, in that the root of “fan” is, in fact, “fanatic”— and for awhile now I’ve waited patiently for a good movie adaptation of, say, ANY DC Comics character AT ALL.

“Joker” scratched my itch.

I think it comes down to the fact that Joaquin Phoenix can do no wrong— except, I guess, that time he and Casey Affleck made that faux documentary about him becoming a rapper that so vexed David Letterman, not to mention the girlfriend with whom I saw that movie in the theater. Though in fairness that girlfriend and I rarely liked the same movies. 

But I digress, what the hell am I writing about? Right, this is the pizza blog. Bungalow.)

For the life of me, I don’t remember if we got bruschetta as an appetizer. It seems we would have, if it was an option; and it seems that Bungalow is way into their bread, so it seems likely it would have been an option.

But if we did have bruschetta, my brain has chosen to completely purge the event from the memory bank. Which, not for nothing, can’t be all THAT complimentary of the bruschetta, if indeed there was any.

You know what, the fact that I have two pictures of my pizza on my camera roll, and no pictures of bruschetta, now makes me think there wasn’t any bruschetta.

The conversation has now shifted to a cold open of “The Office” that, the Maestro and I have discovered over the course of the previous week, has apparently been scrubbed from the Netflix version of the show. Which, I mean, blasphemy, right? I thought we lived in AMERICA.

The cold open in question features a Dunder Mifflin Halloween party, where for some reason there are children touring the company’s “haunted warehouse” (think one of those cheesy community organization-run haunted houses that pop up around Halloween— but not, you know, one of the professional, actually scary ones that induce nightmares in grown ass adults. Er, hypothetically). Michael Scott decides to send an anti-suicide PSA to the kids by pretending to hang himself— because, according to Michael, Christmas shouldn’t be the only holiday that can send a message.

Oh, GTF off of my blog, Halpert.

I vaguely remember seeing this skit— specifically, a joke therein where Jim has written “BOOK” on his face with a magic marker (GET IT? HE’S FACEBOOK FOR HALLOWEEN! JIM YOU’RE SO CLEVER!)— but the Maestro claims to have never seen it, despite our comparable levels of obsession with the show. He’s appalled that anyone would consider the scene so offensive as to warrant scrubbing the vignette from reruns of the series.

You know what, I’m almost prepared to say there was no bruschetta. But there’s this nagging voice in the back of my head that insists there might have been. It’s driving me nuts— or it would, if I was more invested in the question.

Eh. It is bugging me. 

Regarding “The Office,” I opine that, while I’m not nuts about censorship, I’m also not so nuts about prime time TV making suicide into a punchline. Even though, strictly speaking, I get that the real punchline of the joke was Michael’s failure to comprehend why it might be inappropriate to fake kill himself in front of a group of kids, for any reason.

I cannot believe there is no Diet Coke.

Posted for no reason other than I like this ad. Though, IF WE’RE BEING HONEST, I also like caffeine in my Diet Coke.

And I’m unclear why this pizza, while fine, is “shifting the paradigm for what makes good pizza in Chicago.”

I mean, does that paradigm really need shifting? Really?

I can’t shake the feeling that Bungalow by Middle Brow was conceived by people who don’t laugh at “Portlandia,” because they don’t get that it’s supposed to be parody. Or maybe they do, but they don’t find it funny, and don’t think you should, either. 

But it’s all right.

“King of Comedy” came out in 1982, by the by.