[Photograph: Roger Kamholz]

Is it weird that I get excited over good tuna salad? Not, like, visibly, fist-pumpingly excited—but there's definitely a lot of inner joy happening when I find it. And the Bourgeois Pig Cafe is harboring the good stuff. The tuna salad in its Old Man & the Sea sandwich ($3.95 half/$7.75 whole) has character. You notice it. That cannot be said for many other tuna salads out there.

The BPC blend starts with chunk white Albacore tuna and mixes in minced celery, fresh dill, mayonnaise a secret measurement of minced red onion that clearly has been refined to far past the decimal point. It's perfect, really—just enough to be expressive, but not so much as to overwhelm the herbal hints of dill and bright celery or, worse yet, leave you feeling over-served onion-wise afterward. You know what I'm talking about.

To its simple, delicious tuna salad, BPC adds fresh tomatoes, alfalfa sprouts and lettuce. Everything goes between two slices of hot-damn-that's-fresh multigrain bread. Okay, maybe I did one little fist pump under the table.

Bourgeois Pig Cafe

738 West Fullerton Parkway, Chicago, IL 60614 (map)
773-883-5282
bpigcafe.com