Carl Sandburg wasn’t kidding when he wrote in his poem “Chicago” that the city is a “Hog Butcher for the World,/Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,/Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;/Stormy, husky, brawling,/City of the Big Shoulders:/They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys…” Chicago is a tough town that famously runs on sinew, muscle, and corruption—all of which require serious calories.
Chicago is one of the baddest-assed cities on the planet. It’s the only place I’ve lived in where I’ve seen a cop start making out with a stranger stepping off a bus. It’s the only city where I’ve known someone to be politely and gently mugged (my friend Simon, a tough boy raised in tough parts of Dublin). It’s the only city where I’ve been able to sit in a speakeasy (it was a small house converted to a bar on the South Side, with—I’m not kidding—some dude in a trench coat warming his hands over a trash-can fire on the sidewalk) and have the guy next to me at the bar say: “If we was 10 blocks north [meaning whiter] or 10 blocks south [meaning blacker], I’d have to kick your ass, or you’d have to kick mine, just on principle. Lucky thing we’re here. Cheers, brother.” And we clinked glasses of beer to the most beautiful articulation of the arbitrariness of racism that I’ve ever heard.
Chicago is a fantastic town. And while Seattle continues to figure out how it feels about “street food”—from city council debates to Seattle Times articles—Chicago has had it covered since the 19th century. If you’re getting on or off the El pretty much anywhere, there is a cluster of places where you can find an excessive number of calories for just a few bucks: little carts and nooks everywhere serving pizza and hot dogs and shawarma and whatever. There will be a lady shoving fried chicken (with some grease-smeared white bread, for some reason—I never cottoned to that particular Chicago tradition) through a single brick-sized hole in the wall.
The tradition of “Chicago cuisine” has two major components: convenience and excess. The “City of the Big Shoulders” was built on industrial labor—stockyards, train yards, slaughterhouses. And industrial workers need food that is cheap, quick, and rich in calories. They don’t have the time or money for anything else. Give ’em a bunch of fat wrapped in dough so that they can go build a train or chop up a hog—and do it stat.
So Chicago came up with the deep-dish pizza, which is cheesier than Oprah (who lives in Chicago, by the way—not a coincidence). And the Chicago dog, which is a beef wiener buried in tomatoes, peppers, pickles, celery salt, and tons of other stuff. And chicken Vesuvio, which Wikipedia efficiently describes as a dish that started as an Italian specialty in the 1930s, with roasted bone-in chicken cooked in oil and garlic next to garlicky oven-roasted potato wedges and a sprinkling of green peas. Plus, there’s Harold’s Chicken Shack (which specializes in the aforementioned chicken-and-white-bread combo, along with french fries) and on and on and on.
Now to the Weiners Circle. It was a late night shortly after 9/11, and the whole city seemed to be on edge. Soldiers in fatigues walked around downtown with automatic rifles. But people were still trying their best to have fun. This was America, after all, and the best way to show those shrill, sanctimonious, reactionary religious jackasses that we weren’t cowed was to go out. So I’m out with some friends who know Chicago, and they think it would be hilarious to take me (arrived in town for the first time just a few days ago) to the Weiners Circle, a place notorious for its hot dogs and its verbal abuse.
Of course, they don’t fill me in on where we’re going.
I stand in line, approach the counter, and ask the young African-American woman behind the register for a hot dog.
“Right. So you want a boiled, skinny white dick like yours or a big, black charred dick?” she says with a smiling sneer.
It takes me a few seconds to acclimate to this unexpected tone.
“Um, a big black dick?” I say.
“Okay, big black dick,” she says. “What do want on that?”
“Um, everything?” I say.
“Everything,” she says. “Everything. Huh. You want my pussy juice on that?”
“How much does your pussy juice cost?” I ask.
“More than you can afford,” she says.
“Well, then,” I say, “one big black dick but hold the pussy juice.”
She cackled and took my money, with everyone in line in hysterics. I wish I could tell you how the hot dog tasted. But in my memory, the conversation eclipses the cuisine.
And that’s the way it is with Chicago food—the fact that it exists, and the way that it exists, is really more important than whether you use X or Y pickles on your Chicago dog or whether or not you put spinach in your deep-dish pizza.
Which brings us to Taste of Chicago, a little diner/cafeteria in the University District. They’ve got those Chicago-style things you can’t find anywhere else. They’ve got a robust Chicago dog—tomatoes, green relish, diced onions, pickle spear, mustard, sport peppers, and celery salt on a poppy-seed bun—for $6. (While you can find variations of the Chicago dog at a few other places in town, they’re all pretty anemic compared to the one at Taste of Chicago.) They’ve got pizza puffs—port sausage, mozzarella cheese, and pizza sauce wrapped in a tortilla and deep-fried—for $4.50. They’ve got pork-chop sandwiches ($6.50), gyros, Italian beef sandwiches ($8.75), fried chicken sandwiches ($5.50), chili-cheese dogs ($5.25), and other good stuff. They’ve also got beer, and they’re open until 3:00 a.m. on weekends.
