1613 Central Street #3Last weekend was a long weekend.
I’ll really dive in to this over the next several blogs but basically I drove to Chicago, then to Detroit, then back to Chicago in the span of three days.
My weekend started on Friday with the first trip to Chicago. B’s synchronized skating team was competing at Synchro Illinois at the Robert Crown Community Center in Evanston. L’s team was competing on Sunday so our original plan was to just stay the whole weekend. But then I had to come back to Michigan to work. I left everyone else in Chicago and I did the back and forth.
We got to Evanston pretty early on Friday because we had to get their early for B. He’s on a team with 11 girls and while he doesn’t have to do as much hair and make up to get ready, they do and he has to be there with everyone else.
My parents also drove up for this one knowing it was B’s last competition of the year. L has one more so they didn’t make the return trip on Sunday. They’re just going to come to L’s last competition next weekend in Kalamazoo.
Once we got J and B with their team, I asked if I could take my parents to lunch since we still had a couple of hours until the competition began.
As we were walking out of the arena, I asked if there wasn’t anything in particular they wanted. My dad said he knew I already had a place I wanted to go so let’s just go there.
He was right.
We headed over to Mustard’s Last Stand on Central Street to the west of Ashland Avenue. The small 50 year old hot dog stand is right across the alley from Northwestern’s Ryan Field. There are a few parking spots right off the alley and a few more spots behind the building. Everything about this building is what you should think of when you think of Chicago dog joints.
The inside of the building is tight. The ordering area is all the way at the far end of the building when you walk in the door. There’s really just enough space for a small kitchen area and the counter. The menu is kind of hodgepodged in a few different places. There’s an old slide letter board with most of the menu on it plus there are hand written signs and banners with specials, combos and just random things that are not on main menu board.
There is pretty limited seating which is not unusual for a place like this. The only indoor option is a rail on the wall opposite the order counter. You can stand or there are some old pleather topped barstools to sit on. The walls are filled with newspaper clippings, Chicago sports memorabilia, and pictures of the people who have eaten there over the years. Typical for this kind of place in Chicago.
In nicer weather, there is also a fairly large area outside to eat with concrete picnic tables but it was way to cold to even consider that.
I knew when I walked in what I wanted. I was in Chicago. I was getting an Italian beef and fries. The ordering is kind of haphazard. One guy just asks what you want and starts making it. Another guy started asking about toppings and sides. Neither write it down. They just kind of go from memory before getting to the cash register and pretty much asking you again what you ordered so they can ring it up.
The fries weren’t anything special. They were simple frozen restaurant fries. I always like the hot dog stands that cut the fries themselves. They did offer up bottles of ketchup for the fries but I don’t really like ketchup. I ate them as they were. They were fine. Just nothing special.
I got my Italian beef with hot peppers and “juicy” as they put it. The large French roll was filled with thinly sliced beef and hot giardiniera. The sandwich came with a knife and fork but I did my best to not use them until the very end. The sandwich was delicious. The bread soaked up all that juice and added to the beefy flavor. It did it’s best to hold everything together but at some point, the juice one out and I had to pick up the fork. I knew my time in Chicago was going to be limited this weekend so I had to get a beef from somewhere before I left town.
With my parents meals (my dad got the Polish sausage and my mom got the Italian sausage), the cost came to right around $45.
Mustard’s Last Stand must be a great place to grab a bite to eat on game day at Northwestern. It’s a quintessential Chicago hot dog stand serving up the quintessential food you can only get in the Chicago area.