Category: food

I’m at a loss. I’m perplexed, confused, and befuddled. I’m conflicted, dog-tired, and cat-quick. I’m, frankly, screwed up. And I’m not quite sure what to do about it. You see, there is this stretch of Grand Avenue that has two great sandwich shops and I’m not enough of a foodie to be able to tell which I like better. My taste buds are jaded, raided, and abused. They have been beat up, smacked down, and honked off for about 40 years. How I achieved fame (18 readers) as the most knowledgeable food guy in Chicago (MKFGIC) is beyond me.

Alright, enough with that. I heard through one of my clients that Bari is a “real Italian deli.” Damn if it ain’t (you can get like 4 different kinds of capers in a jar there). If you go all the way to the back, there are about six men speaking accented English making sandwiches faster than you can say Mediterranean. I went early, at 11:30am, and there were already about eight people lined up for a sandwich.

Here’s the thing, Bari (1120 W. Grand) is less than a block from Vinnie’s (1204 W. Grand), and they both make a killer prosciutto and mozzarella sub. You already know how much I like Vinnie’s. Well, the Bari P&M is just as good. It’s different though.

Bottom line, Bari’s version is more prosciutto-centric and Vinnie’s is more mozzarella-centric. You have to make the call, which is more important? The taste and aroma of a fine pork product or the mouth-feel and flavor of a fresh mozzarella? I…just…don’t…know.

Go ahead, pull the two pictures up. Here is the Vinnie’s version. They are eerily similar. I think they may get their bread at the same place – D’Amato’s, which is equidistant from both. I will look into that. Also, note the order of the ingredients. Bari goes, from top to bottom, lettuce, mozzarella, tomato, prosciutto, hot peppers, oil. Vinnie’s goes oil, tomato, lettuce, mozzarella, prosciutto, hot peppers. Does it make a difference? No, it doesn’t.

This is a stupid conversation. Why are we talking about this? Get a life!!

Some of my most enjoyable dining experiences are at EBCs (ethnic bakery cafes). My favorite is BomBon Cafe, which I’ve talked about here and here. Other classics are Letizia’s Natural Bakery in Wicker Park and Cafe Selmarie in Lincoln Square. I’ll visit these multiple times this summer, don’t worry. Chicago is full of EBCs and I’m going to start tagging posts with EBC so you can access them easily.

I like the combination of light, inexpensive lunch fare combined with quality dessert items. I’m genetically predisposed to have dessert at the end of my meal but I rarely do so during lunch. However, when I get a smallish lunch like the Artopita from Artopolis, I usually have plenty of room for some sort of sugar-loaded concoction (you’ll see it in a few days, so sit tight).

Ahhh, the Artopita, it’s special. Pictured is the cross-section of the chicken and mozzarella Artopita, known as the Kotopita. It’s a flaky pastry shell stuffed with a mix of artichoke, tomato, fennel, chicken, and mozzarella. It comes with a side of pasta for $6.95. You can use a knife and fork, but I just pick it up because that’s what my grandfather, The Greek, would have done.

Keep in mind, I don’t have any idea if this is an authentic Greek dish. Artopolis is in the heart of Greektown, so I assume that it’s at least rooted in some Greek tradition. But frankly, I don’t care. It’s too damn good to care about where it come from, just appreciate it. You bite into the buttery pastry shell with a slight crunch, then you get to the doughy part of the pastry, then to the creamy and savory filling. Perfect. I could have probably had two, but that’s excessive.

Artopolis is such a versatile place to entertain or be entertained. They have a bar where you can grab some drinks after work. Their coffee is really good so during off hours they function as a coffee shop. As you can see above, the lunches are great. They have a gift shop and a full-blown dessert case if you need to pick up a gift/dessert on your way to a function. Wow, talk about sensory overload.

Well friends, I’m pressing on with Vinnie’s and it’s turning out to be a flavorful endeavor. This is the tuna. Just homemade tuna salad, lettuce, tomato, oil, and I add hot peppers. Only $4.00 plus $0.25 or $0.50 for hot peppers. It was very good. The homemade tuna salad was creamy with intermittent celery crunch. There were other spices in it but I couldn’t pick them out…maybe some tarragon, some mustard seed. I don’t know. Highly tasty.

Hmmm, I got a new ranking:

1. Prosciutto and Mozzarella
2. Tuna
3. Vinnie Special

The Tuna was a close second and the Vinnie Special is pulling up the rear. The Special really can’t compete with the Tuna and the P&M. Standard lunch meats on the Special like ham and salami struggle when matched up with a flavorful tuna salad and a distinctive meat like prosciutto. I look down the menu and see roast beef, turkey, and ham; three meats that I don’t think can compete with the top two any better than the Special. At this point in time, I’m anticipating a battle royale between the P&M and the Tuna in the end. Don’t worry, there will be video.

