There’s a stretch of Western Avenue on Chicago’s far South Side where the street food isn’t just food — it’s history. It’s memory. It’s the smell of a gyro spit & the crack of a Polish sausage casing hitting a flat-top grill. For nearly three decades, Nicky’s of Beverly has been the place where that history lives on, plate by plate & sandwich by sandwich, for the people of Beverly & the broader South Side community.
Established in 1997 at 103rd & Western Avenue, Nicky’s of Beverly is owned & operated by Paul Kostopanagiotou, a second-generation restaurateur whose father ran one of the original Nicky’s locations on the city’s Southwest Side for more than 30 years. That lineage matters. It means that when you order a Chicago Style Hot Dog or an Italian Beef at N.o.B., you’re not getting a theme park approximation — you’re getting the real thing, made with top-quality, locally sourced ingredients by a family that has spent generations getting it right. In January 2021, Nicky’s moved to a sleek new location down the street at 10500 S. Western Ave., but the soul of the place — & its commitment to Chicago’s street food canon — remains exactly as it always has been.
These six dishes aren’t just menu items. Each one carries the weight of Chicago immigrant history, neighborhood culture, & the kind of working-class ingenuity that built this city from the ground up. Here’s the story behind every classic you’ll find at Nicky’s of Beverly.
The Gyros: Greece Came to America Through Chicago
It might surprise visitors — & even some locals — to learn that the American gyro was born not in New York or Los Angeles, but right here in Chicago. Greek immigrant George Apostolou is widely credited with serving the first gyros in the United States around 1965, at his Parkview Restaurant in Lawndale on the city’s West Side. The dish then spread rapidly through Chicago’s Greektown, & by 1968 it had become a signature offering of the neighborhood’s restaurants.
The word “gyro” comes from the Greek word for “turn,” a nod to the slowly rotating vertical spit from which the seasoned lamb-&-beef blend is carved. In Greece, the traditional preparation often uses pork, but Chicago put its own stamp on the dish. With the Union Stockyards humming nearby & the diverse religious dietary needs of the city’s immigrant communities in mind, Chicago’s Greek restaurateurs developed the now-iconic lamb-&-beef blend — a local adaptation that has since become the standard across America.
The gyro really took off as a mass-market item once Chicagoan Peter Parthenis developed the pre-formed meat cone, which made consistent, scalable production possible & allowed the sandwich to spread to hot dog stands & fast-casual spots all over the city. Wrapped in warm pita, loaded with fresh tomato, onion, & cool tzatziki sauce, the gyro became one of the South Side’s most beloved quick meals.
At Nicky’s of Beverly, the gyros reflect this heritage without cutting corners. Paul & his team use the highest-quality lamb, make their tzatziki in-house, & source the freshest pita bread. This is a gyro that honors both the Greek tradition that created it & the Chicago innovation that made it an American classic.
The Chicago Style Hot Dog: Dragged Through the Garden
No single food item says “Chicago” more emphatically than the Chicago Style Hot Dog — & no menu item would be complete without it. This is a dish with deep roots in the immigrant history of the city, & every single topping tells a story.
The Chicago dog’s origins trace back to the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, where two Jewish immigrants from Austria-Hungary introduced the city to Vienna Beef frankfurters. The hot dog was simple then: just a frank, mustard, & pickle. But as wave after wave of immigrants settled into Chicago’s working-class neighborhoods throughout the early 20th century, the dog evolved. Each community added its own contribution. The poppy seed bun came via Polish & Eastern European Jewish traditions. The bright green relish reflected Italian & Greek influences. The sport peppers were brought north by migrants from the American South. The tomatoes & onions? Italian & Greek produce vendors at the Maxwell Street Market. Celery salt arrived as a regional flavor from Lakeview, once a major celery-farming area.
By the Great Depression, the fully loaded hot dog — then called a “Depression Sandwich” & sold for a nickel — had become a lifeline for Chicago’s working poor. Piling a frankfurter high with vegetables was a way to stretch a meal, to get nutrition out of something cheap. That practicality is baked into the DNA of the Chicago dog. And crucially, there is one thing you never, ever put on it: ketchup. That is not a preference. It is a law.
