Steak Sandwich of Southwest Suburbia: The Poorboy

Not to be confused with the vastly more well-known poorboy sandwiches of Louisiana (more often called po’boy, or po-boy, or even oyster loaf), or the far more widespread type of deli hoagie using inexpensive cold cuts that is also often called a “poor boy,” the Poorboys of Illinois (sometimes spelled as one word, sometimes as two–I’ll generally use the one-word spelling here) are a species of their own. I first encountered them at a restaurant called Poor Boy in Kankakee, stopping for a quick lunch while driving my son Max downstate to college.

The poor boy sandwich from Poor Boy is a kind of long burger served on a hoagie roll with grilled onions, ketchup, pickle, and mustard. The meat is seasoned and formed into a too-perfect rectangle, sausagey rather than meat-like, less steak than McSteak.

It’s a satisfying meal though, large, different, not much more costly than a burger would be. I’ve been back to try it a few more times since then, and have been vaguely aware of other places in the area selling similar sandwiches, having seen one mentioned on our friend Titus’ blog and an old Chicago’s Best video, among other sources.

It was not until this month that I really dug in and tried to map out the places in the area serving a poorboy sandwich. It’s not easy, given that there are 2 other sandwiches claiming the same or similar names. I had to rely on menu descriptions, yelp reviews, etc. I found and omitted a few other restaurants called variations of Poor Boy who served sandwiches that did not seem related to the sandwich I was looking for, either more standard hoagies or a specialty burger named after the restaurant itself. I also left out a number of Cajun restaurants and their poorboy offerings. Here’s what was left:

With a few notable outliers, Illinois’ unofficial Poorboy Trail (that I just made up) appears to describe a wide but short path leading southwest from Chicago (following I-55? the original Route 66?) centered around Joliet, Illinois. Perhaps not coincidentally, the sources I cited earlier mentioning the Poorboy sandwich almost universally cite a restaurant called Merichka’s, just outside Joliet in Crest Hill. If the points on that map were the tremors of an earthquake, Merichka’s would be at or near their epicenter.

Most of these poorboys are only a little like what I had in Kankakee. The farther from Merichka’s, the greater the variance, or so it seems. The poorboys near the center of this circle have these things in common, though: they are long sandwiches, served on French rolls or baguette sections; the bread gets slathered in garlic butter, the more liberally the better; they are usually served with grilled onions (or the option of grilled onions); and they are considered steak sandwiches rather than burgers, even those that are clearly using the same factory-made prepackaged frozen “poorboy” patties that I had at Poor Boy in Kankakee. In addition to the grilled onions, there is often also an option for mushrooms or peppers. Cheese is usually offered as well, mozzarella usually, though the more fast-foody the place, the more likely it is they will use American.

Merichka’s, though: Merichka’s uses steak. The Chicago’s Best video linked above shows their process of carving, trimming and scraping a good cut of steak–a strip loin maybe from the shape–then running it through a mechanical tenderizer, trimming it into a roughly rectangular cube steak, and cooking it on a griddle. They serve it up on a long French roll that has been liberally slathered in an aged garlic “butterine” they make with margarine and loads of garlic, covered in grilled onions, with a piping hot “double baked” potato on the side.

So when I inevitably started this month at Merichka’s, that is exactly what I ordered.

I don’t believe my photos or the video from Chicago’s Best adequately convey the truly foolhardy amounts of garlic butterine the cooks at Merichka’s use on this bread. Please don’t take this as a complaint–I’m with them: damn the torpedos, let my beard be the paintbrush and we’ll spread garlicky cheer throughout the world! The bread dripped with garlic butter; no, more than dripped, it gushed each time I lifted the sandwich, spouting its aromatic allium oilslick all over the plate, the tablecloth, my shirt, my hands, my beard. They use sturdy cloth napkins at Merichka’s and it was still not enough; I left mine sodden, needing a good wringing out before it could be laundered.

In addition to the steak poorboy, the Merichka’s menu offers both a grilled chicken and a spicy fried chicken poorboy, the latter of which was Mindy’s choice on this visit. She took hers with grilled onions, mushrooms, and cheese. The chicken does have a bit of a capsaicin bite; the fried boneless breast is a bit on the dry side though, even surrounded as this was by garlic oil-infused bread, onions, mushroom, and a layer of molten cheese. Still, it’s a good option, and if we make it back to Merichka’s I might try it next time.

