Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [143]
Accommodations are minimal. There is an adjoining dining room with actual tables at which to sit as well as a counter up front with stools, but the Italian beef connoisseur’s choice is to stand at the chest-high counter that rims the perimeter of the main room. Here, the wax paper that wraps the sandwich can be unwrapped to catch all the spillage and keep it at handy plucking distance while you dine.
Paradise Pup
1724 S. River Rd.
847–699–8590
Des Plaines, IL
L | $
The name is Paradise Pup and the hot dogs are indeed excellent—Chicagoland classics that are available topped with a wheelbarrow’s worth of condiments. And the Italian beef sandwiches are top-tier. But the Pup’s primary claim to fame is its cheeseburger. A hefty patty charcoal-grilled to crusty succulence, all the more delicious when ordered with a sheaf of bacon on top or perhaps raw or grilled onions, it comes on a seeded kaiser roll. You get your choice of cheese—American, mozzarella, or the connoisseur’s choice, Merkt’s, which is a tangy Cheddar from Wisconsin that matches perfectly with the beef.
Seasoned French fries are excellent, too, whether you order them plain or loaded, which means heaped with cheese, bacon, and sour cream. To drink: a cream-rich milkshake.
Dining accommodations are virtually nonexistent—a handful of counter seats and outdoor tables with umbrellas—and the small eat-shack is almost always crowded. Expect to wait.
Poochie’s
3832 Dempster St.
847–673–0100
Skokie, IL
LD | $
Poochie’s red hots are all-beef Vienna franks boiled to perfect plumpness and served in tender, seeded Rosen’s-brand buns. Char dogs, cooked over coals, are crusty, blackened versions thereof. Polish sausages are plumper, porkier variants that are slit in a spiral pattern to attain maximum crunchy surface area. And if one in a bun of any of these tube steaks is insufficient for your appetite, you can get either a jumbo dog or a double. Our personal favorite meal is a jumbo char dog with Cheddar fries (super fries!) on the side.
Poochie’s is proud of its char-cooked hamburgers, and we like them very much, especially piled high with those sweet grilled onions. But if you are passing through Chicago and stop at Poochie’s with time for only one street-food indulgence, make it a red hot with the works and a side of fries. It is an only-in-Chicago meal, and a jewel in the crown of America’s Roadfood.
Ricobene’s
252 W. 26th St.
312–225–5555
Chicago, IL
LD | $
Italian beef gets all the glory when Chicago street food is discussed, and Ricobene’s serves a fine beef sandwich with natural gravy, but the main claim to fame of this 1946-vintage Bridgeport eatery (now in modern quarters) is its breaded steak sandwich. An Italian-American neighborhood invention, the sandwich is a vast, pounded-thin sheet of meat that is lightly breaded and fried, then rolled into a bundle and stuffed inside a long loaf of Italian bread with a coat of red gravy (tomato sauce). Favored garnishes include fried hot peppers, spicy giardiniera vegetable medley, or shredded mozzarella. It is a meal—no, two meals—in a bun.
Beyond its bodacious breaded steak sandwich, Ricobene’s serves virtually all the great Chicago street foods, including Italian beef, pizza, and hot dogs, as well as a delectable “Vesuvio Italian Classic” sandwich. This is a quick-eats version of the meal known in more upscale restaurants as chicken Vesuvio (garlic-flavored chicken with cooked-soft hunks of potato). In this case, you get a crisp breaded cutlet dressed with onions, lettuce, tomato, and mayo stuffed into a length of Italian bread.
Whatever else you order, be sure to get an order of French fries, either plain or gobbed with molten Cheddar cheese. These are some of the city’s best—dark, skin-on, and crisp.
Stash’s
610 Central