Portage Park

Portage Park continued...

That outdoor pool, when the weather is right, is open to the public. Only the water has been changed.

The rest of the neighborhood is what we come to expect of a Chicago Neighborhood -- plenty of Chicago-style bungalows, a variety of churches, a couple of smaller parks, enough grocery stores and hot dog places and, here and there, a surprise.

The Portage Theatre is one of them. It was the Portage Park Theatre when it opened in 1920, and by the 1970s it appeared doomed to suffer the fate of so many of the city's neighborhood movie houses. Dividing it into two auditoriums wasn't the answer, and it was shuttered in 2001 -- but the Portage reopened in 2006, and today the restored theater is used for live performances as well as film programs best described as "creative." (One linked Lon Chaney's silent classic "Phantom of the Opera" with Don Knotts' "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken.")

Another surprise, across Milwaukee Avenue from the Portage, is Fantasy Costumes. This isn't your corner costume store. We're talking masks, makeup and, well, the stuff of fantasies, most of them wholesome. Rent or buy. The store takes up a full city block -- so if you've got a fantasy, it's probably in stock.

Dining places in the Portage Park neighborhood tend to appear almost anywhere -- and their offerings can be just as unexpected.

The Lucky Grill, in a nondescript strip mall on the 4400 block of Milwaukee Avenue, looks from the outside like a nondescript diner until you spot menu items like the Irish Breakfast, complete with two Irish-style bangers, rashers, black pudding and white pudding.

On Central Avenue, if you can even identify Panciteria Mabuhay as a Filipino restaurant (it's a storefront that looks like . . . a storefront), you can treat yourself to a steaming bowl of bopis.

"It's real good," promises chef-owner Lemi Maglonzo. "It's made with pork heart, stomach and snout [and other good things]." And it is good, best enjoyed with puto, steamed rice cakes. Or if that's a little too exotic, you can always fall back on the old kalderetang kambing -- though you might want a translation before you order. Or just stick with the oxtails.

A few blocks south, still on Central, is the factory store for Alexandra's Pierogi. The surprise here is the variety: a choice of fifteen fillings, from kraut to cherries -- and that's not counting the blintzes, uszka, pyzy or a couple of kinds of dumplings. Polish is the prevailing language on both sides of the counter, but English works, too. Ask, and you discover that simple as pierogi seem to be, quality varies.

"It depends on the flavor and on the thickness of the dough," says Celina Hernandez, a young woman behind the counter, switching effortlessly from speaking Polish to customers to speaking English to an inquisitor.

What makes a bad pierogi?

"One that falls apart," she says.

Las Tablas, on Irving Park west of Cicero, is a Colombian steakhouse. La Peña, back on Milwaukee midway between the Lucky Grill and the Portage Theater, is Ecuadoran.

Trattoria Porretta, back on Central at Waveland Avenue, is a classic neighborhood Italian restaurant in a neighborhood not known as classic Italian -- and that's the charm of Portage Park:

It may be defined by an intersection and a park, but it defies category.

And like a good pierogi, it refuses to fall apart.

For more information about Portage Park, please contact the Portage Park Chamber of Commerce (773.777.2020) or the  
Six Corners Association (773.685.9300).