Syracuse, N. Y. — You don’t need to travel to Chicago, or feed your vicarious craving on TV, to get a taste of the famous Windy City creation, Italian Beef.
A big, messy and spicy Chicago-style Italian Beef sandwich is a featured regular item on the menu at Buried Acorn Taproom and Eats, which opened July 30 at 900 E. Fayette St. in Syracuse.
This taproom is a spinoff of Buried Acorn Brewing, which opened its brewhouse and taproom at 881 Van Rensselaer St. in Syracuse’s Inner Harbor in 2018. (Buried Acorn last fall also added a taproom on a farm in Newfield, near Ithaca.)
The new Syracuse taproom is meant primarily as a showcase for the beers, many sour and/or barrel aged, produced by brewer/owner Tim Shore and his assistant, Sean Place. It’s also got its own kitchen, run by Shore’s wife Crystal, offering flatbreads, paninis, charcuterie and more.
But it’s the Italian Beef that’s capturing a moment. The sandwich is at the heart of the hit Hulu series “The Bear,” set in (and mostly filmed at) a Chicago sandwich ship that specializes in Italian Beef. The show has won accolades for its accurate depiction of restaurant culture.
But don’t accuse Crystal Shore of simply jumping on a hot trend. She grew up in the Chicago area and is a big fan of the iconic sandwich, although she and Tim had not yet watched the TV show before the taproom opened.
“Whenever we go home, we get some Italian Beef, sometimes more than once in a trip, trying different places,” she said. “But it’s been hard to find around here. So when we decided to do a kitchen here, we knew we were going to have it.”
There are several key points in making Chicago-style Italian Beef, Crystal Shore says. All are ”critical” to ensuring it’s as authentic as possible, she adds.
The first is the beef. It’s seasoned and roasted, then sliced extremely thin, and then simmered in liquid, referred to as “au jus.” The resulting meat (Shore uses sirloin) is extremely tender.
Then there’s the topping. It’s giardiniera, a chopped combination of peppers and often veggies like carrots and cauliflower in oil. That’s the only condiment — you usually won’t find mustard, mayo or anything like that on a Chicago Italian Beef. Provolone cheese is an optional topping at Buried Acorn.
“The giardiniera is something else that a lot of people around here don’t know,” Crystal Shore said. “But it’s very, very important for Italian Beef.”
She prefers hot peppers, although sweet ones are sometimes used. Tim Shore likes the texture the giardiniera gives to what is mostly a soft, wet sandwich.
“You’ve go to have that crunch,” he said.
One concession Crystal Shore has made is the bread. She’s currently using a cheesesteak-type roll from Philadelphia, because she can’t find the long Chicago-style French rolls here.
Then there’s the service. Some customers may ask for some of the juice, or “jus,” to be served in a cup on the side, but that’s not the traditional Chicago way.
“We dip the whole sandwich in the juice to get it wet,” she said. “We’ll serve it on the side if you ask, but the best way to dip the whole thing in.”
Piled high with beef, topped with a generous scooping of giardiniera and dipped in juice ensures one thing: Italian Beef requires a bunch of napkins.
Buried Acorn sold a lot of Italian Beef on its opening weekend, but Crystal Shore said it’s too early to tell if it will be the best-seller going forward. She and Tim are also considering adding Chicago-style hot dogs to the menu. These dogs, topped with tomato, onions, pickle relish and sport peppers, are also a Windy City specialty, and recently got a big write up at the New York Times.
The Shores have no plans to try deep-dish Chicago-style pizza, however.
The Buried Acorn taproom on East Fayette Street serves a rotating list of beers made in the brewhouse on Van Rensselaer Street, and many will be familiar to patrons there, like Ghoster Blanc (a farmhouse ale) and Hot Whip (an IPA).
But you’ll also find a few made specially for the new taproom.
“The ones made just for here are fun, fruited sours,” Tim Shore said. Flavors include takes on Key Lime, Fruity Pebbles and Hawaiian Punch.
Buried Acorn taproom is in the older part of the historic Sylvester Building at the corner of Fayette and Irving streets. A more modern section houses the new location of Strong Hearts vegan café. The new location in spacious, with multiple seating areas and rooms and a large, circular bar in the center. It opens at 10 a.m. seven days a week.
Note: While Italian Beef is unusual in Central New York, it can be found at some places. The Meiers Creek Brewing tap room in Syracuse’s Inner Harbor has a menu item called Harbor Beef Baguette, which adds a horseradish sauce to the traditional ingredients. Italian Beef has also been offered on occasion at Across the Hall Cafe, next to City Hall in downtown Syracuse, and sometimes at Darwin on Clinton, where it’s called the Windy City.
More CNY food and dining news:
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Salt City Market adds noted Ethiopian kitchen to its food hall lineup
Armory Square restaurant to double in size, and maybe add ‘late night’ offerings
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Don Cazentre writes for NYup.com, syracuse.com and The Post-Standard. Reach him at dcazentre@nyup.com, or follow him at NYup.com, on Twitter or Facebook.