Western Avenue Art Gallery: Food

The Western Avenue and Vicinity Art Gallery: Food
Food is an unfailing source of inspiration for roadside artists. The attrition of local cuisine in the face of national
franc hises bodes ill, but for the moment the genre persists.

Peggy's is on Californa Avenue near Pershing Road. Rita's is on 18th Street near Ashland Avenue.

The bucolic city: Campesino is on Broadway near Berwyn, but now across the street, and the farm scene is from a Pilsen grocery. Lafe is on Lawrence.

La Sierra is on Montrose and Gelatinas Pepito on Blue Island Avenue. Tastee Dog is on Lawrence. TV and movie producers persist in showing New York-style street carts purveying hot dogs in Chicago, but this kind of basic hut is far more typical of Chiacgo's entry-level hot dog market.

The rather minimal Tes's was on Clark Street at Greenleaf. The Oakwood is on the Montrose strip near Western, as is Gara. The not-quite-iconic WIC family fits quite nicely with the leering pig and meat-eating shark at Soto's, on 18th Street near Ashland Avenue.

The painter of the Taqueria Tayahua sign not only came up with an elegant solution to the ventilation problem, but also did great executions of mural-size entrees. The chef at Broadway Pizzeria seems oddly distressed, while the Jackie-like diner at Diane's Truck Stop seems obsessively perky.

Plastic shop signs usually are blandly executed, if not mass-produced. But Grisel and Junior on Armitage Avenue features this nice, but enigmatic, pair, Grisel and Junior (one supposes). Savvy breakfasters at Huck Finn's, a South Side mini-chain, order the Becky Thatcher Breakfast and leave the connection between Huck Finn and donuts alone -- forget about the royal burger. Pekin House is a longtime fixture that persists in the Indian neighborhood on Devon near Western.

On the South Side: a lineup of isolated food items adorn a barren brick building, another lineup Zebony 2, where they apparently accept nothing. The Zebony artist applied admirable, if clumsy, detail. The Jimmy cow dreams of pigmeat, while the gyros spins back on 51st Street.

Click here for
the Western Avenue gyros lineup.
The cannibal gyros is from California Avenue on the Southwest Side.

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The bucolic city: Campesino is on Broadway near Berwyn, but now across the street, and the farm scene is from a Pilsen grocery. Lafe is on Lawrence.

La Sierra is on Montrose and Gelatinas Pepito on Blue Island Avenue. Tastee Dog is on Lawrence. TV and movie producers persist in showing New York-style street carts purveying hot dogs in Chicago, but this kind of basic hut is far more typical of Chiacgo's entry-level hot dog market.

The rather minimal Tes's was on Clark Street at Greenleaf. The Oakwood is on the Montrose strip near Western, as is Gara. The not-quite-iconic WIC family fits quite nicely with the leering pig and meat-eating shark at Soto's, on 18th Street near Ashland Avenue.