MY YOUNGER SON AND NAMESAKE, TERRANCE, TURNS 21 NEXT summer, and I’m already thinking about where to take him for his first drink. But in putting together this issue of Chicago, I realized there was another rite of passage, a distinctly local one, he hadn’t yet completed.
So one evening in late September, I drove him to Johnnie’s Beef in Elmwood Park, five minutes from our house. I urged him to go with Peter Sagal’s recommended order (page 61): wet, sweet and hot. He agreed, which surprised me. After all, this is a young man who eats his hot dogs not just sans ketchup, like any true Chicagoan, but entirely condiment-free.
At one of the metal tables outside, under the fluorescent lights, he bit into his first Italian beef. He…
