Eating Through Chicago’s Belmont Cragin Neighborhood: If You Know, You Know

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Posting photographic evidence on social media of the namesake cheeseburger at Charly’s Burgers in Belmont Cragin yielded the typical hedonistic upvotes that any tall, sloppy, and cheesy burger might expect. This behemoth packs two house-ground beef and bacon patties with melted American cheese, a heap of caramelized onions and shaved pickles, and a generous smear of mayo-based secret sauce. But it also received a slew of winks and nods from those already in the know about this family-run joint. 

“They have the best fries in the city.” 

“The owners are the nicest people.” 

“Next time, get the piña burger” – a sleeper hit featuring grilled pineapple, Chihuahua cheese, grilled onions, jalapeño, and garlic aioli. 

The secret may be out about this unassuming, takeout storefront on Cicero Avenue just south of Fullerton Avenue, as evidenced by the 25-minute wait for a couple of burgers on a frigid Wednesday night minutes before its 7:00 pm close. Yet aside from the occasional appearance on burger lists from Time Out and The Infatuation, Charly’s still flies relatively under the radar when it comes to the relentless chatter surrounding Chicago’s best-loved burgers.

In that sense, Charly’s is something of a metaphor for this utilitarian, Northwest Side neighborhood and its numerous culinary delights which quietly beckon amid the body shops and machine factories in an area that runs roughly from Belmont Avenue to Grand Avenue and Cicero to Narragansett Avenue. All the more reason to hop in the car or on your bike (admittedly, this neighborhood is something of a deadzone for CTA trains and reliable buses), and see what the locals have long known about. 

My first stop a few weeks back was for dinner at Minna’s Restaurant, which opened in 2015 on the 5000 block of West Armitage Avenue. This diminutive diner and its all-female staff turn masa into every imaginable creation: oversized, speckled quesadillas stuffed with squash blossoms and cheese; thin, supple tacos packed with juicy, minced carne asada or chorizo con papas; boat-shaped huaraches packed with beans and piled high with tender chicken tinga or nopales; and round picaditas with pinched edges, dressed in (also housemade, natch) red or green salsa, crema, onions, and cheese. 

Posted up at the narrow counter, I watched as cooks pressed fresh tortillas one by one and turned them on the grill top till they puffed like little balloons. Others emerged from the back bearing crocks of steaming caldo de res or pescado – each of which got its own cloth-topped basket of tortillas on the side – and colorful plates of cecina (dried beef) and enchiladas potosinas, or chile-stained tortillas packed with salsa and cheese. (The family hails from San Luis Potosí in north-central Mexico.) In short, to eat dinner at Minna’s is to know unending food envy, even when one is so well-fed. But there’s always next time.

Then again, if I head out the door and a few paces west, I’ll hit Taqueria La Paz, another no-frills slip of a restaurant serving superb carne asada tacos on oversized (also handmade!) tortillas with salsa verde, then El Guerrerense, a cheerful, family-owned restaurant with real-deal menudo and molcajetes overflowing with grilled steak, shrimp, Mexican sausage, and cheese in diablo sauce. Or I can turn around and walk east a few blocks to darken the door at Las Delicias de Puerto Rico, a spartan joint churning out solid jibaritos, fried potato balls, and snappy, rich morcilla (blood sausage). 

This tapestry of specialized and high-quality indie restaurants alone should serve as a hint that the neighborhood houses a significant Latino population. In fact, it has the city’s largest Latino population of any neighborhood, a shift that started in the 2000s. 

Belmont Cragin’s original residents were Native Americans. Around the 1830s, European settlers arrived and started building factories and plants. Purportedly, the first business came to the neighborhood soon thereafter, when George Merrill opened a saloon at Grand and Armitage, a stone’s throw from where I’ve just finished my meal at Minna’s. A few decades later, a hotel went up at this storied corner, which came to be known as Whiskey Point. As more factories were raised, Cragin’s population surged into the 1880s; the area was annexed by the city of Chicago in 1889. Factories kept coming to the area into the early 20th century, though by the late 1900s, many were no longer in business. Indeed, between 1970 and 1984, the neighborhood lost 15,678 manufacturing jobs, or 47.5 percent of its 1970 base.

Immigrants have long flocked to Cragin, including those from Ireland, Poland, and Italy. By the 2000s, the area's demographics started shifting to Hispanic communities. These days, almost half of them work in jobs outside the city, according to a 2024 report by the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Great Cities Institute. The neighborhood is also home to 50-odd locally owned restaurants, spanning more than a dozen nationalities, though about half of them are Latin American or South American. 

Indeed, I’d heard from legendary culinary gumshoe Titus Ruscitti that I’d find bonafide Peruvian street food just south of Belmont on Central Avenue, at Avenida Peru. This easygoing, BYO restaurant that opened in 2021 specializes in dishes from Lima, South America’s indubitable gastronomic capital. 

I sipped a refreshing, sweet, and spicy Chicha Morada (Peruvian blue corn drink) while I pretended to peruse the menu, though I knew what we were getting long before we arrived. We kept it classic, starting with ceviche carretillero, loosely meaning “from a cart.” This harkens back to Peru’s economic crisis of the 1980s and ’90s, when street vendors started selling affordable ceviche from carretillas, or wheelbarrows. Avenida Peru’s version is a meal unto itself – a masterful cold feast of raw fish “cooked” in tiger’s milk (a citrus and fish stock-based marinade), then tossed in even more citrus juice and chilies along with fried calamari, red onions, soft corn, crunchy corn, and hulks of sweet potato, then garnished with seaweed. 

We followed with two deliciously iconic chifa dishes, which convey the Chinese influences on Peruvian cooking since Chinese people first arrived as indentured laborers in the mid-1800s when slavery was abolished. Perhaps the most famous chifa dish, lomo saltado, packed tender marinated steak wok-seared with hand-cut potatoes and fat strips of blistered onion, tomato, and bell pepper in a savory mixture of soy and ají amarillo, the creamy, sweet, and fiery condiment made from yellow peppers. Avenida Peru’s chifa chaufa, or Peruvian fried rice, was heavy on the ginger and laced with juicy chicken and scallions; each impeccably cooked grain of rice glistened with oil in this restorative, satisfying dish. We liberally doused every bite with more ají amarillo. As I perused the room of (mostly Peruvian) diners, I made mental notes on what to order next time: most obviously the salchipapas, or sliced hot dogs seared with more of those burnished, hand-cut fries, which seemed to grace every other table.

Speaking of potatoes, the fries at Charly's, where I rounded out my tour de Cragin, are indeed some of the best I’ve had anywhere in the city. They shattered pleasingly to reveal a fluffy interior, the kind of painstaking, cooked-in-stages fries that are good enough to draw me back again on their own – particularly knowing that I can order a side of nacho cheese-style dipping sauce. Of course, next time I’ll also call ahead (as everyone should) to order my la piña burger, now that I’m finally in the know.