- Michael Gebert
- Tony Tzoubris at Ivy’s
When Hot Doug’s was in its first bloom of world-historical fame, I often wondered why, in a city full of hot dog stands, almost no one else seemed to be following in the footsteps of the only hot dog stand with a line wrapped around its building. Wouldn’t it be worth adding a few specialty sausages with exotic toppings and charging $6 instead of $1.75? Wouldn’t it be worth trying something, anything different to stand out?
Eventually he needed to go back into the restaurant business, and about two years ago he decided on a neighborhood hot dog stand for small-town-feeling Edgebrook as a business that would allow him to be home at a reasonable hour for his family. He found a space along Devon with ivy growing against the back patio, and decided to call it Ivy’s with a nod to the Cubs fans in the area. There’s a standard approach for hot dog stands, and at first that’s what the architect he hired gave him—the template that would make it easy to get city approval and be up and running quickly, with garish colors and Formica countertops.
The fries are freshly cut and they’re served unsalted—so you can salt them yourself from the bar of 14 different sea salts. Their milkshake is another selling point, made with Homer’s Ice Cream, a 14 percent milk fat ice cream from Wilmette.
The way to deal with that—the only way to cope—is to fight hard to create your own little pocket of normal life and to try to give as much of it to your kids in the midst of all the bigger things you’re trying to keep from them. That’s Ivy’s, the better neighborhood hot dog place with its tables made from wood that’s trying to look out for the future, its food made the old-fashioned way from well-raised beef, and some damned tasty shakes.
