When At Play asked readers to nominate sandwiches that you considered “the best, lip-smacking, life-enhancing sandwiches in the Chicago area,” you responded. Big time.
You told us how you absolutely love Johnnie’s in Elmwood Park for its juicy beef–unless you love it for its combo.
No, wait. You absolutely love the subs at (choose one) Bari Foods, Fontano’s Subs, Leno’s Submarine Shop, Algonquin Sub Shop, Hero’s Submarine Sandwich Shop . …
Or is it the corned beef at Manny’s Coffee Shop & Deli, the Reuben at Original Frances’ Deli, the jibaro at Borinquen Restaurant?
OK, let’s just say there was no clear single winner among the more than 200 e-mails and letters we received from At Play readers. But there was passion:
“I love sandwiches. And choosing the best is often a matter of the day’s mood,” wrote Patrick J. Leston of Glen Ellyn, who gave us a week’s lineup of his favorites from Augustino’s Rock and Roll Deli in Carol Stream.
Of the pork tenderloin at Junior’s Sports Lounge in Chicago, Chicagoan Kim Bosse noted: “It has gotten me through 8 months of pregnancy so far and will definitely help in the home stretch.”
That sandwiches are an important part of our lives is no surprise. Number crunchers who track America’s eating habits at Rosemont-based NPD Group found that the No. 1 main dish served at dinner is a sandwich.
So we chose five passionate missives and tried their favorite sandwiches. Have a bite.
— Judy Hevrdejs
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A cheeseburger topped with gyros. Mmmm.
When asked for favorite sandwiches, readers told us: To each his own. Here’s one diner’s tale:
Nicholas Noyes took a bite of the Niki Special, a sandwich the 22-year-old estimates he has ordered 140 times since his dad introduced it to him when he was 8 years old. Slices of gyros meat fell into his paper basket. He moaned.
“I can tell you every single one makes me as happy as the first,” he said.
Here’s what’s in Chuck Wagon’s Niki Special–a thin cheeseburger topped with grilled onions, ketchup, mustard, lettuce and a huge pile of gyros meat inside a soft sesame seed bun. All for $4.95.
The Wilmette lunch counter’s sandwich is a marvel of greasy harmony–the perfect balance of meaty cheeseburger and salty gyros mediated by the sweetness of onions and ketchup and united by a certain oily goodness.
Noyes, who works at a law firm, has asked other restaurants to construct Nikis for him, especially when he was away at college.
He had no luck. The proportions were always wrong. Sometimes there was too much hamburger. Or too little gyros meat. Something was always off, so every time he returned home, he would “hit the Wagon” with his friends, also Niki aficionados.
At some point, Noyes and his friends decided the Niki would be a good way to prove their manhood, or something like that. So they began ordering multiple-patty Nikis, with three hamburger patties. And four. And seven.
The biggest Niki any of Noyes’ friends kept down?
A Niki with 13 patties.
Asked how a 13-patty Niki could fit in anyone’s mouth, even that of a hungry teenage boy, Noyes says, “It’s really hard.”
And then, miming a person pressing two things together with great difficulty, “You. Have. To. Really. Squeeze. It. Down.”
Niki Special, $4.95
Chuck Wagon
1120 Central Ave.
Wilmette
847-256-0120
–Trine Tsouderos
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The original sub at Leno’s is still that
The white walls of Leno’s Submarine Shop are lined with movie posters from “Grease,” “Rocky” and “Saturday Night Fever.”
But it’s more than the wall art at this tiny Waukegan sandwich shop that transports Jennifer Herrick back to the early ’70s. For this Leno’s fan, it’s the garlicky, vinegary, yeasty, meaty flavors of Leno’s original sub sandwich that takes her back to her Waukegan childhood.
This work of art arrives open faced in a red plastic basket. The fresh Gonnella bun is loaded with slices of cotto salami, ham, luncheon meat (a type of pork) and American cheese. Next comes a fluffy tangle of shredded lettuce, thin rings of white onion and two slender slices of red tomato, all finished with Leno’s secret herbed oil-and-vinegar dressing.
