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Food cart back serving up Chicago hot dogs

BY MELODY BIRKETT

Tribune Contributor

Lou Mirabelli always dreamed of owning and operating a hot dog food cart and now that the weather has cooled, he’s back at it.

“It’s been a lifelong dream to do it,” said Mirabelli, who’s lived in the Mesa/Chandler area for 30 years. “I kept coming up with excuses not to do it because of my other job. Finally, I decided to do it.”

He opened Sweet Lou’s Chicago Style Dogs in February 2020. “There wasn’t another Chicago-style hog dog place in the Valley until Portillo’s came to town.” In the summer, Mirabelli works at his furniture liquidation sales job throughout the country.

“I quit selling hot dogs in May or June,” he said. “It’s just too hot to stay outside. I leave the valley for four or five months and I come back normally in September or October.”

This year, Mirabelli resumed selling hot dogs Oct 15.

What makes a hot dog Chicago-style has to do with the bun and toppings.

“Poppyseed buns #1,” said Mirabelli. “Number two, my dogs have no ketchup but rather mustard, relish, onions, scored peppers, pickles, tomatoes and celery salt.” Mirabelli lets customers choose their toppings but if ketchup is one of them, you’ll have to put it on yourself. “If you Google anything about Chicago, we don’t allow ketchup on hotdogs,” he said. “My dogs are all beef and they actually snap. They’re called a cased hotdog.” Now that summer is gone, Lou Mirabelli is back selling his He also sells chips, Chicago-style hotdogs. (Special to the Tribune) cold water and soda. “Then I do a Polish Italian beef dog,” added Mirabelli who says a Polish dog is more of a sausage than a hot dog. “And I do a Ditka dog, after Coach Mike Ditka. It’s an 8” Polish. Plus I do chili dogs.”

Mirabelli posts regularly on Facebook the locations he’ll be at usually four to five hours at a time.

“I do enjoy it,” he said. “It gets me out of the retail part of it. It’s instant verification. I get a lot of people from Chicago so we talk about the city. It brings back memories.”

He also caters birthday parties and even weddings for a flat fee.

Eventually, Mirabelli would like to get a second cart but the pandemic delayed his plans. “None of the snowbirds came down. So it kind of killed my business.”

Despite the pandemic, he has survived with one cart. “I offer a great product and I interact with people very well,” said Mirabelli who depends on word of mouth to get business in addition to social media.

Daily locations posted on Facebook

at Sweet Lou’s Chicago Style Dogs. ■

Mesa restaurants grappling with shortages

BY HEAVEN LAMARTZ

Tribune Contributor

Mesa is back after a year of shutdowns due to the pandemic but local restaurants are still struggling. The reason: they cannot find workers to keep their customers happy. Restaurants are finding it challenging to find employees to help sustain their business. “We can’t find anybody to hostess,” said Jonnie Knudsen, an employee at Red Mountain Café. “When we’re understaffed it affects us a lot.”

At Red Mountain Café, the servers must take turns and act as both hostess and server. Knudsen said that it creates extra work and a more difficult environment.

Another employee at Red Mountain Café, Melinda Henricks, said she believes “people are making enough money to just stay home.”

Henricks praised Gov. Doug Ducey’s Back to Work bonus, stating, “When I heard that I came and I got the job.”

The bonus allowed full and part time workers to receive a payment for completing eight weeks of employment. For parttime, the bonus was $1,000 and full-time workers got $2,000.

Brian Tatum, the general manager of Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken in downtown Mesa, said additional unemployment benefits also slowed hiring, although Ducey ended those in midsummer.

“With COVID and with the unemployment benefits being increased there had been a lot of issues with people not wanting to work,” Tatum said.

While Tatum said the shortage of workers has eased a bit there are still problems.

“We still have some people that are obviously applying for jobs just to fulfill their obligations in order to collect their unemployment, and not answering the phone when you call to set up the interview.”

And when applicants answer their phone, he added, meetings are set in place and the applicants do not show up.

Recently, Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken managed to recover and now has almost a full staff.

Not all restaurants in Mesa are being as impacted.

Main Street Sweets in Downtown Mesa has been relatively safe from the effects of unemployment. Instead, their biggest concerns involve supply issues, according to manager and co-owner Cole Cooley.

“The biggest impact on us that also has to do with COVID, and people not being staffed is that supplies are really hard to get,” he said. “It’s hard for us to get certain ingredients, food or boxes and packaging goods.”

The family-based café made frequent trips to nearby grocery stores to make up for the lack of product.

“Lots of trips to Fry’s or Food City and buying what we can, as much as we can,” Cooley said. “It’s hard to get things from grocery stores when you usually buy in bulk.” ■

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