Put your money on Vienna Beef

When you eat a Chicago-style hot dog, you’d best put your money on Vienna Beef – the king of Chicago dogs and the brand served by a sizeable chunk of Chicago’s hot dog slingers. Going with anything else would be breaking tradition. Thankfully, Pam’s Chicago-Style Dogs and More, a new spot in the East Loop, serves Vienna Beef dogs, which really are some of the best around. Take Pam’s Jumbo Chicago Dog, served in a red plastic basket. The natural casing will attempt to fight your advances before giving way, with a perfect snap, to the juicy contents within. These are steamed all-beef hot dogs at their best; seasoned perfectly and topped with all the fixings. Up in the Windy City they call the whole mess “dragged through the garden,” and Pam’s gets it right, plopping the dog into a poppy-seed bun and topping it with yellow mustard, that unnaturally green relish, chopped onion, a full-size kosher pickle slice and tomato slices. The last were nice and juicy, instead of the crunchy underripe specimens you typically find with fast food. Sport peppers and celery salt are an optional (but in my opinion necessary) addition and add a bit of zing. Even without the natural-cased snap of the quarter-pound dog, the Philly Dog also delivered, its flavorful additions offering a dash of innovation among the standard list of dog-stand offerings. Topped with oozing Swiss-American cheese, caramelized grilled onions and briny sport peppers, which add a spicy crunch, it fulfilled my junk-food cravings. Unfortunately, other items I sampled at Pam’s weren’t particularly noteworthy. Italian sausages had a nice spice and a touch of fennel, but the grilled onions they are topped with fell flat. Overly thin and under-caramelized, they lacked the sweetness you’d hope for. Bratwursts missed the mark too, by way of sauerkraut more vinegary than it was sour. And with the Reuben, I was left with a basketful of mess when the bread simply couldn’t stand up to the dousing of Thousand Island and kraut. I did enjoy the corndog, which I love because of that brown, overfried crunchy bit that’s always left around the stick. But the real story at Pam’s just might be the dessert offerings, the deep-fried Twinkie in particular. In fact, there’s been so much buzz about Pam’s Twinkies that, on one visit, the owner told me he’d run out. It’s times like these when true culinary ingenuity hits, and, faced with having to buy Twinkies retail to restock supply, he spotted a box of Raspberry Zingers and thought, “Why not?” After some time in the freezer, the Zingers are battered with funnel cake batter. They’re then deep-fried just long enough that the batter creates a golden brown skin and the pseudo-raspberry-scented cake is warmed, but just short enough that the creamy filling is still cold and fluffy. I wanted to shrug it off as the unholiest of all food creations, but I simply couldn’t. It was a genius move; one bite was all it took to be hooked. Food at Pam’s – which includes more than 30 offerings, among them sandwiches, salads and breakfast items served till 11 a.m. most days – is made to order, and service is fast and friendly. The décor is as you would expect, with Chicago memorabilia hanging throughout, but it’s the black granite floor – one of those broken-tile mosaic jobs – that is most striking. With its nooks and crannies, it seems impossible to keep clean. But clean it is, and highly polished. But that’s the thing at Pam’s: From the floor to the dogs to dessert, it’s not just another dingy hot dog shack.