Carms Beef Hamburger Review: Grabbing a Bite to Eat in the Tri-Taylor Area

Carms Beef

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1057 W Polk St
(between Aberdeen St & Carpenter St)
Chicago, IL 60607

Quick Review: Carms is a great place to get a quick, cheap, good tasting Chicago hamburger burger joint. It’s been a neighborhood favorite for decades for a reason. I occasionally go there often on my lunch break.

Long Review: I occasionally stop by Carms every so often to grab a burger for lunch. They have very good burgers that will fill you up. Like any burger joint the atmosphere is laid back and informal. The crowd consists of construction workers, police officers, college students from near by UIC and just about any other neighborhood character you can think of.

This place has been standing on the corner for decades (since the 1930‘s if I remember correctly) and has been serving up great burgers ever since.

Though, the service can sometimes be a bit slow during the lunch rush or sometimes it seems like the cashier or a server is being short with you (their not, their just trying to juggle multiple orders and keep the line moving) service is pretty good and friendly when there are lulls. Here’s the typical service you can expect.

Cashier- “What y’ll have?”
Customer- “Double chessebuger, fries and Pip”
Cashier- “Double cheeseburger, fries and a Pip?”
Customer- “Yeah.”
Cashier- “$4.50.”

Pretty typical exchange and nothing out of the ordinary. Though don’t hold up the line, that is a pet peeve with any fast food server. Especially if they have a lot of attitude. Place your order, if your taking it to go step out of the way of the other customers and wait at the counter. If your eating it there, claim a seat at the counter at the wall and pay attention to the servers. They usually will ask you questions like what you want on your burger or if it is for here or to go (sometimes they forget when juggling multiple orders during high volume times and can only remember so much at one time). When you order is ready they usually won’t say the full order, but will call out “burger with fries” or “”burgers” if you ordered more than one.

This can be confusing as many people there are getting the same thing and may seem confusing to you, but they’ll remember who ordered what and you can rest assured they won’t hand your order away to someone else. I’ve done this in confused stupor and went up to the counter for someone else’s order, thankfully the sharp server swatted me away and I didn’t screw here up. There’s a lot of subtle nuances for the Carms newbie to grasp but once you do (or even if you don‘t) Carms is a great place for burgers. One of the top burger joints in the area.

4 out of 5 stars