Show Hometown Pride at Your Super Bowl Party with Chicago-Born Foods

Get more recipes, food news, and stories at wttw.com/food or by signing up for our Deep Dish newsletter. 
Have a food story or recommendation? Email us at [email protected].

For Super Bowl Sunday, honor our home team – even though they’re not in the game – by serving some foods that were first put on the menu in the Bears’ hometown.

If your Super Bowl spread usually features the fully dressed hot dog, thin-crust pizza, or Italian beef, congratulations: you’re already staging a Chicago food festival. Those three dishes form a powerful triumvirate of Chicago-born foods. But they’re just the tip of the deep dish iceberg. As I explain with my co-author Monica Eng in Made in Chicago: Stories Behind 30 Great Hometown Bites, there are at least twenty-seven other hometown originals waiting to turn your living room into a sporting temple of Windy City grease and glory.

The beauty of serving your friends some of these local snacks on game day is that many are super easy to prepare and, during commercial breaks or a lull in the action, you can regale your friend with fun facts about them.

Maxwell Street Polish

A Maxwell Street Polish is a garlicky beef and pork sausage draped in griddled onions, dappled with yellow mustard, and studded with sport peppers: hot, juicy, and undeniably tasty. It’s called a Maxwell Street Polish because it originated at Jim’s Original, a funky little take-out joint that used to be at the corner of Halsted and Maxwell Streets at the time-honored and now vanishing Maxwell Street Market. "Our top-selling item is definitely the Polish sausage," we were told for the book by Jim Christopoulos, grandson of James "Jimmy" Stefanovic, founder and namesake of Jim's Original, which now stands at 1250 S. Union Ave. If you’ve ever walked within a quarter mile of Jim’s Original, you know how this works: you weren’t hungry, and then suddenly you are; that’s the scent of steaming onions talking. You can save yourself the trip by making this Chicago original sandwich at home.

How to make: Buy a bunch of Polish sausage, ideally from a reputable source like Makowski's Real Sausage Co., griddle chopped onions until translucent, cook the sausage, and put it all on a bun with yellow mustard and sport peppers.

Big Baby

A Big Baby is a double cheeseburger layered with grilled onions, cheese melted between two hamburger patties, and condiments on the bottom bun. Sold at several currently unrelated little restaurants on the Southwest Side – all called “Nicky’s” – this stunningly simple yet very popular sandwich was the brainchild of Nicky Vegenas, who explained in the book, “It just came to me. I tried everything and the grilled onions on a double cheeseburger – well, people liked it and it went on, and that’s it.”  But what’s with the name? Vegenas explained, “I was working with a woman side-by-side,” and I said, ‘Hi, big baby,’ and she said, ‘Why don’t you call that double cheeseburger ‘Big Baby.’” And so he did.

How to make: While you griddle onions (always a good start) and hamburgers, add to the bottom bun three little pickle coins, a smear of mustard, and a squirt of ketchup; place the first hamburger patty on top of those condiments, put a slice of American cheese on top of that patty, then add another patty and slather on some griddled onions; put on the top bun and you’re done.

Bone-in Pork Chop Sandwich

A bone-in pork chop sandwich is another food born at the Maxwell Street Market. It’s just a griddled pork chop with onions, mustard, and sport peppers (perhaps the most popular trio of condiments on much Chicago street food). This is prototypical working man’s food: simple, easy to prepare, and eaten with the hands. Be careful though: start to eat the sandwich from the side of the bun opposite the bone and hold onto that bone while you eat (you always want to know where it is lest you chomp into it and lose some teeth). "I'm going to keep cooking it with the bone, because that's how it always was, but also because everything with the bone in tastes better," Christopoulos told us. "It's always moister and juicier right close by the bone."

How to make: Griddle onions and pork chops in a little oil, put it all on a bun, and add condiments of choice (traditional choice is onions, mustard, and sport peppers).

Chicken Vesuvio

Vesuvio has become a broadly applicable term for baking foods with garlic, wine, and potatoes.  Chicken Vesuvio was first put on the menu at Chicago’s Vesuvio Restaurant in the 1920s. Since then, the term has been applied to such proteins as salmon, cod, and pork chops; at the recently opened DeNucci’s in Hinsdale (18 E. First St.), they have an artichoke Vesuvio, proving that, though Chicken Vesuvio is the most traditional version, you can Vesuvio almost anything.

How to make: Take a protein or vegetable, pre-cook some quartered potatoes, saute some garlic, and add it all together in a baking dish; splash with white wine, bake, bada bing bada boom, done.

Taffy Grapes

Taffy grapes are simply fresh green grapes dipped in chocolate or icing and topped with ground nuts. These are one of the newer food items to hit Chicago, usually appearing in plastic clamshell containers tucked next to the register behind the bullet-proof turnstiles in places like Harold’s Chicken or Baba’s Steak & Lemonade. This finger-food is very, very easy to make and eat, and it’s quite possibly (given the fruit) the healthiest option in this line-up of Chicago original foods (a very low bar).

How to make: Melt some chocolate in a pan, swirl each grape in the chocolate, sprinkle ground nuts on top, and set aside for a few minutes to dry.

Malört

Malört, a wormwood-based Swedish liqueur, is Chicago’s biggest in-joke, and quite possibly a one-way ticket to an evening of regret. Search #malortface on Instagram and you’ll see hapless visitors to Chicago wincing, grimacing, and generally looking shocked after their first sip of the spirit that’s been haunting Chicago since before Prohibition. Jeppson's Malört Liqueur is in a line of descent from Beskbrännvin, a colorless Swedish spirit distilled from grain or potatoes, and it was once a quick, cheap drunk. Now embraced by Chicagoland hipsters, it’s soaring in popularity: yearly sales in Chicago rose from 400,000 shots in 2007 to 7.9 million shots in 2022, and now, under the stewardship of CH Distillery, it’s available nationwide. Put a can of Old Style next to a shot of Malort, and you’ve got a Chicago Handshake.

Super Bowl Sunday – whether the Bears are playing or not – is always an opportunity to celebrate Chicago sports, one sausage, sandwich, grape, or bracing shot of Malört at a time.