Overview

According to owner Kurt Schmeisser, “guys who grill” are the main clientele at this venerable meatatorium in Niles. Schmeisser’s is old-school to its core: it makes its own sausages—frankfurters, beef sticks, smoked Thuringers, knackwurst—from the trimmings of the prime beef and top-quality pork and veal that are all butchered on premises from hanging sides.

Schmeisser, the business’s principal Wurstmacher, learned the trade at the knee of his grandfather, a butcher from Germany who worked in Chicago’s fabled stockyards and opened the store in 1951.