Friday, November 2, 2012

A Look Back at a 90s Chicago Restaurant: D.B. Kaplan's-- Part 1

From the October 25, 2012, Chicago Tribune "Deconstructed the (departed) menu" by Phil Vettel, Tribune restaurant critic.

D.B. Kaplan's opened in 1976 in Chicago's Water Tower Place and closed in 1995.  They offered 100 sandwiches with "groan-worthy, punny names." and quite a colorful menu and caricatures that would have been popular back then.

There were caricatures of Batman and Jack Nicholson's Joker character who was eating a ham.  Then, Harry Caray was standing there with a beer in one hand and sandwich in the other, and for some reason, a halo around his head ("Holy Cow!").  Then Robert "Murphy in the Morning" Murphy, a popular local radio personality stood there in a straight jacket. 

A snarling Mike Ditka, Chuck Berry playing a celery-stalk guitar and duck walking, Michael Jordan slam-dunking a ham and other caricatures of Elvis, Tina Turner and Ernie Banks.

"Never before has a delicatessen risen to such great heights (7th floor Water Tower Place).  Nowhere on earth will you find a sandwich more mountainous than at...D.B. Kaplan's Delicatessen."

Some of the sandwiches (and I sure would have liked to have seen the whole list):

The MIKE ROYKO (Vienna Pepperbeef)
The HUGH HEFFNER (topless club sandwich)
The BOB SIROTT  (salami and bologna on rye)-- Chicago radio and TV
The DR. RUTH (sausage platter)

Even Some More to Come.  --Cooter

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