The Casa That Ike Built
“I go to Mexican restaurants maybe once a year, whether I need to or not.”
--Mike Ditka, on the eve of signing his coaching contract with the Chicago Bears
On January 19th of 1982, Mike Ditka absolutely needed to go to a Mexican restaurant.
Not because he wanted enchiladas, but because the legendary Bears tight end had been spotted by eagle-eyed reporters at Chicago’s Tavern Club eating dinner when he should have been home in Dallas resting after a brutal last minute playoff loss at the hands of the San Francisco 49ers (Ditka was an assistant coach for the Dallas Cowboys). If you’re a football junkie, you’ll know this moment as “The Catch”, Dwight Clark’s Elastic-Man-worthy reception from Joe Montana with 51 seconds left on the clock.
I know, some of you are like, “Stop the sports ball talk!” Rest assured, we are not here to talk about pigskin, but about Mexican food.
Ditka was in town negotiating a contract to coach the Bears with owner George Halas, but had not yet officially sealed the deal. Not wanting to answer inquiries from nosey journalists, Ditka fled Tavern for a cup of coffee at Su Casa Mexican restaurant located at 49 E. Ontario.
I suspect Ditka chose Su Casa because unlike say Gordon or Diplomat, the hot restaurants of 1982, no one was doing celebrity recon at an almost twenty-year-old Tex-Mex joint located in a former coach house of the Victorian mansion of Pizzeria Due next door.
Su Casa founded in 1963 is not located next to Due by chance. If Su Casa had opened as originally planned in 1943, Chicago and the world may never have experienced the ecstasy, or the agony, of deep dish pizza.
That’s because Ike Sewell, who owned the space we now know as Pizzeria Uno, wanted to open a Mexican restaurant. Sewell, a former UT Austin football player known as the Texas Tornado, grew up in San Antonio, and lamented that he couldn’t find a great bowl of chili or any real Tex-Mex cuisine that would please him.
Sewell was so committed to the idea of a Mexican restaurant in the eventual Uno property, that he and his partner Ric Riccardo had bullfighting scenes painted on the wall. A test meal cooked by a Mexican bartender allegedly made Riccardo sick (was this story real or a marketing play indulging in racist tropes?) , so Riccardo headed off to Italy and apparently came back with the idea for deep dish pizza instead.
Uno was so successful, Sewell acquired the Due mansion, the former home of steel baron Joseph T. Ryerson, in 1955 to serve the overflow crowds. Eight years later, Sewell finally achieved his true dreams by launching Su Casa next door in the coach house. In the early years Su Casa was referred to as “Ike’s Chili Palace”.
By 1963 Sewell was a rich pizza baron, but that didn’t stop him from complaining about the prodigal expenditures of Su Casa’s interior designer, Harlan Pomroy.
Sewell said, “He went way over budget, and we tried to cut him off because his bank account was depleted.” Sewell added, “But he was in remote villages where there were no telephones and this beautiful stuff just kept coming in, and we had to keep going to the bank.”
The investment was worth it. Much of the decor, including wooden John the Baptist statues that flank a couple of heavy timber doors repurposed from an old home in Toluca, Mexico backdropped by white-washed brick remain to present day.
The bar features a mural created by Pomroy with a depiction of Montezuma’a headdress inlaid with Mexican stones including obsidian and amethyst. Sixty years later, you still feel like you’re dining outdoors in a Zocalo or plaza.
Even if you’ve never eaten here, if you’ve been down by the Uno pizza empire or shopping at Eataly, you’ve likely seen the neon cactus sign and wondered why there’s a clay-tile-roofed faux adobe hacienda in the loop.
In the 1960s and 70s, Su Casa was believed to be the single biggest vendor of tequila in the US. In that era, manager Hugo Aranda estimated customers drank 65 quarts of margaritas a day.
Aranda who ran Su Casa from 1971-1983 once taunted a cheap customer by allowing him to “win” a raffle for an expensive bottle of whiskey, and then emptied it of the fine liquor, and filled it with iced tea before rewarding the prize.
In 1967, a couple met (as they did before dating apps) for dinner at Su Casa, went steady, and left Chicago. One night they returned to Chicago because the young man hoped to propose where they met. He didn’t account for the fact that it was Sunday, the only day Su Casa was closed. Still, after discovering this, he dropped to one knee outside the restaurant’s timber doors and asked his squeeze to marry him with a ring that featured the engraving “mi casa es su casa”.
Su Casa had a place in many relationships. Third generation Sauza tequila heir, Mimi Sauza Smilgus, who was born in Chicago, celebrated her 25th wedding anniversary at Su Casa. Her father, Francesco who ran the distillery for decades, once worked as a Mexican troubadour for W-G-N radio.
