One Steak Sandwich to Rule Them All

Often, when a subject like “Steak sandwich” comes up at the Tribunal, it ends up being a bit of a clip show of a post. Steak sandwich is a category rather than a specific type of sandwich, and we’ve written about plenty of them in the past–cheesesteaks, the Barros Luco in Chile and the Prego in Portugal, the Shooter’s sandwich, and many more.

This time though I wanted to take a look at some local favorite steak sandwiches in the Chicago area, and think about what makes a good steak sandwich. I had a pretty good idea what I would find. Steak sandwiches come in a few different forms. There are the shaved steak sandwiches (e.g. cheesesteak), the chopped steak sandwiches (e.g. carne asada in a torta), and the whole steak sandwiches (e.g. a ribeye sandwich). I figured I’d try a few of each, compare, contrast, maybe try making an ideal version on my own.

It turns out the ideal version already exists. We’ll get there.

When I first started researching this post, I began by reading up on some local favorite steak sandwiches. One thing I’ve noticed in Chicago, especially the south side, is a preponderance of storefronts offering “steak and lemonade,” that is, cheesesteak-type sandwiches and flavored lemonade slushies. It turns out that this type of restaurant originated just a couple miles from my home in the south suburbs. According to WBEZ, the original steak and lemonade stand was Baba’s Famous Steak & Lemonade in Country Club Hills.

Mindy, Ian and I stopped by on a Saturday to see what was what. Baba’s offers both cheesesteak and ribeye sandwiches, so when our turn came to order, I asked which steak sandwich was the famous one. He gestured toward the cheesesteak section of the menu, so I ordered the “Super Philly Steak” with fries (mild sauce on) and a strawberry lemonade. Mindy requested a ribeye sandwich, and our son had the pizza puff.

I’d recently learned that pizza puffs are made with flour tortillas, and that certainly seemed to be the case with this one. He enjoyed it, and while I think it’s likely that 12-year-olds are the target market for these things, I will also admit that I was interested to learn that Baba’s has what’s called a “Crispy steak” on the menu that is essentially a cheesesteak version of the pizza puff. I am having a hard time visualizing a future in which I do not absolutely house one of these crispy steaks before too long.

Mindy’s ribeye sandwich was a cheap thin-cut ribeye steak, browned on a flat top and served in a French roll with mayo, lettuce, and tomato. It’s essentially the kind of thing I always think of when I think of a steak sandwich, and kind of the archetype of the typical ribeye type of sandwich. It was fine, a little chewy in parts, one of the drawbacks of the whole steak type of sandwich, but serviceable.

The cheesesteak was also typical of the midwestern style of cheesesteak. Cheesesteaks in Philadelphia do not generally contain green peppers, and yet that is the form in which I have encountered them my whole life. The steak is shaved and cooked quickly on the griddle, pulled apart and chopped as it cooks, and mixed with the onions and peppers. I had thought Baba’s offered mushrooms in the cheesesteak as well, but did not encounter any. The cheese was nominally provolone, but had the melting qualities of a processed cheese. Regardless, it was a satisfying sandwich, though I’m sure a Philly partisan would look down his nose at it.

A note on mild sauce: mild sauce is a type of thin, sweet barbecue type sauce that many south side African American sandwich stands and fried chicken joints will offer. It is a standard practice for them to squirt it right on top of the fries for you. (They may also offer hot sauce or lemon-pepper seasoning as well, but mild sauce is the standard.) I have not yet encountered a place making good fresh-cut fries that offers “mild sauce on” and I don’t know that I’d take them up on it if they did, but when a place, like this, offers crinkle-cut food-service fries, mild sauce is a decent accompaniment for them.

Speaking of mild sauce, another south side favorite offering a well-known steak sandwich is Taurus Flavors. Sadly, the classic Avalon Park sandwich stand was struck by a vehicle in late May and is currently not open, or at least not selling their steak sandwiches. They are taking call-in orders for their hoagie sandwiches, consisting of inexpensive cold cuts with pickles, thin-sliced onions, tomatoes, pepperoncinis, and a drizzle of vinaigrette in a French rolls, and selling them out the back door of the restaurant while repairs are being made to the front of the house. But from what I can tell, their current back-door business does not offer the steak sandwich.

But there is another Taurus Flavors location, and again it isn’t far from my neck of the woods, on East 142nd Street in Dolton, IL. So while I could not feature the original in this writeup, I was at least able to get a sense for what their steak sandwiches are all about.

This, again, is a shaved steak sandwich, cooked on a griddle with onions, then topped with quite a bit of a sweet sauce much like the classic South Side mild sauce, along with sweet peppers and a sweet pickle relish. It’s not a photogenic sandwich, especially once it’s been wrapped up tightly in foil paper. It’s not an easy sandwich to eat neatly, either, and it’s a touch sweeter than I’d normally prefer. But I can see the appeal, and it’s absolutely unique.

