The Company That Supplies Portillo's With Its Fan-Favorite Hot Dogs

There are plenty of ambiguities in the world of wieners, like why on earth we call a hot dog a glizzy (answer: the meaning is found in hip-hop slang) and whether or not a hot dog is actually a sandwich (answer: the jury's still out). One subject that's not confusing, however, is the provenance of the delish Chicago-style franks from popular chain Portillo's. Portillo's consistently ranks as having some of the best Chicago dogs around, especially if you are located outside of Illinois. But where do they come from? Vienna Beef, a well-known hot dog manufacturer with strong ties to the Chicago hot dog tradition, has been proudly touting its ties with Portillo's since the restaurant's inception in 1963.

For those not in the know — Portillo's only has locations in nine U.S. states as of this writing — Portillo's is known for its Chicago street food, including Italian beef sammies, cake shakes, and, of course, the "dragged through the garden" style of Chicago hot dog featuring sport peppers, tomato slices, relish, onion, speared pickle, mustard, and celery salt. Looking for a slightly sacrilegious spin? We have a great recipe for a Chicago-style vegetarian carrot dog! There are many spots for a great Chicago hot dog in the Windy City proper, and Vienna Beef features in many of them. When you nosh on an all-the-way Chicago frank from Portillo's, the hot dog in the bun isn't just an afterthought to all those abundant toppings ... it's a critical part of the experience.

Simply put, you can't recount the origins of either the Vienna Beef company or the Chicago-style hot dog without the two tales overlapping. It's a story of both old-world tradition and bold American innovation, all tied together with the gritty underpinnings of Chicago's own history. Basically, the hot dog had long since made it to the Windy City before the Chicago hot dog was born around the turn of the 20th century. The large number of German immigrants had brought with them a proud tradition of making spiced pork sausages, some of which found themselves nestled into buns. 

In the late 1800s, however, an influx of Jewish settlers in Chicago influenced the development of an all-beef hot dog, which was fit for kosher consumption. Vienna Beef was founded in 1893 by Samuel Ladany and Emil Reichl, two such Jewish immigrants from Austria-Hungary. When the first Chicago dogs were being piled with veggies around the time of the Great Depression, Vienna Beef was there.

Today, the "snap" of a good Chicago dog is said to work best with a Vienna Beef hot dog that features a natural animal casing. There are tricks to boiling the hot dog to give it the right texture, but sourcing the right wiener gives you a definite leg up. A pillowy poppy seed bun and the appropriate relish for the job — which many argue should be the lurid emerald green of a classroom St. Paddy's shamrock — count as well, but one could definitely argue that a Vienna Beef frank cozied in the center is the heart and soul of a Chicago hot dog.