But don’t fret all you turkey, ham, roast beef, and veggie lovers. Maybe one will unseat the champ. I will keep an open mind.

More appropriately, I should say Calling all Restauranteurs. It’s those folks who’ll probably need to help me get an In-N-Out Burger in Chicago.

Before I get into this, let me ask you this: Do you know anyone that plans a trip to one of the most fertile, agricultural regions on earth and fantasizes equally about experiencing wine from that region and fast-food burgers from that region? Well, if you don’t, now you do. Me! We made a trip to Santa Barbara wine country and as soon as we got on the road for the two plus hour ride north from LAX, my head was on a swivel trying to spot my first In-N-Out Burger.

It was actually about 36 hours into the trip before I got to experience the cheeseburger and fries pictured above. Man, they were good. Even my wife, the lover of cooking and French cuisine, was impressed with the burger. If you look in the background, you’ll see my wife’s ring-clad hands wrapped around her cheeseburger. ‘Twas a special way to share a quiet evening with the person you love on the central coast of California.

In-N-Out has four food items on the menu; hamburger, cheeseburger, double cheeseburger, and fries. Then for drinks they have the standard sodas and water, and a chocolate malt. That’s it. Talk about focus!

I got the cheeseburger and it comes with burger, lettuce, tomato, cheese, onions, and special sauce. The burger is made on the griddle and the bun is toasted nice and crispy-like. You can feel the crunch of the toasted underside of the bun. You know me, I’m a straight American cheese and grilled onion guy. But this combo from In-N-Out really tugged on my taste buds. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The fries are hand cut from fresh potatoes all day long. It’s pretty cool. They have this silver machine that you can see from the dining area for cutting the fries. They pop a potato in it, pull the lever, and out drops a stack of fresh cut fries.

This place kills. It’s quite a formula. If you drop a few in Chicago you would become a millionaire overnight. I’m working on it, so don’t steal my thunder.

This Italian Grinder from D’Agostino’s is available darn close to my home, so I will never go hungry. At $6.95, this oven baked sammy with ham, capicola, salami, pep, sauteed green peppers/onions, provolone, and Italian spices….is more than a few tasty mouthfuls. And that doesn’t even include the rockin’ fries. That’s a lot of food for a small price.

I’m huge fan of D’Agostino’s pizza and this grinder proved that they are good at more than just pizza. But D’Agostino’s is one of those pizza places that has burgers. What’s with that? Do people actually go into places like D’Agostino’s, Leona’s or Father and Son to order a burger? You could, because they all have them. I can safely say that I’ve never ordered a burger in a pizza place.

Their pizza rocks, so why do it? But maybe I need to try. Maybe that’s a whole new category for Tasty Chicago…pizza joints with good burgers. I don’t know, I’m not buying it.

Getting a burger at a pizza place would be kind of like going to Nordstrom to get some golf shoes. Sure, there’s a good chance that Nordstrom is going to have a bevy of fine golf shoes, but you just don’t buy them there. You just don’t do it! It’s stupid! You go to a golf shop or some other purveyor of golf equipment to buy golf shoes.

Okay, forget about the golf analogy. Would you go to an Ulta to buy bath salts? No, damn you! You go to Bed Bath and Beyond to buy bath salts. I mean, its B3, they have the word bath in their name. Right? Help me out here, someone.

We here at Tasty Chicago always have a bias towards Chicago-based chains when venturing into the land of fast food. If I want a fast, hearty breakfast, nothing beats the sausage, egg, and cheese breakfast sandwich at Potbelly Sandwich Works. That’s right, many of the Potbelly restaurants have breaky (cool-speak for breakfast) and it’s a great thing. It’s also a huge thing. I would say about twice as big as the sausage and egg McMuffin from that other fine local chain, McDonalds.

Potbelly puts it through the same exacting process that all of their sandwiches go through. The egg, cheese, and sausage patties (2) go on and it makes the famous trip through the Potbelly oven. The bun is that wonderful combo of crispy and soft and it’s a joy to eat.

Ahh, I remember you Potbelly, my friend. You were just a little storefront on Lincoln (just south of Fullerton) when I moved here in 1989. You’ve come a long way baby and I feel like I grew up with you. You’re kind of like that good friend from third grade…that I used to hang out with until you got really popular and then made me wait in line just to say hi. Which is not necessarily a compliment, I might add. But I don’t hold it against you because you’re sandwiches are the unequivocal masters of the hot, gourmet sandwich world.

My wife wips up a lot of nice pasta dishes. She is all about mise en place. Hah, you didn’t know that I speak the language of the kitchen, did you? Well, that means basically that she sets all of her ingredients and flatware on the counter in a nice organized fashion before she starts the creation.

