It's a battle of the beef

I put two Northwest side Italian beef stands to the test

Hi, everyone!

It’s my birthday week.

In celebration of that fact, I’m going to give myself next week off The Party Cut, and just to make it a real party, I’m making subscriptions 20% off this week using the coupon below.

The offer’s available through this Saturday, April 5th, and if you’re an existing subscriber it should tack on additional time to your subscription at the discounted fee. Let me know if you have any weird issues.

And about the money — it really just goes to cover expenses for the restaurants we visit. I was originally in the hole when I started the newsletter over two years ago, but I stubbornly held on against my financial best wishes. In all transparency, after taxes, it’s now a zero sum game (as in I don’t actually make any money), but I feel so strongly about our local independent food scene that I’ve stayed committed to the task. Thank you guys for reading, sharing, messaging me, and supporting the newsletter, it means the world to me.

This week, I revisited the same northwestern neck of the woods as last week’s unique food truck find, to visit two Italian beef stands I’ve always heard were terrific, but had yet to visit. And no, I didn’t go to Johnnie’s, since I went to it last year for the first time. But these two are hometown favorites that are markedly different from each other, and I wanted to see if I’d come away with a favorite, and why.

The first spot was Bob-O’s Hot Dogs in the Irving Woods neighborhood.

Despite having “hot dogs” in its name, I’ve heard more about its Italian beef than anything else (though I hear the dogs are excellent too).

In fact, Bob-O’s won WGN’s Italian beef tournament last year, surprisingly beating out fan favorites like Al’s, Johnnie’s, and Mr. Beef. It’s a cute little place, with just a small storefront on Irving Park, and is still family-run, having recently expanded to a second location on North Milwaukee Avenue.

I’d order a regular Italian beef and an Italian beef and sausage combo at each place, dipped, with both sweet and hot peppers, along with a side of cheese fries.

Because I love cheese fries, okay?! Don’t judge me! (Okay, you can judge me.)

The regular Italian beef at Bob-O’s ($8, sweet and hot giardinera are extra) comes absolutely loaded with beef, and is the quintessential version of the sandwich.

The beef here isn’t the thinnest I’ve encountered, so it does have a bit of chew to it, which gives it a sort of hearty homemade feeling. It’s juicy, substantial, and even the huge pieces of sweet bell peppers here have a heft to them, which gives the sandwich even more brawn. The giardinera is the kind you already know and love, with that standard pickly pepper bite, along with bits like celery, and shredded carrots.

But the combo with the Italian sausage ($8.75) is the real standout.

The idea of an already large Italian sausage on a French roll that treats a mound of beef as a condiment has always been absolutely hilarious to me. But Bob-O’s is excellent. It’s all that aggressive seasoning in the charred sausage, like fennel and garlic, along with the fat, salt, and volume of meat, that really brings this thing together. Now that I’m getting older I’m sort of finding it harder to justify ordering Italian beef combos, but I have to admit they’re good when you get them at the right spots, and Bob-O’s counts as one of them.

The natural hand-cut fries ($2.99, cheese cup $0.75) at Bob-O’s are also really good and plentiful too, and absolutely worth getting.

They’re nothing to wax too poetic about, but they’re just very well executed. And their pump cheese is better than most I’ve had, in that it’s actually got some tangy flavor. You can order the fries with the cheese on them already, or in a cup on the side.

Italian beef is one of those things that can easily just be served from a foodservice bag, a-la Portillo’s, or via standard-issue Vienna Beef kits (which are great too!), but when a stand makes its own beef from scratch and takes care to make proper fries, that says a lot to me. I’ve been to sit-down restaurants where a good amount of the stuff comes from frozen restaurant supply bags, but Bob-O’s takes its beef and fry game seriously. It’s a neighborhood stalwart for a good reason, and I’d be so happy to come back any day of the week.

My next spot was Jay’s Beef in Harwood Heights, on Narragansett near Montrose.

It’s about a 10 to 12 minute drive from Bob-O’s Irving Park spot, and I know it has a cult following from some Chicagoans.

My friend Dave Bonomi, who owns Coalfire and Peanut Park Trattoria (and gives me an endless ribbing whenever I go visit), has always gone on about how he absolutely loves Jay’s. The beef stand had an outpost on North Avenue in Wicker Park for a while, but I never got the chance to visit when I lived in the neighborhood. That location closed in early 2022. Now the Harwood Heights location is the only one that’s left.

You know the drill: I got a regular Italian beef and a combo with both sweet and hot peppers, along with an order of cheese fries.

Here their version of “dipped” is “juicy,” by the way, in case you’ve never been and want to look like you live in the neighborhood. (Mr. Beef uses the term juicy as well.) One major thing I immediately appreciated at Jay’s is that each table is outfitted with an actual paper towel holder, no shitty thin paper napkins here.

