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here's my system for Manny's: I go with a friend and we get a full corned beef sandwich and then get an extra side of rye bread and an extra potato pancake. There is so much meat heaped onto the sandwich we always happily can make two sandwiches out of it and enjoy a potato pancake each. (Um, I ain't sharing that.) If you wink at the carver, he'll throw on an extra pickle for you. If I am extra hungry I will get a bowl of chicken soup with kreplach too. I don't think I am the only person that does this as they take it in stride.
bjt

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"eating is an agricultural act" wendell berry

Is that a warning?

Drop me a PM or email and I'll happily meet you there if you're looking for someone to split a sandwich with.

Another perspective on Manny's sandwich pricing.

Two weeks ago I had a corned beef sandwich at a deli in the loop. The sandwich, with nothing else cost me $5.75 and it was made with mediocre bread and cold machine-sliced Boar's Head meat. A serviceable sandwich but not great. It came with a depressing little pickle and nothing else.

So, double the price plus a little more change and you come to a Manny's LARGE warm hand-sliced sandwich on pretty good bread with a huge potato pancake and a terrific pickle. Plus, you get to eat in a location that's a little bit of Chicago history. Oh yeah, and someone cleans up after you--That's worth a buck right there.

Manny's can be double the cost of a cheap loop lunch (a few bucks more than a regular lunch other places) and easily about 10x's the experience.

Add Manny's to the list of places that I'd happily pay a monthly membership fee to, just for the privilege of walking in the front door.

If anyone else needs convincing to visit this classic member of a dying breed of cafeteria, please visit the GNR thread.

Best,
Michael

I get my corned beef fix at Manny's by going once/month and getting corned beef hash for breakfast. Under $4, it's very good, and it's easy to find parking. Plus they have free wireless, so I go sit under the LTH plaque (which is the table next to the bathrooms, but also the table next to the electrical outlet for my laptop) and work for an hour or two.

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"You may not want to take its picture, but you really want to eat it." - Nigella Lawson

I still want to know.... what is "Manny's corned beef" anyway? I always thought it was Vienna corned beef cooked and sliced at Manny's. Does anyone know if they really make thier own?

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Lacking fins or tail
The Gefilte fish
swims with great difficulty.

Jewish haiku.

It is, in the sense that it's supplied by Vienna, but that doesn't mean it's interchangeable with the Vienna corned beef you find in a case at the Jewels. Meat suppliers offer many grades, preferred customers get the better stuff out of any grade anyway, and I'm sure Manny's is an important customer monetarily and even moreso historically/symbolically.

(answer basically cribbed from old Evil Ronnie post I remember but can't find)

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Maybe. But the whole concept of "Manny's corned beef" implies (at least to me) that this is some special unique product, a different recipe or made in house. If it's not, the whole thing seems deceptive to me.

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Lacking fins or tail
The Gefilte fish
swims with great difficulty.

Jewish haiku.

Vienna sells them briskets per their specs, presumably they come corned according to Manny's specs (which might have been exactly the same as a lot of other guy's 50 years ago, but probably are much less common now), and then the Manny's guys cook it with the skill you expect from guys who've been doing that forever. That IS making Manny's corned beef, in house.

I haven't found Evil's post on corned beef, but here's his description of how Manny's sources its pastrami. Read that and I think you'll agree that you're getting something special:

http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=86118#86118

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Watch Sky Full of Bacon, the Chicago food HD podcast!
New episode: Soil, Corn, Cows and Cheese
Watch the Reader's James Beard Award-winning Key Ingredient here.

If the briskets are cured differently than the usual Vienna commercial product, I have no quibbles with the concept of "Manny's corned beef", but if the only difference is in the labeling, that's problematic for me.

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Lacking fins or tail
The Gefilte fish
swims with great difficulty.

Jewish haiku.

it's not much different than two steakhouses buying their meat from the same supplier, yet turning out a drastically different steak, no?

Or 2 places that serve Vienna dogs. We all know they're hardly all the same.

=R=

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I just wanna live until I gotta die. I know I ain't perfect but God knows I try. --Todd Snider

Twitter: ronniesuburban

This might be the corned beef thread you're thinking of. It's so old that LTHForum didn't exist and Ron(nie) hadn't turned Evil.

Actually...

A good way to taste Manny's corned beef and pastrami is to order a combo, which I don't believe is on any of their menus. I prefer it on a kaiser roll dipped in brisket juice.

Gino (the slicerman / resident crazy person) tends to give you a little more of each type meat on a combo, and the corned beef tends to cut the saltiness of the pastrami. I eat the whole shebang with a knife & fork, dipping this top-quality meat in Manny's spicy mustard.

Yeah, the potato latke is good, and yeah, the pickles are killer, but that warm corned beef against the totally different experience of the salty, slightly briny pastrami is a match made in heaven, if heaven contained people who've had multiple bypasses.

I'd be willing to pay a $5 premium just to watch and listen to Gino for a few minutes. He's a wonderful, funny, sweet guy, and he, more than anything else except maybe the CB+Pastrami, makes Manny's what it is to me.

I like the combo, but I'm just so addicted to the salt+spice bomb of the pastrami sandwich, that I can't bear to order anything else.

