Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [138]
Among Ann Sather’s other breakfast icons are Swedish pancakes, which are folded-over crêpes with a lace edge and fine, steamy-sweet flavor. They are available with a cup of lingonberry sauce, with a side of eggs, or with a couple of meatballs. The potato pancakes are superb, as is the French toast with peach compote. But the item that rivets our attention is the waffle, two waffles to be exact, Swedish waffles, the menu says. We’re not exactly sure what makes them Swedish, but we do know that they are not big fat Belgians. They are thin, crisp, and aromatic waffles, baked in an iron that gives them a fetching scalloped shape and served two to an order.
Although most Chicagoans think of it (rightly) as a breakfast place, there are few places that offer such wonderful comfort-food supper. Chicken croquettes with candied sweet potatoes, anyone? There is roast tom turkey with all the fixin’s, broiled Lake Superior whitefish, shepherd’s pie, and roast loin of pork with caraway seed sauerkraut. And, of course, there are Swedish meatballs.
Army & Lou’s
422 E. 75th St.
773–483–3100
Chicago, IL
BLD | $$
A friendly storefront open since 1945, Army and Lou’s is the place to go for soul food—breakfast, lunch, or dinner, and, Friday evenings, jazz performed by South Side artists. We were the only white people in the place the day we went for lunch, and wall décor is exclusively pictures of African Americans. It is said that the city’s first black mayor, Harold Washington, ate here all the time.
While the menu features a wide array of soul food, including chitterlings (served with spaghetti!) and ham hock with mixed greens, there are plenty of items that appear to be just what you’d expect in any neighborhood café, black or white. We say “appear” because the smothered pork chops we ordered were soulful to the nth degree, and the fried chicken would never, ever be mistaken for KFC’s flabby bird parts.
All entrees come with a choice from a long list of appetizing side dishes, including candied sweet potatoes and corn bread dressing with giblet gravy. Dessert is a choice of fruit cobbler (ooey-gooey peach the day we were here), sweet potato pie, or bread pudding with lemon sauce.
Byron’s Dog Haus
1017 W. Irving Park Rd.
773–281–7474
Chicago, IL
LD | $
As plump Polish sausages sizzle on the grill, the Dog Haus counterman dips a ladle into the fryolator (whence commeth the French-fried potatoes) to get some hot fat to pour over the grilling tube steaks. The grease helps give them a blackened, crisp skin; it also gives them a look of glistening, sinfully swollen avoirdupois. These are some of the most cumbrous Polish sausages in a city where Polish sausages, along with their all-beef brothers, hot dogs, are matters of serious culinary consideration. If you are a Polish sausage fanatic, it isn’t likely you will be blasé about the big, charred tubes they serve up at Byron’s Dog Haus; you will love them or hate them.
The hot dogs are more civil, and we can recommend them to anyone who likes a substantial, all-beef frank. They are Vienna-brand beauties, steeped to plump succulence, with a faint crackle as you sink your teeth into them. Our only complaint is about the buns. They are a bore—small, plain (no poppy seeds), forked right out of their plastic-wrapped container (not well-warmed), and therefore redolent of cardboard and plastic wrap.
On the other hand, Dog Haus condiments are fine: eleven different toppings that include strips of green pepper, cucumber discs, piccalilli, squeeze-on yellow mustard, onions, sport peppers (hot!), and a whole tomato cut into slices. Yes, there resting atop your hot dog and all its other condiments is one sliced tomato, and because the slices don’t go all the way through, it stays in one piece…until you try to eat the dog, at which time everything falls into a splendid mess. The tomato is customarily gilded with a sprinkle of celery salt.
Alongside this good specimen of frankfurter pulchritude, you want French fries. They are skinny