CLOSED: A Whole Lot of Chicago in a Little Bitty Trailer

Update: Little Chicago is gone - Trailer before trailer was cool, we wish Chris the best in whatever he does next and hope it involves sausage. The best bet for a killer Chicago Dog in Austin is now Frank.

Chicago knows how to eat. Everything from Charlie Trotter’s wine list to Giordano’s Pizza is just a little bit over the top, just a little bit more than it has to be, and a whole lot of good eating.

Case in point: The Chicago Dog. A real Chicago Dog elevates the hot dog into culinary territory other dogs can only wistfully imagine. The formula is immutable, unsubstituable and far greater than the sum of its parts:

• Poppy seed hot dog bun
• All Beef hot dog (Vienna Beef is the gold-standard here)
• Yellow mustard
• Chopped white onion
• Neon Green Relish
• Sport peppers (often overlooked)
• Tomato wedges
• Crisp kosher dill pickle spear
• Celery salt

And here’s where to get one in Austin: Chris’ Little Chicago. Austin actually has a pretty sizable list of places that give the dog a go (Dog Almighty, Lux Café, Lucky Dog), they're all good, but most cut a few corners – no sport peppers, dill relish, missing poppy seeds. Chris cuts no corners. Well, OK, maybe he cuts a few corners on tables-and-chairs, but the dog is out of this world.



Chris’ is housed in a cheery little red trailer at 3600 South Lamar, just before the Brodie Oaks shopping center. The menu is pretty much there on the sign: Chicago Style Hot Dogs and Italian Beef Sandwiches. File this one under niche dining.

The dog itself is on the large side, and Chris is so generous with the toppings, it’s nearly overwhelming.

Because Chris is a Chicago-only place, there’s no attempt at passing non-Chicago relish or buns or tomatoes off in place of the good stuff. It’s all in there. And it’s all good. And while the seating is limited to a couple of plastic chairs at a folding card table out back, the view over Highway 360 and out into the Hill Country is as good a setting as you’re going to get to kick back, pop open an Izzy, and enjoy a little bit of Chicago, right here in Austin.

Intelligentsia: Behold the Clover

Spent the early part of this week in Chicago, where I was able to check another must-taste espresso joint off my list: Intelligentsia.

These guys are right up there in the CoffeeGeek pantheon, producing a good share of US Barista Championship top contenders, and blazing the trail for single-origin micro-lot coffees nationally.

I got to check out two of their shops in Chicago - in both places getting hopped up enough on caffeine to walk out a little wobbly. Geeky, I know, to risk getting cut off at a COFFEE bar. Both were excellent, though the Lakeview store had a much better vibe - more sparse, more funky and more fun than the more bustling, business-like Millennium Park location.

Truth is, though, I'm still struggling a little with my take on the place. It was clearly top notch - the barista in Lakeview tossed two macchiatos before she got one she liked enough to serve - but the drinks themselves, and the experience overall didn't quite hold up relative to Victrola or Stumptown.

Two minor quibbles:

Black Cat, Intelligentsia's espresso blend, is roasted significantly darker than other places of this caliber. The roast yielded an espresso that was exceptionally smooth, but with less body less nuanced flavors than I was expecting.

I was also a little disappointed with the texturing of the milk. Keep in mind, this is relative to expectations, not run of the mill; these were exceptionally tasty drinks, beautifully presented. But still - check out the head to head with my current all-time fave Victrola:


The Victrola latte was clean, clear and silky smooth. The Intelly latte was by comparison, choppy and heterogeneous, with larger, less consistent bubbles.

Just before I left, I went back up to the counter and ordered a coffee from one of the only operational Clovers in the country. The Clover is a $20,000 piece of coffee genius. It allows complete control of the process of making a single cup of coffee - temperature, brewing time, grind, dosing. Word was that the Clover was going to change the way the world drank coffee, and I must have read a dozen first person accounts of how the Clover had revealed flavors in coffee that no one had ever dreamed of. Then, Starbucks bought the company, and clamped the window shut on independent stores like Intelligentsia getting more. Expectations high? You betcha. But I found the actual result - I ordered a cup of a micro-lot Honduran - a little disappointing. There was an exceptionally clean finish, and crisp citrus flavor that reminded me a little of lemongrass. But as with the espresso, the body was lighter than I expected, and I had to strain to taste the richer undertones. It was an excellent cup of coffee, but didn't compare to the depth of Paradise Roasters Lake Tarwar or Cuvee Coffee's micro-lot Brazilian in my humble little french press at home.

There's no question that my expectations of this place were sky high; and my quibble were really just that. If I lived around the corner from an Intelligentsia shop, I'd be in there every last chance I got, drinking in the smells and sounds and feel of a place clearly passionate about really good coffee.