Greasy Fingers and Internet point way to spicy side of Springfield

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - Rolled into Springfield, the Land of Lincoln, and found out there is a chilli after all.
 Greasy Fingers and his Chicago Gangsters told me about it years ago, but I doubted them. If you ever saw Greasy Fingers and his associates you would know what I mean.
  I was checking the Tampa Bay On-line Web site the other day, where a lot of you have been leaving suggestions on places I should visit on this trek from the Republicans' convention in Philadelphia to the Democrats' in Los Angeles and then back to Florida.
  That's where I found the note from Greasy Fingers, who is a sometimes entrant in my annual chili contest. It was Greasy who first claimed that in Illinois they spell chili with two 1's, which sounded so silly that I didn't believe him.
  Anyhow, Greasy said I had to check out the Chilli Den, where his name was on the wall because he had polished off a bowl of their nuclear chilli.
  I looked in the phone book in my motel room. No Chilli Den or Den of Chilli or anything like that. I went to the computer, where you can find anything. Sure enough, there was a site where people talked about their favorite foods in Springfield.
  Son of a gun if there wasn't this long debate about who had the best chilli in town. In fact, the more I read, the more it seemed that these people consider Springfield as something no less than the cradle of chilli. They even believe Abe Lincoln may have been one of the first chilli aficionados.
  The consensus seemed to be that Joe Rogers' Chili (for some unexplained reason there is only one l) was the place to go.
  Well, it was early Sunday, but I looked it up in the phone book and gave them a call. Marianne Rogers answered. She said the place was closed and she was only down there because some of the boys had rigged up a spice-mixing machine for her and she was fooling with it.
  I explained about Greasy Fingers and about my eternal search for the best bowl of chili. She said to wait a minute, and came back a few seconds later to say she had some fixings frozen in the fridge. If I was that desperate, she would nuke a bowl for me as long as I promised not to take her picture because she was cleaning up and all that.
  Twenty minutes later, I was at the entrance of a low-lying building. Marianne Rogers ushered me into what looked like a huge diner with a long counter. There were enough tables for another 100 or so people.
  And here's the good news, Joe Rogers was the guy who opened the Den. He's been dead for a few years. The place was sold and then went belly up. Joe's daughter Marianne took it over. She's been running it for about four years, and this year a local magazine named her the most popular person in town, beating out the mayor.
  "I think it's because chili [that's the way she spells it] bonding food," she said.
  I know if you eat enough of it, it surely is.
  "The people who come into the parlor come from all walks of life. The mayor comes in here and so do the factory workers down the street," she said. "It's a place where you can forget your other cares and sit down with friends over something hot and good."
  I asked her if she felt like a bartender.
  "We actually have sort of a rule that there are three things you don't talk about in here. You don't talk about politics, religion or chili," she said. "You don't talk about chili because it is like a passsion around here I don't want people getting upset."
  Rogers took me back into the kitchen where she was warming up the chili. She let me take her picture after I said it probably wouldn't come out anyway.
  "I want you to try the mild version so you can actually taste it and then I'll give you a little bit of our JR Chili, which is the one that will blow your socks off," she said.
  We went back to the counter and she watched with satisfaction as I wolfed down the first bowl and then moved on to the JR special. I'll tell you what it is. They have this thing for suet up here ... lots of it. But this is great chili. I wonder why that stuff Greasy Fingers makes back in Tampa tastes so strange?
  Anyhow, if you are a chili-head, put Springfield on your list. You need to try this stuff, no matter how they spell it. ....

By: Steve Otto