Tonight is my last night in town. I went for a long walk around the Loop in the evening. I must’ve looked quite the character in my khaki trenchcoat and fedora hat, umbrella tucked into my pocket, head down strolling around in the wind (it was pretty dang windy today). I have to say this trip has been a lot better than last year’s extended tour of Northwest Memorial, and my mom has enjoyed it too aside from her discovering that she just doesn’t have as much stamina for walking around all day like she used to.
I decided the last few nights to take advantage of my free Grubhub subscription to try a few local foods I hadn’t had a chance to track down.
Someone upthread recommended tamales, and I’vr read that Chicago tamales are very different from the Mexican tamales I’m more familiar with. I found a place called The Hat and ordered a “mother-in-law sandwich” - a tamale on a hot dog bun, topped with chili, onions, tomatoes, and sport peppers. It came in a box, open-face style, and I had to eat it with a knife and fork.
The tamale - which was thin and quite evidently machine-made, was about the same length and thickness as a jumbo dog, and had a ground beef filling. I was surprised when I tasted it, because it was very familiar - it tastes almost exactly like XLNT tamales, a brand which they sell refrigerated at the grocery store in southern CA.
The chili I thought was a little bland and could’ve been moister, but it paired well with the tamale and the poppyseed bun, and the sport peppers provided some much-needed heat.
Tonight I wanted some Mexican food. A few decades ago that probably wasn’t even possible to find in Chicago outside of Taco Bell, but I found quite a few restaurants to choose from. I started looking at them and the first one I saw, I looked at their menu and when I read the description of the burrito I thought to myself “Well, this is just ALL wrong”, because the fillings listed were meat, refried beans, LETTUCE, tomato, cheese, and sour cream. That’s not a list of fillings I’ve ever seen outside of a Taco Bell, so I assumed the proprietors of this particular establishment were merely escaped mental patients who had somehow secured a mob loan with zero interest and a generous payment plan, and scrolled to the next one.
Their burrito was the same. So was the next one. And the next one. Almost every one I looked at was the same. Interesting. Could I have just stumbled onto the existence of some Chicago-style burrito I’d never heard of?
I googled it, and there weren’t many results, but a few people including a Chicago Tribune writer, seem to have noticed the existence of this style just within the last year or two. Fascinating! So I picked one called El Greco, ordered a carne asada burrito with all the trimmings and hot sauce, and tried it.
It was pretty dang good! The lettuce was warm, but not so warm that it was limp or slimy, it still had some crunch to it. The meat wasn’t seasoned the same way carne asada usually is - maybe just salt and pepper and a bit of chili powder, but it was perfectly seared and tender and moist and diced into tiny bits like it should be. The beans were very smooth and moist. I was expecting cheddar considering the gringo-esque sound of the burrito, but it was a mild white cheese instead, maybe jack or Oaxaca. The tortilla was browned a little more than I normally see, but not to the point of being crunchy and all. It was about the same size as a San Diego burrito and it came with a side of medium salsa that was about the same consistency as gazpacho.
If Chicago-style burritos become a thing that gets recognized outside the city, I would prefer it to the San Francisco full-of-rice-and-beans style that Chipotle is poisoning the world with.
If I ever make it here again, I’ll have to try a breaded steak sandwich.
