Buona Restaurants; The Next Italian Beef Breakout

Nearly every major city has a particular sandwich that residents can claim as the original home of that sandwich. These are some the very well-known hand held’s like Cheesesteak, French Dip, Cuban, Loose Meat , Smoked Brisket, Chopped Pork, Fish Taco, Po’Boy and on and on. For as long as I can remember as a Chicago native the hot dog, the one that’s dragged through the garden and without ketchup BTW, as the Chicago Icon. But recently, the Italian Beef is beginning to take its place as the favorite Chicago sandwich. And it was the “The Bear”, which you heard a small snippet from earlier along with the attention of food writers from around the country that has put the Italian Beef sandwich front and center. We’re talking with a man whose family has lived the adventure of Italian Beef for over 40 years. Joe Buonavalanto, leader of the Chicago restaurant chain of about 26 stores scattered around the Chicago metro has readied his company to grow even larger through franchising. We started the conversation with my personal experiences of Italian beef at a restaurant I visited quite often. That was Mr. Beef which was the shooting location for the series BTW and, as I found out, at onetime was a Buonavalanto family business.