The canonical Chicago dog must be an all-beef frankfurter, traditionally steamed, nestled in a steamed poppy seed bun, & dressed — in order — with yellow mustard, chopped white onions, bright green sweet pickle relish, a dill pickle spear, tomato slices, pickled sport peppers, & a dash of celery salt. It is, in the words of every true Chicagoan, “dragged through the garden.”
At Nicky’s, they make no compromises on this civic institution. A Chicago dog from Nicky’s tastes exactly like it should: deeply familiar, vibrant with flavor, & somehow greater than the sum of its parts.
The Italian Beef: The South Side’s Dripping Masterpiece
The Italian beef sandwich was born in Chicago, & more specifically, it was born on the South Side. Created by Italian immigrants in the early 1900s in the neighborhoods surrounding the Union Stockyards, the sandwich came out of both necessity & ingenuity. Italian working-class families were transitioning from poverty into a modest middle class &, for the first time, could afford whole beef roasts. They made those roasts stretch by slicing the beef paper-thin, simmering it in a deeply seasoned broth, & piling it onto a long Italian-style crusty roll — a preparation that could feed more people for less money.
The Ferraro family is often cited as one of the first to serve Italian beef publicly, beginning around 1934 or 1935 at a Little Village location. Meanwhile, South Side butcher Pasquale Scala helped popularize the thin-sliced, slow-simmered version that became the modern standard. By the mid-20th century, Italian beef stands had multiplied across Chicago, becoming fixtures in working-class neighborhoods from Pilsen to Beverly.
What makes a proper Italian beef is the technique: thin-sliced seasoned roast beef, slow-simmered in its own aromatic jus — what locals simply call “gravy” — & piled generously onto a sturdy Italian roll that can hold up to the moisture. The bread must be able to absorb the jus without disintegrating, which is why the quality of the roll matters enormously. You finish it “wet” (the whole sandwich dunked in the jus), “dry” (lighter on the dip), or “dipped” (the entire thing submerged). You top it “sweet” with roasted green peppers, “hot” with Chicago-style giardiniera, or both as a “combo.” There is no wrong answer.
Nicky’s calls their Italian beef the best in the city, & they back that up with the craft behind it: made fresh, made in-house, & served with pride. On the South Side, that’s not a boast. That’s a standard.
The Polish Sausage: Maxwell Street’s Gift to the City
Chicago’s Polish sausage sandwich — the “Maxwell Street Polish” — is one of the most culturally significant street foods in the city’s history, & its origins are as working-class as it gets.
The sandwich is widely attributed to Jimmy Stefanovic, a Macedonian immigrant who took over his aunt & uncle’s hot dog stand at Maxwell & Halsted in 1939, eventually establishing what became Jim’s Original. The Maxwell Street Market of that era was a legendary open-air bazaar on the Near West Side, a chaotic & vibrant hub where Jewish, Italian, Greek, Polish, & Black Southern immigrant communities all converged to buy, sell, eat, & build community. It was a place where different cultures collided daily, & the food that emerged from it reflected that collision.
The Maxwell Street Polish is elegantly simple: a generously sized smoked pork-&-beef kielbasa, grilled on a flat-top until the casing achieves a satisfying snap, served on a bun with caramelized grilled onions & yellow mustard, with optional sport peppers for heat. The grilling is essential — it crisps the casing, locks in the juices, & creates the characteristic char that defines the sandwich. This is not a boiled sausage. This is not a steamed sausage. This is a grilled sausage, & that distinction is everything.
The Polish became one of Chicago’s most beloved street foods alongside the hot dog & Italian beef. At Nicky’s of Beverly, it is served the right way: grilled, not rushed, with those slow-cooked sweet onions that have been softening & caramelizing to perfection.
The Big Baby: A South Side Legend in Its Own Right
If you grew up on the South Side of Chicago, you know the Big Baby. It’s a double cheeseburger — two thin, well-done patties, American cheese, the works — & it occupies a unique & specific place in the city’s street food landscape. What’s fascinating about the Big Baby is that it isn’t one restaurant’s burger. It’s a South Side institution in the broadest sense, appearing on the menus of dozens of unaffiliated hot dog stands & fast-casual joints across the neighborhood, all under the same name.
The Big Baby’s connection to the Nicky’s name on the South Side runs deep. Nicky’s of Beverly traces its roots to one of the original Nicky’s locations — a constellation of independently operated South Side restaurants that share common roots & nearly identical menus, including the Big Baby. WBEZ’s Curious City has called the Big Baby a burger that “deserves a place in the pantheon of classic Chicago burgers,” noting the thin, charred patties & simple melty American cheese that define the sandwich.
