Someone’s gonna have a beef with Alton Brown

SHARE Someone’s gonna have a beef with Alton Brown
altonbrown051116.jpg

Alton Brown taste tests Italian beef sandwiches from Al’s Beef and Johnnie’s Beef. | Screenshot

Food Network star Alton Brown tackles one of Chicago’s biggest food debates in his latest blind taste test.

Hunkered down in his tour bus with the shades drawn, the food show host tasted two well-known Italian beef sandwiches and picked a winner.

Die-hard fans of Al’s Beef or Johnnie’s Beef will be chewing over this episode for awhile. Brown selected those two finalists for his taste test, saying they got the most votes on social media from his followers.

Alton Brown | Food Network

Alton Brown | Food Network

Brown — in town Saturday for two shows of “Alton Brown Live: Eat Your Science” — knew he was possibly biting into trouble, saying he wouldn’t post the results until he was safely out of Chicago.

“But of course, we won’t put this on social media until we’re well outside of the Chicagoland area in case someone tries to, you know, retaliate.”

It was close. Brown needed a couple of bites of each sandwich to decide.

Al’s Beef got higher marks for the meat, but Brown declared Johnnie’s the better sandwich because it comes on a harder roll and the peppers are more thinly cut and better cooked.

The Latest
Hindu nationalist organizations are working to import their bigoted ideology into this diverse city, and Chicagoans cannot remain in the dark, the head of the Indian American Muslim Council writes.
The team needs to be reunited for posterity. Legions of Siskel and Ebert fans would all give this idea a big thumbs up, writes a lifelong Chicagoan and movie fan.
Athlete’s father insists on offering free game tickets to his friends, creating an inconvenience for the family members who are supposed to get the seats.
Artificial intelligence is the tech story of 2023, and ‘hallucinate,’ referring to incorrect information generated by AI, was also chosen as a word of the year for 2023.
A Sun-Times analysis finds that thousands of scofflaws — many from the suburbs — have dodged city debts over the years, depriving City Hall of a massive sum of money as Mayor Brandon Johnson faces steep budget challenges.