There’s the Beef!

Mike’s Italian Beef offers a mesmerizing taste of Chicago in St. Louis

Written by CHERYL BAEHR

Mike’s Italian Beef

8001 MacKenzie Road, Affton; 314-282-0007. Mon.-Sat. 11 a.m.-8 p.m.; Sun. 11 a.m.-6 p.m.

Imade a rookie mistake at Mike’s Italian Beef, the Affton sandwich shop based around Chicago’s quintessential sandwich. After unwrapping the restaurant’s namesake sandwich

— a mammoth portion of tender, paper-thin-sliced, jus-soaked topround nestled into a pillowy hoagie roll and smothered in piquant giardiniera — I knew I should probably grab some napkins before digging in. I’d ordered it dipped, after all, which meant that the bun, already saturated in the meat’s cooking liquid, had been dunked in its entirety into even more au jus, guaranteeing an utter mess of an eating experience.

If I wanted to maintain any sort of decorum, I would have looked at the sandwich, understood the situation and walked 10 feet to one of the many napkin dispensers situated around the order counter. Instead, I glanced down at the beautiful specimen before me, with its glistening meat and vibrant minced vegetable trimmings, and caved. Just one bite, I told myself. Then, I’ll get some napkins. Half a sandwich later and dripping in a mix of beef jus and giardiniera vinegar nearly up to my elbows, I realized my error: Get the napkins before you sit down. Otherwise, there is no tearing yourself away.

The sort of crave-inducing reverie the Classic Italian Beef sandwich elicits is what inspired coowner Mike Roos to open Mike’s Italian Beef in the first place. A Chicagoland native who moved to Waterloo, Illinois, in 2007, Roos often longed for the hot beef sandwiches that could be found in casual shops on just about every street corner in his hometown. In 2021, when he was presented with the opportunity to open an eatery of his own by his then-employer, Sedara Sweets & Ice Cream owner George Simon, it made sense that he would look to the food he missed so much as the basis for his first restaurant venture.

However, if you would have told

Roos that he’d been opening an Italian beef restaurant back when he first moved to the bi-state area, he would have laughed. Back then, he was a recent high school graduate who had never cooked professionally. He wasn’t even actively considering a career in the culinary field until about six years after the move, when he had an aha moment while watching the Food Network during a vacation. Roos isn’t sure exactly what clicked — perhaps a show that connected with his childhood experiences watching his dad work in the food industry — but he recalls suddenly being filled with a sense of certainty surrounding his future. After returning home, he began researching culinary schools and began his studies at the now-shuttered L’Ecole Culinaire that following January.

While still in school, Roos began