Back in 1978, Art Williams left Chicago to play basketball for the Fresno State Bulldogs. But over the decades, he never forgot the tastes of home — the deep-dish pizzas and Chicago-style beef and sausage sandwiches his mother perfected as proprietor of the Williams Inn restaurant on Chicago’s South Side.

Now Williams has brought those home-town specialties to Fresno. On May 31, he opened his new restaurant, The Chicago Connection, an all-family affair that he hopes his California customers will like enough to spread far and wide.

“It’s like a gourmet pizza, you know?” is how Williams, 49, describes the deep-dish Chicago style pizza he serves at his new restaurant in the Hoover Marketplace shopping center at the corner of First Street and Bullard Avenue.

-- Jeff St. John