2.41 Al’s Beef

Posted on December 8, 2008
Filed Under American |

Hello from Chicago! I visited Chicago over the Thanksgiving holidays and of course hit some good places in town, so you can expect 3 or 4 entries from Chicago coming up. For today, though, we’re eating Italian Beef.

I was very curious when people started talking about Italian Beef. It just sounded so vague, I mean, if I told you I had Korean beef or French beef, what image comes in to your mind? It really could have been anything! So, here we are, at Al’s Beef, to find out what exactly is Italian beef.

There’s a ton of stuff on the menu, from hot dogs to burgers to… Gourmet Salads? Dude, whatever, I’m here for the MEAT from the section titled: LEGENDARY ITALIAN BEEF & SAUSAGE. So bring it on!

Our sandwiches and fries arrive. I ordered an Italian Beef sandwich and also an Italian Sausage sandwich to try.

The fries turns out to be fresh and not frozen. Yes, my good folks at home in California, it IS kind of like In-n-out fries, but it then it looks like it’s lightly battered and then fried to give it more crunch and body. I really like these, they’re even better than In-n-out fries.

It turns out the beef is spiced, oven roasted, then sliced thin and then piled onto a piece of Italian bread resembling a baguette, which crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside. Honestly, it tastes a LOT better than it looks, partially because it’s soaked with gravy (I’d say it’s more like au jus) on the inside. I originally thought the beef would be fatty and the whole thing would be very heavy, but it turns out they’ve meticulously trimmed the beef and it’s amazingly lean, tender and light. You can choose spicy or sweet peppers, I went with the sweet this time but you can bet I’m going after the spicy the next time I’m in town. Excellent.

Italian Sausage sandwich. Oh, man, Chicago dogs and sausages are SO good! The textures were very pleasing and the flavors were jump out at you, it’s excellent, with a very home made taste. I love Chicago hot dogs and sausages (more of that to come) but this is my first glimpse at it.

So, it’s a quick meal here and then we moved on to see the Sears Tower. A few more meals here in Chicago to come, including pizza and of course, the famous Chicago hot dogs. It’s so cool to be in Chicago, the building styles are really diverse. I’m gonna try to focus on the food here, but if you do get a chance to visit Chicago, a tour of downtown is definitely recommended, the architecture here is really quite something.