FX’s “The Bear” was, for many viewers, a first introduction to the deliciously messy Italian beef sandwich. In the show’s first season, Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) is a fine-dining chef who comes home to Chicago to take over the family’s beef stand following his brother’s death. The show, which returns Wednesday for its highly anticipated third season, provided a close-up look at the inner workings of a restaurant whose sole purpose was preparing the meaty, juicy sandwich.
For those of us who grew up in the Windy City, this dish is as iconic as deep-dish pizza and our uniquely topped hot dogs. It has been beloved for decades, served not only at local institutions such as Al’s #1 Italian Beef and Mr. Beef (after which the restaurant on the show is modeled), but also in buffets at parties and, if I remember correctly, in school cafeterias.
Sometimes simply called Italian beef, the sandwich features thinly sliced roast beef on a roll moistened (to varying degrees) with the beef’s cooking liquid and typically topped with giardiniera, an Italian pickled vegetable relish. Though there are a few tales of the sandwich’s invention, such as one from Al’s that includes jail time and more nefarious dealings, historians credit it to Italian American home cooking. “The key stage in the development of the sandwich was its use in so-called ‘peanut weddings’ (attested from the 1920s),” Anthony F.
Buccini and Michael Stern wrote in “The Chicago Food Encyclopedia.�.
