10/03/2026
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19nfQ2fzfF/
Did you know we make our own Pizza Puffs now at Shells By The Sea ?!! No shade to the classic from Iltaco but its difficult to supply them in the Lowcountry. So, we decided to make my own with a lil spin on the original. COME TRY ONE AT THE CAMPGROUND this weekend!!
The pizza puff's origin actually starts almost a century ago with Elisha Shabaz, an Iranian-Assyrian immigrant who bought a small company making Chicago style rolled tamales for pushcart vendors back in 1927. That company grew and eventually shortened its name to Iltaco, short for Illinois Tamale Company, a name that gives away absolutely nothing about the fried pizza snack the company is now actually known for.
The pizza puff itself didn't come along until decades later, invented in 1976 as Chicago's second major pizza wave was taking off and local hot dog stands wanted something handheld they could sell alongside the thin crust and stuffed pizza places suddenly booming across the city. Shabaz family members Warren and Edward took the same tortilla style dough Iltaco already used for its tamales and wrapped it around a spicy pizza flavored filling instead, essentially building a deep fried, personal sized calzone disguised as a convenience food.
What makes the pizza puff such a quietly specific Chicago thing is exactly where it lives on a menu. It almost never gets listed next to the actual pizzas or sandwiches at a hot dog stand, it sits over by the fries and onion rings as an afterthought side item, even though it's really a full meal unto itself. Iltaco still produces the overwhelming majority of pizza puffs sold around the city today out of its West Town facility, hand folding millions of them a year, and the product has stayed recognizable enough that Byron's Hot Dogs has kept it on the menu for more than forty years running.
Travel more than a short drive outside Chicago city limits and pizza puffs essentially disappear entirely, which is part of why so few people outside the area have ever heard of them despite the city's much louder reputation for deep dish and Italian beef. For lifelong Chicagoans, though, it's exactly the kind of food that barely needs explaining, a cheap, scalding hot, tortilla wrapped pocket of pizza filling that's been quietly sitting on hot dog stand menus since 1976, never trying to be anything fancier than a reliable late night snack built by a family that started out rolling tamales for pushcarts nearly a hundred years ago.
