On the way home from a client today I stopped for a quick lunch at Portillo's in Addison IL. It wasn't bad, nice tender meat and crunchy spicy pickled peppers & carrots on a standard-issue french bread roll. I see now what sets Johnny's Italian Beef above the rest though -- their gravy is more herbal, more savory, and you can adjust the amount of it so you can really soak that sucker down into a mushy puddle of flavor, so that the WHOLE SANDWICH oozes that dreamy flavor without the intrusion of any bread blandness whatsoever. Plus it has loads more atmosphere -- Portillo's was one of those annoyingly self-aware "retro" places with lots of random mid-century reproduction signs and an old gas pump, etc. as decor.
Posted by foodnerd at June 28, 2005 05:59 PM