SCARY COOL SAD GOODBYE 59
A chat with Titus Pullo, Chicago's road food king.
It’s still chilly in Chicago but nevertheless, my first summer with a driver’s license and a really cool car starts NOW. So it’s only right that America’s #1 vibes-based email newsletter honor the occasion by dedicating our Summer 2024 coverage to the theme of the MIDWESTERN ROAD TRIP. All season long we’ll be hitting the road to bring you boots-on-the-ground reportage from the Midwest’s finest watering holes, Friday fish fries, haunted lighthouses, coal-fired steamships, the 64th annual Lumberjack World Championships, and more of that hard-hitting journalism you know and love. But before all that, I simply had to tap in with a man I’ve stanned for years — a mysterious yet iconic presence by the name of Titus Pullo aka “Chi BBQ King”, road food savant and the disembodied voice behind the greatest blog still standing.
If you’re anything like me, your search history before a weekend road trip looks something like: “supper clubs near Lake Winnebago,” “oldest bar Milwaukee,” “best restaurants Ludington, Michigan” and so forth. If that’s the case, you probably know Titus and his blog, Smokin’ Chokin’ and Chowing with the King, where for the past 16 years he has thoroughly, no, obsessively documented regional specialties (what he calls “road food”) through county highways, back roads and strange alleyways. The guy’s eaten everywhere: Alabama smoke shacks, Laotian cookouts in Wisconsin, greasy spoons in South Dakota, horsemeat sandwich shops in Parma, Burmese salads in Chiang Mai. My secret to eating big throughout Thailand and Vietnam? I followed Titus’ blog posts and they never led me wrong, besides the fact that it was a banh mi from a spot he recommended (Madam Khanh’s, Hoi An) into whose fresh-baked bread, pork, ham, eggs, pate, papaya, and cucumber I forfeited my front tooth, thus beginning my present and ongoing dental nightmare. The sandwich, though? Fire.
For years I’ve wondered how he does it: how does one Midwestern man accumulate such vast, arcane and worldly road food wisdom? Luckily for me, Titus took some time this Tuesday to meet for lunch at a place he recommended, a small halal fried chicken and taco spot newly opened in Portage Park. (I got the lamb barbacoa tacos: A+.) “My goal is to document every last independent spot so if the world blows up in 100 years and starts over, they can look back and say, this is how people used to eat,” Titus told me between bites of fried chicken torta. As it turns out, all you need is 20 years of obsessive research and a hunger for the occasional five-meal day.
(All photos in this post come from Titus’ blog, with links to the original posts in the captions, which I strongly urge you to click through — trust me on this one!)
MG: I’ve been wanting to talk to you for years. You know you’ve got STANS, right?
TP: [Laughs] I guess so.
You grew up in Lincoln Park, yeah? What does “old-school Chicago” mean to you, and what do you miss about it food-wise?
It would be the ‘80s and ‘90s, since I was born in ‘83. What I miss food-wise is all the hot dog and Italian beef stands. There’s still a lot, but there used to be so many more, and they were more unique back then. Food is monotone now because of Cisco and Vienna Beef; everyone has the same supplier. Vienna Beef hot dogs are great, but in the ‘80s there was more than just Vienna Beef around. I was young, but I can still remember that even in Lincoln Park, there were at least 15 hot dog stands that had been there for a long time. Weiner’s Circle is probably the only one that’s left.
So when did you become a “food guy”?
It all goes back to being a Chicagoan. My Italian grandpa had an Italian beef stand and a hot dog stand, but he also loved to make egg rolls; he had this recipe for peanut butter egg rolls, which are popular in Chicago. My mom went to culinary school, but she didn’t pursue it as a career beyond cooking for four kids. Growing up, I hung out at hot dog stands. I knew all the owners of the local stands and they knew me. I went to Tampa for college for a year and learned that Italian beef and all that wasn’t a country-wide phenomenon. That made me like it even more, but then I learned about Cuban sandwiches. Then I went to Wisconsin and learned about cheese curds and brats. That’s how I became interested in regional food. In college it was more about drinking and partying, but after college I needed something to do besides drink at bars. I met a lot of people through LTHForum; it stands for Little Three Happiness, the restaurant in Chinatown. They started the message board for love of places like that, Little Three Happiness and long-gone Italian beef stands. It was the message board era, the blog era. I graduated in 2002 and started posting there and another site called Roadfood based off this book by Jane and Michael Stern, this couple that would travel the country and eat at pizzerias in New Haven or hot dog stands in Chicago. The best way to meet people and learn about the area when you’re somewhere like Wisconsin or Knoxville, TN is at a bar or restaurant.
