Italian Beef, You Say?

Wikipedia describes an Italian beef sandwich in the following manner:

"An Italian beef is a sandwich of thin slices of seasoned roast beef , dripping with meat juices, on a dense, long Italian-style roll, believed to have originated in Chicago, where its history dates back at least to the 1930s. The bread itself is often dipped (or double-dipped) into the juices the meat is cooked in, and the sandwich is typically topped off with Chicago-style giardiniera (called "hot") or sauteed, green Italian sweet peppers (called "sweet").

Italian beef sandwiches can be found at most hot dog stands and small Italian-American restaurants throughout the city of Chicago and its suburbs. They are difficult to find outside the Chicago metropolitan area. However, Chicago expatriates have opened restaurants across the country serving Italian beef, Chicago-style hot dogs, and other foods original to the Chicago area."

What this fails to mention is how incredibly awesome this sandwich is. Seriously, it's a death row meal. Unlike many other sandwiches the secret is it's simplicity. It doesn't require cheese, or any other condiment to make it tasty. The meat, the juice, the bread - it's enough. I prefer my sandwich with giardiniera, but I'll eat it plain, if it's a good sandwich. That's the other side of the knife edge; while a good beef is sublime, a bad one is horrendous. It's not like pizza or a burger, where even a bad one is edible. No, a bad Italian beef sandwich is an affront to the palate, a disgrace to tradition.

My personal favorites:

• Al's Beef - This is tops on my list, just about. Great gravy, great thin giardiniera. Also makes great Italian sausage. But, one word of warning. Go to the original on Taylor, or the one on Ontario. Ignore the rest.
• Johnnie's Beef - I can't believe they don't have a website. Great traditional style beef, with clear, gray-brown juice. And a phenomenal sausage; order the combo. Also, go when it's nice out, there isn't any indoor seating.
• Joe Boston's Italian Beef - This one is a recent addition to my list. I had seen it for years, but never went in to try it, even though it was in my neighborhood. My mistake - while the fries are often lackluster, the beef itself is tasty, juicy and delicious.
• Portillo's - It's tasty, delicious and everywhere. 'Nuff said.
  

Some people might ask, "Why isn't Mr Beef on your list?" I'll tell you. It's for tourists. It's tasty enough, but their giardiniera is totally week; it's celery in oil. Let Jay Leno have his Mr Beef. Any of the above options leave it in the dust.

And now, for some food porn:


Now - go get yourself a sandwich! "One beef, hot; dipped."

First Watch on the Moon

As the years go by, and I edge, inexorably, towards forty years old (yikes!), I find myself attracted to all sorts of things that I never would have been attracted to in years past. Expensive watches seem to be the latest thing.

I love mechanical watches. There is just something about a device that requires no electrical power source to work. Poetry in the machine, I dunno.

Anyway, the Omega Speedmaster - that's what I want. It was worn during the first American spacewalk during Gemini 4 and was the first watch worn on the moon during Apollo 11. NASA was serious about making sure the watch could handle space. These are the conditions they subjected all the watches they tested to:

• High temperature: 48 hours at 71° C followed by 30 minutes at 93° C
• Low temperature: Four hours at -18° C
• Temperature cycling in near-vacuum: Fifteen cycles of heating to 71° C for 45 minutes, followed by cooling to -18° C for 45 minutes at 10^-6 atm
• Humidity: 250 hours at temperatures between 20° C and 71° C at relative humidity of 95%
• Oxygen environment: 100% oxygen at 0.35 atm and 71° C for 48 hours
• Shock: Six 11ms 40 G shocks from different directions
• Linear acceleration: from 1 to 7.25G within 333 seconds
• Low pressure: 90 minutes at 10^-6 atm at 71° C followed by 30 minutes at 93° C
• High pressure: 1.6 atm for one hour
• Vibration: three cycles of 30 minutes vibration varying from 5 to 2000hz with minimum 8.8G impulse
• Acoustic noise: 30 minutes at 130db from 40 to 10,000hz

The evaluation concluded in March 1965 with the selection of the Speedmaster, which survived the tests while remaining largely within 5 seconds per day rate.

I'm pretty sure the watch could handle whatever mundane nonsense I could throw at it. I mean, it could handle this:


I know there are other watches that get more notice these days - James Bond's Rolex Submariner leaps to mind, but for me, the Speedmaster is it.

The Monroe Building

Built in 1912 and designed by Holabird and Roche, the Monroe Building (center) is a beautiful example of early skyscraper design. Here is a picture of it today (or nearly so):


The best part? I spend all day in it, every day of the week, working, looking across at the Bean and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Life is grand.

