Schaumburg-area sandwich shop makes Yelp’s list of nation’s 100 best

Finuccio & Sons, just outside Schaumburg, is among only three Illinois eateries to make Yelp’s list of the nation’s top 100 sandwich shops for 2025.

The secret weapon of the only suburban eatery to make the list? The always fresh homemade bread, owner Fino D’Agostaro of Palatine said.

“We do everything from scratch,” he added. “That’s a huge thing. I knew I had to do something different to stand out. You have to come in with something special and carve out your niche. If you say it’s homemade, you actually have to make it.”

Standing at 76 on the Yelp list, Finuccio & Sons’ only fellow Illinoisans are the Chicago shops Omarcitos Latin Cafe at 36 and 11 Degrees North at 62.

D’Agostaro said he had no advance warning of the list or his consideration for it, but figured his Yelp review score of 4.9 on a 5-point scale had something to do with it.

The list explains its methodology as ranking businesses identified in the sandwich category on Yelp with multiple factors including the volume and rating of their reviews.

When he and his family opened the shop at 1612 E. Algonquin Road in unincorporated Cook County in January 2020, D’Agostaro’s high ambitions for quality were based just on a desire to compete effectively in the area.

But he now believes they helped the business overcome the major challenge of the pandemic and such smaller but still significant ones as nearby road construction and inflation.

D’Agostaro sees his business’s place on the Yelp list as validation of all that’s been done over the past five and a half years.

“It speaks highly for the work that everyone does here,” he said. “For us, it’s a humbling thing. We appreciate every customer that comes in here.”