The Definitive Guide to Chicago Delis

Sandwich from Manny's Cafeteria & Delicatessen in Chicago — Photo:
Courtesy of Manny's Cafeteria & Delicatessen

I’ve always found it curious and kind of charming when New Yorkers use the word “deli” as an indefinite noun as in, “We’re going out to get some deli.” For them, it’s a ubiquitous and comforting dining choice like Italian or Chinese. Not so in Chicago. Instead of neighborhood delis we’ve got endless sandwich shops — places like The Original Beef of Chicagoland in “The Bear” where you can order from a menu that includes some combination of Italian beef, hamburgers, hot dogs, and gyros.

Our delis, on the other hand, are destinations — places we visit for a treat, for the kind of meal that elicits a cardiologist joke. Here, delis come in three basic categories: Jewish, Italian, and Polish. While Chicagoans will argue endlessly about pizza, we seem to be in general agreement about which delis today are the best. Here they are.

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Manny’s Cafeteria & Delicatessan

Sandwiches from Manny's Cafeteria & Delicatessen in Chicago — Courtesy of Manny's Cafeteria & Delicatessen

Chicago once had a robust number of delis and other food businesses near the late Maxwell Street Market — a hub for Jewish merchants and successive waves of other immigrants. Manny’s has been in the area in one form or another since 1942, eventually ending up in its current location in the mid 1960s, where it has become something of a civic institution. Is it technically a “deli” if there’s no meat market, pickle barrels, or packaged foods to go? Who cares when the latkes are so huge and crisp, the matzo balls and kreplach soups such bowlfuls of love, and the warm corned beef sandwich the behemoth of your dreams? I always vow to take half home and occasionally succeed.

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Kaufman’s Bagel & Delicatessen

Close up of a pastrami sandwich on rye from Kaufman's in Chicago. — Courtesy of Kaufman's

The close-in suburb of Skokie has long been a hub of Jewish culture in Chicago, and it’s here that you’ll find the city’s best traditional deli. Kaufman's is the place you go for a ridiculously over-the-top sandwich and end up stocking your kitchen with half-sour pickles, Nova lox, fresh-baked bagels, rugelach, and tubs of frozen matzo ball soup. I’m kind of partial to “Moise’s Pupik” — a heap of hand-cut corned beef or pastrami on corn rye with spicy mustard. (Pupik means “navel” in Yiddish, and I don’t even want to know.) One of these days I’ll try the “New Jersey Bypass,” a double decker with both corned beef and pastrami. Please note the cardiologist joke.

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Andy’s Deli & Mikolajczyk Sausage Shop

The biggest and most inviting of the north side’s Polish delis, Andy’s is a kind of Eastern European wonderland. The meat and sausage counter serves as the main draw for expats who crowd it for their turn to get persnickety with the counter hands. There’s also a bakery offering great, sour rye bread, those sugary custard or jelly-filled doughnuts called paczki, and fat squares of cake that appear to be at least 50% frosting. Walk past the shelves stocked with imported dry goods to the prepared foods counter in the back, where a generous hot lunch — one meat, one starch, one salad — is yours for about 10 bucks. The choices are vast and include the likes of duck and veal. On my recent visit I ended up with a roasted pork shank, a bed of bulgur in mushroom gravy, and a sauerkraut, apple, and carrot salad.

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J.P. Graziano Grocery

The city’s West Loop has in recent years morphed from an appealingly gritty former industrial zone filled with the hulking remains of wholesale market buildings and warehouses into a nightlife mecca of wall-to-wall restaurants, bars, and boutique hotels. But if you want a taste of what once was (both figuratively and deliciously), stop for a sandwich to-go at the nearly 90-year-old Italian deli J.P. Graziano Grocery. Its signature giardiniera is famous throughout the city as a key ingredient in Italian beef sandwiches. Here, though, this elixir (which comes in both hot and mild versions) anoints subs constructed on bread cut from crusty, yard-long loaves. They’re piled with sliced cold cuts and cheeses as well as icy-cold lettuce and tomato. Everything is on the honor system without a ticket in sight. Order at the counter, help yourself to whatever chips and drinks you want, admire the seemingly decorative old deli counter filled with salumi, and wend your way to the old wooden cashier booth in the back. Then just mill about and listen for them to call your sandwich.

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