Calumet Fisheries
Calumet Fisheries belongs on this list because a wood-smoked shrimp eaten leaning against a car door by the Calumet River is an experience available nowhere else on earth.
Wedged onto the 95th Street bridge over the Calumet River — the same bridge where the Blues Brothers' car chase ends — Calumet Fisheries is a take-out-only smokehouse that has been using natural hardwood, not liquid smoke, since it was established in 1928. The current operation is still run by the Kotlick-Toll family descendants; the menu runs to smoked shrimp, rainbow trout, sable, sturgeon, salmon with pepper and garlic, and eel. The James Beard Foundation gave it an America's Classic Award in 2010. The recognition did not change anything about the operation.
This is a cash-only, stand-outside-and-eat establishment on the deep Southeast Side, well off any restaurant circuit. You will eat from a paper bag in the parking lot or next to the river, and it will be one of the best things you eat in Chicago. The smoked shrimp alone justify the drive.
- Smoked shrimp
- Smoked pepper and garlic salmon
- Smoked rainbow trout
