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Patty Please
Patty Please launched in May 2024 as a burger pop-up operating out of Small Bar, an established Avondale neighborhood bar run by Footman Hospitality — not a standalone restaurant, but a tight, focused smashburger program working out of someone else's small kitchen. Chef Khaled Simon, who also created the well-regarded Taco Sublime, built the concept around a deliberately narrow menu: real smashburger technique, applied seriously, in a late-night bar setting that doesn't usually get food this dialed in. The house order is "The Pleaser": two smashed patties, American cheese, sliced onion, pickles, and Pleaser sauce, notably served without fries included — a detail that signals this is a burger-first menu, not a full diner spread. The smash technique itself is the draw: two thin patties pressed hard onto the griddle for maximum crisp-edge contact, the same method driving the broader national smashburger wave, executed inside a neighborhood bar's kitchen rather than a dedicated burger restaurant's. Being a bar pop-up rather than its own restaurant shapes the whole experience — it's a late-night, casual, drink-in-hand kind of order, not a sit-down meal, and part of its fast-growing local reputation (enough to draw food-review attention within its first year) comes from that exact "hidden gem inside a bar" quality that makes it feel like a discovery rather than a destination. Chef Simon's earlier work on Taco Sublime matters here too — it signals a chef with real technique moving between concepts rather than a bar owner trying to add a food program as an afterthought, and that seriousness shows up in the smash technique itself: getting a genuinely crisp, lacy edge on a patty pressed inside a small bar kitchen, night after night, at volume, is harder to execute consistently than it looks. That Patty Please has kept its quality up since a 2024 launch, entirely on word of mouth from inside someone else's bar, is a real signal it's not just a novelty pop-up. Patty Please operates inside Small Bar, a longtime Avondale neighborhood bar run by Footman Hospitality, rather than as its own leased storefront — a pop-up-within-a-bar model that's become more common in Chicago as chefs look for lower-overhead ways to launch new concepts. The Pleaser itself runs $8 single, $12 double, priced to function as a genuine bar order rather than a destination-dining check, and it's served alongside sides like garlicky cheese curds and a citrusy frozen daiquiri that keep the whole menu feeling built for drinking, not just eating. Chicago Magazine named Patty Please its "Reboot of the Year" in February 2025, only about eight months after the pop-up's May 2024 launch — a fast turnaround for that kind of recognition, especially for a burger operating out of someone else's kitchen rather than its own standalone restaurant. For a Chicago cheeseburger list, Patty Please is the essential "new but already excellent" entry — genuine smashburger technique inside a small Avondale bar's kitchen, proof that Chicago's burger scene is still actively producing new contenders rather than resting on decades-old institutions.
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Redhot Ranch
Redhot Ranch was founded by Barry Nemerow and Jeff Greenfield — the same duo behind The Wieners Circle — starting with a single hot dog stand in 2005 near White Sox Park on the South Side, built around reviving the classic Chicago-style "Depression Dog": mustard, relish, onion, sport peppers, and fresh-cut fries, no ketchup in sight. The burger came later and almost as an afterthought, which makes its current popularity a bit of a reversal of the original plan. In 2014, the team opened two more locations and added a double cheeseburger modeled directly on In-N-Out's format — a style that barely existed in Chicago's home-grown fast-food scene at the time. The charburger caught on fast enough that it quickly outpaced the hot dogs that built the brand in the first place, developing its own cult following across Chicagoland independent of Redhot Ranch's original identity as a hot dog stand. That hot dog pedigree still matters for context: Redhot Ranch was inducted into the Hot Dog Hall of Fame as its 151st member, recognition for the original Depression Dog rather than the burger — a reminder that this is fundamentally a Chicago hot dog stand that happens to also make an excellent smash-style cheeseburger, not a burger restaurant that added dogs as an afterthought. Nemerow and Greenfield's earlier work at The Wieners Circle is worth knowing for anyone expecting a quiet counter-service experience — both businesses share a certain unapologetic, no-frills Chicago attitude, prioritizing the food over polish or hospitality theater. That same directness carries over to the burger: no elaborate build, no house sauce mythology, just a well-executed double-patty smashburger sold at a genuine value price point across three no-nonsense counter locations. Nemerow and Greenfield's first Redhot Ranch (originally called 35th Street Redhots) opened in the summer of 2005 near the old Comiskey Park/White Sox Park area on the South Side, well before the burger existed at all. The RHR charburger itself has a specific origin story: the pair got the idea in 2013 while eating at an In-N-Out in Las Vegas, and came home to build their own version — fresh patties, melted cheese, mustard, ketchup, sport peppers, lettuce, tomato, onion, and a house special sauce — onto a menu that had spent its first eight years focused entirely on hot dogs. In April 2024, the city of Chicago gave Redhot Ranch an honorary day alongside its formal induction into the Hot Dog Hall of Fame, civic recognition unusual for a business that, by that point, had arguably become just as well known for its burger as for the hot dog stand that built its name. For a Chicago cheeseburger list, Redhot Ranch is the essential "West Coast smashburger format done by South Side hot dog guys" entry — an In-N-Out-style double cheeseburger built by two people whose actual expertise and reputation was forged making Chicago dogs, now sold at three counter-service locations across the city.
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