Results tagged “italianbeef”

Keeping a day job in the northern suburbs has re-acquainted us with many of the charms of growing up on the North and Northwest sides. That includes exploring the "border" suburbs when we want to get our nosh on. A co-worker who keeps asking us for restaurant advice (but never heeds it) offered to make a run to a long-forgotten hot dog stand a few weeks back. He brought us back an Italian beef sandwich from Herm's Hot Dog Palace in Skokie (3406 Dempster St., 847-673-9757). As a teenager, we used to bike — or take the Skokie Swift — to visit "Big Herm's" and grab this delicious sammich.

In last month's edition of The New Republic an article by Steve Pinker quoted Leon Kass, chairman of the President's Council of Bioethics (which recently published a 555-page conservative tome called Human Dignity and Bioethics), as saying of street food:

In November we took a look at La-Van Hawkins, a Chicago-born restaurateur who made a fortune in fast food franchises. Hawkins was planning on opening a slew of Nancy's Pizza and Al's Italian Beef franchises on the South Side even as he was waiting to be sentenced to 33 months in prison on corruption charges.

Today's Sun-Times has an interesting article on restaurateur and Chicago native LaVan Hawkins, who's opening Nancy's Pizza and Al's Italian Beef franchises even as he's set to go to prison on corruption charges. The biography of Hawkins is a true rags-to-riches, rise-and-fall-and-rise-again story starting with his early years running in a gang and battling drug addiction, then from working his way up from the lowest rung at a McDonald's to commanding a fast-food franchise empire...

In an effort to hype its Pitchfork Music Festival in Union Park this summer, organizers are tying themselves in to some already existing arts events in the city this summer. According to Pitchfork Media, the Chicago Cultural Center’s Lunchbreak series, in the weeklong run-up to the fest, will be devoted to bands handpicked by the owners and operators of several clubs affiliated with the League of Chicago Music Venues like Schuba’s, the Hideout, Metro, Martyr’s...

Chicagoist has always had a love/hate relationship with the news. For all its faults, we love it anyway. Sort of like a dog that pees the rug and chews our furniture but nuzzles against us at night to tell us about our how the economic stability of Chile might affect our country’s foreign policy. And we know the big cliché in the news biz is that nothing really happens in August, but it doesn’t seem like the local and national MSM are even trying anymore (and apparently neither are we...).

If you missed last year’s The Book of Ralph by John McNally, you missed a great little “meta-memoir” about growing up in the southwest suburbs--but you weren't the only one. The novel--described on its cover as "a fiction"--has just come out in paperback and McNally has started up a tour again and stops in Chicago every day this week, culminating in two big events on Saturday. At 11 am, he’ll be at Duke’s for “the...

This weekend we read about some robberies around town. In two of them, the suspects were caught. In the most serious, a string of bank robberies, the suspect is still on the loose. First off is a robbery that's the most strange of the three. Earlier this month 22-year-old Robert Johnston broke into Pop's Italian Beef on the South Side and stole a donation jar meant to help those serving in Iraq. He made about...

One the best sources for all-things-food is Michael and Jane Stern's Roadfood.com. In fact, word around the Chicagoist office is that one of us has planned entire vacations around the suggestions found in the Sterns' book and Web site.

Oh, good heavens! Chicagoist’s dearest neighbor in the southwesterly direction, the fair city of Peoria, has been officially recognized as one of our nation’s most well-mannered cities. Let us demonstrate our deepest approval in a fitting manner, with just a hint of a grin and gentle applause. Prim and proper Peoria was recognized by 79-year-old etiquette princess Marjabelle Young Stewart, of Kewanee, Illinois, who has been compiling the best-mannered list for the past 28 years....

Dick Portillo announced this week that he plans on opening a restaurant in Los Angeles, the first Portillo's located outside of the Chicago area. The west coast store will have Portillo's 1920s themed decor and drive through and the menu will feature a true Chicago dog (take that, Wienerschnitzel!). Portillo, who started his business in 1963 by selling hot dogs from a 12' x 6' trailer in Villa Park, says he believes that SoCal can sustain at least as many stores there as are in IL.

Saturday was a beautiful day and Chicagoist had a few friends in from out of town so we all headed down to Grant Park for Taste of Chicago, which claims to be the world's largest food and free music festival. Wow, what a bunch of gluttons we were!!! Tickets were $7 for 11 tickets and the three of us each bought $21 worth of tickets. .. what's that? 99 tickets? At each of the festival's 70 restaurant booths there were several food items to choose from that ranged in price from 2 - 9 tickets. Pooling our tickets together and sharing everything we bought we were able to consume all of the following:

Say what you like about them, yesterday Citysearch announced the winners of their 5th annual "Best of Citysearch" restaurant winners in more than 55 categories. Either Portillo's employees were skewing the votes or else Portillo's has good everything.. this year's winners include: