Johnnie's Beef

At 7500 W. North Avenue in Elmwood Park, Johnnie's Beef sells three things — Italian beef, Italian sausage, and hot dogs — from a counter that has looked roughly the same since Lyndon Johnson was president. The beef is the point: thin-sliced, slow-cooked, ladled into Gonnella French bread and finished with your choice of hot giardiniera, sweet peppers, or both. Order it dipped — dunked fully in the cooking jus — and eat it while leaning forward over the parking lot like everyone around you is doing.

The lines on a summer weekend are long and move quickly, and no one is checking phones. This is a food pilgrimage that demands a certain posture, and the city's visitors are often more confused than its residents that a beef stand in a western suburb outranks half the Loop's downtown restaurants. It does, and it should.