Sewell once gave a tribute dinner for Dario Borzani, a 1920s dance king at Su Casa. This is most notable because Borzani ran a series of Mexican restaurants where he hired entertainers on the rise like Danny Kaye and Vincent Price. Price, who you likely know from his maniacal laugh at the end of Michael Jackson’s Thriller, was a super foodie, and published Borzani’s recipe for Chicken Chichen Itza in his cookbook “Treasury of Great Recipes”.
Also, while we’re talking about Vincent Price, please enjoy the best SNL sketch ever performed.
Since the late 1970s Su Casa had gone from one of, if not the first, restaurants in Chicago to serve chile rellenos and mole to a processed cheese and beans operation.
Trib critic Mark Knoblauch lamented that many people introduced to Mexican food by Su Casa had fled to Pilsen for the good stuff and the empty restaurant had capitulated with nods to American tastes.
By 1983 Su Casa was back and Knoblauch awarded it 3.5 out of 4 stars.
I moved to Chicago in 2002. Having stayed downtown while searching for a home, I remember spotting the hacienda almost immediately. I never went.
As I became a food writer, chefs who worked downtown regularly told me they like to party at Su Casa after a shift. The respected bartender/mixologist Paul McGee used to take his Lost Lake tiki bar staff here.
When I finally stepped foot in the joint, I sent a photo to a friend who told me he’d blacked out at Su Casa at least three times over margaritas. He also asked incredulously, “Why are you there?”
I was there for the same reason I step foot in every small mom and pop Tex Mex joint in any small town in America I happen to be visiting: my nostalgic obsession and desire to recapture the glory days of dining at Chi-Chi’s. And also because I was dying of hunger after touring the nearby Driehaus museum. I’d thought about hitting Eataly, but every time I do it makes me sad and I ruminate on how the orange-clogged-parm-king Mario Batali was such a jackass.
Batali’s idiocy was Su Casa’s gain. As discussed already, the dining room is glorious. Honestly the only thing missing was a neon lit active volcano, but I can always hit San Angel Restaurante at Epcot for that fix.
There was, in a very Disneyesque manner, an eastern European or Russian dude walking around the restaurant with an SLR camera, offering to take free pics of your party, which would then be upsold as a souvenir wrapped in a Mexican-themed booklet. We declined, but many others did not. Mid-meal, I glimpsed the dude practicing his pitch in a dark corner before approaching a table to convert them on the keepsake.
If for no other reason, this is why I love a spot like Su Casa, which is to say, it’s no longer a hot restaurant. To survive it has to rely on the true hustlers, those looking for their first jobs in America. Su Casa is a launching pad for the newest of Chicago lives.
There were free chips and salsa. I believe that the best nacho chip comes from fresh flour tortillas chopped into triangles and deep fried, so the thicker commercial-like corn chips at Su Casa didn’t quite do it for me.
Spice tolerance I know is relative, but Su Casa manages to balance on a razor’s edge of heat that engenders re-dipping but doesn’t blow the palate with pain and numbness. I retained the leftover salsa to pour on my enchiladas.
Because George Clooney already has everything in life, I decided not to enrich him anymore and skipped the Casamigos (Clooney sold the brand to Diageo but I assume he still gets some cut) and went with Corazon tequila margarita spiked with fresh agave that was crisp and limey. This glass enriched the Sazerac company, distiller of Van Winkle bourbon instead.
Though chili con carne was the reason for Su Casa’s invention, it is no longer on the menu, nor are the chile rellenos. If the Uno company ever needs a bump in sales or a news peg for a sixty-year-old restaurant, bringing back Ike Sewell’s chili, would certainly help.
Su Casas’s current menu isn’t totally Chilis-ified and Taco Belled to the gills. There are carnitas, poblano chicken, and sopes on offer. It is however, a pick-your-combination palace, and as such I went with taco and enchilada samplers.
Spicy adobo nubbins of shrimp swim in garlic sauce while swaddled in a corn tortilla smothered with tangy tomatillo cream sauce. It is not my beloved Chi Chi’s enchilada Cancun featuring fake crab and shrimp. It is much better, and the best thing I ate at Su Casa.
Tacos feature supple corn tortillas and zingy chimichurri-glazed steak. The rice has the right nuclear orange hue and a slightly-al dente hull. The refried beans are glossy with lard.
Is Su Casa the greatest Mexican food in Chicago? No.
Is it as good as Uncle Julio’s but serving an absolute main course of non-franchise authentic history? Absolutely.
Were I young enough to desire to do so, would I black out on margaritas in these environs like my friend once did next weekend during Cinco de Mayo? Hell, yeah!
Most important, though, if you’re about to be hired as the next coach of the Chicago Blackhawks in 2024 (could be as early as this summer, sorry Luke Richardson) should you still hang out at Su Casa to hide from the jackass contingent at Barstool Sports wanting to rip you to shreds on social media?
100.
Su Casa is located at 49 E Ontario in Chicago.