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Billy Goat Tavern
Billy Goat Tavern has been a Chicago institution since 1934, when Greek immigrant Billy Sianis opened the original location at 1855 W. Madison, across from the old Chicago Stadium. The tavern moved to its current spot — literally underneath Michigan Avenue at the south end of the Magnificent Mile — in 1964, inside the Apollo Savings and Loan building, where it's stayed a genuine below-street-level landmark ever since. The "cheezborger, cheezborger, cheezborger, no fries, chips" bit is directly lifted from the tavern's own grill counter, immortalized by a Saturday Night Live sketch built around the place's rapid-fire, no-substitutions ordering style. The burger itself is unfussy diner fare — a thin, griddled patty, quickly cooked, no ceremony — which is exactly the point: Billy Goat built its reputation on speed and personality at the counter, not on reinventing the burger. The tavern is equally famous for something that has nothing to do with the burger: the "Curse of the Billy Goat." During the 1945 World Series, Sianis was asked to leave Wrigley Field because his pet goat's smell was bothering other fans, and he responded by cursing the Cubs to never win another pennant — a curse fans and sportswriters referenced for the next seven decades until the Cubs finally broke it in 2016. The tavern's below-street-level setting is a genuine architectural quirk worth knowing before visiting — it sits literally underneath Michigan Avenue, accessible via a set of stairs most tourists walking the Magnificent Mile above would never notice unless they knew to look for them. That physical hiddenness, combined with the tavern's genuine age and the enduring curse mythology, has made Billy Goat feel like a real discovery even though it's one of the most written-about bars in the city — a rare combination of tourist landmark and legitimately old-school Chicago dive that hasn't sanded off its rough edges to court visitors. Sam Sianis, Billy's nephew, took over the tavern after his uncle's death in 1970, and it was Sam's thick Greek-accented delivery of "Cheezborger, cheezborger, cheezborger... no Coke, Pepsi" that Saturday Night Live actually immortalized — the sketch was modeled on his exact cadence at the grill counter, not a generic bit. Sam ran the tavern for more than five decades, expanding the Billy Goat name to additional Chicago locations while keeping the original Michigan Avenue counter's format essentially untouched, and turning it into a genuine hangout for generations of Tribune, Sun-Times, and City News Bureau reporters working nearby, whose bylines and photos still line the tavern's "Wall of Fame." Sam Sianis died in 2026 at 91, having spent more of his life running the tavern than not. For a Chicago cheeseburger list, Billy Goat is the essential "tourist landmark that's also a real Chicago dive" entry — a below-street-level grill counter that's been slinging the same fast, thin, griddled cheezborger since before most of the city's current burger spots existed, wrapped in enough local legend to anchor a city's baseball mythology.
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Mott St
Mott St is, first and foremost, an Asian fusion restaurant in Chicago's Wicker Park/West Town area — Korean street food sits at its core, with flavors pulled in from Japan, China, Mexico, and Italy across the rest of the menu. The burger isn't the restaurant's original concept, but chef/partner Edward Kim's Mott Street Burger has become one of the things the restaurant is most specifically known for among people who might otherwise never think to order a burger at a Korean-inspired restaurant. The burger itself reflects the kitchen's wider sensibility rather than playing it straight: double chuck patties, hoisin aioli, pickled jalapeños, and sweet potato frizzles on a brioche bun, balancing sweet and spicy in a way that's distinctly Mott St rather than a conventional diner or smashburger build. One detail matters for anyone planning a visit specifically for the burger — it's only available at the bar, and only after 7pm, which keeps it feeling like an insider order rather than a standard menu item available all day. That restriction is part of what's built the burger's specific cult following: it's not the headline dish on the menu, and Mott St isn't marketed as a burger restaurant, so ordering it requires knowing to ask for it at the right time in the right seat — the kind of detail that turns a good burger into a specifically-sought-out one. Mott St's broader Korean street food menu — the restaurant's actual core identity — gives the burger useful context: this is a kitchen already comfortable working with bold, sweet-savory-spicy flavor combinations across an entire menu, which is exactly the skill set that makes hoisin aioli and pickled jalapeños on a burger feel considered rather than like a novelty mashup. Regulars who come specifically for the burger are, whether they realize it or not, benefiting from a kitchen that spent years developing that flavor sensibility on dishes that have nothing to do with beef. Mott St is chef Edward Kim's second restaurant, following Ruxbin, which he opened in Wicker Park in 2011 with his wife Jenny, sister Vicki, and friend Nate Chung after training in kitchens in Los Angeles, Seoul, and New York — including a stint under Thomas Keller at Per Se. Mott St followed two years later as a more casual, family-style counterpart to Ruxbin's tasting-menu format, and it's since become a 13-time Michelin Bib Gourmand recipient, recognition for the kitchen's broader Korean street food menu rather than the burger specifically. That fine-dining pedigree matters for understanding the burger's construction: Kim isn't a burger chef improvising a Korean twist, he's a Per Se-trained cook applying the same technique and flavor-balancing instincts he uses across Mott St's whole menu to a single bar-only, after-7pm item most diners don't even know to ask for. For a Chicago cheeseburger list, Mott St is the essential "fusion kitchen's secret burger" entry — proof that some of the city's best cheeseburgers are coming out of kitchens that aren't burger restaurants at all, built by chefs applying a completely different cuisine's techniques to a very American format.
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