Al's #1 Italian Beef

This guide to Al's Italian Beef in Chicago follows street peddler Anthony Ferreri at a nineteen-tens neighborhood wedding, watching a family slice their roast beef the ordinary way and doing some quiet math of his own. It traces how that afternoon set his son Al, sister Frances and her husband Chris Pacelli Senior on a path from a 1938 stand on Harrison Street to the Taylor Street counter you're ordering from now. Listen for the ritual of wet or dry, hot or sweet, that regulars still repeat today.