I asked our waitress and the two hostesses at the front desk on the way out about the history of the Poorboy sandwich. I hoped to get some insight into why this particular style of cube steak or chopped steak sandwich is popular over such a hyper-local region, or maybe some stories about why it was named Poor Boy. All three had similar answers for me. Something to do with the Great Depression, they thought, since the restaurant had opened in 1933.

According to Merichka’s Facebook page, the poorboy sandwich “started way back in 1959 with Joe Sr. and fellow cook and friend Rose coming up with the ingredients and how to prepare the sandwich.” So perhaps it was something of a nod to the restaurant’s roots in the Great Depression rather than an acknowledgement of the realities of 1933. It’s as good an answer as any I got this month as to the sandwich’s origins–I did ask at other places, but without much luck. One waitress shrugged and admitted that they order a frozen product called “poorboy steak” at one restaurant. Another insisted vehemently that unlike other places in the area, everything at their restaurant was made from scratch. Most did not care to venture a guess. In any case, Merichka’s appears to have been around the longest and have the best claim as the original.

I tried a bunch of poorboys this month. Some were more burgerlike; others had clearly been made from good quality beefsteak. Some used garlic butter and some didn’t. Some were completely unlike what I had come to expect, but still seemed to fit, somehow. I gave myself a pretty bad case of poorboy fatigue and yet I barely scratched the surface of those pins on the map above.

For Valentine’s Day, Mindy and I visited Cookie’s in Minooka. Dive bar on one half of the building and nice small-town family restaurant on the other side, they’d decorated for the occasion, hearts and flowers adorning the rustic wood walls. I got a poorboy sandwich with a double-baked potato again. Mindy got prime rib with fried shrimp and spaghetti. It’s only fair, given her indulgence of my sandwich obsession on the occasion.

Cookie’s poorboy appeared to be of the prefab rectangleburger variety, though it came on some nice bread with plenty of garlic butter. It was a bit much for me to eat all at once, so I brought half the sandwich home, an act that would become something of a theme this month.

Pappy’s, on 95th Street in Evergreen Park, also makes a longburger style of poorboy, coming by default with mozzarella cheese, grilled onions and grilled peppers. Add some red sauce and it’d be a Freddy, and believe me I considered it.

The poorboy sandwich that deviated the most from the pattern, while still being included in my roundup, was the version from South Side Italian Beef stalwart, Tony’s. Their poorboy consisted of half pound chopped steak patty, its perfect roundness again bespeaking possible mass production. It was served on Texas Toast, of all things, with grilled onions, lettuce, and tomato.

It was not a bad sandwich–excessive to be sure, but the thin slices of tomato acted almost more like a squirt of ketchup than a vegetable, and the flavor was good. The grilled onions that came standard and the description of the patty as “chopped steak” got it just close enough to the standard that I decided to include it for completeness’ sake.

One of those pushpins on the map above isn’t in Illinois at all. Freddy’s Steakhouse in Hammond, Indiana offers a surprising Poor Boy steak sandwich, using ribeye that is cooked to order–in other words, ask for it medium rare and you’ll get thin pieces of good quality steak, not tenderized cube steak, left more than just pinkish in the middle, stacked thick on a standard French roll.

The thing about untenderized ribeye though, is that it doesn’t bite through very cleanly in a sandwich. Ribeye is probably my favorite cut for a steak; it’s great for slicing with a fork and a knife, plenty of flavor and tender enough to eat as a steak while still having a little chew to it. In a sandwich, though, it’s a struggle to separate a bite from the rest of the steak. Outstanding steak though, and a great vibe, the kind of old-school place where I’d love to drink 3 or 4 Old Fashioned cocktails while powering my way through a fifty dollar steak and then get a too-expensive cab home.

