On March 1, Joseph Zucchero passed away in Chicago. He co-founded the well-known sandwich shop that was the model for the famous FX restaurant drama “The Bear,” where many of the series’ filming took place. He was 69.
His son Christopher, an owner of Mr. Beef, the family’s restaurant in Chicago’s River North district, confirmed his death at a hospital. The cause, he claimed, was unknown. Chicago’s famous Italian beef sandwich, consisting of thinly sliced roast beef with giardiniera or roasted peppers, is Mr. Beef’s specialty.
Usually, all the stuff is placed on a sandwich bread, which is then either drenched in or drizzled in beef juice. Christopher Zucchero remarked of his father, “He enjoyed being there. He remained there all day and night.
FX filmed inside and outside Mr. Beef, fictionalized on the show as the Original Beef of Chicagoland, for “The Bear,” a series about a young chef who quits his job at a high-end New York restaurant to run his family’s sandwich store. According to Christopher Zucchero, FX also built a copy of the restaurant’s kitchen in a Chicago studio.
The show received praise from chefs and restaurateurs after it debuted on Hulu last summer. Its success also sparked a nationwide demand for the Italian beef sandwich, including at Mr. Beef itself, in a beautiful illustration of life imitating art that imitated life.
Christopher Zucchero stated of the series, “Mr. Beef’s always going to be associated with that, and we’re grateful for that. They are a unit. It’s mutually beneficial, but I don’t want it to overshadow my father’s accomplishments. On February 21, 1954, Joseph Zachary Zucchero was born.
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According to his son, he began his profession as a butcher and grew up on Chicago’s Northwest Side. Mr. Zucchero and his brother, Dominic, launched Mr. Beef on North Orleans Street in Chicago’s River North neighborhood in the late 1970s. Formerly seedy, the area has now undergone extensive gentrification.
A New York Times writer visited the eatery in the middle of the 1990s and discovered people enjoying $3.50 Italian beef sandwiches at a Formica tabletop next to an autographed photo of Frank Sinatra. As almost everyone ordered from the same small menu placed above the grill, it wasn’t indispensable to have one.
If you want a hot dog, go to a stall selling them, Mr. Zucchero advised. “Come here if you want a beef sandwich.” Mr. Zucchero is survived by his wife Camille, daughter Lauren, son, sister Claudine Grippo, and brother and son. His son claimed that Mr. Zucchero loved movies and that Hollywood celebrities frequented his eatery.
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Joe Mantegna, an actor, and Jay Leno, a comedian, and talk-show host, “would come in constantly,” according to Christopher Zucchero. He claimed that he had known “The Bear” creator Christopher Storer since they were in kindergarten and that they both spent time with Mr. Beef when they were younger.
The senior Mr. Zucchero went to the filming location on the West Side of Chicago, where Mr. Storer’s crew had created a copy of his eatery. He gasped when he saw what he had done. You truly walked inside, and inside Mr. Beef, he said to NPR last year, “from the floor to the ceiling, the worktops to the equipment.”
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