CHICAGO DIVISION:
#4 Fenway Frank
Eating at a ball game is actually trickier than you think. There are a lot of factors to consider: price of food inside vs outside park, how much of the game you miss if you go inside for food, the quality of food from the stations vs the vendors, filling up on peanuts and not having room for a sausage with onions... It's just not as trivial as you'd like. I like to go with a sausage with onions and green peppers before I get into the park. A Blue Moon or Sam Adams on the way to my seat. Another beer around the fourth or fifth inning, and some peanuts. And a Fenway Frank during the seventh inning stretch.
#5: Slayer Burger, Kuma's Corner
Kuma's Corner is really fucking awesome, but also really fucking annoying. It's on the corner of Belmont and Kedzie in Chicago, or in other words, way-the-fuck-out-of-the-way. And they don't take reservations, and there's always a wait. You deal with it. The wait can be well-spent drinking from their impressive microbrew menu, or eating mindblowing appetizers. (Their beer menu says: "Death to Miller and Budweiser... they are over-produced and inferior products that prevent passionate craftsmen from sharing their gifts with all of us.") The burgers are all named after rock, mostly hardcore bands. Megadeth. Black Sabbath. Lair of the Minotaur. My preference was the Slayer Burger. It wasn't really a burger, more like chili fries on heroin. A pile of fries topped with ground beef still in burger-ish chunks, hot cherry peppers, fried onions, cheese, and according to the menu, anger. It's barely finishable in it's size. Here is a link to the menu; even going with a dozen people, no two people would order the same burger.
Kuma's Corner | Food | Harshing our melow since 2005
WINNER: Kuma's Corner. Worth the wait, and if I was in Chicago for one weekend, Sunday brunch would without a doubt be here.