Cemitas for dinner and gelato for dessert

That’s right everyone, it’s another food review! I’m doubling up on Chicago’s Best locations again too (though it happened on accident).

Back in March I bought two Living Social deals for a place called Cemitas Puebla. As the hyperlink will show you, this place is very popular for its cemitas, a special Mexican sandwich featuring ingredients straight from the town of Puebla. In Puebla. In Mexico.

Puebla.

Anyway, I was able to convince my family to head to what is a scary neighborhood for them (stone’s throw away from the admittedly bad Humboldt Park area) and head in.

I’m cheating as I didn’t take this picture. Sorry.

What the picture doesn’t show is the line of photographs all over the back wall of the family, the grandparents, the soccer and baseball players… even Chris Jericho was there.

Our deals come with an order of chalupas (appetizer size, so not very big here) two sandwiches and two drinks. We tried every cemitas we possibly could: milanesa, al pastor, el Atomico (Guy Fieri made this one famous) and the arabes (which is the meat on a spit as shown in the Food Network video).

El Atomica: Ham, milanesa pork and carne enchilada (that’s more pork).

This sandwich was tasty. Everything was really, even the tacos we later got (my mom didn’t like the sandwich much). The flavor was great, and the meat on all sandwiches was excellent. What kept this from being the best sandwich in Chicago, a claim the guy explaining cemitas to us made, is it is so damn dry. Avocado and chile pepper spread are delicious, but they’re no mayo. The bread was great, but it was also part of the problem, as it was thick and, sadly, dry. Fortunately there were plenty of sauces around, and my mom got a side of sour creme to use too, but it didn’t quite fix the problem.

Hardly disappointed by the flavor, but I did expect a less dry sandwich. Jarritos helped, but not enough.

After our sandwich excursion, we all wondered about dessert. Unfortunately the Chicago’s Best map hasn’t been working these past few days, so unless I knew exactly what was on the list and was close, I couldn’t exactly help pick a dessert place. No one wanted to head back to Logan Square for Bang Bang Pie sadly, but I will visit them another day.

We started to travel to Harlem Irving Plaza area, near where my dad grew up, when we crossed an authentic Italian gelato shop: Bellezza Gelato.

It wasn’t until we got past the door that we even realized it was a Chicago’s Best location. We didn’t try their specialty, the affogado that mixes coffee and gelato together in one cup. But I don’t like coffee anyway. Trying the cappucino proved to be too much for me.

But fortunately there was plenty of gelato to try, and I was pretty thirsty.

It was the best gelato I ever had.

I put my lemon sorbet into a smoothie, which was very tart but delicious and cured my thirst easily, We tried S’mores gelato, the banana creme (one of my favorites), New York strawberry cheesecake, the Sweet Home Chicago (chocolate, peanuts, toffee and mini-marshmellows) and the boysenberry sorbet. All of it was fantastic. Not a bad flavor in the bunch.

If I had more of a stomach I would have tried a gelato cookie sandwich or a brioche, but I guess I’ll just have to come back instead.

They even make gelato pies! How delicious is that! Good thing it’s better for you than ice cream.