The Chicago Italian Beef: A Question of Commitment
The Italian beef sandwich is a test. Not of your taste, which it will immediately satisfy, but of your willingness to be uncomfortable in public. To lean over a counter with both elbows out, wax paper held in both hands, while au jus runs down your wrists and your shirt becomes a casualty. The Italian beef demands commitment. If you can't commit, get the dry. But you will regret it.
The History: Working-Class Chicago, Wedding Economics
The Italian beef sandwich emerged in Chicago's Italian immigrant neighborhoods in the early decades of the 20th century, and its origin story is one of practical ingenuity rather than culinary inspiration. Large Italian-American families in the Near West Side and South Side neighborhoods faced a recurring challenge: how to feed a crowd affordably at weddings and gatherings without diminishing the occasion.
The solution was economical and turned out to be brilliant. Buy a less expensive cut of beef — the rump roast, the bottom round, the tougher secondary cuts that required long cooking. Season it aggressively with garlic, Italian herbs, and black pepper. Slow-roast it until it was tender enough to slice paper-thin. Then slice it, return it to the cooking juices to keep it moist, and pile it on Italian bread.
The dip was originally practical: the cooking juices (the au jus) kept the thin-sliced meat from drying out and extended the flavor. What it also did, incidentally, was create a sandwich that was greater than the sum of its parts — the beef soaked in its own concentrated cooking liquid, packed into a crusty Italian roll, created something wet and extraordinary.
By the 1930s, the Italian beef had moved from home kitchens and church hall banquets to the street. Vendors with carts began selling it. Al's Beef, founded in 1938 by Italian-American immigrant Alex Ferreri on Taylor Street in the Little Italy neighborhood, is widely credited as the first permanent Italian beef stand in the modern tradition. Al's is still there.
Wet, Dry, and Dipped: The Language You Need
You cannot walk into an Italian beef stand without understanding the terminology. Fumbling the order reveals you as a tourist; ordering correctly is a small performance of belonging.
Dry: The sandwich is assembled — thinly sliced beef on a roll, with your chosen topping — and handed to you without additional interaction with the au jus vat. The beef is moist from its time in the jus, but the roll is largely intact. This is the order of someone who values a structured eating experience. It is a defensible choice.
Wet: Before the sandwich is completed, the beef inside is ladled with extra au jus, saturating the interior bread but leaving the exterior crust largely intact. You will need napkins. The bread will begin to yield as you eat, but it holds together through the meal. This is the sensible middle ground.
Dipped: The entire assembled sandwich — bread, beef, and all — is submerged in the vat of au jus for two to three seconds. The wax paper goes on the counter. The sandwich is placed in your hands dripping. You lean forward. You eat quickly. There is nothing clean about this experience, and that is the point.
The dipped is the definitive Italian beef experience. It is also the quality test — a restaurant that can't execute the dipped, where the bread dissolves on contact or the jus is so thin it tastes like hot water, has not understood what it is making. A perfect dipped Italian beef has an exterior that still provides the suggestion of a crust while the interior bread has become a deeply savory, beefy mass that functions more like a seasoned starch than a structure. The beef is everywhere. The jus is everywhere. You are somewhere in the middle of it.
Order dipped. Come back and thank us.
Giardiniera vs. Sweet Peppers: The Only Real Choice
Chicago giardiniera is not the Italian jarred giardiniera you encounter at an Italian-American deli. It is a specific preparation: sport peppers, celery, carrot, cauliflower, and olives preserved in oil and vinegar with a level of heat that ranges from moderate to significant depending on the vendor. The oil is the vehicle — it carries the heat of the sport peppers throughout the condiment, and when it hits the hot beef and jus, it blooms into something that elevates the whole sandwich.
Sweet peppers are roasted or griddled bell peppers, served warm, soft and sweet. They provide textural contrast and a sweetness that balances the savory intensity of the beef. They are legitimate. They are not the right answer.
Giardiniera is the correct choice because the Italian beef needs an element that cuts rather than harmonizes. The beef is rich, the jus is savory, the bread is now saturated with both. The giardiniera's acidity and heat arrives like a knife — separating the flavors, refreshing the palate, making each bite a new experience rather than an escalating accumulation of richness. Without the giardiniera, the Italian beef is excellent. With it, it is complete.
"Giardiniera and sweet" is also acceptable, particularly for first-timers who want the full picture.
The Players
Al's Beef (Taylor Street): The institution. The original location on Taylor Street has not moved in nearly ninety years. The au jus is seasoned with Italian herbs and garlic that have been building in character for generations of cooking. The roll holds up to the dip better than most.
Mr. Beef on Orleans Street: The late Anthony Bourdain documented his obsession with Mr. Beef over many years of Chicago visits. The setting is unremarkable — a narrow counter, a few stools, a parking lot. The sandwich is remarkable consistently. This is Bourdain's most credible recommendation in a career of credible recommendations.
Portillo's: The chain that made Italian beef accessible to the suburbs and, eventually, to the rest of the country. The hot dog menu tends to overshadow the Italian beef at Portillo's, but the beef is genuinely good — consistent, properly seasoned, correctly executed. If you're not in Chicago, Portillo's is the most accurate representation of the format available nationally.
Johnnie's Beef (Elmwood Park): The outer-ring choice. Consistently cited by Chicagoans who want to avoid the tourist concentration of the city proper as the best beef in the metropolitan area. The drive to Elmwood Park is part of the experience.
The Jimmy Kimmel Effect and National Visibility
The Italian beef has had several moments of national attention over the decades — food journalists discovering it, travel shows featuring it — but none as significant as the FX series The Bear, which debuted in 2022. Set in a fictional Chicago Italian beef shop explicitly modeled on Mr. Beef on Orleans, The Bear treated the sandwich with a specificity and seriousness that functioned as cultural documentation.
Google searches for "Italian beef sandwich" spiked measurably after each season's release. Restaurants in cities without an Italian beef tradition began attempting their own versions. Jimmy Kimmel, who has eaten at Mr. Beef more times than he can count, used his platform to further amplify it.
The Italian beef is now nationally known in a way it wasn't before 2022. Whether the national versions do it justice is a separate question — the answer, generally, is no — but the attention has landed on a sandwich that deserves it.
How to Make It at Home
The home Italian beef is not the same as the restaurant Italian beef. The restaurant version benefits from a vat of au jus that has been cooking for hours or days, deepening in flavor with each batch of beef. Your home version will be a one-shot operation. It will still be very good.
The roast: Use a rump roast or bottom round, three to four pounds. Season aggressively — much more than feels comfortable — with salt, black pepper, garlic powder, dried oregano, dried basil, red pepper flakes, and Italian seasoning. Roast at 275°F for four to five hours until very tender when probed.
The au jus: Don't discard a drop of the cooking liquid. Supplement it with beef stock (good quality, not the sodium-heavy grocery store kind), a splash of dry red wine, and additional seasoning. Taste it. It should be deeply savory, herby, and slightly spiced. This is what the sandwich lives in.
The beef: Slice as thin as possible while the roast is still warm but not hot. A mandoline or a sharp slicing knife with confidence. The slices should be nearly translucent. Submerge them in warm au jus for three to five minutes before assembling.
The bread: Crusty Italian hoagie rolls with an interior that is soft but not squashy. The bread choice is the hardest element to replicate at home — look for a substantial Italian bakery roll, baked the day of, not a grocery store hoagie bun. The bread must be able to absorb without dissolving.
The dip: Put your au jus in a wide, shallow vessel. Hold the assembled sandwich with both hands. Submerge for two seconds. Eat immediately over the counter.