How To Eat Like A Local Chicago Foodie Without Leaving Home – Tasting Table

It’s no secret that Chicagoans love to eat. From hearty Midwest comfort foods to world-class cuisine influenced by a diverse blend of cultures, you won’t leave the Windy City hungry. Yet, you don’t need to travel all the way to the Second City to dig into Chicago’s famous flavors. Whether you’re a former Chicagoan, avid visitor, or just a fan of “The Bear,” you can get a taste of Chicago delivered to the comfort of your own home.

From deep dish pizza to Italian beef, many of your favorite iconic Chicago foods are available to ship nationwide. Between services like Tastes of Chicago and Goldbelly, and local purveyors that ship directly, you’re never more than a mouse click or tap from a Chicago craving. This roundup celebrates Chicago establishments and the delicious food that keeps hungry customers satisfied, both near and far. 

Prices are as of the date of publication. 

From one hot dog stand that opened in 1963 to more than 70 locations today, Portillo’s dishes out the ultimate Chicago comfort foods. The Italian beef sandwich is one such local classic that has recently gained national attention as the signature dish on “The Bear.” It features a roll stacked with thinly sliced beef simmered in au jus. You can order it with sweet or hot peppers, choose to add cheese, and specify if you want it dry or dripping with au jus.

A roll soaked in gravy isn’t the best option for takeout, but you can solve that problem by making Italian beef in your own kitchen with a kit from Portillo’s. The Italian beef kit includes eight servings for $109.99 and comes complete with Portillo’s beef, gravy, Italian rolls, and both sweet pepper and hot giardiniera. The only thing missing is the historic memorabilia lining the walls of the restaurant. 

Located in a historic building on a residential corner of Old Town, Twin Anchors is the kind of cozy neighborhood joint that Chicagoans love. It’s also one of Chicago’s oldest restaurants and has been serving hearty fare since 1932. You may recognize Twin Anchors from its appearances in movies, like “The Dark Knight” and “Return to Me,” but it’s the ribs that made Twin Anchors famous.

The baby back ribs at Twin Anchors have gained many fans over the decades, including Frank Sinatra, who clocked several visits. Now you can make Ol’ Blue Eyes’ favorite ribs at home with the Twin Anchors baby back ribs kit for $99.99. The kit includes two (or four) slabs of ribs, slow-cooked and basted in the restaurant’s Zesty BBQ sauce, that you can cook outdoors on the grill or in the oven. Each slab contains about 12 bones and is perfect for feeding one to two people — depending on how hungry you are. 

For more than 50 years, Manny’s Cafeteria and Delicatessen has been a mainstay of Jewish deli classics. Serving filling fare like potato pancakes, matzo ball soup, and iconic pastrami sandwiches, Manny’s draws all walks of life to its welcoming cafeteria on the Near West Side. It’s no wonder that the restaurant is a common stop for politicians to mingle with voters. The fourth generation of the Raskin family still runs Manny’s today, and nothing keeps the meat slicer busy like its corned beef sandwiches.

The Manny’s corned beef kit contains all the marbled, meaty goodness of its sky-high sandwiches for $110.99. Slather a loaf of rye bread with Manny’s special horseradish mustard and top it with two pounds of thinly sliced, pre-cooked corned beef. The pièce de résistance is eight hand-made potato pancakes. You’ll just have to supply your own cafeteria tray.

Did you know that Chicago has its own style of cheesecake? Eli Schulman created this distinctive style in 1978 after a year of testing recipes. Schulman changed the game by utilizing a hot, fast bake and foregoing a water bath. Rather than a traditional graham cracker crust, his cheesecake had a buttery shortbread cookie crust. The result is a golden-brown cake with a uniquely textured and a creamy interior.

Countless Chicagoans have celebrated special occasions with cheesecake from this third-generation, family-owned bakery. The White Sox even celebrated their 2005 World Series win with a 500-pound cheesecake from Eli’s. If you’ve got a sweet tooth, Eli’s ships every form of cheesecake you can think of, including bite-sized cheesecakes, gluten-free options, and even a cheesecake of the month club. The original plain cheesecake is as classic as they come, serving 16 people for $58.00.

