When I spent a week with Nick in Chicago, we had grand plans for every single meal - especially the ones we cooked in his kitchen. Nick's already covered the fatty, home-ground burger and our foray into making red enchilada sauce, our two major kitchen experiments. But I also know that Chicago is a great eating town. I grew up in the area, but my knowledge of Chicago food is shameful. Unfortunately, I didn't slip out of my suburban kid suit nearly enough in high school; I went away to college, then drove out to New York where my tongue was awakened. So I humbly came to my own hometown and let Nick boss me around.
Nick's only lived in Chicago for less than two months, but he's quickly developed a firm understanding of three important food groups in the city: Mexican, Hot Dogs, and Barbecue. Nick wrote a post a few months ago (when he was visiting the city, but not yet living there) about Maiz, an affordable but ambitious-to-be-upscale Mexican place, and I visited it within a day of arriving. It was everything he'd promised: full of light, delicate combinations with the spicy robustness that Mexican flavors promise. There were no muddy refried beans or stale red rice in sight.
His local Mexican grocery store, Danny's Fresh Market, has a take-away counter and some booths tacked onto the side of it where they have large trays of pork, steak, and chicken that have probably marinated for hours and cooked slowly for longer. For $2.99, we could hardly pass up the opportunity for a torta al pastor every time we walked by. Served on crumbly white bread that was smeared with refried beans then topped with meat, the tortas were crunchy from the lettuce and tomato and spicy from the salsa. I was ecstatic over this revelation just blocks from where Nick lives.
If there's one Chicago food that I can claim longstanding affection for, it's the Chicago Dog. I may not have explored every obscure neighborhood in Chicago when I grew up in the suburbs, but I understood the Chicago Dog. I understood that it was a beautiful combination of unlikely ingredients that were not to be deconstructed. Logically, it shouldn't work: there are more condiments than actual hot dog. It's futile to try and explain; you just have to eat one.
I'd read about Hot Doug's in Nick's last post, Chicago Eats [Part I], which promises all manner of bun-and-sausage combinations--from the classic Vienna Beef Chicago dog to fancified "encased meats" with game and truffles. I knew it was at the top of our list. Normally the line stretches down the block, but we savvily visited the place for breakfast, at 10:45am on a weekday morning.
We both started with the classic Chicago Dog, then I ordered a Bratwurst and Nick opted for an Italian sausage.
The Chicago Dog was excellent, complete with its bright green relish and all the necessary toppings, down to the celery salt.
But it was the other dogs that really got us. In particular, Nick's Italian sausage was an unbelievably tender and juicy revelation. It was topped with mustard and Giardiniera, a pickled mix of peppers, carrots, cauliflower, and celery, which balanced the meaty sausage.
It's unclear how they achieve the melting texture of the sausage that they do, but it is the opposite of toughness. It was the same for my bratwurst, which was appropriately topped with mustard and sauerkraut, plus a little caramelized onions.
The fries were pleasantly crispy and overdone, which is how I like them.
After Mexican and Encased Meats, the final food category Nick promised me was barbecue. For some time he's been raving about a place near his apartment called Honey 1 BBQ, but alas, they were on vacation for the entire duration of my visit. So we headed outside the neighborhood to a little place called Smoque. On their website they had a lengthy manifesto about their approach to barbecue, and they clearly take it very seriously. So we felt confident that we'd be in good hands.
There was a short line out the door when we arrived, but the people ahead of us had already popped open their first of their beers (Smoque is BYOB). We joined them by opening ours, risking arrest, but quickly the line shuffled inside where we got a look at the menu.
At Smoque you don't have the option of sitting down to be served by a waiter; their goal is to sell as much barbecue as possible to a constant stream of people. We decided on a platter of pulled pork, a 1/2 slab of St. Louis style ribs, plus a side portion of brisket. We filled in the corners with coleslaw, cornbread, baked beans, macaroni and cheese, and a peach cobbler.
In the manifesto, Smoque talks about the importance of "tug" when it comes to ribs; they should be meltingly tender, of course, but they also shouldn't totally fall off the bone. They should provide a little resistance. Eating these St. Louis ribs--almost spicy from the hours of smoke they'd been cooked in--this all made sense.
I don't know a great deal about barbecue, but these were the best ribs I'd ever eaten. As was the brisket, which was the most absurdly tender meat I'd ever put in my mouth. The pulled pork was the least impressive of the three, but it was still very good.
