Beef Shack (St. Charles)
2015 W. Main StreetSeptember has been rough. I’ve had something going on literally every weekend.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel though..albiet a small one as I only have the first weekend in October totally free too.
The final weekend in September was a wedding weekend. A colleague of mine was getting married in the Chicago area. It was also J and I’s anniversary weekend. We didn’t really do much for our anniversary because we knew we were going to be traveling for this wedding.
We dropped the kids of at J’s parents in St. Joseph County around 11:00 AM on Saturday then J and I headed for Illinois. It was about a three hour trip to St. Charles, IL where the wedding was going to be.
The wedding was at the gorgeous Hotel Baker right along the Fox River in downtown St. Charles. We looked in to just staying there but the $500/night room was well out of our price range. We stayed at the Quality Inn about a mile up the road for a lot less.
J and I are not ceremony people. It is really rare for us to go to an actual wedding ceremony. We’re not church people anyway and we always feel that the ceremony is for a more intimate crowd. As friends of the couple, we join the celebration at the reception.
We got to St. Charles around 2:00 PM. We got checked in to our hotel then decided to go out for lunch. Wedding food doesn’t really do much for either of us. We’ll eat it but it’s not usually enough…especially if we want to have a few drinks. We’re old now. Gotta make sure we’re not drinking on an empty stomach.
J asked if there was a Portillo’s close. There was one not too far away but closer by, there was another place that would serve the same purpose.
We headed through downtown St. Charles to find the Beef Shack on the corner of West Main Street and South Randall Street. We had a pretty rough time trying to get in to the business at the very busy, high traffic intersection. Coming from the or the north, there’s no way to get in to the business on the corner due to concrete separators in the traffic lanes. You have to do a U-Turn at some point. I went through the light and did a U-Turn at the next light to get to where we were going.
Beef Shack is a newer chain with seven location in Chicago’s northern suburbs. This location is just a couple of years old. Before the building was converted to sell tasty Chicago style food, it was a Title Max location. St. Charles is actually the original home of Beef Shack. The first location was just a couple of doors down on West Main Street before it closed in 2020. The look of that place was a lot different from this more streamlined version that sits two stores to the west.
Beef Shack looks like a lot of counter service restaurants. When you walk in, there is a order counter at the back of the space. You need to walk through the dining room which consists of solid wood tables on either side of the aisle and a large light up sign with the stores name hanging on the wall opposite the floor to ceiling windows that look back on to West Main Street.
The menu hangs pretty high above the order counter. We had to take a step back to figure out what we wanted. Their specialty is the Cheesy Beef but I like my beefs more wet and hot than gooey and cheesy. J assumed she would just get a hot dog but then realized the salad sounded like her favorite Portillo’s salad so she went that direction instead. We were given a number when we paid then we went and sat down. A few minutes later, a guy came out of the kitchen with a bag that only had my food in it.
I had ordered the Combo: Beef & Sausage. This is my favorite of the Chicago beef sandwiches because not only is it that delicious sliced beef but it includes an Italian sausage in the bottom of the bun. I asked for hot peppers and for the sandwich to be wet. The kid taking the order just kinda said ok. The sandwich is served on a crusty, toasty French roll and it is filled with beef and that spicy sausage. The sandwich was not nearly as wet as I would have liked it. The meat was a little dry as was the bun. Both could have really soaked up a lot more flavor. There was a good amount of giardiniera on the sandwich so between the sausage and the veggies, it did have a pretty good kick. It was still a tasty sandwich and still satisfied that Italian beef craving, I just could have used a lot more gravy.
I made my sandwich a combo and got a large fry for J and I to share. The fries are the kind of fries I love from a Chicago sandwich shop. They’re fresh cut, a little greasy, a little crispy, a little floppy and oh so delicious. The large fry is a pretty large bag that I just broke open so J and I could share. She had some but I ended up eating most of them. The sign of a good beef place is when they do fries like this.
J ordered The Shack Salad. I made sure to make it a point earlier that when the food was brought out, only my sandwich and fries were in the bag. We gave it a couple of minutes thinking the salad was still being made but after five minutes or so, I had to go back to the counter and ask about it. The kids working were totally confused about what I was saying. I finally got them to realize they didn’t bring out the salad we ordered. It took another five plus minutes for the girl I talked to come out with another bag and asked if we ordered a salad.
The Shack Salad is a mixture of romaine and iceberg lettuce, red cabbag, ditali pasta, tomatoes, chicken, bacon bits, and gorgonzola. Portillo’s does a really similar salad with pasta and that’s what J gets a lot of times when we go there. She saw the salad with pasta on the menu here and ordered it instead of a hot dog. They only gave her one small cup of dressing which was nowhere near enough. She went to ask for another and the cashier started to ring her up for a whole other salad. She again had to explain that she only wanted another cup of dressing and not another salad. Once she got more dressing, she said the salad was really good and exactly what she needed before we headed to the wedding.
The cost for our meal with two drinks was a little over $32.
Mixed bag here as service was meh at best. The food was good though but I really would have liked my sandwich to have been more dipped. I was really just kind of happy to get that Italian beef while I was in Chicago though. I knew we weren’t going to be in town very long so getting there early and getting this out of the way was a solid win.
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