Chicago-style hot dogs are about as important as Chicago-style pizza when it comes to Windy City food favorites, which is why the restaurant selected as Illinois' most iconic may not come as a surprise to many -- or maybe it will.
In a list of the most iconic restaurants in every U.S. state, Superdawg claimed fame for the prairie state.
According to PureWow, a women's lifestyle website, the Chicago drive-in dishes out a side of history along with it famed "greasy grub."
The family-owned restaurant opened in 1948 on the corner of Milwaukee, Devon and Nagle. The founder Maurie Berman returned from World War II and was attending Northwestern University at the time when he and his wife Flaurie decided to open a business that could operate in the summer months of ’48, according to Superdawg’s website. The intention was to only operate throughout that summer to help Maurie pay for his education. The roadside hot dog stand has since blossomed and prides itself on its own creation of the Superdawg.
A Superdawg is classified as having mustard, relish, chopped onion, sliced pickles, hot sport peppers, green pickled tomato and a typical Chicago dog poppy seed bun.
“You can’t get it anywhere else in the world,” Lisa Drucker, business owner and daughter of the Bermans, said.
It is just one of many delicious options on their original menu from 1948.
Local
“[The recognition] kind of solidifies what we do every single day and every year of our lives,” Drucker said.
Superdawg is also owned by Lisa Drucker's husband Don Drucker and brother Scott Berman.
“We just get up and go to work every day and do the best job we can,” Don Drucker said. “It’s recognition on a national level that what we do every day and what we enjoy doing every day is appreciated by everybody.”
Here are the iconic restaurants named on the list for other states in the Midwest:
Indiana: St. Elmo Steak House
Iowa: B&B Grocery
Kansas: Sims Bar-B-Que
Michigan: Zingerman’s Deli
Minnesota: Matt's Bar
Missouri: Pappy’s Smokehouse
Nebraska: The Drover
Ohio: Slyman’s
Wisconsin: The Old Fashioned
See the full list here.
