Arby's New Italian Beef Dip Is An Insult To Chicago

If you think of Chicago, you're automatically going to picture things like our brightly-topped hot dogs, deep dish pizza, and Italian beef sandwiches, most recently made famous by the TV show, "The Bear." Though the glow of that show has gently faded, now plenty more people are aware of the humble beef sandwich that helps defines street food in my hometown. And if you still aren't quite sure of what an Italian beef sandwich is, it's simple: 

It starts with a large hunk of beef, slow-roasted with aromatics like garlic and oregano. Once the roast beef has cooled off, it's shaved paper-thin, and it's held in a flavorful meaty jus (sometimes called gravy). When you order one, you get to pick how wet you want it (you can get it completely dunked) and whether or not you want any toppings with it, which are primarily giardiniera (hot pickled peppers in oil), sweet peppers (cooked bell peppers), or on occasion, cheese. Cheese is notable only because it's a non-standard customization that I've noticed is more common now; it's usually shredded mozzarella.

Arby's recently released a fast food version a few weeks ago called the Italian Beef Dip. It comes on a long sub roll with roast beef, Swiss cheese, and giardiniera, and it has a cup of jus for dipping. But since there aren't many Arby's locations in Chicago (there's only one downtown), it hasn't actually gotten much attention here. What's interesting is that most people seem to have forgotten that Arby's had a Chicago-inspired sandwich in 2017 called the Chicago-Style Beef Dip, which had roast beef, Swiss cheese, Italian seasoning, and fire-roasted peppers on it, with a side of jus for dipping. (For the record, that's not an Italian beef.) But if anyone on The Takeout staff had the bona fides to review the new Italian Beef Dip, it'd be me, a highly-opinionated Chicagoan, so Arby's kindly set me up with a sandwich to try.

Arby's Italian Beef Dip has 680 calories in total, with 37 grams of fat (13 of them saturated) and 1 gram of trans fat. There's 85 milligrams of cholesterol, 2,900 milligrams of sodium, 52 grams of carbs (5 of them being sugar), and 3 grams of fiber. The whole sandwich comes in with 35 grams of protein, in case you're keeping track of that, too. Fun technical specs aside, this is actually a surprisingly big sandwich. 

It goes for $7.79 at my local Arby's (I had to head out to the suburbs for this guy), so it's a touch on the expensive side, but it's just about the same price for a double Beef 'N Cheddar, so it's in line with most of the other offerings on Arby's menu. The medium meal version is $11.99, which comes with medium curly fries and a medium-sized beverage.

I'll give you the good news first: The sandwich is fine. It just tastes like an Arby's roast beef sandwich with a weird slice of processed cheese and pickled giardiniera. The giardiniera is totally accurate, with ingredients like carrots, celery, and oil, but it's the mild version — so if you're worried about spice, I'd rate this at a low with a tiny bit of heat to it. The bad news is, this is absolutely not an Italian beef sandwich. Absent are any flecks of Italian herbs, garlic, or anything remotely related to a legit Italian beef. Even a dry shake of generic Italian herb blend on top of the beef would have helped.

For context, the jus that the real Italian beef is typically dunked in is one that's based off of the roast beef's drippings, which would understandably be difficult to create under fast food conditions. But what I was given tasted, just, well, "brown." As in, it just came off as hot salty water that a single slice of roast beef may have stared at from two miles away once. And the bread isn't correct either; Italian beef sandwiches are made using chewy and springy French rolls (I know, confusing) from local manufacturers like Turano or S. Rosen; Arby's uses more or less regular sub bread. 

The bread is forgivable, because asking Arby's to nationally source a crap-ton of French rolls from Chicago would be a huge feat, but man, any seasoning on the beef or in the jus would have made the sandwich closer to the real thing. Something about this creation tasted oddly familiar, though, so I coyly asked the employee if perhaps this was simply Arby's French Dip sandwich with giardiniera added. They confirmed my suspicions.

If you're from far away, and your only option for an Italian beef is Arby's Italian Beef Dip, I would not blame you for being extremely confused as to why we get so territorial about these things. For whatever reason, there's something about Italian beefs that get lost in translation past the Chicagoland area, just like cheesesteaks do the further you get from Philadelphia (no, green bell peppers are not on a traditional cheesesteak). I guess whoever developed this sandwich at Arby's just looked at a photo of an Italian beef and decided it needed processed cheese for some reason, but hey, at least they got the giardiniera perfectly right.

It makes me wonder if anyone from the test kitchen actually came to Chicago, or if they're just big fans of "The Bear." At the bare minimum, a sprinkle of oregano and granulated garlic would have done wonders, maybe a squirt of concentrated seasoning into the jus — anything would have helped. This makes me sound like an Arby's hater, but I'm not (okay, well, the Arby's vodka was a little weird). You'll just have to pry my beloved Beef 'N Cheddars from my baby-sized fists instead, because everyone knows that those are the real reason you go to Arby's. And yes, the curly fries, I know, I know.