One of the best times I ever had in Chicago was getting a Maxwell Street polish. Back in the day Maxwell st. Was a weekend flea market. Blues musicians used to plug their amps into the store fronts on summer nights (way before my time). The university of Illinois tore it all down to put up housing. The only thing that remained were the two shacks that sold food. I can’t remember the names but anyone on the south side would know them. It had a walk up window with nowhere to eat. The smells were amazing !!! Anyone from cops to nurses and students, detectives, blue collar workers, you name it would line up for the food. Rain or shine, winter or summer you’d stand outside to order your food. Why??? Because it was just so good. I think the menu was polish sausage, burgers or chicken breast sandwiches. They had sodas in cans in an iced downed cooler. The one part I never understood was they used some sort of green hot pepper. It was about the size of a jalapeño and nobody ever ate them. They were all over the neighborhood because people would Chuck them out their car windows. I noticed even the pigeons wouldn’t touch them.
My fondest memory of that place is one day I went to get lunch and a gentleman was selling porno tapes and new socks on the corner. I had had to think , what a wonderful spot in the world this is lol.
Somewhere on YouTube some foodie made a long video of that place from the inside of them cooking all the food with just the sounds. Oh man, I can still dream of the huge pile of grilled onions on the flat top. I’m thinking maybe that was a pork chop they did. I always went for the polish with onions. I could dig up the link if anyone was interested.
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Topic: Meathead's smoked Italian beef (Read 2974 times)