What you’ll notice immediately about Jay’s sandwiches is the difference in peppers. Instead of the swampy green sweet bell peppers you get at most places, Jay’s actually uses colorful ones. And its giardinera is unlike any other you’ll see across the city, because it uses fresh vegetables. You’re looking at ingredients like jalapeños and slices of celery that are simply dressed in garlic salt, crushed red pepper, and oil (the employees were kind enough to tell me some details). There’s no vinegar, and any light twang you might get from the veggies are from light fermentation.

The Italian beef ($8.75) at Jay’s is markedly thinner than that at Bob-O’s, and ultra-tender.

What I noticed immediately, aside from the peppers, was the jus. The gravy here is remarkably concentrated, with a deeply meaty flavor and salty backbone. It’s rare that a detail like that sticks out so much for me, especially in something as utilitarian as an Italian beef sandwich, but here it’s a tremendous highlight.

And the giardinera is so fresh it reads kind of like a salad, which is unlike anything else I’ve ever had. But the only acid component in it is what’s naturally in the fresh ingredients, which isn’t much. So rather than getting a complementary pop of flavor, you’re getting texture and vibrance. It’s also not particularly spicy. This isn’t your typical Italian beef sandwich, and I love it for this reason.

The sweet peppers are almost unnecessary here then because they sort of get swept in with the giardinera. They add a lot of extra vegetal bulk to a sandwich that we generally prize for the hardcore amount of beef. They’re visually attractive, but I’d skip them.

The combo here ($10) is also noticeably different.

That’s because the sausage is much thinner. I actually had to dig around in each sandwich to determine which one contained the sausage. The fact that it was smaller meant it cooked differently — the charring made the sausage drier. It also made the ratio of each bite a little more Italian beef-heavy, which might be good for some people, but I preferred Bob-O’s over this one.

And the cheese fries ($5.20 for large) here are the gloriously gloppy ones you expect from a fast food joint.

They come in a clamshell with a huge amount of cheese, and they’re the ones you think of when you think of typical cheese fries. I love how inevitably soggy these get after a while, because you fork them up like a side salad. I know not everyone orders cheese fries at an Italian beef stand, but they’re sort of a weird obsession for me. You can take or leave them depending on your mood; same goes for the likely-frozen fries. I did see breaded mushrooms on the menu, which Bob-O’s doesn’t have.

So my final thoughts: Both Bob-O’s and Jay’s Beef deserve all the love they get from their respective fans, and I’m fascinated at how different they are. Italian beef is one of those things in Chicago that only tends to come with minor variations, which is why Jay’s departure in the giardinera department is so cool to me.

And as to comparisons, I’m going to have to say I like the standard Italian beef at Jay’s a little more than that at Bob-O’s. The deciding factor is really the thinness of the beef, plus the bold flavor of the jus, and that interesting giardinera, which admittedly might not be for everyone.

But the combo win goes handily to Bob-O’s for having the bigger Italian sausage, which was balanced out with the sturdier beef and pickled giardinera and flavorful sweet peppers. That being said, Bob-O’s traditional homemade beef is also exactly what you think of when you think of Italian beef, if not the ideal version. Jay’s is just a unique outlier in Chicago.

I am going to shout out to the employees at each stand, too. Everyone was welcoming and kind, and happily answered all of my questions without a second thought. One thing I’ve always loved about Chicagoans is our united ability to just talk to each other, and at no other place is that exemplified like during employee-to-customer banter at a hot dog or Italian beef stand. It only takes a few minutes of chatter to make you feel like a regular, which both places did.

Definitely give both Bob-O’s and Jay’s some attention if you’re nearby and want something quick to eat. They’re both great places to grab an Italian beef or combo, and make Chicago feel just like home.

Bob-O’s Hot Dogs
8258 W Irving Park Rd
Chicago, IL 60634
(773) 625-9840

Hours:
Open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily

Jay’s Beef
4418 N. Narragansett Ave
Harwood Heights, IL 60706
(708) 867-6733

Hours:
Monday - Saturday: 10 a.m. - 11 p.m.
Sunday: 12 p.m. - 10 p.m.

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Gotta love a wet Italian beef sandwich. You all know that there’s nothing else in the world like it.

Since today’s edition of the newsletter’s free, please, by all means, share it where you can — it helps this little thing grow, and spread the word on Chicago food. Supposedly hitting that little heart button does something too:

And here’s the 20% off coupon one more time. Like I said, it’ll be good through this coming Saturday, April 5th.

I don’t actually have anything planned for my birthday, but since I’m already spoiled by good food, I can’t complain. But I am still going to take next week off to rest the ol’ eyeballs, so enjoy the archives while I’m chillin’ and thinkin’ ahead. There’s plenty to read through.

Okay, I’m going to go relax now. Love you guys.