5 great sandwiches on Grand Avenue, Chicago’s best Sandwich Row
To traverse one of Chicago’s best sandwich streets, walk to the corner of West Grand Avenue and North Aberdeen Street and look up. That’s where you’ll find a massive American flag flapping atop Sterling Bay’s towering 200-foot-tall flagpole.
This just happens to coincide with the beginning of a 0.8-mile stretch of Grand Avenue containing more great sandwiches than seems fair for a few odd blocks.
This is not a hunch. One glorious day, the Food team tried a dozen sandwiches from this street to pick out our favorites.
What makes Grand Avenue such a great Sandwich Row?
Grand Avenue has an ideal mix of old-school shops and inspired newcomers. Bari Foods, D’Amato’s Bakery and Vinnie’s Sub Shop are the bedrock of Grand Avenue’s sandwich scene, offering solidly built subs quickly and without fuss.
But the street also contains two fascinating newcomers, Tempesta Market and Publican Quality Bread, which offer creative twists that gladly break with tradition.
Grand Avenue also has plenty of bakeries. At the eastern edge of the stretch is D’Amato’s Bakery, which produces crackly sub rolls in one of the city’s only coal-fired ovens. Constructed in 1912, the oven was grandfathered in by city health inspectors when Nicola D’Amato purchased the space in 1970.
Running that oven requires constant attention, said third-generation owner Rosanna D’Amato. “The bakery is running 24 hours a day,” D’Amato said. “Every day, we have to feed the hopper with coal. We actually have to use a shovel. But it becomes second nature.”
Venture to the west end and you’ll see Publican Quality Bread, which officially opened in 2014 but moved into a much larger facility on Grand Avenue in 2022. Head baker Greg Wade won a James Beard Award — one of the industry’s highest honors — for Outstanding Baker in 2019 for his devotion to naturally fermented and whole-grain bread.
“A year in, we are stunned by the community,” Wade said. “We have tons of regulars. People really embraced us as a lunch spot.”
If that weren’t enough, in the middle is Aya Pastry from Aya Fukai. The shop mostly focuses on meticulously crafted pastries, but also offers some incredible bread.
The street is synonymous with the Italian sub. Akin to a hero, hoagie, grinder or po’boy in other parts of the country, the sandwich probably originated in Italian American communities in the Northeast before making its way here. Though there are regional differences, most versions stick to a mix of cured Italian meats and cheeses such as fresh mozzarella or provolone, all layered on a long, crusty roll.
In Chicago, the best Italian subs feature thin layers of salty salami, creamy mortadella and fatty capicola. If you see ham thrown into the mix, that is usually a sign of a lackluster Italian sub. The cheese is almost always provolone, lending each bite a slight sharpness.
Toppings are kept to a minimum. Shredded lettuce adds crunch, while sliced tomatoes, as long as they aren’t wickedly out of season, add an acidic juiciness. Finally, you’ll get a drizzle of olive oil and vinegar, a sprinkle of dried herbs and maybe a spoonful of giardiniera. The latter is a pickled vegetable and chile condiment that’s aggressively salty, spicy, oily and crunchy. It’s what truly sets Chicago’s Italian sub apart from the crowd.
Turns out, Grand Avenue has been the place for Italian subs since at least the 1970s. If anything, the stretch might have had more sandwich stops in the past. My 1977 copy of “The New Good (But Cheap) Chicago Restaurant Book” by Jill Nathanson Rohde and Ron Rohde only recommended eight sub shops in the whole city, and three were on Grand Avenue: Grand Daddy Sandwich Shop (1324 W. Grand Ave.), Mario’s (1629 W. Grand Ave.) and Millie’s Sugar Bowl (1473 W. Grand Ave.). While those three have since closed, Grand Avenue remains the epicenter of Chicago’s Italian sub scene.
With Grand Avenue’s credentials firmly established, let’s celebrate the abundance of sandwiches that this street offers. Here are five places to try in alphabetical order.
Italian sub from Bari Foods
Joseph and Grace Pedota opened Bari Foods in 1973 after emigrating from the small southern Italian town of Bitritto, near the city of Bari. At first, the shop operated exclusively as an Italian grocery store, offering a range of imported products. But in the 1980s, the Pedotas’ son, Frank, began attracting attention for the subs he’d make for friends while watching the Bears play. While you can still pick up some Italian goods, visit during lunchtime and you’ll find a long line of people waiting for subs.
The majority of patrons will order Bari’s Italian sub, which is one of the finest sandwiches in the city. Much of that has to do with top-quality meat and the attention employees put into each sandwich. I’m also a huge fan of the shop’s housemade giardiniera, which isn’t shy with the heat, but also has a wild complexity in the background.
As much as I love the sandwich, I do have mixed feelings about the bread. For years, the subs were built on the rolls from its next-door neighbor D’Amato’s. But right around the time D’Amato’s started selling its own subs, Bari switched and is now using rolls from Valenzano Baking Co. in Franklin Park. Though solid and sporting a beautiful dark brown crust, these lack the impressive crispness of D’Amato’s.
