The guidebooks send you to deep-dish pizza and the Chicago hot dog. However, to feel like a true Chicagoan, you order the Italian beef.

Thinly shaved roast beef, slow-roasted in its own jus, stacked on an Italian roll and dipped until the bread nearly falls apart. You top it with sweet peppers or hot giardiniera, a chopped relish of pickled vegetables and hot peppers in oil. It comes out wet and messy, eaten leaning forward.

Where it came from

It started as a way to stretch a little meat. In Chicago’s old Italian neighborhoods, money was short, and the humblest weddings were known as peanut weddings, after the bowls of peanuts that stood in for a catered meal. To feed a crowd on little, hosts sliced a small cut of beef paper-thin and served it on bread soaked in its broth. Who invented the sandwich is still debated. Anthony Ferreri and Pasquale Scala both have claims. Ferreri’s son Al turned it into a business in 1938, opening the Little Italy stand that still bears his name. The cheap, tough cuts came home from the stockyards. Long roasting and thin slicing did the rest.

The beef is a working sandwich and does not look like much. For decades, it stayed local, eaten at a stand near the job. Then it caught on in the 1970s, and The Bear took it national. The FX show is built on a real Chicago stand, Mr. Beef on Orleans Street. Now people who have never set foot in the city come looking for the sandwich.

Chicago has changed around it. The city is now one of the world’s serious food destinations, with some twenty Michelin-starred restaurants, a wall of James Beard awards, and Kasama, the first Filipino restaurant anywhere to earn a star. Smyth holds three Michelin stars and was just named the best restaurant in North America. Through all of that, the sandwich hasn't changed much. It is still a few dollars at a counter, and still the sandwich that says Chicago.

Where to get the best

The best of it is not in the city. It is at Johnnie’s Beef in Elmwood Park, a low stand just past the western edge of town, doing one thing well since 1961. Order like a regular: a combo, juicy, sweet, and hot. That gets you beef and a length of char-grilled sausage, the roll dipped, sweet peppers, and giardiniera on top. Johnnie’s roasts its own beef, which is why it comes out so tender. The line runs long and moves fast. It is cash-only, and there is nowhere to sit except at a counter or in your front seat. Finish with the lemon ice. By Chicago standards, where everyone has an opinion, Johnnie's is the closest thing to a consensus pick.

If you would rather not leave the city, take the original. Al’s #1, on Taylor Street in Little Italy, has been at it since 1938, and it holds its own. But the best one is a short drive west, out past the bungalows to a corner of Elmwood Park.