Nobody asked me if I wanted any pussy juice when I ordered my hot dog—but you can’t have everything. 
hey,what’s up there fruitcake? Wow! that sounds like a cool joint!!! i am a total tough guy,and i like to talk shit about anyone or anything,(example:walk in and say:hey,what about a grey or yellow dog in this shack?),and i do not fear death, where is this place? i would love to go there!!! by the way,whats the toughest joint in seattle right now? one more thing… i don’t mind chicago but..i perfer detroit,many people clam its also a hard ass city to live in… this revue sounds like its from new orleans(RIGHT after katrina) instead CHICAGO…
You bet.
as somebody who greatly despises the term “the shit”, their italian beef sandwiches are THE. SHIT.
*sigh*
…..chicago…
what did you put on your fries ?
My favorite Weiners Circle memory:
A young boy with round glasses was standing sheepishly in the corner of the waiting area, obviously terrified. The lines were really long and it was pretty late at night. Eventually he side-steps the line and politely asks one of the women behind the counter if he could have his french fries. His voice was one of the most timid voices I’d ever heard. Her response: “FUCK YOU, HARRY POTTER.”
So mean there, sometimes.
This article reads like it was written by someone who needs to move the fuck back to the midwest already.
LOVELY READ, Brendan. I miss the food terribly.
Jesus I’m sick of Chicago transplants with their neverending yack about the superiority of Chicago junk food – pizza, hotdogs, hamburgers. Nice airport, but I wouldn’t live there if you paid me.
For what it’s worth, I’m not a Chicago transplant. I only lived there for a year and some change. But the city impressed me.
@7&@9 Classic small-town inferiority complex. Perhaps others have something outside of their little pond that brings joy to their life (what a novel concept). Let my guess your Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, or South Dakota transplants? If so, I apologize, for Seattle must have been your beckoning savor for a long long time with no ambitions outside of that. Carry on you cute little sad souls ~
Yeah, nice place if you like a bunch of racist dick heads…
“Which brings us to Taste of Chicago,…a robust Chicago dog—tomatoes, green relish…”
The traditional “green” relish condiment includes FD&C yellow and blue dyes, so as to create the curiously-vivid green effect that would not naturally be.
Detroit’s tougher.
Baghdad is tougher.
Baghdad is tougher than pussy-assed Detroit.
People from Chi-town and Detroit have that Macho Man complex as they have to endure lake effect winters that make ice cubes out of tough guys real fast? People from these parts know what a cold toilet seat is as they don’t need to climb Mt Rainer to get ice sickles on their anus. Yea if I need some tough guys to crash Beijing or Moscow or L.A. I would go with Chi-town? Any of the multi colored Eskimos who populate the great lake regions are some serious seal hunters.
I love Taste of Chicago, but that was a terrible review. I don’t think you can even call that a review when 3/4 of it was spent rambling on about Chicago.
@18, did you read this part?
…I wish I could tell you how the hot dog tasted. But in my memory, the conversation eclipses the cuisine.
And that’s the way it is with Chicago food…
pussy juice. somebody needs to market that.
@9
“Nice airport”
Stopped reading there.
Taste of Chicago blows and is nowhere near as good as the wiener circle. The bun was stale, the dog was cold and it lacked all that is necessary in a good Chicago dog. Don’t even get me going on their so called Chicago Italian beef. I have given this place 3 tries and now they are out.
tell ya what… I’ll take a fistfight with some Detroit jackass any day of the week over pulling knives outta my back from some pretentious Seattle pussy. I’ve known hardcore gangsters back home with better intellectual articulation and a fuller travel log than most of these frontierland idiots. BTW there’s nowhere near enough diversity out here for you people to even begin to understand the difference between racism and being able to poke just enough fun at each other to survive living closer to each other than you are to your basketball team (oops). That said… Taste of Chicago is about average from the typical joint back home. (Paul’s being my fave there; but I digress) It at least keeps the homeland sentiment at bay when the sorry excuses for museums you got out here aren’t cutting it. And don’t worry. I won’t let the door hit my ass on the way outta here. Its a beautiful city here, but the people here are the ugliest I’ve ever met across the rest of the country. You might have to look up from your shoe-tips to see that, though. Don’t go breakin’ your neck tryin’ either…
Convenience, Excess, and Sheer Bad-Assedness!
Fluff! Hype! style! Grace! mode! nich! fad!
do it scream Chicago or do it whisper Detroit?
America has “NO” fricken values when it comes to anything!
As for the dream of a place that puts the taste of Chicago on your taste buds? more power to ya and more Bad-Assedness to the dream and please open one in Belltown next.
As someone who’s lived in Chicago, has eaten at Taste of Chicago and is moving back there in a month, I have to say that this review is about as accurate as you can get. If you want to appreciate Taste of Chicago, you need to understand what Chicago food is, and it’s much more about the attitude and spirit than the flavor.
Seriously, if this review doesn’t mean anything to you, the food at Taste of Chicago won’t either. It’s really nothing special, but it’s authentic and it feels like home.
My favorite only-in-Chicago food scene unfolded when I took a visiting friend to a dog joint on the Near West Side.
There’s one guy in front of us in the line, an ordinary looking white dude. He steps up to the counter and calmly speaks his order for a dog, fries, and a drink.
The gal behind the counter says nothing the whole time, then looks up at him silently for about a second.
And then she asks him, “Don’tchoo fuckin’ eat *anywhere* *else*???”