Mike McCreary has followed up his launch of Mike’s Tastes of Chicago on International Boulevard early this year with a new location on Price Road just east of Paredes Line.

Tastes of Chicago No. 2 occupies the former Triple S Express drive-through. It’s still a drive-through, though now customers can get Chicago-style hot dogs, deep-fried pizza, Italian beef, gyros, Polish sausage and other Windy City favorites to go along with beer, wine and McCreary’s own micheladas. Or vice versa.

There’s also indoor and outdoor seating and — standard practice in Chicago but new for Brownsville — beer delivery along with food.

“It’s kind of a unique thing, something different nobody else is doing,” McCreary said. “I always figured they’d go together.”

His Chicago dogs, in case you’re wondering, are authentic: Vienna beef wiener on a steamed poppy seed bun (shipped in from Chicago) and garnished with a dill pickle spear, tomato wedges, chopped white onion, pickled sport peppers, neon-green pickle relish, regulation mustard and a dusting of celery salt.

McCreary said he’d been looking for another location when he happened to meet the owners of Triple S, who stopped in at the International Boulevard store one day.

Conversation ensued, one thing led to another and Tastes of Chicago No. 2 opened on Price Road in mid-July. McCreary said food sales at the new location are about half to a third of what Tastes of Chicago No. 1 does, though he admits the beer and wine business at the new store is having a refreshing effect on the bottom line.

McCreary is keeping an eye out for additional locations, and is still gauging the viability of International Boulevard as a location. It could move. Or not. It depends.

“You never really know for sure,” he said. “We certainly were much busier in the winter and spring, though we still have a pretty reasonable lunch crowd. It’s a seasonal thing.”

McCreary said he plans to introduce deep-dish pizza and has the equipment ready to go, though it’s just a matter of deciding which store to put it in.

While his wife, Letty, runs the original location, continuing to roll out new pasta dishes in addition to the regular menu and putting her stamp on the restaurant décor-wise, McCreary spends his day at the Price Road location or dashing back and forth between the two stores, both of which are open seven days a week.

“Most of the time I’m trying to keep up with everything we’re running out of,” he said. “I thought I was busy before.”

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