Pictured above are the makings of her pasta with chicken, veggies, and Mizithra cheese sauce. It’s a think of beauty, her mise en place. Notice the organized placement of everything. Let’s start with the broccoli in the upper left and go clockwise. After the broccoli you have some olive oil, mushrooms, milk, pasta, Mizithra cheese, flower and butter, roasted red peppers, shredded chicken, and leeks. She makes the pasta, makes the sauce, then combines it all in a large skillet. Great stuff.

I have some Greek blood so I appreciate the efforts to use ingredients, like Mizithra cheese, that bring me in touch with my roots. Heck, my grandfather Sfaelos’ nickname was “The Greek.” That could explain why I love baklava and Zorba the Greek. But then again, maybe baklava is more Turkish than Greek. Kinda kills my view of my ethnicity, or lack thereof.

Swim Cafe is fast becoming one of my favorite coffee shops. There are a lot of reasons. Most prominent, is the fact that they have a lot of great food. Pictured is a fine example. That’s the cross-section of the Swim Cafe chocolate coconut mini-muffin. I had two or three, they were highly enjoyable.

My enjoyment was heightened by their warmth. Yeah, the person waiting on me just pulled a steaming panful of these out of the toaster oven behind the counter. That’s right, a toaster oven. It looked like the kind you buy at Target. You know, the kind you want so bad but your wife won’t let you have it because it looks ugly on the counter. Well, that toaster oven gets a lot better looking if you’ve tasted something as good as these mini-muffins coming out of it.

My wife may convert. Let me tell you a little story. On this day, we came here after working out. Usually after a workout, my wife prefers that we grab food and go. Which is fine, but definitely not my preference. Well, she stared google-eyed as the person behind the counter dropped the steaming mini-muffins into the blue to-go bag. I had a hint, based on her expression, that she was ready to relax the “I won’t eat in sweaty workout clothes rule.” She grabbed the bag, felt the warmth radiating, and emphatically announced to me, “We’re eating here!”

This is just another example of the warm pastry rule (natural law stating that once the sensation of warm pastry is felt by the fingertips, even the most highly-disciplined human can be turned into a food-craving puddle of insatiable consumption).

Swim Cafe is a great place. Not only do they cook up a bunch of good pastry, cupcakes, and muffins, they also serve up some great sandwiches, soups, salads, and breakfast. Let me personally recommend the egg, fontina, and chicken sausage panini on focaccia. Wow, it is something special. I wish I had my camera so you could see it too.

Wow, I’m getting a lot of flack from Tasty Nation (that’s what I want my fan club to be called when it gets formed). John, they say, why don’t you ever say anything negative about food? You’re not a real food critic!

Well, they’re correct. I don’t say negative stuff about food and I’m not a food critic. I just write about stuff that I like to eat. If it’s bad food, I just don’t write about it. There’s enough negativity in this world without some dude like me throwin’ hatred on a restaurant that screwed up my burger or didn’t put enough black beans in my burrito. Not gonna happen here, it’s that simple.

Now if you see me at a place and I don’t end up writing about it, you can assume one of three things:

1. I forgot my camera. Each food post has a picture, that’s my rule. No picture=no writing.
2. I was too embarrassed to whip out my camera and take a picture. I’m a self-conscious guy, what can I say.
3. I did not like the food.

If you want critique, check out my takes on golf. I’m more knowledgeable about golf than I am about food so I’m a little more comfortable spewing out some negativity if it’s warranted.

What do you think? Will you still be a loyal reader now that you know I’m not a food critic?

Where do you get a good chili dog in this town? That whole “Chicago Style” dog thing kind of gets me down at times. Gotta tell ya, I’m not a big fan. My preference is the chili dog, like the kind above from Tony Packo’s, with some spicy pickles.

Raise your hand if you’ve heard of the famous Tony Packo’s in Toledo, Ohio. I guess you have to be at least 40 and remember the TV show M.A.S.H. There was a character named Klinger (cross dresser actually) and he was from Toledo. He would bring up Tony Packo’s occasionally in-show.

Well, the actor that played Klinger was real-life Toledoan Jamie Farr.

Toledo is near my hometown, which luckily has a Tony Packo’s outpost. I went when I was home last and started longing for the ability to get a damn chili dog whenever I please. What better topping for an encased meat than the spicy ground beef creation known as chili? I don’t want a bunch of veggies on my dog, I want meat on top of meat. Is that so wrong?

Actually, the ingredients for the Tony Packo’s chili dog are a dog, mustard, onions, and chili sauce. The next time you are driving through Toledo on the Ohio Turnpike, stop and grab one, you will not regret it. And if you know where I can get one around here, let me know.