Other options: Bari serves plenty of other cold subs, including prosciutto with fresh mozzarella and Italian tuna salad. But it’s the hot subs that have been gaining in popularity over the years. In particular, try the shop’s fascinating take on the Italian beef.
1120 W. Grand Ave., 312-666-0730, bariitaliansubs.com
Italian sub from D’Amato’s Bakery
For most of its history, D’Amato’s Bakery was known primarily for serving excellent Sicilian-style pizza slices. Even though it had been baking excellent sub rolls for decades in its coal-fired oven, the shop didn’t start making its own sandwiches until 2012.
Considering they were already baking such incredible bread, it’s understandable why the subs were such an immediate hit. Made to order, each one is filled with just enough Genoa salami, mild capicola and mortadella to balance out the crunchy roll.
Rosanna D’Amato notes the neighborhood has changed a lot over the past 20 years, but she’s proud her family’s bakery continues to serve hardworking Chicagoans. “It’s still a stop for the blue-collar worker,” D’Amato said. “But it’s a mix now. It’s not just the everyday neighborhood people. But the newer arrivals love the old-school feeling of the shop.”
As for the supposed rivalry with next-door neighbor Bari Foods, D’Amato thinks it’s been blown out of proportion. “They do great, and we do great as well,” D’Amato said. “Everybody won in the end.”
Other options: D’Amato’s offers more than a dozen other sandwich options, including a satisfying meatball sub. But the Sicilian-style pizza is really too good to pass up.
1124 W. Grand Ave., 312-733-5456, damatoschicago.com
The Big Sandwich from Publican Quality Meats
The consensus winner of our tasting was Publican Quality Bread’s Big Sandwich. True to its name, it’s an absurdly large offering, taking up an entire pizza tray. Fortunately, no one is expected to devour it alone. Simply tell the employee how hungry you are, and he or she will slice off just the right amount and weigh it. (Speaking from experience, a half-pound portion is about right for one person.)
If this sounds similar to Gabriele Bonci’s Roman-style pizza served at Bonci in the West Loop that’s because it is. Wade says he was inspired by Bonci’s astonishingly airy and slightly crispy pizza crusts. But instead of serving pizza, he halves the bread and adds fillings based on what’s seasonally available. When we visited, the sandwich was stuffed with lemon ricotta, bright green asparagus, turkey, arugula and a slightly spicy salsa macha. Talk about an ideal spring sandwich.
Other options: The big sandwich is available starting at 10 a.m., But at 1 p.m., the shop starts serving ham and cheese sandwiches built on freshly baked baguettes. Where the big sandwich goes maximalist, this one is a minimalist masterpiece. The sandwich only includes soft butter, mustard, Comté cheese and rosemary ham. With the bread still warm from the oven, it’s hard to think of a better ham and cheese sandwich in Chicago.
1759 W. Grand Ave., 312-605-1618, publicanqualitybread.com
The Dante from Tempesta Market
Unlike Publican Quality Bread, Tempesta Market doesn’t bake its own bread, but it does produce pretty much everything else. Along with owning Tempesta Market, Antonio Fiasche also runs Tempesta Artisan Salumi, one of the finest producers of cured Italian-style meats in the Midwest. With The Dante, the West Town deli tricks out the standard Italian sub in a way that takes it just to the edge of sanity.
Instead of three kinds of meat, Tempesta Market goes with five: hot sopressata, mortadella, Genoa salami, hot capicola and porchetta. Though it should feel like an avalanche of salt, fat and spice, instead it’s like an artfully produced fireworks show, where each meat gets a brief moment to shine before the next one reaches liftoff. And that’s not even all the meat. Tempesta also folds ‘nduja, the spicy and spreadable pork sausage, into the aioli. Along with some lettuce and the requisite giardiniera, everything goes on an astonishing baguette from nearby Aya Pastry.
Other options: Every sandwich at Tempesta Market is worth ordering, but our food team also loved The B. Franklin. It’s probably the most unhinged turkey sandwich in Chicago. Along with plenty of thinly sliced roasted turkey, the shop adds 2-year-aged cheddar from Hook’s, pickled Fresno chiles and red onions, sprouts, avocado and sofrito aioli. It’s served on some supremely soft sourdough bread from ButterCrumb Bakery in suburban Hickory Hills.
1372 W. Grand Ave., 312-929-2551, tempestamarket.com
Vinnie’s Special at Vinnie’s Sub Shop
Vinnie’s Sub Shop isn’t the oldest Italian deli on Grand, but it might be the friendliest, especially if co-owner Darlene Swiatek is there to take your order. Her husband, Joe Swiatek, has owned Imperial Hardware next door for decades before the two decided to open this sandwich shop.
The Italian sub is a perfectly solid rendition, especially thanks to the bread baked by D’Amato’s. But what you really want is the Vinnie’s Special, a ham, salami and provolone sandwich built on a wonderfully crusty sesame-topped roll. It’s crunchy and salty, with just enough fresh lettuce and tomato.
Other option: Everything is solid, but the tuna salad sub is the one that I’d return to first. Freshly made every morning, the tuna salad is thankfully not overly creamy, allowing you to actually taste the fish.
1204 W. Grand Ave., 312-738-2985
