You watched ‘The Bear.’
Now eat the sandwich that stars in it.
Culinary Delights in Natick serves the best local take on Chicago’s Italian beef
Massachusetts has sandwiches. There’s the Fluffernutter, salty and sweet. The lobster roll, at home in no-frills seafood shacks and the fanciest restaurants. North Shore roast beef, a regional delight. Massachusetts can keep you in sandwiches all day and all night.
But if you’ve been watching “The Bear” — the Hulu series that will crash your romantic notions about opening a restaurant — you are hungry for the sandwich at the heart of the show. And that sandwich is from Chicago: the Italian beef.
In “The Bear,” an award-winning chef returns home to run the family’s Italian beef shop after tragedy strikes. The sandwich has a devoted following, and the fictional Original Beef of Chicagoland is inspired by the real Mr. Beef, founded in 1979. The beef is a customizable creature, based around thin, tender slices of well-seasoned roast meat, jus, and French rolls, preferably from Illinois-based Turano Baking Co. Customers can order it dry (a pile of beef dunked in jus then transferred to the roll), wet (with additional jus judiciously applied), or dipped (bread and meat just full-on dunked like a kid at a pool party).
Another choice: Will it be hot (topped with giardiniera, the Italian relish of pickled vegetables), sweet (roasted peppers), or hot and sweet (the equivocator’s solution)? Cheese is also an option.
If you’re in Chicago and you want an Italian beef sandwich, there are plenty of places to go:
Al’s #1 Italian Beef, Johnnie’s Beef, Portillo’s, and so on. If you’re in Massachusetts, you want to go to Natick. At Culinary Delights European Sub Shop, owner Alex Palterman has what you’re looking for.
The Italian beef is an immigrant creation, designed to feed a lot of people for a little money. So maybe it makes some kind of sense that the guy serving the most plausible local facsimile is a Latvian immigrant who was inspired by an Adam Sandler movie.
Palterman came to the United States in 1992, in search of a better life for his family. He worked for a decade as head chef at Children’s Hospital, then opened Culinary Delights 20 years ago, wanting to showcase Eastern European cuisine. But the niche was too narrow, he found; there wasn’t a big enough customer base to support the business.
“I tried to be unique and different, like a boutique,” he says. “I made a big mistake. I was so confident: I’m going to push people to eat something, what I’m going to cook. You cannot change customers, you only can change yourself.”
By the time the 2008 recession arrived, he was stressed out: He ran a business, his wife ran a business (Blooming Nails by Valda, since sold), they had two little kids. He turned to the movies for some comic relief. Instead he found economic salvation in “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan.” Not many people can say that.
In the Sandler satire, there is an electronics store called Going Out of Business. The store isn’t, but the name
‘We go to the supermarket, every aisle has a different nationality. What nationality is my store? It’s an American store. It’s everything!’
ALEX PALTERMAN, owner of Culinary Delights in Natick
brings in customers looking for a bargain. Palterman had an epiphany: “OK, I have to do something so people start thinking I made changes.” One of his customers, originally from Chicago, wanted to start a food business. There’s a big Polish and Latvian community in Chicago, Palterman says; he thought the cuisines would go well together. And so Spalla’s appeared, a proto popup shop-within-a-shop, bringing in new foot traffic; in 2016, “Phantom Gourmet” visited. The partnership eventually ended, but the Chicago-style hot dogs, sausages, and Italian beef sandwiches stayed — along with the customers who love them.
And so, when I pull up to the restaurant on the trail of beef, wet, hot, I am distracted: by stuffed cabbage, frisked with dill and nestled in tomato sauce; by schnitzel and oyster mushroom salad; by perfectly clear chicken soup stocked with dumplings that look like little brains. When I ask what kind of dumplings they are — maybe a Latvian specialty? — Palterman sings out: “Every culture has dumplings! You can call these Alex Dumplings!” Half the menu isn’t even on the menu, he says. He can customize anything. Everything is cooked with the care of someone who fed the families at a children’s hospital for 10 years. The store’s shelves are stocked with sausages, honey cake, tinned sprats from Latvia, and other Eastern European goods. “Breakfast sandwiches aren’t even advertised, but if you Google ‘best breakfast sandwich in Natick,’ it’s us.” (I do; it is.) So I’m going to eat my messy, soggy Chicago sandwich here, but you know I’m bringing takeout home for later.
And the sandwich is worth every bite. The beef is delicate and flavorful, well seasoned and juicy. The bread has just enough heft. It gives itself over to the meaty jus without sacrificing its integrity altogether. The giardiniera is spicy, crunchy, and acidic, complementing the beef without canceling it out. I skip the newfangled cheese, per Palterman’s counsel that 90 percent of Chicagoans do the same. I drink pear-flavored Ukrainian soda with my Italian beef, which 100 percent of Chicagoans likely do not. I go through probably several hundred napkins, which I suspect is about average. While I eat, a steady stream of regulars comes through to pick up food and shoot the breeze. “It was delicious as always,” a woman calls out as she leaves.
Palterman’s kids are now grown. He just became a grandfather. There’s even a Latvian, Kristaps Porzingis, playing for the Celtics. “I feel: I’m 59 years old, I did something, now I see my kids are a little bit proud of me,” he says. “We go to the supermarket, every aisle has a different nationality. What nationality is my store? It’s an American store. It’s everything!”
229 North Main St., Natick, 508-6535553, culinarydelights-natick.com. Italian beef $13.95.