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Ed Fisher
my chicago food photos

RIP LTH.

I heard from Ken Raskin today, who evidently is an avid reader of LTH Forum, though not a poster. He has this to say about Manny's corned beef and pastrami:

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Steve Z.
Photographer/Pseudojournalist

"The only time to eat diet food is while you’re waiting for the steak to cook." - Julia Child

There are any number of BBQ places that are supplied by Moo & Oink, Peoria Packing, Grant Park, etc. Is the BBQ all the same? Indeed, Grant Park makes hot links to Uncle John's specs, for Uncle John's and Barbara Ann's. While they once were willing to sell them to the public, if the public knew to ask, Grant Park now quite properly refuses to sell UJ links without an OK from the man himself. I tried. Links made to spec off site and then BBQ'd on premises doesn't strike me as deceptive at all. Same for the Vienna/Manny's relationship. NB, there's still a big Vienna sign on Langer's facade. That's who used to supply the starting product. The end product is not what you'd pick up at the Jewels, and I'm sure it wasn't when Vienna was supplying. See also Scala's Italian beef.

Somewhere here is an article documenting that Vienna has dozens or hundreds of bespoke recipes for large customers. That's not a bad thing, it's great. Vienna is one of the last of a very old-fashioned traditional kind of supplier. They still do everything small batch on Elston, spicing and smoking in house. If Vienna were a brewery, it would be like a "big" micro, maybe like Anchor.

See my post above. According to Manny's owner Ken Raskin, they do not use Vienna briskets.

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Steve Z.
Photographer/Pseudojournalist

"The only time to eat diet food is while you’re waiting for the steak to cook." - Julia Child

Well, that settles that.

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Watch Sky Full of Bacon, the Chicago food HD podcast!
New episode: Soil, Corn, Cows and Cheese
Watch the Reader's James Beard Award-winning Key Ingredient here.

I really think people misinterpreted what I was trying to say (although I thought I was being quite clear about it ). I was just interested in confirming that the product to be sold as "Manny's corned beef" was in some way unique, and not just a relabelling of something that might be readily available under another name. It appears this is the case. Sign me up. I'll take one home tonite if I can find one.

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Lacking fins or tail
The Gefilte fish
swims with great difficulty.

Jewish haiku.

Of course. I should've refreshed before posting. Does that mean Manny's used to use Vienna?

People rave about "Hot Doug's sausages" but he certainly doesn't make them. Does that make them any less special?
Jamie

Manny's is not just corn beef and pastrami but the sum of its parts. Some of those include:

the carved roast beef, mentioned earlier, which you can have rare--well-done to your liking (preferably on a fresh onion roll).

Manny's is also one of the few places where you can also get an actual boiled beef brisket sandwich, and the fact they have sense enough to keep horse radish on the tables makes this a viable option.

In addition, you can say NO to the latke if you so choose. Gino'll give you a pitying look but he'll comply.

Oh yeah, Eli's cheesecake is at the end of the cafeteria line (cafeteria? Jewish cafeteria? How many of those are still around?) .

In other words, go to Manny's if you haven't been before. Not the best of any one thing, but still worth a detour.

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"The fork with two prongs is in use in northern Europe. In England, they’re armed with a steel trident, a fork with three prongs. In France we have a fork with four prongs; it’s the height of civilization." Eugene Briffault (1846)

No doubt Manny's (along with nearly everyone else in town) used Vienna at one time.


Photo by Gleam

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Steve Z.
Photographer/Pseudojournalist

"The only time to eat diet food is while you’re waiting for the steak to cook." - Julia Child

Gino is a trip. My co-workers always give me a hard time as Gino and I always manage to have some kind of off-topic conversation. I'm still concerned about his utensil handling though. If it wasn't dead before - it is now.

I've been salivating about the combo idea mentioned above. What kind of bread/rolls do they use/have available?

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What if the Hokey Pokey really IS what it's all about?

Rye and onion rolls are the two most people use. A combo on an onion roll is great, but I get my pastrami on rye.

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Ed Fisher
my chicago food photos

RIP LTH.

Thanks, Ed. Do they have a good reuben? The last time I got a decent one was at the Robin Hood downtown, many years ago. Wonder if they're still around.

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What if the Hokey Pokey really IS what it's all about?

I've never had the reuben, but be warned that it's made by taking a pre-grilled reuben and stuffing it full of fresh corned beef, rather than by making the whole thing to order. You might be able to get them to make one to order, but I've never tried.

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Ed Fisher
my chicago food photos

RIP LTH.

I have had the reuben, and would recommend against it, for the reasons set forth above by gleam. Not the shining star of the Manny's culinary constellation.

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JiLS

I'm surprised. Considering his rep I would think that making a reuben like that would be considered a sacrilege.

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What if the Hokey Pokey really IS what it's all about?

Well, Manny's is by no means kosher, but given the reuben could only be more traif if you put shrimp and pork rinds on it, I think "sacrilege" in reference to their mediocre presentation of this archetypically goyishe sandwich is perhaps a bit alarmist. They serve a reuben because they are asked for them; doesn't mean they have to put their heart into it.

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JiLS