Chicago workwear maker founded in 1924 by Austrian immigrant brothers Max and Joe Eckerling, who first sewed bib overalls out of their home on Roosevelt Road; still family-owned into a third generation.
Best for Coveralls & chore coats
Universal Overall was founded in Chicago in 1924 by brothers Max and Joe Eckerling, who had immigrated from Austria in 1921 and took whatever work they could find before starting the company. They began by making and selling bib overalls out of their own home on Roosevelt Road, initially selling to local retailers. During the 1930s the business expanded into other work garments, including coveralls sold to industrial laundries. The company has stayed family-owned and -operated across three generations since its founding, and its products have historically been used on factory floors, farms, construction sites and job sites across the US.
Manny's has served hand-carved corned beef and cafeteria-style Jewish deli fare from the same Chicago address since 1942. Mayors, US presidents and generations of local families have eaten here.
Best for Hand-carved corned beef at Chicago’s historic cafeteria-style Jewish deli
Manny's has operated from the same Chicago address since 1942, and describes itself as the oldest cafeteria-style Jewish deli still running in the country. The format is part of the draw: instead of table service, customers move down a line, watch sandwiches get hand-carved to order, and pick sides cafeteria-style before finding a seat — a structure that hasn't changed across roughly 85 years of the same family's ownership.
Corned beef, hand-carved rather than machine-sliced, is the signature order, alongside bagels with lox, house-made soups and standard deli sides. The self-service cafeteria format keeps throughput high without sacrificing the made-to-order carving that distinguishes it from a pre-packaged deli counter.
Located at 1141 South Jefferson Street, Manny's has built a reputation as a genuine cross-section of Chicago rather than a tourist stop: the restaurant's own account of its clientele includes mayors, "icons," and — by its own description — visiting U.S. presidents, alongside generations of the same local families returning for lunch. Almost 90 years into operation, that continuity of ownership and format, more than any single dish, is what the place is known for.
This family-run European delicatessen smokes its own sausages and cures meats in-house, filling a Lincoln Square emporium with imported cheeses, breads, and pantry goods beneath a seasonal rooftop beer garden. The counters run to Polish, German, and Eastern European specialties made from old-country recipes.
Best for House-smoked sausage and European deli goods
Gene's Sausage Shop & Delicatessen came to Lincoln Square in September 2009. It took over the space of Delicatessen Meyer, a German-American grocer that had served the neighbourhood for 53 years before closing in 2007. The business behind it is older. In March 1972 two brothers from a farm village in Malopolskie in southern Poland, John and Gene Luszcz, opened a small deli on West Roscoe Street. It specialised in homemade smoked sausage and other Polish foods, drawing on the family's recipes and smoking methods. The shop served the Polish neighbourhood around St. Ladislaus church. After eight years it moved in 1980 to larger premises on Belmont Avenue. A life-size sculpture of a cow on the sign still marks that store. Gene and his wife Alice built it into a European market with forty kinds of smoked sausage made fresh on the premises each day by sausage-makers trained in Europe. Fresh meat is cut to order from the cooler by butchers. Prepared foods and imported specialties fill the rest of the floor. Their delicatessen was featured on the Frugal Gourmet Show and 190 North. The Lincoln Square store at 4750 North Lincoln Avenue was opened as a second full-range European market in the same mould. It has the sausage counter and specialties downstairs and a rooftop above the shop. Weekly specials run across imported pantry goods, from German curry ketchup to barrel sauerkraut, and the counter keeps to the Polish and German lines the brothers started with.
Frank and Mae Puch started this Chicago confectioner in 1928, and four generations later it still makes family-recipe candies including Hunky Dorey, a caramel corn studded with pecans and almonds. The factory turns out chewy caramels, hard candies, and sugar-free sweets from its longtime West Side plant.
Iwan Ries & Co. traces to Chicago in 1857 and rebuilt after the Great Chicago Fire destroyed its premises in 1871. Now in its fifth generation of family ownership, the shop, which calls itself America's oldest tobacco shop, sells pipes, house-blended pipe tobacco, and cigars.
Best for Pipes, house-blended pipe tobacco and cigars
Iwan Ries & Co. traces its founding to 1857, when German immigrant Edward Hoffman opened E. Hoffman & Co. inside Chicago's Sherman House Hotel, twenty years after the city's incorporation. Hoffman later began manufacturing his own cigars and brought his nephew, fellow German immigrant Iwan Ries, into the business to help run it.
The original premises were destroyed when the Great Chicago Fire of October 8, 1871, burned down the Sherman House Hotel; the business rebuilt and continued. Hoffman brought Iwan Ries into the company in 1891, and after Hoffman's retirement in 1898, Ries sold off the manufacturing side of the business to a New York pipe company and renamed the retail shop Iwan Ries & Co., the name it has carried since.
Now in its fifth generation of family ownership and billed as America's oldest tobacco shop, the business today occupies a store at 55 E. Monroe in Chicago's Loop, stocking more than 15,000 pipes from a wide range of makers alongside a large pipe tobacco selection that includes house blends such as Three Star and its IRC British and bulk lines. The shop also carries cigars, lighters, cutters, humidors, and other accessories, and operates an adjoining smoking lounge, the Front Room, that keeps later evening hours than the retail floor.
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