🙏 The sandwich that will change your life

Birria grilled cheese at Monday Night Foodball! [View this email in your browser]( [READER Logo]( [Food & Drink]( | March 22, 2024 Usually a sandwich is just a sandwich. But sometimes a sandwich changes your life.  It was about a year ago that I last spoke with Gilberto Bahena, and he had a brave new sandwich he’d just debuted at a pop-up at Life on Marz. Of the sandwich in question—a hot, gooey, queso-crusted beef birria sourdough grilled cheese with onion and cilantro—Bahena sold just 18.  “I didn't know if it was gonna hit or not,” he says, but “that sandwich changed my life. I’d actually like to thank the people for changing my life with that sandwich.”  How did he give birth to this miracle? “I’d just smoked a lot of weed with my guys, and we got stupid high, and I was making fun of my partner, Teddy, because he's French and they have the croque monsieur sandwich.”  “I'm Mexican. So there's a little beef between me and the French. I was just keeping it going. Keeping the beef strong. I was like, ‘French people are goofy. Why would you put cheese on the outside of the sandwich?’ And then I had a croque monsieur, and I'm like, ‘Dude, this is the future.’”  Last April, Bahena was nervous. He wanted to quit his steady chef gig to focus exclusively on Milo’s Market, his pop-up born on the patio deck of business partner Teddy Braziunas’ Avondale crib. He wasn’t ready to pull the trigger, but he was ready to introduce the birria grilled cheese sandwich to his first [Monday Night Foodball]( the Reader’s weekly chef pop-up.  His sales nearly doubled, and two weeks later he left his job at Tied House. It didn’t take long for Milo’s and the BGCS to conquer the hearts and minds of brewery stroller daddies from Begyle to Marz, spending their Saturdays sipping all-day IPAs before rolling the family back home to nighty night.  The chihuahua-crusted birria grilled cheese comes with a side of the spicy tomato-based consomme he braises the beef in. You gotta dunk those gooey griddled corners in your tomato soup, right?  He applies the same inverse plancha-fu to his corn tortilla quesabirria tacos; and for the plant eaters, the jalapeño honey–drizzled quesadillas. Those are both on the menu too, along with Bahena’s roasted tomatillo-poblano-pepita salsa.  In the year since Bahena’s Foodball debut, the “beeria” grilled cheese has changed a lot of lives across Shikaakwa. Won’t you let it change yours? Keep the beef strong this Monday, March 24, at 5 PM, when Milo’s Market returns to 2959 N. California in evolutionary Avondale.  Seismic changes are afoot for Foodball too. Just three more Mondays before a transformative new schedule drops. Until then, come out and toast the future with[Pierogi Papi]( on April Fools’ Day. And on April 8*, achieve totality with the[Garuda]( return of [John Avila]( and [Minahasa](.  *Through no fault of their own, [Sauce and Bread Kitchen]( and [18th St. Distillery]( had to back out on their originally scheduled April 8 date. They will return to Foodball in glory. [Change your life: Eat a birria grilled cheese when Milo’s Market returns to the next Monday Night Foodball]( It can happen to you with Gilberto Bahena’s radical quesabirria–croque monsieur at the Reader’s chef pop-up at Ludlow Liquors. by [Mike Sula]( | [Read more]( → [a man making chocolate on a machine]( [Meet barefoot businessman Muffadal Saylawala and his Oro Chocolate cafe]( The cocoa trafficante brought bean-to-bar chocolate from the Nicaraguan rainforest to Chicago—via house arrest. by [Mike Sula]( | [Read more]( → [people sitting at the bar in a restaurant]( [Take a chill ride to northwest Indiana—and its two dozen breweries]( June 2018 | A 20-mile ride takes you to plenty of refreshment—and you can take the train back. by [Julia Thiel]( | [Read more]( → [a cup of saffron ice cream on a table]( [Who does Brandon Baltzley think he is?]( June 2013 | A chef whose mesmerizing creativity is deserving of fame? A drug addict in recovery who rightly eschews sobriety? A twentysomething memoirist whose brief history is worth your time? Or is he none of those things? by [Sarah Nardi]( | [Read more]( → Get the latest issue of the Chicago Reader Thursday, March 21, 2024 [READ ONLINE: VOL. 53, NO. 12]( [VIEW/DOWNLOAD ISSUE (PDF)]( [Become a member of the Chicago Reader.]( [Facebook icon]( [Instagram icon]( [Twitter icon]( [Website icon]( [YouTube icon]( [LinkedIn icon]( [Logo] You received this email because you signed up for newsletters from the Chicago Reader. Want fewer emails from us? [Click here to choose what you want us to send you](. Or, [unsubscribe from all Reader emails](. We’ll miss you! [Sign up for emails from the Chicago Reader]( | [Forward this e-mail to a friend]( © 2024 Chicago Reader. All rights reserved. Chicago Reader, 2930 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 102, Chicago, IL 60616