Whether you’re walking through the Loop or one of Chicago’s airports, the sweet, cheesy aroma of popcorn in the air can only be Garrett. Founded in the Loop in 1949, Garrett served freshly made CaramelCrisp and CheeseCorn popcorn flavors. Patrons often asked for an empty bag so that they could combine the two flavors together, so “The Mix” was born in 1977. Sweet meets salty when you order this Garrett Mix. Other popcorn purveyors began offering a similar combination of flavors, in turn popularizing this unique Illinois food.

While there are many places to find Chicago-style popcorn these days, Garrett has stayed true to its original methods. It uses the same recipes to make popcorn in copper kettles and mixes each batch by hand. Garrett offers four size options and an array of specialty tin designs. It cooks its popcorn daily in small batches, so you’ll always receive a freshly popped batch. A classic tin of Garrett Mix will run you $35 for 14 cups of popcorn.

One thing that the best spots for Chicago-style hot dogs have in common is that they serve Vienna Beef wieners. Vienna Beef debuted way back at the 1893 World’s Fair, where two brothers made sausages reflective of their Austrian-Hungarian roots. The Chicago-style hot dog came on the scene during the Great Depression. When people struggled to find affordable food, they topped their sausage with veggies and nestled it in a bun for a complete meal that cost only a nickel.

An authentic Chicago-style hot dog starts with a poppy seed bun and all-beef link, both steamed. In a careful balancing act, it’s loaded up with onion, tomato, sport peppers, green relish, and a pickle before it’s topped with mustard and a sprinkle of celery salt. The Vienna Beef hot dog kit comes with everything to drag it through the garden. For $79.99, you’ll get 10 Vienna all-beef hot dogs and poppy seed buns with toppings — just don’t add ketchup!

Founded by Italian immigrants in 1946, Ricobene’s has been busting Chicago guts with its colossal breaded steak sandwich since the 1970s. This classic Bridgeport dish is as messy as it is beloved. The sandwich starts with tenderized skirt steak breaded in Italian seasoning. Then it’s fried, bathed in tomato sauce, and jammed into an Italian bread roll. It’s finished with a topping of melted cheese and giardiniera. The result is sloppy, unwieldy, and delicious.

Take home a taste of the South Side with a Ricobene’s breaded steak sandwich kit, which includes breaded steak, red sauce, Turano Baking Co. rolls, mozzarella, and giardiniera. The kit feeds four to six people and costs $109.95. The part of making it at home? No one will notice if you drip red sauce on your shirt.

Many Chicagoans remember heading to the 13th floor of Marshall Field’s department store to buy chocolates straight from Frango’s Chocolate candy kitchen. Before it landed in Chicago, the iconic candy brand debuted in Seattle in 1918 in the tearoom of the Frederick & Nelson department store. In 1929, Marshall Field’s brought Frango Chocolate to Chicago and the chocolate treat became synonymous with a trip to the department store. While Marshall Field’s closed, Chicago popcorn giant Garrett purchased the chocolate company, which it has been operating since 2017. 

Marshall Field’s may be long gone, but you can order a box of Frango Chocolate from Garrett in original milk mint, dark mint, and white mint chocolate flavors. The classic Frango milk chocolate mint box contains 15 pieces of milk chocolate-covered mint candies. A box of the nostalgic dessert that’s been delighting fans for more than 100 years will run you $60.

You don’t have to head to the South Side to indulge in Chicago’s most colorful classic dessert. Joe and Katherine Sapp founded Rainbow Cone in 1926 and featured a distinctive blend of ice cream flavors. The signature Rainbow Cone includes chocolate, strawberry, pistachio, orange sherbet, and Palmer House. For the uninitiated, Palmer House is vanilla ice cream with walnuts and maraschino cherries. Unlike most ice cream cones, the flavors aren’t scooped — they are sliced and stacked in layers atop the cone.

This stacked ice cream masterpiece packs a colorful and flavorful punch. In recent years, Rainbow Cone expanded from its Beverly location to ice cream trucks and multiple storefronts around the Midwest. If that’s not close enough, you can order two quarts of original Rainbow Cone ice cream for $84.95. You’ll have to slice your own ice cream and provide your own cones, though. 

In the hotly debated world of deep-dish pizza, Pequod’s Pizza is always named near the top of the list. There are many delicious deep-dish restaurants in town, but it’s consistently listed as the best pizza in Chicago. After it started in the suburbs in 1970, the legend grew, and Pequod’s Pizza opened in Lincoln Park in 1992. What makes customers stand wait hours for a table (and then an hour for the pie after ordering)? The differentiator is all about the caramelized crust. The pie’s crispy edge is a satisfying complement to gooey goodness stacked high in the pan.

