The Original Maxwell Street

There are no more blues on Maxwell Street.
It is a sunny Sunday morning market day and the street is nearly empty. A fellow named Lockhart who has sold tube socks on the street for the last fifteen years is still hawking his wares to anybody that stops for a Polish at Jimmy’s on Halsted and Maxwell. Business is not good. He looks down the deserted street and sees only ankle deep garbage piled in the gutter. If the city of Chicago ever provided services to this area of town, they have long since stopped. The buildings are abandoned and boarded up. They wait for the wrecking ball that the folks down at city hall have been trying to wield for over a hundred years.

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Chicago is famous for its signature deep dish pizza, Italian beef sandwiches, the Maxwell Street Polish and the Chicago hot dog, which is made of Vienna beef and loaded with mustard, onion, tomato, pickle relish, celery salt, sport peppers and a dill pickle spear; putting ketchup on a Chicago ‘dog’ is completely taboo. A few of the city’s best pizzerias are Bacci Pizzeria, Pizza Broker, Pizza Ria, Edwardo’s Natural Pizza, Pizzeria Ora, Pizano’s Pizza & Pasta, Rosati’s Pizza & California, Pizzeria Uno, Reggie’s Pizza Express and more.

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If you stand at the intersection of Halsted and Maxwell streets on Chicago’s Near West Side and take a look around, you won’t really see anything special. About a mile southwest of the Loop, it’s just like many other gentrified areas of the city, complete with modular brick housing, bars, a Caribou Coffee bar and a Jamba Juice. Once one of the city’s busiest crossroads, this was the nerve center of the Maxwell Street Market, an old-world-style bazaar that brought together people of all nationalities and religions, but all that remains is a sanitized version of its former self. Noisy curbside vendors no longer hawk their wares to throngs of eager customers, and racks of rumpled men’s wool suits no longer line Maxwell Street. The smells of polish sausages, onions and mustard linger no more here, but several blocks away on Union Avenue.

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Give Your Tongue A Kick In The Taste Buds
One taste and you’ll know that where there’s hickory smoke, there’s fire! Our Vienna Beef Spicy Polish is a skinless, hot and spicy beef sausage made with a special blend of cayenne peppers and zesty seasonings, then hardwood hickory smoked for our famous mouthwatering taste. It’s a delicious way to add spice to your life!

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Plump, flavorful and loaded with snap, Vienna Beef Polish Sausages are made with our century-old family recipe featuring fresh, domestic beef and our secret blend of spices. Hardwood hickory smoking adds the famous Vienna taste in every hearty Polish Sausage. Try it with your favorite condiments like mustard, grilled onions and pickles.

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You can smell the grilled onions from 290 when you’re driving with the windows down in the summertime! Exit at Independence Ave. and on the south side of 290, 24 hours a day, here lies the gate to the best polish sausage you’ll find in Chicago. Hidden in a heap of grilled onions lie several cooked polish sausages waiting on a hot grill to be served on a soft bun with sport peppers and mustard. Juicy, flavorful, the grease squirts in your mouth…*Homer Simpson drool*…it’s like a cigarette after sex…a cold beer after mowing the lawn…seeing Flanders lose. Anyhow, despite the destruction and ruin that Maxwell Street has seen (thank you, sterile University Village for ruining another great Chicago tradition), another Chicago gem still holds ground. Yes, Jim’s Original is stil there at Roosevelt/94, but for how long? The richies from their overpriced new condos have already been complaining about the onion smell. I simply can’t stand the sight of the new Maxwell St., which is why I have been frequenting this location for many years. And frankly, the fries are better here! I swear, they must use red potatoes… Like I said, you can smell this from the freeway, and it a’int the nasty smell of McDonalds! (or Taco Bell)

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VIENNA® BEEF MAXWELL STREET POLISH DOGS – THE BEST IN THE WORLD!! With a sharp knife score both ends with an X or score diagonally along every inch of a Vienna® Beef Polish Sausage (either a 6-inch or footlong cut in half). Grill or deep fry to a crispy, charcoal brown to release the distinct and delicious flavor. Place in a steamed poppyseed bun or warm roll and top with the following condiments:

Yellow or Dusseldorf Mustard

Grilled Onions (See “Tip” below)

Garnish with Sport Peppers

Tip: To grill onions, add a teaspoon of sugar to each whole sliced onion. Then add a pat of butter or grill with the natural juices from the Polish Sausage to give the onions a sweet taste and an even gold brown color.

Joey Clams Answers Your Questions: Old Chicago Dogs

A Maxwell Street Polish consists of a grilled all-beef Polish sausage topped with grilled onions and mustard on a bun. The sandwich was first created by Jimmy Stefanovic, a Macedonian immigrant, who took over his aunt and uncle’s hot-dog stand (now Jim’s Original) in Chicago’s Maxwell Street marketplace in 1939.[1] It is sometime referred to as a “Jewtown Dog,” or “Jew Dog”[citation needed]. (Part of the market was called Jewtown after the original Jewish merchants.) The Maxwell Street Polish soon grew to be one of Chicago’s most popular local dishes, along with the Chicago hot-dog. It is served by restaurants around the city, and is common at sporting events. Many small vendors specialize in the Maxwell Street Polish along with the pork-chop sandwich. Some variations exist. For example, some hot-dog vendors offer a “Maxwell Street hot dog” in which a hot dog is substituted for the Polish sausage. Others like to add sport peppers to the Maxwell Street to give it more heat.

Best Chicago Hot Dog: What is a Maxwell Street Polish ??