How to get run out of Chicago
protect ya neck
Hello, clowns!
Today’s edition of the newsletter was inspired by a piece of local journalism I read recently. Axios Chicago writer Justin Kaufmann tried a viral modification on one of Chicago’s culinary staples, the humble Italian beef sandwich, that he saw floating around on the devil’s TikTok recently. This particular version was from the restaurant chain Portillo’s, which is a place Davida and I like to eat at sometimes.
The fact that Kaufmann was inspired by TikTok, which is where all good ideas go to die, was already concerning, but the fact that it messed with our sacred roast beef sandwich felt like a serious problem.
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The first red flag was that Kaufmann was following the recommendation of someone known as @eatdrinkbemandy on TikTok, who’s based out of St. Petersburg, Florida. And as we all know, listening to anyone from Florida for anything is always a good idea.
But before I continue, you non-Chicagoans might want a bit of sandwich context. Here’s the rundown: An Italian beef is a simple sandwich of super-thinly sliced roast beef on a French roll. That’s it!
The nuances are in how you order it. The roast beef sits in jus (we call it “gravy” sometimes), and when you order the sandwich, you can ask for it in various states of wetness, including fully dipped, bread and all. An Italian beef only comes with two optional condiments, which are sweet peppers (cooked softened bell peppers), and spicy pickled peppers in oil, known as hot giardinera. Cheese is an option, usually mozzarella, but many of us order it without.
In the video, @eatdrinkbemandy mentions that this isn’t the first time she’s ordered Italian beef, but the last time she did it, she was told that she ordered it all wrong. So this go-round, she went ahead and listened to TikTok commenters (oh boy), who told her to order her Italian beef dipped, and add both sweet and hot peppers. So far, so good. Then she mentioned that she’d added cheese — which is also fine, until she revealed that the cheese she’d added was nacho cheese sauce.
Oh, the humanity! That’s akin to putting a huge mound of shredded iceberg lettuce on a grilled cheese sandwich. It simply isn’t done here. This isn’t Philadelphia, where Cheez Whiz is deliciously ladled onto onion-scented beef, no, this is Chicago. We only do things one exact way and then get mad when anyone else does them differently.
No self-respecting Chicagoan would admit to eating an Italian beef with nacho cheese added on top, but deep inside my general food area, I knew this could be delicious. Kaufmann thought so too, and after trying it himself, declared, “It's so goooooood. The cheese is almost mixed in with the beef instead of just lying on top, giving it a much more cheesy, chewy, messy vibe.”
So I decided to hop into the car to go to Portillo’s to try this for myself. I initially wanted to post the pictures to my Instagram account to try and ruffle some feathers because I thought it’d be funny. But then I wondered just how far I could push it before I actually started to piss real Chicagoans off.
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I was starving, so I first tried the TikTok order because it sounded pretty good.
My go-to Italian beef order is dipped, with hot and sweet peppers, so adding one more element wasn’t hugely divergent from my usual shenanigans. But I sat in a back booth so that none of the lunch crowd could see the bright yellow cheese sauce coating this thing. And as you’d probably imagine, this thing was junkily glorious.
I mean, what’s not to love about a beef and cheese sauce sandwich? Arby’s sells the shit out of those Beef ‘n Cheddars, and that place is the clearly the pinnacle of cuisine (you may gingerly eat Arby’s ass, Thomas Keller), so this was destined to be good. But just to be safe, I’d order one of these at the drive-thru or for delivery, because if someone from here hears you say “please add cheese sauce to the Italian beef,” you may not make it out of the parking lot.
If you’re wondering where the gang was, don’t worry, they were with me for muscle in case anyone threw hands at me.
But because there would be so much grease involved, I had to make sure that they were protected in the manner of Bubble Boy, which I believe is a classic documentary film. I could have sworn I heard grumbling from the Ziploc, and they clearly did not appear to be enjoying this aspect of the field trip very much.
My next bastardization attempt was to order an Italian beef, dry and plain.
Very few people here do this, except for those that hate themselves. That’s because an Italian beef with no accompaniments is very boring, and without any gravy, the thing is just a mouth-shriveling bite of chewy bread and meat shreds. I’d never eaten an Italian beef this way, but was curious to see how it’d be.
I took one bite, and swore upon Andre the Giant’s grave that I would never do this again. Because it was just no fun. Who eats a sandwich this dry? It sucks the moisture right out of your mouth!
My solution was to add the most maligned condiment in all of Chicago to the dry Italian beef: ketchup.
People here are so fucking weird about ketchup. Use it on burgers, you’re okay. Dip your fries into it, you’re fine. But mention the word “ketchup” and “hot dogs” in the same sentence and suddenly everyone turns around, straps on a pair of steel-toed boots, and starts threatening you.
