Manny’s

The same end product at the counter

The corned beef lands high on rye, cut for a sandwich that has to read the same as the last one. Dan Raskin, chef at Manny’s in Chicago, keeps that line by refusing to treat continuity as a soft idea. At Manny’s Cafeteria & Delicatessen, the work sits inside a Raskin family chain that began when Jack and Charlie Raskin opened Purity deli in 1942, then moved through Jack, Manny, Ken, and now Dan. The current address at South Jefferson Street has held the operation since 1964, under Manny Raskin, before Ken Raskin took over after Manny’s death in 1983. Dan’s station is stewardship rather than reinvention. He has said the goal is “to not change anything here and keep providing the exact same ingredients, the exact same end product.” That is a narrow brief, and a difficult one. The sandwich cannot depend on novelty. The Reuben, built on perfectly brined corned beef, has to meet a diner’s memory without becoming a museum piece.

Hand-carved weight on rye

The method at Manny’s is cafeteria service, not ceremony. The counter carries the craft: hot sandwiches, hand-carved meat, soups, sides, bakery, pickles, and soda moving across the pass with the directness of a deli that knows its own grammar. Corned beef and pastrami carry the room, with the pastrami working fatter and the corned beef taking the cleaner line. Matzah ball soup, potato pancakes, kugel, knishes, brisket, turkey, and black and white cookies sit around those anchors. The Four Kinder sandwich puts corned beef, pastrami, brisket, and turkey together on the diner’s choice of bread, a stack that explains the place better than a tasting menu could. The house is not kosher, and it does not present itself as a chef’s laboratory. Its discipline is repetition, brine, carving, stacking, broth, and the ability to keep a cafeteria tray from feeling anonymous. In 2022, the foods began moving through nationwide shipping via Tastes of Chicago, extending the same staples beyond the counter without changing the center of the program.

Old-timey light, long tables, fast hands

The room is bright, broad, and built for motion. A 2016 renovation added a take-out deli counter, but the dining area kept its cafeteria feel: the line, the trays, the open seating, the sense that a sandwich can be both lunch and civic habit. Manny’s sits near Jefferson and Roosevelt, close to the city’s political traffic, and the room has long drawn office workers, families, and public figures without changing its posture for any of them. The sound stays conversational even when the counter is moving. There is plenty of seating, but the place does not ask to be settled into like a lounge. You collect the plate, find the table, and let the sandwich do the rest.

A family line kept in service

The next move here is not a new format; it is the continued handoff of a family operation that has already passed through Jack, Manny, Ken, and Dan Raskin. That makes the daily work plain and exacting: hold the ingredients, hold the output, hold the menu close enough that a returning diner recognizes the Reuben.