(cars honking) - [Narrator] Chicagoans have always loved cheap, handheld meals bursting with flavor.

And as the city grew, people from different cultural backgrounds turned out culinary creations of their own.

- Chicago's got a lot of sandwiches with interesting names.

- [Narrator] Like the Jibarito, a sandwich invented in the city's West Side Puerto Rican community.

- A Jibarito is the most extraordinary sandwich ever created.

- [Narrator] Local restaurant owner, Juan Figueroa, had run out of bread, but he had plenty of plantains on hand.

- Oh, plenty of plantain, bro.

We grow plantains and bananas like crazy.

- But instead of bread, you use green plantains that are fried, smashed, deep fried again as your bread.

And then they take the most luscious pulled pork, and then a garlicy mayo, tomatoes, lettuce, and then just the right amount of melty American cheese.

And then they smush that all together.

Delicious.

- [Narrator] And then there's the gyro sandwich, invented in Chicago in the 1920s.

50 years later, Greeks in Chicago were the first to mass produce gyros.

- What we did in Chicago is we created the first pre-formed, pre-cooked shippable gyros by basically taking all of that meat and spices and fat that could be poured into a cone and then sent out pretty much precooked.

That's why you still find all the top gyros manufacturers in the Chicago suburbs, and they make this stuff for everybody in the nation.

- [Narrator] And South Siders took this Greek favorite to another level by combining gyros with two kinds of beef to create a Chicago original with a unique name, the Jim Shoe.

- You've got the Jim Shoe, which is gyros, Italian beef, and corned beef, often griddled and chopped up on a bun.

Served with, you can never say tzatziki, you have to say gyro sauce.

'Cause this is a South Side sandwich, and that's how you say it on South Side, gyro sauce.

- [Narrator] Mexicans also brought their sandwiches or tortas to Chicago, but it was the taco that captured the city's heart.

It's easy to find them all over town, from food trucks to high-end restaurants and everywhere in between.

- It's crazy how the American public totally adopted tacos, it's like anytime is a good time for tacos, which they're not wrong.

It's a celebration of three things in a taco.

It's the corn tortilla.

Corn's like the center point of our cuisine.

Really, our culture revolves so much around it.

And then we have meat.

On the streets, normally all we see, meat being celebrated, right?

And then it's salsa.

The tortilla, the protein, the salsa.

That's all you need for a good taco.

- [Narrator] Mexican immigrants who first came to Chicago in the 1920s found work in factories, not in restaurants.

They cooked their family recipes at home, trying to recapture the spicy complex flavors they loved from Mexico.

- I'm going to make pozole the way my mother made pozole to take away a little bit of that homesickness and then be like, this is our home now.

- [Narrator] Surprisingly, most Chicagoans had never had a taste of authentic Mexican food.

- The only thing that was really known in Chicago was Tex-Mex kind of food.

- [Narrator] Like chili con carne, a spicy stew made with chili peppers, beans and meat.

It was introduced to the city at the 1893 World's Fair when it was served at a chili stand in the Texas building.

- My first experience with chili con carne was actually in Spanish class.

"What did you have for dinner yesterday?"

"Oh, well, Javier had chili con carne."

And I would be like, "What is chili con carne?"

You know?

- [Narrator] People loved it.

Soon the city was filled with chili parlors and chili was piled on top of everything from hot dogs to mac and cheese.

The traditional tamale, on the other hand, is an authentic Mexican favorite.

It has a filling inside of corn dough, then steamed in a corn husk.

A common street food in Chicago, it was anything but in Mexico.

- Tamales are normally for celebrations.

Takes a lot of work to make, and most of the time when you're making them too, like you involve the whole family.

- [Narrator] Chicago's talent for mass producing food items led to the creation of a tamale unknown anywhere else in the world.

- These kind of red hot tamales are not an authentic, you know, Oaxacan style tamale wrapped in a corn husk.

- It's the extruded tamale they push through a machine, so there's a filling, and then the cornmeal wrapped around it.

So when it comes out, it's got that perfect filling right in the middle of it.

- They definitely were catering to the American palate, because you're like, "Well, what sells?

What are people really liking?"

- [Narrator] The Chicago style tamales are so warm out of the same hot water bath used to heat hot dogs.

- I would not wanna get one of those if I wanted a (indistinct).

- I think they taste good.

I mean, they don't taste like anything I've ever had in Mexico.

- [Narrator] Today, the regional richness of Mexican cuisine is enjoyed by the entire city, in some of Chicago's most celebrated dining destinations.

- I'm a chef owner of Mi Tocaya Antojeria.

It's a style of restaurants that revolves around food that you ate at your home.

- We were trying to represent as best we could, the regional Foods of Mexico.

All these different moles and preparations, all cuisines are constantly in flux.

And out of those kinds of adjustments oftentimes comes really wonderful things.

They show the ingenuity and the flavor profile of the homeland.