I just got my driver’s license this year, so I’ve been driving up to Wisconsin just about every weekend and hitting as many supper clubs and bars as I can, following the trail of what the people there suggest. I’m dying to know your method of finding spots. You don’t have to give away the secrets…
There’s no secrets. I’ve been doing this for 20 years; with my blog, I’ve been doing it for 16. So one is just years of gathering knowledge, whether it’s from other people or my own experiences. My obsession can’t be matched. So if I go to Wisconsin, I know what I’m looking for. In Michigan, I know what I’m looking for. I’m always looking for locally loved stuff. I spend an insane amount of time researching. If I’m going on a trip to Grand Rapids I’ll probably look at every restaurant, looking for the ones that catch my eye — the old school, unique, local type spots.
You can kinda judge a book by its cover, right? You get a glimpse and you’re like, yup.
For sure. I always tell people when we’re going somewhere, “I don’t know if this will be the best burger you’ve ever had. More times than not, it’s not going to be. But it’ll be an interesting time.”
Are older spots usually better, you think?
To an extent. Not always. But going to an older spot is always fun, even if it’s not the best food you’ve ever had — like a supper club. I love prime rib and lake perch, but if you bring someone, it’s not gonna be the best meal they’ve ever had. Food’s great, but it’s meat with salt, it’s not going to arouse the senses like going to Tokyo or Mexico City. But it may be one of the better times they’ve had.
I saw that you were in Sheboygan this weekend. What’s the vibe? You seem to have a very clear idea of what you’re going for there.
The vibe? It’s very Wisconsin. I’ve been to Sheboygan at least 10 times over the years. It’s a weird town. The bars are abundant, obviously, but there’s a little something weird about them, I can’t quite pinpoint it. My friends that I went up there with were shocked at the prices. We’d get a round of beers for $7. I guess the way to describe Sheboygan is that it feels like the ‘90s, the same way I describe Italy. They don’t have the latest updates on their apps. They still use cable TV boxes. It’s stuck in time, not in a bad way.
Even Milwaukee has that feel for me — that’s why I love it. It feels like an older Chicago that I can still access, especially the bars.
Milwaukee feels like the Chicago that I grew up in. Chicago used to have so many corner bars, even in Lincoln Park where I grew up, right by DePaul. There used to be at least 10 corner bars that I could walk to. I think there’s one left, and even that’s been developed to where it’s not a neighborhood bar anymore. The Chase Tavern was the one that we hung out at — me, my dad and my uncle, his twin. They had great ribs, shuffleboard, foosball but with hockey, just a classic corner bar. It was torn down like five years ago. Now it’s just a house.
You mentioned on Twitter the different kinds of sausages you go for in Sheboygan. Let’s break those down for the people.
Well, Southeast Wisconsin specifically — the Milwaukee area going down to Kenosha and up to Sheboygan — is probably the sausage epicenter of the country. No one ever really mentions this, but Sheboygan’s like the brat capital of the world, and rightfully so. I saw so many signs about brat frys — that’s how they do fundraisers there, they sell brats and call ‘em brat frys. I must’ve seen 16 different signs: “Support the veterans” or “Help the VFW hall.” Every weekend there’s a brat fry, and they do really well. Going down to Kenosha and Racine, there’s a huge Italian population and there’s a spot called Tenuta’s Deli, which has the best Italian sausages outside of Chicago, and just as good as anywhere here. Then you also got a huge Lao and Hmong population, and Lao sausage is outstanding: super ginger-y, not finely ground, typically served with the jeow sauce and sticky rice. 40% of the Asian population in Wisconsin is Lao or Hmong, and the majority live in the Milwaukee area. There’s really not any spots to get it in Chicago besides a couple pop-ups, but if you’ve never had it, it’s worth seeking out.
I went to Thailand last year and followed your restaurant recommendations faithfully. They were insanely on point. With countries you’re visiting for the first time, isn’t it a little harder to go off your instincts as far as what’s legit?
