worked for a streetcar company and Ferrari drove a truck, so the stand would only open at night after they were done with their day shifts. ![]() Interestingly, both Pacelli’s father and Al worked other jobs during the day, Pacelli Sr. “ said, ‘I’ll do the beef stand, you guys take orders in the back,” says Pacelli. The original Al’s - originally called Al’s Bar B-Q - located at Harrison and Laflin St, was little more than a small outdoor patio (or “stand,” as there was no seating) where the family would take food orders out front while the gambling took place inside the restaurant in the back. ![]() started the business with Bones’ uncle Al Ferrari in 1938. “It started as a front for a bookie operation,” says Pacelli (better known to neighborhood locals as “Bones”), whose father Chris Pacelli Sr. This is when things really get interesting. The thinner cut came to be known as the Italian beef sandwich and afterwards Ferrari continued to provide the service at local weddings sporadically in addition to making to his usual lunch deliveries for the next 20 years until his son, Al, decided to make a business out of it. ![]() Pacelli says beef sandwiches at peanut weddings in the early days were originally cut rather thick and Ferrari noticed that if you slice the beef thinner and cook it in its own juices, you could feed 35-40 people instead of 15-20. Because the new immigrants didn’t have much money, wedding receptions would be held in homes and church basements where peanuts and other cheap foods designed to feed as many people as possible were served. While many in the beef business claim to have invented the Italian beef, the common ground is that its origins lie in the Italian-American immigrant tradition of the “peanut wedding” prevalent among Italians who immigrated to Chicago in the early 1900s.
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