The Poorboy from Sal’s Famous Cheesesteaks in Justice fits the bill but is about as sad a version as I had this month. I ate more of the fries, which also were not very good, than I did of the sandwich. Another longburger, this one comes with American cheese, very finely minced grilled onions, shredded lettuce, and thin slices of tomato on the same French roll you’d get an Italian beef in. The patty was a uniform gray color, with little of the nice browning evident on many of the other versions I tried this month; there was no garlic butter on the bread, and nothing about this sandwich to recommend really.

Somewhat better was the version I had a few days later, at Billy Boys Restaurant in Chicago Ridge. The Billy Boys sandwich also featured lettuce and tomato–cheese was not standard but available on request–but had clearly seen more care go into its making than the Sal’s version. As a bonus, Billy Boys not only had an appetizer called “hotzarella sticks”–basically mozzarella sticks but with some chili peppers added to the breading–but also sold toasted ravioli, an occasional nostalgic indulgence that reminds me of my hometown.

To be clear though the majority of poorboy sandwiches I’d tried this month were at the very periphery of poorboy territory. By this point I had eaten far more than my share of poorboy sandwiches in a short period of time and didn’t care to subject myself to more. Rather than give this sandwich short shrift though I girded myself for battle, screwed my courage to the sticking point, and began a trek into the belly of the beast.

I drove to Joliet.

Right off the bat, I found a terrific sandwich, and a restaurant I wouldn’t mind returning to. Thayer Bros Deli & Grille is, like Cookie’s was, half-family restaurant, and half-dive bar, with nothing but an open door separating it from the Thirty-Buck tavern next door. The poorboy sandwich came with a cup of soup–very good beef noodle soup that day, though chicken noodle was also available–fresh hand-cut fries, a mild vinegar slaw, pasta salad, and a few good dill pickle slices. The sandwich itself was made from top round, freshly seasoned and tenderized in the Thayer Bros kitchen, with grilled onions and garlic butter on a decent hoagie roll that, from the sign in the window, was provided by a local bakery.

Would I have liked them to use a bit more garlic butter on the bread? Sure, maybe not to the point of a sopping wet, glorious mess like Merichka’s had been, but a little more would have been nice. That is as close to a complaint as I can find about this version of the sandwich though. The bread was good, the garlic butter was present and appeared to be freshly made in-house, the onions were good, even the pickle coins they provided on the side were the best pickles I’d had with one of these sandwiches.

Was it my favorite version of the sandwich? It and Merichka’s are neck and neck, though night and day, yin and yang, Gandalf and Saruman. Both are handmade, using quality meat on good bread. Thayer Bros’ poorboy was assembled with a bit more care and thought for the experience of eating it, a paragon of sandwich order; but the Merichka’s version was piled on with a kind of audacious abandon that I can’t help but admire, an avatar of sandwich chaos. Still, there are rolling daily specials and several other regular menu items I’d like to try at Thayer Bros, so I’ll likely be dragging the family back there before we return to the lake of burning garlic butter.

Also in Joliet, Babe’s Hot Dogs, the very model of a local fast-food joint, looks like a perfect candidate to have a poorly put-together poorboy sandwich complete with the same long rectangle of seasoned ground beef I’d seen at a half-dozen other places this month. But, perhaps because we were in Joliet, on the poorboy’s home turf, their version was better than it needed to be, a thin slice of cubed steak served on garlic bread, with grilled onions that I requested.

The fries weren’t great but the sandwich was a winner, and the chicken dumpling soup and caramel shake Mindy ordered were both top-notch as well. Babe’s is worth a stop if you’re in the area. But I’ll go out of my way to get to Thayer Bros again.

Finally, I did make one homemade version this month, on homemade baguette, using a black garlic butterine, onions grilled to the edge of caramelization, and seasoned, tenderized top sirloin that turned out to be a great choice for a steak sandwich. I served it with my own version of a twice-baked potato, using 5 year old cheddar, homemade bacon, cream, sour cream, butter, black garlic butterine, salt, pepper, and chives. It was delicious! You’ll have to watch the Tiktok video to see it though. For now, I’ve had my fill of poorboys. March is only a day away and we’ll have three more sandwiches on our List to try. I for one can’t wait. Thanks for reading!

@sandwichidiot Black garlic steak poorboy sandwich #poorboy #sandwichtribunal #blackgarlicbutter ♬ original sound – Jim Behymer