Walk into what remains of Chicago's historic Greektown. From the early 1900s, Greek immigrants settled the Near West Side around Halsted Street, building the largest Greek community in the country outside the Mediterranean, dense with coffeehouses, churches, and restaurants. The original heart of the Delta, as it was known, was largely erased in the 1960s when the University of Illinois cleared block after block for its new campus, scattering families that had lived here for two generations.
The restaurant row along Halsted survived as a cultural anchor, and for decades the cry of flaming saganaki cheese set alight at the table, said to have been popularized here, rang through its dining rooms. Walk along Halsted and look for the blue-and-white awnings and the National Hellenic Museum; this short strip is the memory of a far larger neighborhood lost to the bulldozer.