Portillo's - Chicago Syle Dog

With over a dozen hot dog establishments all vying for top position as the greatest hot dog its hard to go wrong when looking for an authentic Chicago style dog. Its pretty easy to find Chicago style dog recommendations in the blogosphere. Hundreds of opinions are out there. The Chicago Traveler has done a couple recent pieces on Hot Doug's and Portillo's, both pillars in hot dog world, as one example.

I was recently in Chicago for a meeting and trapped downtown, without a car, and in need of a a cheap hot dog. Unlike most of the better hot dog joints around town, Portillo's has a branch downtown easily accessible without car or train.

The interior of the shop (above) is pretty crappy. It sort of has that food court mall feel but without the benefit of a mall. There are a bunch of community tables scattered around two food court-esque store fronts - one for dogs/meats one for pasta. What? Pasta? You do get the feel that the place is touristed out a bit. What none of the online reviews tells you is that the restaurants are themed. The particular branch I went to was a silly "30s, 40s gangster theme." Which means there is all kinds of crap plastered (old cars, a barbershop?) on the walls and scattered about the restaurant. Whatever. I was there for the dogs.

I ended up ordering the beef dog with fries and a diet coke.What makes a Chicago dog a Chicago dog is primarily the way that it is served. The hot dog is placed in a poppy seed bun, topped with mustard, onion, relish (usually a fluorescent green concoction), a dill pickle, tomato slices, sport peppers (like mini-jalapenos), and celery salt. Supposedly its taboo to put catchup on a true Chicago dog so I stayed away from that. By a stroke of luck I was given an extra order of fries. It might not be the healthiest thing (according to Chicago Moms blog), but quite honestly, the dog rivaled any hot dog or other cheap food I've ever had. Even better, the bill was about $9

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