Every time I visit Chicago, I try to eat somewhere different since there are so many wonderful restaurants and cuisines to be found there.  It would be way too easy for me to eat nothing but deep dish pizza every time I go!  But the last time I [...]]]>

Chicago Skyline 2008 (Photo credit: TomC)

Every time I visit Chicago, I try to eat somewhere different since there are so many wonderful restaurants and cuisines to be found there.  It would be way too easy for me to eat nothing but deep dish pizza every time I go!  But the last time I was there, I was really in the mood for a hamburger.  I checked Yelp but it didn’t have anything listed near my hotel, so I checked YellowPages.com, which I like because I can sort the listings by how far I want to travel, how much I want to spend, whether I want family-friendly or romantic, and even which neighborhood I’m in.  So after checking out numerous restaurant menus with YPs new and seriously awesome services, I hit the town. The following is a list of three burger joints that I found in the Windy City:

Kuma’s Corner

This place is what a tavern should be… loud, rowdy, and full of beef. I actually ate two meals here over the week, but the Kuma Burger was my favorite with its ten-ounce patty, applewood-smoked bacon, cheddar cheese, and nice sunny-side-up egg to boot. A real protein sandwich this one. One of the best ten-dollar bills I ever spent.

Naha

The 8-ounce Angus Beef Burger here is one of the juiciest burgers I’ve had in a while, anywhere. With white cheddar cheese that’s actually cooked into the burger, and fresh roasted red tomatoes, this burger was tough to let go of, despite the fact that I was covered in juice. Oh, and the bun(s) on this thing… are incredible – sea-salt crusted focaccia glory that may as well be illegal. This burger is a bit more expensive at fifteen dollars, but definitely worth every penny.

Bull & Bear

Again, another prime example of what a man’s joint should be, the Bull & Bear sports bar offers its namesake burger, The Bull & Bear Burger, in epically juicy proportions. The Gruyere cheese and smoked bacon aioli on this guy, mixed of course with the flavors of the fantastic onion marmalade and premium Kobe beef, fits perfectly on this manly, yet elegant masterpiece. Even at eighteen dollars I was hard-pressed not to come back for another the following day.

After a nice burger-filled week in the Windy City, I can finally say that I now know what I was missing out on all these years. Burger-wise, and otherwise, it’s been a lot. Leaving a burger-haven like Chicago is always a sad affair for me, but at least now I know there’s a site that can actually lead me to the hidden gems in any city. Since arriving back in Seattle, I’ve read up a bit more on the new services provided by yellow pages, and it appears that soon there may be the potential to search by menu items and leave reviews on individual items. Well, if that were an option today, I would certainly give both thumbs up to all the burgers of the many bistros I had the pleasure of visiting while in Chicago.

Thanks to Becky Wilcox for providing this guest post!

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