What makes the Big Baby distinctly South Side is what it is not: it’s not a gourmet smash burger with artisan aioli. It’s not a gastropub showpiece. It’s a straightforward, honest, deeply satisfying cheeseburger made for working people who want something real. The thin patties, cooked until properly charred on a flat-top, develop a crust that’s almost uniquely satisfying. Two of them, stacked with American cheese, on a simple bun — it’s greater than its ingredients suggest.
At Nicky’s of Beverly, the Big Baby has been a cornerstone of the menu for the restaurant’s entire nearly 30-year history. Paul’s father served it before him. Generations of Beverly kids have grown up associating their first memories of riding a bike with the Big Baby waiting for them as a reward. That kind of legacy is not manufactured. It is earned, one order at a time.
The Pizza Puff: Chicago’s Best-Kept Secret (If You’re Not from Here)
Ask someone outside of Chicago what a pizza puff is, & odds are you’ll be met with a blank stare. Step inside the city limits, walk into almost any hot dog stand on the South Side, & you’ll see them everywhere — golden, puffy, deep-fried pockets of molten pizza filling. The pizza puff is Chicago’s quiet local legend.
The origin story of the pizza puff begins not with pizza, but with tamales. In 1927, Elisha Shabaz founded the Illinois Tamale Company (Iltaco Foods) & began selling tamales to pushcart operators across Chicago. By the early 1970s, as Chicago’s pizza scene was exploding with new deep-dish & stuffed-pizza restaurants, the hot dog stands that Iltaco had long supplied began to ask: could they offer something pizza-like? Warren Shabaz, Elisha’s grandson & then-manager of the company, had grown up in an Italian neighborhood & loved calzones. The answer was to hand-stuff a flour tortilla-like dough with Italian sausage, mozzarella, & tomato sauce — a product that all of the stands’ existing deep fryers could prepare to order. The Pizza Puff was officially born in 1976.
The result is unlike anything else: a flat, deep-fried puff with a phyllo-like outer crust & a gooey, molten pizza-flavored interior. The most traditional filling is Italian sausage, though cheese, beef, & pepperoni versions followed. The company, now in its fourth generation of family management, still makes every pizza puff in Chicago. They are in virtually every hot dog stand in the city, & also available in Chicago grocery store freezer aisles — though nothing compares to a freshly fried one.
The pizza puff exists almost entirely within Chicago’s borders. It is one of those dishes — like the gyro or the Italian beef — that feels so deeply specific to this city that it barely makes sense anywhere else. It is a product of Chicago’s immigrant-inflected street food culture, invented to meet the needs of the city’s hot dog stands & the appetites of South Siders who want something warm, filling, & satisfying in a way that a deep-dish slice can’t deliver in a brown paper bag.
At Nicky’s, the Pizza Puff is exactly what it should be: fresh from the fryer, impossibly hot inside, & perfect.
Nearly 30 Years of Getting It Right
When you walk into Nicky’s of Beverly today — into that vibrant, mural-covered, neon-lit space designed by award-winning architect Joe Carroll & built with shipping containers — you are walking into a place that takes its past seriously. Paul Kostopanagiotou has built something that honors the legacy his father helped establish while elevating it with top-quality ingredients, local partnerships with farms & bakeries, craft cocktails, & a commitment to being more than just a restaurant. Nicky’s is a community hub. It hosts live music from neighborhood musicians. It showcases local artists on its walls. It participates in the Beverly Art Walk & opens its patio as a gathering place for the South Side in summer.
But none of that matters if the food isn’t right. And after nearly 30 years of serving these six dishes — the Gyros, the Chicago Style Hot Dog, the Italian Beef, the Polish Sausage, the Big Baby, & the Pizza Puff — Nicky’s of Beverly has earned its place as a South Side institution precisely because the food is always right.
Every one of these dishes carries centuries of immigrant history. Every one of them was born from necessity, ingenuity, & the particular alchemy of cultures colliding in one of America’s greatest cities. At Nicky’s, they are served with the same respect they deserve — made fresh, made with care, & made for the neighborhood that has trusted this kitchen for nearly three decades.
That’s not fast food. That’s a legacy.
