Chicago is kin to the south. No other U.S. city has more ties to the lower half of the country, specifically the Mississippi Delta, aka the Most Southern Place on Earth. All you have to do is spend ten minutes in the presence of Yoland Cannon to understand this. On the 900 block of North Laramie, Cannon is the Tamale Guy. No one talks about Claudio. Most afternoons, weather permitting, he sells Mississippi Delta-style tamales from a yellow cart parked on the sidewalk: ground-beef-stuffed cornmeal magic wrapped in husks and simmered in an oily, peppery brew that delivers the same immediate sensory impact as a shot of whiskey. Many of his customers grew up eating them in Mississippi towns such as Greenville, Leland, and Vicksburg.
On the other hand, his version of the Jim Shoe—the slightly more obscure south-side sub-shop specialty involving a chopped and griddled hash of corned and roast beef, gyro meat, onions, and cheese plastered into a sub roll with iceberg lettuce and pink tomato, then pumped with “GUY-ro” sauce and mayo or mustard—is a redemption of something that very frequently manifests as a sloppy disaster of a sandwich. Wendt uses an improbable combination of lamb and beef tamales as the platform, piling them with smoky caramelized chunks of house-made pastrami, provolone, lettuce, tomato, giardiniera, piquillo peppers, and “d.a.f.” (“Delta as fuck”) sauce, a house blend of Thousand Island and spicy remoulade. It’s a mess, but a delicious and beautiful one.
