The Sandwich King of Chicago, Jeff Mauro, shares his picks for his favourite sandwiches, from hot Italian beef at Village Tap to the Chicago Puerto Rican Original at La Bomba.
Chicago’s culture is deeply embedded in its working-class, immigrant history – including that of its food. While the city’s culinary scene offers plenty of fine dining options, food preferences lean toward hearty, practical and just plain good. A stroll down Chicago’s streets reveals too many sandwich joints to count; tucked into buildings on every corner of the 77 community areas that make up the city, the third largest in the US.
As Chicago’s Sandwich King Jeff Mauro describes it, “Chicago has a no-nonsense palate – we don’t need our food highfalutin and fancy. It is a combination of necessity – hardworking people who build and maintain the city who need something quick, quality and handheld – coupled with the sheer number of immigrants over the generations who bring their cuisine to the city.”
For Mauro, the sandwich is also a comfort that everyone can understand. “As a kid, it’s one of your first foods, carried in a brown bag lunch, your first connection to becoming independent and socialising at the lunch table. You develop an affection for it you don’t get with other foods. And it can be eaten every single day – how many foods do you see like that?”
Part of the Chicago sandwich craze rests on a condiment specific to this city – giardiniera. A medley of pickled vegetables, it has risen to the zeitgeist with the popularity of Hulu’s The Bear. But native Chicagoans have been using giardiniera in their dishes since the late 19th Century when Italian immigrants introduced it to the city. Mauro described it as “an explosion of flavour, heat and texture” that “adds more peppers, more colour, more crunch”.
Dining and Cooking