New Job, New Experiences

It should be obvious to anyone who has ever taken a look at my blog that I have been reticent, to put it mildly, to update my blog. Thirteen months is inexcusable, and for that I apologize. In the long months since I've last posted a thing, I've:

- Gotten married. Pretty rad

- Gotten a cat (Templeton) and a dog (Rye). Those astute few will quickly realize, yes, we named our pets after liquor.

- Recently got a new job. I no longer work for the advertising dollar. Instead, I've moved on, to a (I hope) higher calling. I work for the Pritzker Military Library. If you have a passing familiarity with my interests, you'll quickly realize working at the library is a great chance to do something personally rewarding.

-I've also continued my Kuma's habit (my last blog post 13 months ago). It had started long before my last post, and it continues still. My current favorite burger? The Absu.

Don't worry - I still enjoy clothes and what have you, and should have some content and (hopefully) photos soon.

Thanks for standing by!

High on Fire - Not Just for Ears Anymore!

My friends, if they read my blog, will probably roll their eyes as soon as they realize I'm writing a blog entry about Kuma's Corner. I can understand that reaction. As it's been written up by GQ, Playboy, Time Out, Check Please!, I'm hardly breaking new ground. There is probably little I can add to the masses of letters in print and digital form that have been spoken about Kuma's.

But I don't care. I love the place.

If you go, no matter what time, you should expect to wait. And wait. And wait some more. The kitchen is small; your clothes will smell of meat. You will have heard more doom metal than you ever thought you'd listen to at a restaurant. And as the wait will take at least an hour, sometimes two hours, you will probably be much drunker than you expected by the time you sit down. With a nice beer list of some offbeat and enjoyable beers, as well as whiskey on tap, getting more inebriated than you expect is a treat - if you like whiskey or beer. If not, waiting can be a chore.

After finally being seated; face flush with alcohol, cheeks red, ears humming with tinnitus (okay, not really, it's not that loud, but you get the idea), you're faced with a menu. Over 20 burgers, with names like Dark Throne, Motorhead, Pantera, Mastodon flash before your eyes. Do I want a burger with bourbon soaked pears? Chipotle peppers and goat cheese? Ranchero sauce and tortilla strips? The choices are dizzying. One of my favorites is the High on Fire. A 10 oz patty atop a pretzel roll. Topping it are: Siracha hot chili sauce, a slice of prosciutto, a roasted red pepper, grilled pineapple and sweet chili paste. No cheese; I don't think it needs it, although my wife to be disagrees with that. I think all women believe cheese makes anything better.

High on Fire:


Bay Area metal band High on Fire inspired the luscious burger above. Check out the video for "Rumors of War" from Death is This Communion, their fourth record. Like the burger, it's loud, awesome...and no cheese.

A Gift for the Whole Year

My soon to be brother-in-law and I share a common interest: whiskey. Whenever we visit my fiance's family in Ohio, her brother and I often wind up, at least one night, drinking too much whiskey, though I pay for it the next day, hungover. Nine out of ten times, it's bourbon. Earlier this past year, he and his wife went to the Buffalo Trace Distillery. It was while he was there that he decided to get us a tremendous bourbon they make release only once a year. Part of their "antique collection", George T. Stagg is an uncut, unfiltered barrel proof bourbon. At 141.4 proof, the bottle they got us is from the 2009 release. Despite being over 70% alcohol, it really has a bourbon taste - sweetness, fruit, vanilla - alcohol (duh!). And yeah, it burns, but not as much as you'd expect. I drink it with an ice cube, and slowly. Not a whiskey to drink a lot of, or quickly, it's a great treat that I'll come back to throughout the year to enjoy. If you like bourbon, and you can locate a bottle, I highly recommend getting yourself one.

New Years Evolution: Chicago in Photos

With the turning of the year, and my interest in history, I naturally think about the passage of time, and the changing of things. Time marches on, and though day to day life seems the same, that is just an illusion.

Located as I am in Chicago, I'm always interested in looking back and buildings and places that are familiar to me, yet viewed in the past, somehow out of context. Fortunately, the fine collection of Charles Weever Cushman's Kodachrome slides at Indiana University is available to peruse online. I've often viewed it, looking at great scans of his shots; Kodachrome is truly vivid and wonderful in it's presentation of color. I've taken some of my favorite shots from his collections - all taken from 1941 through 1944, and paired them up with contemporary shots of the same locations. Human beings cannot experience geologic time, but with photography like this can serve as a metaphor - how something as seemingly timeless as a cityscape, can, in the span of a human life, change profoundly.