My love letter to Chicago ended up a love letter to Italian beef
True Chicagoans know the Italian beef is our real food icon. Deep dish is for the tourists.
Photo: Gerald Farinas.
There’s something sacred about the way steam rises from an Italian beef sandwich when the counter guy—and it’s always a guy, usually with forearms like tree trunks and an apron stained with the honest work of feeding people—dips that crusty roll into the au jus one more time before handing it across the counter. That steam carries with it the soul of Chicago, a city that has claimed me completely despite my Pacific origins in Honolulu.
They say deep dish pizza is our signature, but those people have never stood in line at Al’s or Johnnie’s or any corner beef stand on a Tuesday afternoon, watching the ritual unfold. The Italian beef is Chicago’s true communion, our most honest expression of who we are as a city and as a people.
This sandwich was born from necessity, from the beautiful desperation of making something magnificent from almost nothing. Take the toughest, cheapest cut of beef—the kind that would break your teeth if you tried to chew it straight—and transform it through patience and time into something tender enough to fall apart at the touch of a fork. Slice it paper-thin, swimming in its own dark, herb-kissed juices. Pile it high on day-old bread that would otherwise be thrown away, but instead gets reborn through a baptism of au jus until it becomes something greater than the sum of its parts.
This is the alchemy of survival, the magic that immigrant communities have always known. The Italian beef emerged from the same neighborhoods where my adopted city’s character was forged—in the church halls where families celebrated baptisms with whatever they could afford, where wedding receptions stretched precious dollars to feed everyone who came to witness love, where funeral lunches transformed grief into nourishment for the living. It was born in the kitchens of women who understood that feeding people was both practical necessity and spiritual calling.
Those same churches, those same halls, fed the steelworkers and meatpackers, the railroad men and factory hands who built this city with their backs and their dreams. They came from Italy, from Ireland, from Poland, from Mexico, from everywhere hope was scarce and opportunity seemed possible if you were willing to work for it. The Italian beef was their fuel, their reward, their small luxury that didn’t cost like a luxury but felt like one when you were bone-tired and far from the place you once called home.
I remember my first Italian beef, standing outside a little joint just off the DePaul campus, young and foolish and completely unprepared for what was about to happen to my shirt. I’d been in Chicago for three months, trading the gentle warmth of Hawaiian trade winds for the brutal honesty of Midwest seasons, and I thought I understood this city. I was wrong.
The sandwich arrived looking deceptively manageable—just meat and bread, how hard could it be? But Chicago doesn’t reveal its secrets easily. That first bite was a revelation and a disaster. The juice ran down my wrists, the meat slid out the back of the roll, and I stood there on Lincoln Avenue looking like I’d lost a fight with my lunch. A guy at the next table, watching my struggle with the patient amusement of someone who’d seen this dance a thousand times, finally took pity on me.
“Kid,” he said, wiping his own mouth with the precision of a surgeon, “you gotta lean in. Don’t fight it. Become one with the beef.”
It took me weeks to master the technique—the proper grip, the strategic positioning, the zen-like acceptance that some dripping is inevitable but mastery means minimizing the casualties. The way you cradle the sandwich like you’re holding something precious, because you are. The slight forward lean that says you understand this is not food for the timid. The quick, efficient bites that honor both hunger and the craftsmanship that went into what you’re eating.
By winter, I could eat an Italian beef in a blizzard without losing a drop of juice or a shred of dignity. By spring, I was debating the merits of hot versus mild giardiniera with the passion of a theologian. By summer, I was bringing friends from out of town to my favorite spots and watching them go through the same beautiful initiation I’d experienced.
That’s when I knew Chicago had claimed me completely.
The Italian beef taught me that this city doesn’t just feed you—it teaches you. It demands something of you. It asks you to learn its rhythms, respect its traditions, and earn your place in its story. The sandwich is a metaphor for Chicago itself: humble in its origins, complex in its execution, unforgiving to those who approach it casually, but infinitely rewarding to those willing to do the work.
Every time I watch someone take their first real Italian beef—not the sanitized versions served in suburbs or airports, but the real thing, dripping and dangerous and perfect—I see myself on that sidewalk near DePaul, learning what it means to be from somewhere, even when you weren’t born there.
Because that’s what the Italian beef really represents: the possibility of transformation, of belonging, of making something beautiful from whatever you have to work with. It’s the taste of ambition seasoned with humility, the flavor of communities that understood that sharing food was sharing life itself.
The Bear brought Italian beef to television screens around the world, and suddenly everyone wanted to talk about this sandwich we’ve been eating for generations. Governor Pritzker made it our official state sandwich, giving formal recognition to what we’ve always known. But those of us who have stood in those lines, learned those lessons, earned our place in this ongoing conversation—we know that the Italian beef was never waiting for permission to be important.
It was always our truest expression, our most honest ambassador, our most Chicago thing.
In Honolulu, we had plate lunches and shave ice, spam musubi and malasadas—beautiful foods that spoke to the island’s complex cultural heritage. But Chicago gave me something different: it gave me a sandwich that demanded I become worthy of it, a city that asked me to prove my devotion through the simple act of eating carefully and well.
Now, decades later, I can navigate an Italian beef like a native, debate the relative merits of different beef stands with the intensity of a doctoral defense, and feel my heart swell with civic pride every time I see someone else discover what we’ve always known.
This is the greatest city in the world, and its greatest gift isn’t found in its museums or theaters or lakefront views—though all of those are magnificent. Its greatest gift is found in a sandwich that teaches you that love, like the perfect Italian beef, requires patience, practice, and a willingness to get a little messy in the pursuit of something transcendent.
Chicago, you beautiful, complicated, unforgiving, generous city—thank you for the lesson wrapped in crusty bread and swimming in au jus. Thank you for teaching me that home isn’t just where you’re born; it’s where you learn to eat with dignity and pride.
Thank you for the Italian beef. Thank you for everything.