Herrick, a graphic artist at the Waukegan Public Library, remembers, as a kid, “on Saturdays, we’d come here for Leno’s to go.” In high school, she’d stop by for an “original” with pals.
“While I was in college, I dabbled in the bacon, beef and cream cheese sandwich,” another Leno’s special, Herrick admitted. “But eventually I came back to Leno’s original.”
As an adult, she would get party-sized Leno’s sandwiches for get-togethers and on “Sundays, before I had kids, my husband and I would go to a local bar to watch football games and they would have Leno’s subs there.”
But last year, after 25 years of Leno’s dependability, Herrick and others got a scare. They learned the original owners of Leno’s had sold the stand to Paul and Toula Alatzakis, who closed it, then cleaned it up, remodeling much of the interior. “I also bought all these movie posters from the 1970s on eBay,” Paul said.
It certainly looks brighter and cleaner to Herrick, but the big question when Leno’s reopened last May was whether or not the original would taste the same. “Luckily, we found that they’d gotten the recipe from the original owners and it tasted exactly the same,” Herrick said.
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Today, Herrick lives in Gurnee, but still visits Leno’s and has introduced the original to her two kids. On the day we met at the shop, she brought along her discriminating 5-year-old, Charlie. After helping mom polish off a 6-inch Leno’s original, he looked up and asked, “Can we get another one?”
Leno’s original six-inch, $3.99
Leno’s Submarine Shop
1826 Grand Ave.
Waukegan
847-244-7320
–Monica Eng
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Merichka’s super rich poorboy
In the 20 years they’ve been together, Mark and Laura Wilson have never ordered anything at Merichka’s other than the following: a 6-ounce cube steak, placed on crispy-chewy Gonnella French bread and soaked in a buttery garlic sauce.
“We did try the onion rings once,” Laura Wilson said, correcting herself.
Aside from that one exception, the couple still loves the poorboy steak sandwich at Merichka’s restaurant in Crest Hill.
The couple makes the 30-mile trek from their Elmhurst home to the Crest Hill restaurant about three times a year. On a recent visit, the Wilsons ordered the usual, a poorboy with an extra helping of the melted garlic butter on the side (for dipping), a twice-baked potato, garlic dill pickles and a salad (with a tangy, addictive house dressing), all for $12.25.
The Wilsons discovered the sandwich shortly after they started dating. First, they tried Krapil’s, a steakhouse in Worth. Then Laura recommended Merichka’s for their second date.
Since then, they’ve made going out to restaurants an occasional hobby; their coverage area spans the Chicago suburbs, the Florida Keys and overseas. But Merichka’s is still a favorite.
“If I’m in town, I’ll stop in and have the poorboy,” says Mark Wilson, 52, who runs an architectural hardware firm in Oakbrook Terrace with his family. “If they had deep fried butter on a stick, I’d eat it.”
Wilson, his wife and many others prefer the poorboy, however, which traces its origins to the Kentucky Derby, says manager George Zdralevich. Zdralevich’s father and the restaurant’s cook, Rose Kolenc, went to Louisville in 1957 and discovered a French bread and steak sandwich drizzled in butter. They spent the next six months recreating the dish, cubing the steak themselves and adding the baked potato and a garlic dill pickle from Michigan for garnish.
As the Wilsons finished lunch, a waitress arrived with four sandwiches–with all the accoutrements plus extra buttery garlic sauce–in a huge plastic bag. The couple was heading back home and planned to drop off the sandwiches at their daughter’s house in Naperville. The grandkids were hungrily awaiting the grub.
The legacy continues.
Poorboy steak sandwich with twice-baked potato, salad, garlic dill pickles, $12.25
Merichka’s Restaurant 604 Theodore St.
Crest Hill
815-723-9371
–Glenn Jeffers
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At H.P. Schmaltz, it’s chopped liver
Elizabeth Werth is not a sandwich person.
She has nothing against meat between two slices of bread. It’s just that few sandwiches have bowled her over–until this past summer.
It was friends from North Carolina, of all places, who told Werth and her husband, Bill, about this 2-year-old deli that’s a 10-minute drive from their Glen Ellyn home.
