I just got back from visiting my friend Bill in Chicago. I drove out there in a day, a quarter of the way across the country. I did some light tourism, but, principally, I ate. After that, I drove back.

I don’t want to talk about how much I ate in budgetary terms. Suffice it to say that I spent several times $50 in the space of a few days. I won’t lie to you: I went vastly over-budget. But quibbling about a few banknotes when visiting a friend in Chicago who likes to eat is like fussing over a few extra dollars of rocket fuel when heading out to take that one small step onto the moon. This was my first visit to Chicago. Those of you who know the place and what it has to offer will understand my lapse of discipline.

Not long after I arrived, Bill took me out for tacos:

tacos al pastor, de carnitas, y de lengua

tacos al pastor, de carnitas, y de lengua




There is no doubt in my mind that Chicago’s tacos lick anything New York has to offer. These were the best I’ve had outside Mexico. They cost $1.75 each.

The next day, slightly after breakfast, but not by much, I had one of these,

charred hot dog

charred hot dog

from here:

huey's

huey's

This was a standard Chicago red-hot, consisting of a Vienna Beef frank on a poppy seed bun, topped with onions, tomato, mustard, and a pickle (removed when eating), with excellent fries to the side. One may put ketchup on the fries, but not the frank. On Bill’s advice, I got my hot dog charred, which means grilled. It was as good a grilled hot dog as I’ve ever had. I kind of want more, right now.

Later that day, I had an Italian beef sandwich, here:

Al's #1 Italian Beef

Al's #1 Italian Beef

An Italian beef is like a peppersteak sub, if the steak were stewed with onions to the consistency of a tender pastrami; the peppers included pickled celery and so on, and were placed on top; and the bun were dunked in a bin of the broth from the cooking of the meat. The result is a warm, sodden, spicy mass that sings with the long-lasting flavor of slow-cooked fatty beef, the sandwich equivalent of a drunk tenor at an Italian wedding. Like vampires, Italian beef doesn’t show up on photographs, digital or otherwise. Its remains, however, do:

Italian beef remains

Italian beef remains

That’s because they aren’t there.

Because there’s no reason to stop at two meals of beef in a day — none that won’t kill you, anyhow — we repaired that evening to Cho Sun Ok, a Korean BBQ joint, excellent and surly in the manner of all the great representatives of its kind:

Korean BBQ from Cho Sun Ok

Korean BBQ from Cho Sun Ok

The beef was cooked in a stone wok on the table. Nothing new there. What blew my mind was what happened afterward. When we’d finished the beef, the waitress soaked up some of the melted fat with a paper napkin, brought a dish of kimchi and butter, and dumped it into the wok. Then she brought a dish of white rice, dumped it in on top, allowed it to fry until crispy, then mixed it around, and let it fry some more. The red-stained rice tasted as though it could have fortified me against a -20 degree day. The weather was pleasant, so we took the rest of the rice home, and I ate it for breakfast.

And that was only the second day of my trip. I’d tell you about the rest of it now, but I just drove a quarter of the way across the country.

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