Chicago’s Last Original Drive-in Has Been Family-Run for 76 Years

[upbeat music]

Superdawg is the last drive-in restaurant

in the city of Chicago

and has been in business for 76 years.

We have car hop service 362 days of the year.

My mother-in-law and father-in-law started the business

back in 1948.

We sell hundreds of thousands of Superdawgs every year.

We just keep doing the same thing day in and day out.

[upbeat music softens]

Welcome to Superdawg, our family business.

I'm Don, one of the co-owners.

Come on inside.

[light upbeat music]

Every sandwich that we serve comes with fries.

So the way the machine works

is we put the potato in the chute,

go forward, backwards, forward, backwards

and the potatoes come out crinkle on all four sides.

Our french fry slicer has been with us

since we opened in 1948.

We've had to weld it at times when the handle is broken.

No other restaurant has this exact machine.

We bring in about 3,000 pounds of potatoes every week,

and we hand cut every single one of them.

We've rinsed the potatoes before we start to blanch

so that we get all of the starch off of the potato

that will help them to fry better.

Blanching is basically like par cooking

and what we do is we take the potato

and we're gonna put it in the shortening

and we're just gonna let it start to fry about halfway.

We are looking for it to get soft to the touch

and then we're gonna bring 'em over

to our land rack over here and hang it

so that it will dry and cool down.

If you cook the potatoes straight through,

they're not gonna get crisp as well

as if they dry out a little bit,

but these fries will be gone by the end of our lunch rush.

It's 11 o'clock.

We have customers waiting at the front counter.

We're gonna turn the lights on and open up for business.

[switches clicking]

All right, so we're in the kitchen here

and the kitchen itself is the original building.

It's 12 by 20, so it's very tight and very small.

We have a custom-made steam table.

It was made back in 1948 when we first opened.

It was designed by my father-in-law Maurie.

We have two chambers for buns and two chambers for dogs.

The chamber with the tag on it

is so that we know that's the one that's cooking

and getting ready.

The one that doesn't have the tag

is the one that we work out of.

A traditional Chicago hot dog is steamed

rather than charbroiled.

Periodically throughout the day,

we will need to add water to the chamber

because the water will boil off.

This order is for just two Superdawgs.

We use the traditional Chicago condiments,

golden mustard,

the bright neon green relish,

the white chopped onions,

kosher pickle spear,

hot sport pepper if you like.

One is gonna be just mustard and relish with easy mustard

and one is gonna be what we call hold the pickle

with peppers,

so we call it hold the pickle including.

The boxes are made specifically for us

to be able to hold the dog and the fries

and it's designed

so that we can just pop it against ourselves

and it will then lock on the bottom.

It's specially vented so that the steam that's in the box

are able to escape

so that it doesn't get soggy.

And that's our first dog.

Our second one is gonna be hold the pickle including,

which means no pickles and with peppers.

[light upbeat music]

We're getting kind of busy.

The switchboard will be ringing.

Hiya, thanks for stopping.

May I take your order, please?

[Don] My wife Lisa is the master operator

of our switchboard

and she is very enthusiastic

about answering the switchboard,

so she will be the one taking all the orders up there.

So cars pull into our parking lot, pull up to a space.

The spaces are all numbered.

They're numbered for us.

The cars don't know what numbers they are but we do.

You press the button

which signals us inside that they wanna order.

The most important thing that we have to do,

the very first thing is write down the space number

because we don't want space number 6

to get space number 26's order.

We're the only drive-in left in Chicago,

really in the whole metro area.

In the late 1940s and '50s when my parents started,

drive-ins were prevalent in Chicago.

Most homes didn't have air conditioning yet,

so people were looking for an escape.

So people would hop in their cars, get some air,

and be able to enjoy dining in their car

in an outdoor setting.

[switchboard beeps]

Hiya, thanks for stopping.

May I take your order, please?

[Customer] Hey, can I get two Superdawgs

with no onions and no hot peppers?

[Lisa] Sure.

[Customer] And then a small chocolate shake

and a small vanilla shake.

Sure, I've got a regular size.

Being the daughter of Superdawg,

I've been here my whole life.

My earliest recollection is as a very small child,

about four years old,

actually sitting right here at my mother's feet,

learning my letters and numbers.

Then I began to mature and become their equal,

their side by side worker.

[gentle upbeat music]

It's 12:30.

We're in the middle of our lunch rush,

and now I'm gonna turn you over

to my daughter Steffie Drucker

who's gonna be your car hop.

And we're ready to go.

Being a car hop, once the food's ready,

I put it on a tray and bring it out to your car.

And then once you're done eating,

you flip up a switch on the speaker.

Oh, it's so windy.

So that we know to come and collect the tray

and the garbage,

so I make that second trip back to you, too.

Hello, how you doing today?

The challenges of being a car hop, primarily the weather.

We're open 362 days a year

and we're out here in all seasons.

And the strawberry shake.

When people ask like how long I've been working here,

I always say I've worked here my whole life.

Growing up in a family business,

there really isn't that delineation between work and life.

[Steffie laughing]

City's really living up to its name today, that's for sure.

I would come here

and my grandma would take orders on the switchboard,

and I would run them down

and, like, throw them into the kitchen.

And then eventually, I graduated to like be the car hop

and do all the other tasks.

[light upbeat music]

So it isn't gonna take some time.

Give us about 10 minutes or so.

This is gonna buzz and light up when it's ready.

This order right here being taken

is gonna need two Supercheesies.

Adriana, when she's done taking the order,

is gonna call it to the grill

and then they're gonna echo it back

so that she knows what she wants them to cook

is actually what they're going to cook.

[Adriana] Cheesies a pair.

[Kitchen Staff] Cheesies a pair.

We've got another order

for five Superdawgs here, everything,

and two of them are including.

So we're gonna take out five buns right now

and we're really getting a few more orders here, guys.

We better kick it up a little bit.

Everything.

[Kitchen Staff] Everything.

The kitchen itself is very small.

It's very efficient though

because nobody really has to move.

We can just hand things to each other

back and forth and talk.

Our dog man is kind of our quarterback.

He's the guy pulling the Superdawgs out of the water.

Been doing this long enough

that not too much stresses us out.

We just come every day and knock it out

and then we breathe at the end.

From taking the bun out and putting the dog in the bun

and then making it,

we're probably looking at about 15, 20 seconds.

[light music]

Cheesies a pair are gonna be,

make one mustard, pickle, ketchup

and one ketchup, pickle.

Ready for a straw shake for the window

and a choc shake for the window.

It's getting to be closer to two o'clock now.

After the lunch rush kind of dies down,

I'm gonna swap out with Lucas

so that I can go do a little bit of administrative work.

I try to fit that in whenever I can.

I'll be able to go place orders,

certain days I'll do payroll or make service calls

if we need something repaired.

Well, lunchtime is over.

I really hope that you had a good time.

Thanks for stopping.

[light playful music]