Tonight I am in Skokie Illinois. I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off because my 4pm client meeting ran well over 2 hours and I barely made it to the car rental shop before it closed at 7, AND i'd left both cell phones in my cube at the office. Dumbass.
Anyway, I was hungry and had a car and couldn't think where to go, so I thought about it for a minute, to try and remember what I really, really missed about Chicago food that was a) not Perez, b) not Blackbird, and c) vaguely might be sort of near or on the way to Skokie. And then I remembered my last trip to Hecky's on Halsted, which wasn't really a Hecky's despite the desperate baldfaced lies to the contrary from the manager.
The One True Hecky's is now the one in Evanston... a 10 minute drive from Skokie. Yay!!
I just finished off most of a half chicken and some cole slaw, and it was as dreamy as I remember it, just as spicy and tangy, the meat just as moist, and perhaps even smokier than the Halsted shop's. I scored a bottle of the sauce to bring home, to tide me over till the next visit -- hurray for having to check luggage anyway!
And I think I might head back tomorrow night, to get some rib tips... the adorable cashier kid at Best Buy busted into the hugest grin when I told him I was headed to Hecky's, and told me that the rib tips are at least as good as the chickens. I personally have never gotten past the chickens, so I think it's worth a second trip while I am trapped here in the northern burbs. In the name of scientific research and the greater good of humanity, of course.
(Update: the rib tips are pretty good. lots of bone and connective bits, with little nibbles of meatiness and the usual sauce. perfectly worthwhile, but I still prefer the extraordinary chicken.)
Posted by foodnerd at April 23, 2009 12:49 AM