“Nobody in Chicago puts ketchup on their hot dog!” they roar. “Nobody! Fuck you and your family!”
I joke about this shit, but some people in Chicago get genuinely worked up over this. What’s funny is that when I was in line ordering my food, the guy in front of me asked for a hot dog with nothing but ketchup on it. For whatever reason, the cashier insisted on shouting to the entire kitchen staff of forty million people so everyone heard it, “Don’t put anything but ketchup on this hot dog! Just ketchup!”
But there’s only one thing you can say that gives you an exemption to order a hot dog with ketchup in Chicago, and this customer knew exactly what he was doing.
“It’s for my daughter,” he said, looking around at everyone, with his hands up defensively. “It’s for my daughter!” (I’d like to note, he was alone.)
He pulled out the unblockable kid rule. See, if you’re a parent, you’re allowed to order a hot dog with ketchup on it for your child. It’s the only time you won’t get judged for it. But I did notice something — the man appeared to be in his mid-60s, which made me wonder just how old his “daughter” might have been. She could have been 33 for all I knew.
This whole episode could have been ketchup smokescreen.
I took a big bite of the defiled Italian beef.
I was secretly hoping that this would work out much better than it did, because the mere idea of this being any good would have made everyone here really mad. But alas, this was a no-go. When you’re eating a plain Italian beef with just ketchup on it, all you taste is ketchup and nothing else. You don’t even taste the beef.
I went on to try an even more vulgar condiment on the Italian beef, ranch dressing.
Ranch is the glue that keeps the Midwestern family together, so I figured a good manually-applied cascade of this on the Italian beef would do the trick. I’m so glad nobody in that restaurant could see me from where I was sitting, because I’m pretty sure my face was beet red when I poured that shit on there.
Okay, so, ranch was also a bad choice. There’s a reason why people don’t sell ranchy Italian beef sandwiches, since the stuff is too tangy and overpowering in comparison to the otherwise mild beef. I imagined what would have happened if I loudly asked for the Portillo’s employees to actually put some on the sandwich for me — I think I’d have shown up on the news, maybe sporting a crutch.
But here, my friends, is the true pièce de résistance.
I’d ordered an Italian beef, dipped, but with a very special modification: I asked if they’d be willing to put all the toppings of a Chicago-style hot dog on it. The cashier gave me a quick look, both somehow shook her head and nodded at the same time, and proceeded to press a bunch of buttons on the cash register.
I watched in sheer awe as the digital display in front of my face listed the exact request of a dipped beef with yellow mustard, diced onions, pickle relish, a pickle spear, tomato slices, and a sprinkle of celery salt.
I said to her, apologetically, “I hope your kitchen staff doesn’t hate me.”
She immediately turned to the kid assembling my sandwich and said very loudly, “He says he hopes you don’t hate him.” The guy looked at the ticket on the screen, looked down at the sandwich in his hand, and then stared at me.
“Thank you,” I mouthed through the glass.
Clowns, I have to say that this might be my greatest and ballsiest Chicago Frankenstein food yet, because this thing was actually delicious. I think it’s because Italian beef sandwiches never have any fresh ingredients on them, so the pickled, sweet, and salty ingredients really popped on this thing. And there was cognitive dissonance in every bite, because my brain didn’t understand why this one sandwich tasted like two completely different food memories at once.
Man, if I only gave a shit about TikTok. If a video about a “an Italian beef liquid cheese hack” spread like wildfire, imagine how a video about a Chicago dog-style Italian beef would do. Then, of course, Portillo’s employees across the entire chain would hate me (rightfully so) and I would be too ashamed to revisit.
You guys generally hate when the newsletter ends on something delicious, so I’m capping today off with what amounts to a Chicagoan’s self-immolation.
So I put ketchup on a hot dog.
The bounty has now been placed upon my head. But wait, wait! I can explain! Before you attack, it’s for my, uh, very real daughter!
I hate to say it, but I’m now craving another one of those crossbred Italian beef hot dog hybrids. And if you enjoyed today’s edition of the newsletter, I’d really appreciate some social media love by sharing the link (seriously, it helps so much) however you can, via Reddit, Facebook, whatever works for you:
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Okay, everyone, I’m actually headed up to Green Bay, Wisconsin, with Davida in just a little bit, so we better haul some ass. It’s because I have to lay low from the ketchup police. As always, I love you all, and I’ll hop into your inboxes again soon.
can't believe the word "beef" appears 36 times but "boof" doesn't even make one appearance
huge missed opportunity to evolve the ranchy italian beef into a raunchy italian beef