Believe it or not, the sides almost upstaged the meat. The beans were sweet and smokey, the coleslaw crisp and not too mayonnaissey, the cornbread moist, the macaroni and cheese satisfyingly browned and still creamy. Even after all the food, we fought over the last bites of our peach cobbler.
For a city not in the South, Chicago has some pretty good barbecue.
I'd like to take this opportunity to say that I'm very jealous of Nick right now.
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
I'm sorry I didn't get to see you when you were in town! I live right around the corner from Danny's! Nick and I must live in the same neighborhood!
Huh, I'm on Medill and Oakley. Are you close to that?
I'm on Oakley at Shakespeare. On the other side of the pool!
Looks like you had a good time here in Chicago! Glad you liked our hot dogs.
I grew up and lived almost my entire adult life in Chicago. i am currently doing a year and a half long stint in Washington, DC. I recently traveled back with a good friend I have made here in DC, and the biggest reason that he came with me was my detailed and delicious descriptions of Chicago food, and mostly, the Chicago hot dog. A true Chicago dog is like a perfect piece of art. Colorful and complex all in one. We went straight to Hot Dougs. I love Hot Dougs in more ways than I can describe, although I love them more for their adventurous game sausages than their Chicago style dogs. You see, there are some little intricacies in a true Chicago dog and I feel like I have to point them out here. First and foremost, the dog must be steamed, not grilled. Grilled dogs are tasty, but that is not a real Chicago dog. when a dog is steamed in its casing it will literally snap when bitten into, releasing its delicious juices into your mouth. Grilled dogs have no snap to them because the casing is almost alwys split while on the grill. You can get them steamed at Hot Dougs, so that was ok. What was not okay to me was that it came with grilled onions on it. This is not correct. The onions must be raw and chopped and I refuse to believe that this was the normal at Hot Dougs, as I've had it presented to me correctly on prior visits. Nick, I just want to make sure you get yourself a true Chicago dog, steamed, poppy seed bun, mustard (applied first), bright green relish, raw chopped onions, sliced tomatoes, sport peppers (hard to find outside of Chicago), pickle spear, and a dusting of celery salt. I want one, or three, right now.
David is right. Especially about the onions. While grilled onions may be good on a grilled dog, a properly steamed dog requires chopped fresh.
David and Brock: I agree with your sentiments about the Chicago dog, and applaud your devotion. Luckily at Hot Doug's you can specify whether you want a dog char-grilled, deep-fried, fried-and-grilled, or steamed. Though they do put the caramelized onions on their list of "everything" (leaving raw onions and sport peppers to the optional ingredients list), you can ask for them off. So if you know what you're doing, you can definitely arrange for a true Chicago Dog.
Have you had a good New York dog? They have a wonderful snap, though they're not steamed, they're griddled. This gives them a bit of charred flavor, but without direct flame the casings don't split, and the satisfying "snap" when you bite into it is preserved.
I will agree with both David, Brock, and Blake. I've been to a few Chicago Dog eateries and while I thoroughly enjoy Hot Doug's regular dog, that's not the main reason I go there. The Italian sausage was unbelievably good, as was the bratwurst. That's why Hot Doug's is so good.
Of the regular dog's I've had so far, I think Portillo's is better as is Gene and Judes. But that sounds like another post to me.
Anyone got any other thoughts?
Hey Guys, Portillos is good, but I like them for their Italian Beef. Now that's a sandwhich that you really can't find outside Chicago. It's delicious. As far as my favorite Chicago Dogs, Murphy's on Belmont and Racine is really good, as is Muskies on Lincoln, just south of Wellington. Superdawg is an institution that lies just on the edge of the city, but worth the travel. Glad to see your enjoying Chicago.
Nick, you really need to make it a point to go back to Doug's on a Saturday so you can have the famed duck fat fries.
If you ever take a trip to Milwaukee, you need to swing by Speed Queen for some of the best barbeque you'll ever have. They smoke the meat for 12 hours and coat it in a thin sauce that's just the right combination of sweet and spicy; more importantly, it doesn't cover up the taste of the meat! All the barbeque there is good, but the outside shoulder of pork is perfection. You get a nice combination of tender juicy pulled pork mixed with crispy chunks from the shoulder's exterior. The restaurant itself is hideous. They featured it once on the Food Network, and you could sense that the cameraman was struggling to find something picturesque to concentrate on; as a result, almost all of the footage takes place inside the kitchen. There is, after all, nothing more beautiful barbeque.