For over 15 years, I've been driving along Touhy Ave. into downtown Park Ridge. At the corner of Greenwood Ave. and Touhy is a little restaurant by the name of The Sandlot. (see map) It's a basic place, no frills, no liquor or beer service - just a little neighborhood burger joint. My problem is that I kept passing the place and not giving it a try. Earlier this year, I had an appointment in Morton Grove and I was heading from my hotel toward the appointment. It was after 1:00 p.m. and I was a little hungry. I had some time to get some lunch so this time I stopped in to The Sandlot.
The Sandlot started in 2012 when Brandon Shapic - who ran a Checkers restaurant in the Detroit area for 10 years - moved to the Chicago area six months prior. Shapic teamed with Tom Marabanian to open their little burger joint in what was originally a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant. After the KFC went out of business, the building housed a couple fast food-style restaurants, but nothing stuck. The building sat empty for a few months before Shapic and Marabanian took it over and turned it into a small sports-themed fast-casual restaurant named after the movie with the same name. In fact, Shapic and Marabanian had to get an agreement with Paramount Pictures to use The Sandlot as the name of their burger joint. In addition to fresh (never frozen) ground beef burgers and hand-cut fries, The Sandlot also offers hand-breaded chicken sandwiches, hot dogs and they're also famous for their malts and milkshakes.
There's not much to the inside of The Sandlot. Just to the right of the order window is a poster of the movie. But other than that the decor is pretty neutral in the little restaurant. The place had a few tables and chairs along the side and probably sat around 24 people, tops.
It was after 1:30 in the afternoon, but there was a pretty good flow of customers coming and going from the restaurant. A number of people had called in orders in advance, but a few were waiting on orders that they'd placed at the window.
The menu is pretty basic with burgers (single, double, triple and even a quadruple burger!), a chicken sandwich, a double bacon BLT, and a hot dog for main items. Fries are the only side option, while they have pop, bottled water and milkshakes or malts available to drink. From what I could gather from some of the people coming in, the milkshakes were a hot item.
The Sandlot is the closest thing to an In-N-Out burger I've ran across in all my travels across the Midwest. Their "Two-N-Two" is a credible knock off of In-N-Out's "Double-Double" - a flat-grilled burger smothered with American cheese and served on a bed of fresh lettuce and a tomato slice with a choice of grilled or raw onions (I went for the raw onions) and finished with a mayo-based concoction that they called "Sandlot Sauce". The burger was served in a foil wrapper where melted cheese stuck to the inside of the wrapper.
The burger was very good. The bun I didn't care for all that much - it was a bit more hard than I prefer. But it didn't detract from the taste of the burger and actually held together pretty well with all the cheese oozing off the burger patties.
I got an order of fries just for the hell of it. The fries were the thick cut variety and I could tell they used fresh cut potatoes at The Sandlot as the color of the fries was a dark golden hue. The fries were pretty good, but there was a lot of them. By the time I finished up the burger, I was pretty full and ended up eating just a few fries.
I'm sort of kicking myself for not giving The Sandlot a try before this. For as many times that I've passed the place in the past, it took me this long to finally stop in. The burger was very good and very reminiscent of an In-N-Out burger found out west. The fries were OK, but the burger was definitely worth the stop. The Sandlot is a no-frills, window-service restaurant that has found quite the following in the near northwest suburbs.
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