Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [142]
Customers and staff are separated by bulletproof glass. As in a bank, you slide your money through a slot, and when your meal is packed, they send it out via a lazy susan that ensures you can’t shoot them, or we suppose, vice versa. But our experience is that Leon’s looks scarier than it is. We wouldn’t likely visit at midnight, but every lunch we’ve had here has been a totally pleasant experience, the staff helpful and clientele friendly. It’s only the birds in the parking lot that feel threatening.
(Leon’s other locations in Chicago are 8249 S. Cottage Grove, 1158W. 59th St., and 4550 S. Archer Ave.)
Manny’s
1141 S. Jefferson St.
312–939–2855
Chicago, IL
BL | $$
We usually return to our favorite Chicago cafeteria-style deli with the vow of not having corned beef sandwiches. There are so many other good-looking things to eat in the line. On a recent visit, for instance, we gazed upon such day’s delights as kasha and bowtie noodles, chop suey, short ribs of beef, oxtail stew, and pierogies, not to mention the everyday matzoh ball soup, blintzes, and potato latkes. But once again, the beauty of the warm corned beef, thin-sliced before one’s eyes and piled between slices of good, glossy-crusted rye bread in a pile of rosy-red cured-meat moistness, won out and that’s what we ate…sided by potato latkes.
Gino Gambarota, Manny’s corned beef man for the last ten years, will cut the meat the way you like it—lean, fatty, or regular—but he will not cut it thick. “The art of cutting corned beef is to cut it as thin as possible, and against the grain,” Gino says. His slices are shaved so thin they verge on disintegration, but they stay intact and miraculously succulent.
Handfuls of this magnificent meat are stuffed into sandwiches so large that many customers eat one half and take the other back to the office. When a diminutive woman in a business suit asks Gino if he can make her only half a sandwich, he sasses back, “Lady, this isn’t Highland Park!” (Highland Park is a hoity-toity suburb on the North Shore.) The sandwiches get made and sold so quickly that during busy mealtimes Gino always sets up four or five ready-made with a potato pancake on the plate, so customers in a hurry can bypass the hot food at the beginning of the cafeteria line and nab what they want without fuss at the sandwich counter. No prepared sandwich remains on the counter longer than forty-five seconds before a customer speeds past and pulls it down onto a tray.
Manny’s charm goes far beyond its great deli sandwiches and inviting hot meals. At the edge of Chicago’s Loop, not far from where the everything-goes bazaar known as Maxwell Street once thrived, it remains a magnet for Chicagoans of every stripe. Dining room tables are occupied by politicians and businesspeople, wise guys and university professors, and cured-meat lovers from distant suburbs. When a newspaper photographer joined us at a recent meal, a nearby Chicago cop just couldn’t resist coming over to investigate the reason the camera was out. When he saw the photog focusing on a corned beef sandwich, he beamed with understanding and gave us the high sign.
Mr. Beef
666 N. Orleans St.
312–337–8500
Chicago, IL
LD | $
Mr. Beef is a premier source for the Second City’s number one street food, Italian beef. Great heaps of ultra-thin-sliced, garlic-infused beef are piled into a length of muscular Italian bread that gets soft as beef juices soak into it, but retains the oomph to stay in one piece even if you order your sandwich “dipped,” which means double-soaked in gravy. An important choice you’ll need to make is whether or not you want your sandwich topped with roasted red peppers or the peppery vegetable mélange known as giardiniera, which is crunchy, spicy, and a brilliant contrast to the full-flavored beef.
Sausages