Definitely a little harder, but that’s what I’m looking for: what have I not seen or had? Still, I’ve got 20 years of reading about food and going out by myself traveling, 20 years of obsession. I’m driving to Florida next week, but I’m stopping in Atlanta. I’m only gonna be there for two nights but I have a map with like 40 spots, and I’m probably going to go home tonight and look for even more places.
So are we doing double dinners? How many spots are we hitting in a night? In some of your blog posts, it seems like you’re eating three dinners followed by a midnight snack.
Overseas, I go crazy. Plus in Mexico or Asia, street food portions are smaller, so you can go to one spot that specializes in tortas, one spot that just does tamales, and a spot with a famous taco. I probably eat five times a day when I’m on vacation. I do have major FOMO. It’s honestly sometimes a pain, because I’ll spend my entire trip chasing restaurants.
Is your wife hip to this game plan?
For the most part. She has no interest in going to a bar in Sheboygan for brats, but she’s into the Eater hotspot places, the Logan Square type restaurants that are trendy but have good food. If we’re in Mexico, she’s not going to go to every taco stand with me, and I’m fine with that. When you’re married for a long time, it’s better to spend time apart here and there. She’s not going to go with me to the grimy sandwich shop in Buenos Aires. There’s been many times I’ve walked in a place and the bar went silent, like “Who the fuck is this?” In a Wisconsin town of 1,000 people, you walk in and the room goes silent because they’ve never seen you. Plus, I probably kinda stick out.
Oh, they suss you out as a Chicagoan right away. I’ll go to Wisconsin bars and try and be charming and everyone’s like, “Ugh, calm the fuck down.” Do you have any favorite Wisconsin supper clubs, though?
It’s tough to say because I just love supper clubs in general, but my favorite is Toby’s in Madison because they have the best lake perch. I do love the Hobnob on the water in Kenosha, but I’ll just have a drink there. It’s below average food, but it’s not about that. There’s some I’ve been once and never gone back to, but they were legendary.
5 WISCONSIN SUPPER CLUBS, @CHIBBQKING APPROVED:
Buckhorn Supper Club (Milton)
Toby’s Supper Club (Madison)
Village Bar Supper Club (Kieler)
Five O’Clock Steakhouse (Milwaukee)
Schwarz’s Supper Club (New Holstein)
On the theme of Midwestern road trip, let’s have your favorite driveable-from-Chicago food cities. What’s at the top of the list?
I do think Detroit is the second-best food city in the Midwest. Either that or Minneapolis. They’ve both got fantastic food scenes, for different reasons. In Detroit, the Middle Eastern food scene extends well beyond Dearborn. Dearborn’s got the largest Middle Eastern population in the United States, so there’s a lot of Lebanese and Iraqi food, charcoal grilled kebabs. Detroit is so underdeveloped because it was basically on the brink of extinction, so all the old spots, whether it’s bars or restaurants, are still there. You don’t see that so much in Chicago anymore; of course there’s places like Top Notch Beefburgers and the Berghoff, but it doesn’t feel the same. Maybe it’s the people. But Detroit has a ton of old spots that have been around since the ‘40s and ‘50s, so it’s a great food city. I’m looking for local specialties, whether it’s the Coney dog or ham sandwiches, but I’m also looking regionally in terms of the immigrant community — so in Detroit, Middle Eastern food; in Minneapolis, Lao food; in Chicago, Mexican. I try to just eat like a local, even if it’s a shitty bar with an amazing hamburger.
What’s your favorite burger in Illinois?
Well, my favorite was at a spot in Central Illinois that burned down. Their burgers were so greasy, and the spot itself was a grease pit. But it’s re-opening, which is cool. It’s a smash burger spot, because smash burgers are actually from Central Illinois — or if they’re not from there, they’ve always been popular there. It’s Green Gables in Hudson, IL. I’d been there three or four times, and every time I’d go I’d say, “This place will burn down someday.” And sure enough, it burned down two summers ago. It won’t be quite the same, since the bar itself had been there since the ‘40s, but the burgers will be just as good.
What do you consider as the Illinois road food staple? Is it burgers?
In Central Illinois, smash burgers are abundant. But so are corn dogs, horseshoes…
What’s a horseshoe?
It’s found near Springfield. It’s a ton of fries, a ton of cheese sauce, two Texas toasts and your choice of meat, all splattered on a plate. I haven’t had one of those in like 12 years.
If I eat that, my day’s ruined.
