{"id":8874,"date":"2013-03-02T12:16:20","date_gmt":"2013-03-02T20:16:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/burgersdogspizza.com\/?p=8874"},"modified":"2013-03-02T12:16:20","modified_gmt":"2013-03-02T20:16:20","slug":"countryside-il-country-cup-diner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/?p=8874","title":{"rendered":"Countryside, IL &#8211; Country Cup Diner"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Give me a home, where the\u2026.oh, wait. Give me a diner, on Route 66, and I\u2019ll be one happy camper. In a distant suburb of Chicago, the town of Countryside, is the \u00a0Highway 66 exit route from the Loop, and on it, inside a bowling alley, with little signage to let you know it\u2019s there, is the Country Cup dinner, with all of 10 tables, a counter for 8, and on this shift, about 7 employees hustling to serve the jammed packed caf\u00e9.<\/p>\n<p>Serving a full menu 24\/7, I stopped in for a corned beef, changed my mind, and went with a specialty unique to Chicago (as far as I am concerned), the \u201colive burger\u201d, also referred to as the \u201cQueen Burger\u201d in other locales.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve <a href=\"http:\/\/burgersdogspizza.com\/?s=%22Route+66%22&amp;x=-933&amp;y=-36\">written about other stops<\/a> along Route 66 in the past.<\/p>\n<p>Everybody knows Chicago is a great hot dog town, but it\u2019s a great burger town, as well, with one of the most (in)famous being the Billy Goat Tavern, underneath the Wrigley Building on Michigan Avenue.\u00a0 The Billy Goat was perfectly poised between two rival newspaper buildings, the Trib and the Sun Times, and was where a lot of the reporters used to hang out regularly.<\/p>\n<p>But the Billygoat became known to the rest of America through John Belushi\u2019s SNL skit, where the punchline was \u201ccheezbooger, cheezbooger, no coke, pepsi\u201d, which pretty much describes the \u2018Goat as it remains today.<\/p>\n<p>Back at the Country Cup,\u00a0 the coffee is fresh and plentiful, the burger was a sizzling food service patty, and the rings were hot and greasy.\u00a0 And the olives?\u00a0 They were just fine. \u00a0I couldn&#8217;t leave w\/o grabbing a reuben to go. \u00a0I&#8217;d had a hankering for good corned beef for awhile.<\/p>\n<p>If you ever find yourself in need of a nosh in this part of Chicago, check out the Country Cup anytime of day or nite.<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019re a fan of surface streets, stay on the original Route 66 from downtown Chicago to the Cup\u2026. Just about 20 miles, take Adams out of downtown, to Ogden Avenue, and roll out there 16 miles or so to Joliet Road.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_8875\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8875\" style=\"width: 448px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/burgersdogspizza.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/country-cup.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8875\" src=\"http:\/\/burgersdogspizza.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/country-cup.png\" alt=\"country cup\" width=\"448\" height=\"336\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-8875\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Olive Burger<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_8882\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8882\" style=\"width: 430px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/burgersdogspizza.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/country4.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8882\" src=\"http:\/\/burgersdogspizza.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/country4.png\" alt=\"Country Cup, Countryside, IL\" width=\"430\" height=\"336\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-8882\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Reuben<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/burgersdogspizza.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/country2.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-8876\" src=\"http:\/\/burgersdogspizza.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/country2.png\" alt=\"country2\" width=\"448\" height=\"316\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_8877\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8877\" style=\"width: 448px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/burgersdogspizza.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/country3.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8877\" src=\"http:\/\/burgersdogspizza.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/country3.png\" alt=\"Crowded Space\" width=\"448\" height=\"309\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-8877\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Crowded Space<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.urbanspoon.com\/r\/2\/859486\/restaurant\/Chicago\/Country-Cup-Restaurant-Countryside\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: none; padding: 0px; width: 200px; height: 146px;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.urbanspoon.com\/b\/link\/859486\/biglink.gif\" alt=\"Country Cup Restaurant on Urbanspoon\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Give me a home, where the\u2026.oh, wait. Give me a diner, on Route 66, and I\u2019ll be one happy camper. In a distant suburb of Chicago, the town of Countryside, is the \u00a0Highway 66 exit route from the Loop, and on it, inside a bowling alley, with little signage to let you know it\u2019s there,&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/?p=8874\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Countryside, IL &#8211; Country Cup Diner<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,12,16,25],"tags":[280,1875,1876,3055],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8874"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8874\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}