Alinea, Grace, Topolobampo, Spiaggia, 42 Grams, Moto and El Ideas: You could eat a different high-end prix fixe meal every night of the week and blow baller amounts of money in Chicago. But the Windy City dining scene isn’t built on opulence alone. The diversity and depth of taquerias, noodle joints, hamburger shacks, BBQ joints and hot dog huts is foundational to our standing as a premiere dining destination. For every caviar-filled mother-of-pearl spoon or seared lobe of foie gras on offer, there’s probably a hundred superlative (under $10) cheap eats just as satisfying. Here’s a guide to a few of the best.

For the last couple of years, the wait outside Au Cheval in Chicago’s West Loop could last up to three hours. Most waiting were in search of a legendary burger dubbed one of the nation’s best, though their patience would also be rewarded with maybe the best hash browns, larded with duck heart gravy, and mille-feuille, anywhere. To combat the lengthy waits, owner Brendan Sodikoff opened a spinoff, a tiny shack aptly named Small Cheval, which serves only the burger ($9.95 with cheese, $8.95 without), fries, shakes and some choice cocktails. The lines are a bit shorter, but the medium-rare burger — dripping with Kraft cheese and an artery-delighting slather of housemade Dijon mustard-spiked aioli — is still just as great. It’s the backyard burger your dad would make if he’d trained at The Culinary Institute of America.

Technically we’re cheating here, as the cost ($12.95) exceeds our cap of $10, however, the UFO-sized circle of sesame seed-studded bread overflowing with sliced-to-order mortadella, salami, capicola, and olive salad at Rosie's Sidekick is so massive, it will feed two people. If you’ve ever had the original muffuletta at Central Grocery in New Orleans, you’ll appreciate the version from Rosie’s (ask them to hold the balsamic drizzle), which is best held for a few hours before eating, so the briny olive oil juice soaks in to the bread and marinates it.

Often when people are scarfing down a gyro, they are doing it on the run or after a night of debauchery. Occasionally, though, a gyro is thoughtfully crafted to deserve proper recognition, thanks to whole cuts of freshly butchered meat, salted, cured and marinated carefully, then carved off a flame-roasted spit. Enter Jimmy Bannos Jr. and his Piggie Smalls with the throwback gyro, a much closer cousin to the turkish doner kebab than the commodity food-service gyro. The pork gyro ($7.99) in particular is incredibly juicy. Dripping in a creamy tzatziki, the gyros richness is cut with onion and tomato and tangy banana peppers.