RECORD EMPORIUM 2.0

Top Ten Lists

OK. So we are bored. We are waiting patiently for your Ipod to break and you to realize that you don't have the discs or files to back up your tunes. This will be a work in progress so we won't have complete tens and I'm sure the rest of the staff will chime in.
Here we go:

Best Chicago Food and Drink



ROMA'S on North Cicero.

Best Chicago style hot dogs/beef/sausage. No gourmet crap. No NYC sauerkraut. Guys in t-shirts with tattoos and glass eyes waiting on you. First post-prison job? You bet they take tips,



JIMMY'S ORIGINAL is the the place for a Maxwell Street polish. When it was on Halsted, the grease used to leak out onto the sidewalk. The city made them move, I think the address is on south Union, but you can see it from the Dan Ryan, I don't think they lost anything in the move.



CLUB LAGO 331 W. Superior is the ma and pop Italian restaurant you see in the movies. Giancarlo and Guido are third generation owners and great guys. Food and drinks are great. They say that they'll 'talk politics before the revolution'. Good thing because they are right down the street from the courthouse that assesses fines for living in Chicago. I got fined for selling used CD's (imagine that!) and they bought me drinks for an afternoon. Things like that you never forget. The GREEN DOOR down the street pours a heck of a glass of Guinness too.



Pricier but always great is SABATINO'S on west Irving Park. Check out the 'private' booths. I'm always waiting for a guy with a piece of piano wire to strangle somebody. Never saw it happen, but it is worth the risk



The IRISH OAK on north Clark Street is my favorite bar. The drinking is always good and the food can run from the upscale to the better than the run-of-the-mill bar food. Always a good time with the staff and just far enough from Wrigley to eliminate some of tourista yahoos. Billy Lawless was one of the leaders against the smoking ordinance, so you might catch (horrors!) a waft of cigar smoke. Until somebody figures out that eating at a sidewalk cafe and inhaling the exhaust from passing traffic (or sucking in the bouquet of urine cakes) is worse for your health, we might be experiencing an endangered pleasure.



Haven't been to Uno for pizza for a long time. I gotta go to see if they've lost anything. The Chicago pizza legend has been taking a hit lately. It's just not as good as it used to be. You don't cook it over wood fires, you don't add pineapples. Even sticking to the Chicago menu I'm more disappointed than satisfied. Consistently the best is D'AGOSTINO'S on Southport and Addison. It is a good crisp thin crust. (Please don't give me that limp slice NYC crap. Even though what used to be Chicago is rapidly disappearing, we're still a town that likes it stiff.



NY, admittedly has us beat on Delis, but MANNY'S is a good one. You can see city workers on the clock drooling over their pastrami on any given weekday. Our tax dollars at work.



Mexican food? For a town that is over a third Hispanic most of it is as bland as a frozen burrito. My favorite is FERNANDO'S on North Lincoln. Great margaritas too and not just to make you forget about how bad the food is.

IRAZU on North Milwaukee has a great Costa Rican burrito. It seems that the people who run it are a little arrogant, especially since they renovated the place from a little burrito hut. Get it go. They won't say 'thank you' but you'll have a good burrito.


MACNAMARA'S on west Irving has been our Sunday brunch spot. SCHUBA'S used to be but we don't get down around there much anymore.

Aside from Uno's, this has got me to thinking about places that I haven't been to for a while. Moody's used to have the best hamburgers. My wife always like Miller's Pub, but I never was impressed. Thai has been inconsistent everywhere. The Orange Garden used to be the best for Japanese. Harry Caray's never impressed me. I think I'd need a loan to get a good steak.

Like I said, this is a work in progress, but right now I'm hungry.

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