The only thing better than sinking your teeth into the caramelized, cheesy crust is eating it while sinking into the comfort of your couch. Order a two-pack of Pequod’s Pizza pan-style deep-dish for $99.95 and put on your elastic waistband pants.

Chef Rick Bayless has been celebrating Mexican flavors in Chicago since 1987. After traveling through Mexico, Bayless created Frontera Grill to feature an ever-changing lineup of vibrant, regional Mexican fare. You can expect to find everything from the Yucatecan grilled pork collar to Mexico City-style corn-masa quesadillas on the menu. While the food is inspired by Mexico, Frontera Grill’s ingredients are sourced from Midwest purveyors.

You can bring Frontera Grill home with a three-course meal inspired by the flavors of Oaxaca. The Frontera Grill Oaxacan mole dinner kit takes you on a tour of Oaxaca from the comfort of your home for $129.95. You’ll start with green almond soup and handmade tortillas and move on to grilled chicken breast topped with mole and paired with black beans and spicy green beans. Don’t skip the chocolate pecan pie bars for dessert!

In most cases, you shouldn’t mess with a classic. But, chef Kevin Hickey knows his way around a duck, as evidenced by his Bridgeport gastropub, The Duck Inn. While the restaurant’s signature dish is a slow-roasted rotisserie duck, patrons pile onto the bar seats when they’re in the mood for something simpler, and order Hickey’s spin on the Chicago-style hot dog — which is made with beef and duck fat. 

The Duck Inn’s original Chicago-style hot dog kit serves eight for $104.95. In addition to the hot dogs, you’ll receive brioche and poppy seed buns. The kit also comes with a jar of the Duck Inn’s Chicago Hot Dog Super Condiment. It’s a blend of the traditional Chicago-style dog toppings, like onion, mustard, tomato, peppers, pickles, and celery salt.

Stephanie Hart has been making Chicago a little bit sweeter since 2002 with her Southern-inspired cakes. Each bake is a tribute to the tradition of family recipes made with love, like the popular caramel four-layer cake. The Grand Crossing bakery doesn’t stop at cakes either; it also crafts cookies, pies, cupcakes, and more. Yet, it was the cakes earned Hart a James Beard nomination for Outstanding Baker.

You can toast to Chicago’s president when you order the Obama cake for $85.95. Hart created the cake as a response to another cake made in Washington, D.C. during Obama’s first election. Her version is red, white, and black to reflect the diverse layers of America’s people. After savoring the four layers of yellow, dark chocolate, and red velvet cake topped with cream cheese frosting, chocolate drizzle, and pecans, you’ll truly know the meaning of the phrase “Sweet Home Chicago.”

Chicago might not be known for tea, but the Windy City is known for its legendary music scene — including The Smashing Pumpkins. Frontman Billy Corgan and his wife Chloé Mendel founded Madame ZuZu’s Emporium, a tea shop, vegan restaurant, and music venue in suburban Highland Park in 2012. After a remodel in 2020, Madame Zuzu’s now offers 4,000 square feet of sipping, shopping, and listening. Madame ZuZu’s features loose-leaf teas that are sustainably sourced from small farmers around the world.

Brew up five selections of Madame ZuZu’s teas with its 28-pack artisanal tea sampler. You’ll sample Earl Grey, Lemon Berry Meritage, Soothing Sunshine Ginger Turmeric, and French Kissed Moroccan Mint. Put the kettle on, drop the needle on “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness,” and you’ll be transported to Madame ZuZu’s.

Maya-Camille Broussard bakes pies with a purpose and raises money for community-based organizations with every bake. She founded Justice of the Pies to celebrate the life of her late father, who was a criminal defense attorney and self-proclaimed Pie Master. The Avalon Park bakery creates sweet and savory pies, quiches and tarts in distinctive flavors, including everything from sweet potato pie to bleu cheese praline pear pie.

If you can’t visit the brick-and-mortar location of Justice of the Pies, which opened in 2023 and was designed with accessible elements in mind, Broussard can ship her creations to you. The bourbon pecan pie is a no-guilt sweet treat that benefits Chicagoans in need. Broussard’s I Knead Love Workshop offers cooking and nutrition education to children from lower-income communities. A percentage of Justice of the Pies’ profits is donated to social justice organizations.