You’ll go to a spot and it’ll be packed at noon, and everyone’s got a horseshoe. I don’t know how people go to work after eating those. Illinois is not a great food state, I gotta say. Chicago’s a great food city, but outside of the Chicagoland area, not so much.
What would you say is Michigan’s signature road food, then? To me, Wisconsin has a much more defined identity.
It truly depends where you are. In the U.P. they love the Cornish pasties, and they have the Cudighi sandwich, which you won’t find anywhere else. Every pizza spot in the U.P. will serve a Cudighi sandwich, which is kinda like a Freddy on the South side of Chicago, just an Italian sausage patty instead of a link. Wherever you are in Michigan there’s Coney stands everywhere. Then as you get around Detroit, there’s a shit ton of old slider shops that’ve been there forever: they’re not small sliders, they’re like McDonalds size hamburgers. Ham is huge in Michigan, there’s a lot of ham off the bone spots. And corned beef is huge in the Midwest, period; from Milwaukee to Cleveland to Detroit, corned beef is king. In Detroit and the towns around it, there’s a ton of corned beef sandwich shops that have been open since the ‘50s or ‘60s. That’s why Detroit is one of my favorite spots. It’s got its own feel. It’s like the Wild West. It feels like you’re going back in time.
Do you yearn for the past?
Honestly, food’s so much better now than it was, and it probably will be even better in 20 years. The Cisco aspect of it is killing things, but in the ‘80s there weren’t places like this, or unbelievable Burmese restaurants. Everyone catered to white people. It was a lot of bland-ish food. Even thinking of all the restaurants that I miss from Lincoln Park, it was all pizza or Italian beef or hamburgers. There was Taco Burrito Palace which I went to my whole life, a spot on Halsted which had a bit of a cult following among the drinking crowd of Lincoln Park in the ‘90s. I miss it, but there’s way better Mexican food to be had. What people miss about the past is being young. The one thing I yearn for in restaurants is independence.
I have to say, blogging isn’t the most, err, vital lane in media these days, either…
I was just recording an interview for a food podcast and that’s what it was about — how I’m kinda the last food blogger. But I cringe when people call me a blogger, or worse, an influencer. I was doing what I was doing long before Instagram. People will say “I have no idea what you look like,” or if they do, “I thought you’d be a lot bigger.” One, I don’t like taking pictures of myself. Two, it’s all about the food. Trust me, the influencers aren’t going anywhere for the food. When someone posts a picture of themself eating, I cringe. So the term “influencer” has been hijacked. But when Nick [Kindelsperger] was at the Tribune, and Mike Sula will tell you the same thing — they all got their ideas of what to write about from me. I do have an influence in that regard. But none of these places pay me. It’s mortifying to even ask. I make money here and there. I do private food tours sometimes. I’ll do consulting when food shows come to Chicago. But I do it for fun. Like I said, I need something to do besides drink and smoke weed. There’s a new steakhouse from London opening and they invited me to it, but I hate the idea that they’re inviting all these people and it’s not the actual food off the menu. And I’m not interested in owing anybody anything, either. I don’t want Hawksmoor to expect me to write about them, because I’m not going to.
Last question: is there any regional food that you find totally fucked up and disgusting?
There’s things that I never want to try again. But I want to try everything, anything, all of it. I’ve never had that pizza from Altoona, Pennsylvania, but I can’t wait to try it one day. Will I like it? I don’t think I’ll hate it. The horseshoe, I think it’s disgusting. I’ll maybe have a bite. Chicago’s gym shoe sandwich is pretty out there. I haven’t had one in five years, so that should kinda tell you. The breaded pork tenderloin, I’ll never quite understand it. They rarely season them, and they’re often pre-made in a factory, but I’ll probably eat one next time I’m in Indiana anyway — what else is there to get? I’m not expecting every spot to be the best, especially in Midwestern towns. It’s one thing to go to L.A. or New York, but when I’m in Buchanan, Michigan and there’s a bar, maybe the burger will be really good, but I temper my expectations.
Sometimes eating mid food in a really cool old place where everyone knows each other is better than eating good food, you know?
It even makes the food taste better. A burger in a dive bar with the same chairs since 1950 tastes better than that same burger in a Cooper’s Hawk winery setting. There’s just something about it. Nobody believes me when I say this, but I rarely have a bad meal.