The couple visited H.P. Schmaltz & Co. in Naperville for the first time in July. She ordered the #5, the Wall Street: warm corned beef with mustard on rye and topped with chopped liver for an extra 75 cents. “I thought I had died and gone to heaven when I took my first bite,” she said.
The sandwich is stacked high with slightly fatty corned beef then topped with a scoop of chopped chicken liver. Liver-phobes should give this sandwich a try–the liver is toned down by the mustard’s tanginess, and the typically-mealy texture of liver softened with rendered chicken fat (or schmaltz).
The New York-style deli is run by a cast of characters, who would likely know your name and your “usual” order after several visits.
That attracted the Werths, who’ve visited the deli once a month since their initial July visit. On a recent lunch trip, Bill tackled the Gramercy Park, a warm pastrami sandwich with spicy mustard on marbled rye. Elizabeth, of course, stuck to her usual Wall Street. She managed to finish half and took the rest home.
For the Werths–avid travelers, theater lovers and members of the American Coaster Enthusiasts (as in roller coasters)–going to H.P. Schmaltz is like falling in love again for the first time. “If I can have one sandwich and only sandwich,” Elizabeth said, as she finished her Wall Street, “this would be the one.”
Wall Street #5, $7
H.P. Schmaltz & Co.
1512 N. Naper Blvd.
Suite 152
Naperville
630-245-7595
www.schmaltzdeli.com
(Also in Downers Grove, 1416 Butterfield Rd.)
–Kevin Pang
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Chef goes lux duck at the Peninsula
Chefs being competitive types, you don’t often hear one chef extolling another chef’s work. But Carrie Nahabedian, chef/owner of Naha, has no difficulty raving about the Beijing Duck Croque Monsieur sandwich at the Peninsula Chicago hotel.
“It really is tremendous,” Nahabedian gushed, when we talked by phone. “It’s got just the right mix of duck and cheese, and the sweet-chile dipping sauce is key. Just an unbelievable balance of flavors and texture–every bite is flawless. My only regret is that I didn’t think of it myself.”
For the record, executive chef Terry Crandall says the sandwich consists of sliced and chopped duck meat, warmed in a saute pan, seasoned with five-spice and hoisin sauce and topped with spring onions, cilantro, seeded Thai chiles and aged white-Cheddar cheese.
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It’s placed between slices of pan de mie (a sweet, minimum-crust white bread) that have been spread with sesame butter and griddled; it’s served with pickled vegetable salad, fries and a sweet-chile and garlic dipping sauce.
And it’s every bit as delicious as Nahabedian says it is.
“It’s been on the menu for a long time,” Crandall said. “We take it off for the sake of change, when we get bored with it, but our customers keep making us put it back.”
The sandwich is available at lunch in The Lobby restaurant, and also can be ordered in The Bar.
But the insider’s secret is that, even when it’s not on the menu, you can still get it if you ask nicely. (They don’t say “no” very often at the Peninsula.)
It has a luxury price tag befitting the luxurious surroundings, but, Nahabedian said, “For what they give you, it’s worth it.”
Beijing Duck Croque Monsieur, $19
The Lobby
Peninsula Chicago
108 E. Superior St.
312-573-6760
–Phil Vettel
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A few more bites from our reader-nominated great sandwich search:
BEST NAME FOR A SANDWICH, CLEVER CATEGORY: THE SUN ALSO RISES (Bourgeois Pig, 738 W. Fullerton Ave.)
BEST NAME FOR A SANDWICH, BURP CATEGORY: THE BIG BELCH (Belchaloti’s Pizza, 9907 Roberts Rd., Palos Hills)
WE GOTTA TRY IT #1: THE LUCKY BURGER WITH 2 EGGS (Lucky’s Sandwich Co., 3472 N. Clark St.)
WE GOTTA TRY IT #2: BRAISED PORKBELLY SANDWICH WITH COLESLAW (Blackbird, 619 W. Randolph St.)
BEST EFFORT AT A WRITE-IN CAMPAIGN: 13 VOTES–WHO IS CHE GUEVARA (Cold Comfort Cafe, 2211 W. North Ave.)