Joey’s Red Hots & Pizza (Orland Hills)
9135 W. 159th StreetI’ve explained over the last couple of posts I’ve written that we took a quick trip to Illinois last weekend for a figure skating competition and a memorial service. I’m not going to rehash too much of that but I feel like I need to give a little background.
J and L left Wednesday night for the figure skating competition in Flossmoor, IL. I didn’t want to use two vacation days and pull B out of school for two days so we came over on Friday.
My truck is really old and gets awful gas mileage. I pretty much only drive it around town as I have a company vehicle for work stuff. We didn’t want to pay for gas in that gas guzzler back to Illinois and we didn’t want to have two vehicles there.
I looked at taking a train but it was expensive and didn’t really get us anywhere near where we needed to be. I, instead, looked in to renting a car one way which was much cheaper.
I picked the car up from the Kalamazoo-Battle Creek International Airport on Thursday night then B and I drove to Flossmoor Friday morning. L’s two events had about a five hour gap so once she finished the first one, I asked my parents, who drove up from their place near Kankakee, if they’d follow me to drop it off.
I selected a drop off spot in Orland Park, Illinois. It was about 20 minutes from the rink and in a very high traffic commercial area. We used to go shopping in Orland Park all the time when I was a kid so I was somewhat familiar with the area.
I got the car returned then B was begging to go to Target because J was taking L and a couple of her friends to Target. There was one near us so I told him we’d go there but we weren’t going to go crash L’s time with her friends.
We argued for a while about what he wanted from Target and we ended up leaving with only a pair of pajama pants and some candy.
My dad mentioned lunch as we were walking back to the car. Good timing. I noticed a spot not too far from where we were on our way to the store and I’d be able to get an Italian beef.
Joey’s Red Hots and Pizza is a small south side chain features Chicago style hot dogs, Italian beef, pizza puffs, and all the good Chicago food. Some of the locations look like the traditional Chicago suburb sandwich shop being a small, brightly colored building that jumps out at you from the road. This one is one of the newer locations which looks much more like a chain restaurant is a busy commercial district. It’s on 159th Street east of 94th Avenue. I didn’t know this at the time but this building was previously one of the extra locations of my all time favorite chicken joint when I lived in Joliet. It was a Chicken-N-Spice…which has unfortunately closed all their locations in recent years. Before that, it was a Ricobene’s….another great Chicago style restaurant with locations all over the South Side.
The restaurant is fairly new. It opened in February of this year after some renovations to bring it in line with the Joey’s theme…minus the blue, red, and yellow paint job on the outside. Instead, there is a Chicago mural on the side of the building right off the parking lot.
Inside there is that blue, red, and yellow theme throughout the space starting with the order counter. The restaurant is set up like a typical fast food/fast casual restaurant with menus on TV monitors above it. The menu is pretty typical for a Chicago style food joint and it’s a big enough menu that everyone should be able to find something to eat.
We all ordered something different. I got the beef, B got pizza, my mom got tacos, and my dad got a hot dog. The price was right around $40 when it was all said and done. My dad even made a comment on the way out about how reasonably priced it was and we all got out for about $10/person….which is kind of unheard of these days.
We grabbed out drinks then B took us to a booth in the dining room. Again, pretty typical fast food space with a combination of booths and tables. When we sat down, the dining room was fairly empty but it filled up quickly as we sat there past the noon hour.
I ordered the Beef & Sausage Combo with hot peppers and dipped. The sandwich was a lot and almost impossible to pick up. The bun was overflowing with beef and peppers and the spicy Italian sausage in the bottom just disintegrated the bun. The beef kind of tasted like Vienna’s Italian beef to me which would make sense with the color scheme of the place and they use Vienna Beef hot dogs. If that’s the case, I’d assume the whole thing is Vienna beef from the beef to the sausage to the giardiniera to the bun. Even as hard as it was to pick…which is the way I like it…I was able to get the thing in my mouth and enjoy the only Italian beef I had on this trip home.
I got the sandwich with fries and a drink. I gave the drink to B but I kept the fries. They were simple, frozen crinkle cuts. They were pretty well salted which makes them much better. I’m not a ketchup person so I always eat these however they come. As far as simple crinkle cuts go, these were fine.
I got B a slice of cheese pizza which actually comes as two slices of cheese pizza. As J couldn’t wait to remind me later, B is actually a pretty picky pizza eater. He likes Cottage Inn…and that’s about it. I told him if he ate a slice we’d get ice cream. He took the tiniest, tiniest bite of the very tip of the pizza and declared he didn’t like it. I made him eat anyway. He ate about 3/4 and the whole time saying, “I don’t even want ice cream. That’s how much I don’t like this pizza.” I ended up eating the rest of his slice and the second one. It was fine. I don’t love cheese pizza anyway. There’s just not a lot of flavor to it. The cheese layer on this slice was pretty thick and the sauce was pretty thin so there wasn’t a ton of flavor…but it’s pizza! I don’t get how you can even work your way through a slice. It’s not that bad.
I didn’t get pictures but my mom got steak tacos and my dad got a Chicago dog. Both commented that the food was good and more importantly, fairly cheap. I usually take them places where we’re spending $15-20 per person. They were happy for the $10/person here and probably had a more enjoyable meal.
When we walked in, I told B I’d get him ice cream if he finished his meal. I was planning on going to The Original Rainbow Cone not knowing Joey’s had gelato. I was hopeful seeing the gelato would have worked and I would have got him that….he didn’t know my plan and wouldn’t have known the difference anyway, but he refused to eat all his pizza.
I’m sure I’ve passed a Joey’s Red Hots somewhere in the South Suburbs before so I have no idea why I’ve never stopped one. We got a really good meal at this one in Orland Hills and got back to the rink with plenty of time for L’s afternoon skate.
SW Michigan Dining 