Frequent readers of this blog will recognize my fixation with the Jim Shoe sandwich. This sandwich could be described as a culinary abomination, a wrong idea in most every sense, a prank that could have been concocted by any number of ~stoned~ caloric thrill seekers, not too far astray from the street food fantasies of its booze-sopping Latin American cousins. A sub roll + griddled “corn” beef, roast beef, AND gyros + mayo and mustard + lettuce and tomato, gilded with guy-ro sauce (aka tzatziki), sometimes with optional cheese, grilled onions, and requisite-for-me giardiniera.
But its pure Chicago– born behind the bullet proof glass of Southside sub shops, ubiquitous spots that seem to do more of their business in low rent grease (gyros, burgers, deep fried stuff) than their namesake sandwiches. The history of the thing is dubious, likely born out of some sort of maniacal hunger-distorted vision that became the stuff of urban legend that subsequently went viral over the past few decades. Like most northside-dwelling internet food hounds, I was turned on to them by Dr. Peter Engler, a Chicago food historian and a true legend of the food internet underground. I’d heard whispers about this sandwich from mutual friends, but patiently waited for Peter to unleash this decade-in-the-making treatise on the subject.
Bad idea or not, it turned out I actually quite like these monstrosities. Best in measured doses– shared amongst friends, this is a true example of the sum-equals-more-than-its-parts theory. I’ve sampled them across the south and west sides, in all of their forms: meats sliced or chopped on the griddle; spilling out of a pita; wrapped in a burrito shell and deep fried; and even made with higher quality ingredients up in Milwaukee.
This last form sparked a conversation amongst a few of my food pals on a day trip up to Chicago’s northernmost neighborhood. What would a truly artisanal Shoe taste like? Made with the best ingredients of their class: a proper Italian sub roll stuffed with home made meats and giardiniera. The perfect opportunity arose last weekend when my bud Matt “laikom” Zatkoff hosted a Chicago themed potluck BBQ. I was making 7 lbs. of my famous Italian beef anyhow and also had to make a stop at the corner of Grand and May for a 1-2 punch of D’Amatos crusty 3 ft. extra long Italian rolls and Bari’s deeply marinated hot giardiniere. Italian beef is not typical on Chicago shoes, but had featured in that rendition at Milwaukee’s House of Corned beef, upping the Chicago terroir of this sandwich a notch. So my Italian beef would fill in for the roast beef. Mark “fropones” Siegal painstakingly crafted a house-cured corned beef and PIGMON and trixie-pea were kind enough to cruise up the Edens to grab a few pounds of the favored house made gyros (and tztaziki) from Psistria on Touhy in Lincolnwood. And while, there are some pretty massive Jim Shoes already on the market, since we had a 3 foot long sub roll we could dub this the “world’s largest Jim Shoe”, I’ll insert “artisanal” as a descriptor before folks start calling afoul.
Photo c/o Matt Zatkoff
I’m a huge fan of the chopped style of Jim Shoe, for which the meats are chopped on the griddle as they brown, often with onions and giardiera. Watching a true griddle master at a sub shop offers quite the show, a brisk and aggressive, yet finessed dance. A term that comes up in Jim Shoe lore is kat-a-kat, the name of a Pakistani dish of offal that is fried and chopped, the word an onomatopoeia for the sound of two blades hitting the griddle as they cut up the meat. Since many of the griddle men at these sub shops are Pakistani natives, this makes sense.
I’ve noticed that the cooking implements often employed look like (or probably are) spackle knives, so I chipped any residual joint compound off a couple of spatulas from my painting toolkit and proudly wielded them as my kat-a-kat weaponry. Our slow cooked meats broke down into an almost hash-like consistency and as I let the meat crisp up real nice, a good hash might be a fair analogy. You can see my spackle knife in the photo below.
Photo c/o Matt Zatkoff
So how was this? Delicious of course, the sum-of-its-parts as a true Shoe should be. But was it as good as the real thing? I might argue no, at least not as good as the best renditions from Super Sub in Marquette Park or Stony Sub down on Stony Island. An authentic Jim Shoe takes humble, mass produced, (and important here) sodium-laden products that on their own have little merit to a discerning palate and elevate them into something worthy. We took products that were delicious in their own right and while Voltron-ed together were still delectable, they lost their own inherit qualities a bit in the mix. A lack of salt whallop was the most discernible difference, particularly in the gyros, which several BBQ-goers were quick to note. Even the Bari giardiniere had a certain daintiness compared to its more processed counterparts. Satisfying, but not quite on that down ‘n dirty.
Look at this shit eating grin. Photo c/o Justin Oesterreich
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