It’s certainly a better sandwich than either of the two steak sandwiches I tried from Cousins Subs, a Wisconsin-based chain that has expanded to the Chicago loop recently. I tried the steak with bacon, Swiss, & mushroom, and the steak with bacon & cheddar. Neither had much to distinguish them, with very thin-sliced nondescript steak and even thinner bacon. The tastiest thing on either sub was the pepper relish I requested as a condiment on the bacon, mushroom, & Swiss sub

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More interesting is the one-of-a-kind Stella’s Baseball Batting Range in Lyons and its attached food stand. Several years ago, the stand was acquired by a pair of Korean brothers who revamped its menu, adding items like sushi rolls, Nashville hot chicken, pork belly sandwiches, poutine, fried Korean-style mandu dumplings, and softshell crab sandwiches.

Not everything I’ve tried there has worked as well as I hoped, but they have an interesting steak sandwich that I’ve liked on both occasions I’ve visited. Simply called the Korean BBQ steak sandwich, it consists of marinated chunks of skirt steak, grilled and chopped up with a consistency and texture similar to carne asada, and served in a French roll with “kimchi slaw,” which seems to be simply shredded cabbage lightly dressed with kimchi juice, sriracha mayonnaise, sesame seeds, and thinly-sliced radish.

This sandwich is not perfect either, but it’s interesting and unique, with spicy and exciting flavors, and so much promise. It was worth driving to Lyons to eat it twice in the past month, and I’ll likely return in the future as well. If I could offer some constructive criticism, I’d suggest that the meat could be charred just a bit more, perhaps cooked over fire rather than on the flattop, but I’d be splitting hairs. It’s damn good as is.

The Steak Sandwich By Which All Other Steak Sandwiches Shall Be Judged

But then it happened. Then I finally followed the clues, the many online reviews, I listened to the multitude of voices telling me the best steak sandwich in Chicago was in the far west neighborhood of Montclare at a tiny place called Mr. D’s Shish-Kabobs.

Mr. D’s is small–that’s it, that’s the whole restaurant in the photo. There are, I think, 4 tables, in a dining area that is probably not much larger than 18×8 feet. You walk in, order and pay at the counter, and if you’re not taking your food to go, you hope that someone will get up and leave before your food is ready. It worked out for us, as one of the tables was occupied by a couple waiting for their to go order, which came out directly before ours.

Mindy and I ordered 2 of the steak sandwiches. I’d seen that these came with what appeared to be a couple of solid thick disks of raw sliced onion. It turns out they offer them with grilled onions too. We ordered one of each, along with a couple of diet pops. The sandwiches come with free fries. THIS WILL TURN OUT TO HAVE BEEN IMPORTANT.

The sandwich consists of a thin–but not too thin–ribeye steak, marinated and grilled over fire, served in a French roll that has been drizzled with some type of jus, cradling a pair of tomato slices and a pair of onion slices (or in this case some grilled onions), and stuffed into a small boat along with an order of fries.

The thickness of the steak is important. It’s thick enough to get a nice char on it while still leaving a little pink in the middle. The marinade is important. It leaves the steak tender enough to bite through without pulling it out of the sandwich. The tomatoes, well, they’re not super important, but they are seasoned with some Greek herbs, and that’s nice. The grilled onions added a little bit of sweetness, and the jus drizzled into the bread added some flavor and enough lubrication to make every bite perfectly moist. And the flavor! The fire-grilled meat, the herbs, the perfectly cooked steak!

But the sandwich with the raw onion was even better. This was a sweet onion, rather than the sulfurous pungency of typical raw yellow onion, there was a crunch, some onion flavor, but an added dimension of texture that elevated this sandwich to perfection.

With a steak sandwich that good, does it matter what they serve it with? Yes it does. Because if Mr. D’s steak sandwich is the steak sandwich by which all other steak sandwiches shall be measured, then so too are their fries the fries by which all other fries shall be measured. Recently our friend Louisa Chu partnered up with another prolific local food writer named Nick Kindelsperger to identify the best French Fries in Chicago, and while I had scanned the list, I had not fully taken it in, had not grasped that Mr. D’s Shish-Kabobs had taken the #1 spot. Deservedly so. These were enormous, perfectly fried, crisp-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside, not too brown, not too light, just absolutely the essence of what good fries should be.

Our host had noticed me taking pictures of the food and, perhaps thinking we’d come to try the recently-named best fries in Chicago, brought an extra order to our table. “Did you get a good photo?” he asked.

I indicated that yes, I thought I’d gotten one or two good ones.

“So you don’t want these then?” he teased.

Well of course we wanted that extra order of fries. We’d have been fools not to take that extra order of fries. So understand this. Mr. D’s Shish-Kabobs not only has what are nearly the perfect steak sandwich and perfect fries, but it is also owned and run by the kind of people who sometimes bring an extra order of fries to your table for no reason at all. It’s the kind of place we all wish was in our neighborhood, and though it’s an hour’s drive away for me, I’ll be back soon.