You`ll never have to ask ”Where`s the beef?” at Carm`s in Lombard. They sell it by the carload at a thousand pounds a week.
Eat-in or carry-out, Carm`s features a sandwich-laden menu with quick, personal service.
Sports pennants and pictures dot the walls, small booths and a counter serve up to 38 diners. By far the most popular selection is homemade Italian beef.
The restaurant still uses Grandma Carm`s secret recipe, perfected more than 40 years ago when she opened the first Carm`s Beef in 1952.
For the past three years, her grandson Joseph Nebren, along with wife Rhonda and partners Mike and Donna Keating, has operated the Lombard location. Another Carm`s is in Hillside.
Carm`s Italian beef sandwiches are uniquely flavorful. With thinly sliced, spicy beef piled high between slices of thick, crusty french bread, it literally drips with lots of clear, broth-like beef gravy. The beef has a definite bite.
Diners can request that their sandwich be topped off with homemade giardiniera, brimming with chunky slices of jalapeno peppers and celery mixed in garlic juice and oil.
”The business is definitely a family affair,” said Donna Keating.
”Everyone helps out-even the kids.”
Carm`s orders 70 to 80 top butts of beef each week, and the meat is cooked, cut and seasoned on the premises.
The beef is available for purchase at $6.99 per pound, accompanied by a quart of gravy. Other by-the-pound selections include Italian sausage ($3.85 per pound) and Italian meatballs with homemade red gravy ($5.75 per pound). For convenience, customers can also buy long loaves of Turano crusty bread.
”The phone is always ringing,” Donna Keating said. ”Carryouts are definitely the major part of our business. Our catering service has grown quickly too, just by word of mouth. Eventually we`d like to franchise.”
———-
Carm`s, in the Merl Plaza off Roosevelt Road at 111 E. Roosevelt Rd., Lombard, is open 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday. Phone 708-691-8868.
