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June 29, 2007

Viewing Pleasure: A Reasonable Justification For Going To McD's...


...is submitting your drive-thru order in verse. And by verse, we mean freestyle rapping. And by freestyle, we mean over your friend's beatbox. So you listen for thirty seconds and think, well, this is alright, but why does it have 7.4 million views and almost ten thousand comments? Because of parts two and three. And the interstitial dialog. The last line is also classic - all fries should be crispy. Just like your weekend.

[YouTube, Fast Food Freestyle, by Brt9003]

Opening: Punta Cana

There are not a lot of Dominican restaurants in Chicago. Puerto Rican, sure. Pan-Latin American and Latin American fusion? A dime a dozen. But for apparently pretty tasty Dominican fare, consider yourself confined to Punta Cana, the restaurant that slipped into Rudy's Taste's old slot in Ukrainian Village. Actually, Dominican food is a lot like what's served in Puerto Rico and other neighboring countries, but a little milder in spicing. While the restaurant offers non-traditionally Dominican food like chips and salsa and empanadas (a lack of confidence, maybe), you can get red snapper or king fish in coconut sauce ($14 and $11, respectively), oxtail in red sauce ($11), or jumbo shrimp in adobo sauce ($12) and feel like you were in Eastern Hispanola - or at least Washington Heights in New York.

Punta Cana [MenuPages]
Punta Cana – (sort of) new Dominican [LTHForum]

Breaking: MenuPages Chicago Blog Now On MenuPages Chicago Site!

This doesn't affect any of you loyal readers directly, but it's important to us, so we're posting about it anyway. Starting this morning, a live blog feed can be found on the MenuPages Chicago homepage, just below the big map. Suddenly, we are not only reachable from Google and the various Chicago food blogs that have us in their blogroll (and we love you for it!), and for a select few of you, via an RSS feed...now, everyone must embrace us! It is a bold day for MenuPages.

And for those of you just joining in, welcome! We're here to regale you with tales of restaurant openings, special drinking events, meta-reviews, food porn and news analysis. A quarter of the time you'll laugh, another quarter, heavy scowling, and the rest of the time, indifference. But that's a pretty good ratio of emotional responses. Tune in whenever you want; we're always here.

FYI: Old News Rears Its Ugly Head

• Is there some kind of Taste happening today? [Sun-Times]
• Seafood from China now has to be inspected [NYTimes]
• More killer veggies; this time, for kids! [Reuters]
• It's almost 7/4, so you should be paying attn to hot dogs [NYTimes]
• 5% of Americans have food allergies, are crybabies [SciAm]

June 28, 2007

A New Low For Everyone Involved

donald.jpg This is better than YouTube. Two words: Trump Steaks. Be sure you have your headphones on, because the first line is the money shot. Suffice it to say, we're giving up meat. Except maybe for a marbled prime rib of Donald.

One more thing: when DT says "Trump steaks are the greatest steaks in the world, and I mean that in every sense of the word," do you think he spent time trying to construct a sentence that is utterly devoid of meaning? This guy has set up a parody-proof persona.

Photo and link, Trump Steaks [Official Site]

Rock The TOC: Crust, Vella, Suburbs

We were sort of surprised to see reviews for Crust and Vella Cafe in this week's Time Out, because...we would have thought they would have shown up a long time ago. Not that TOC isn't totally on top of the latest hot restaurants, but maybe we're just so jaded and forgetful that we can't tell one Crust or Vella article from another. That's because we've processed thousands of them. Including our own. But let's say these new ones are the final words on the subjects, shall we? It's time to move on. Heather Shouse likes Vella in practice as much as she did in theory, and David Tamarkin concludes that Crust doesn't rise above the facticity of its organicness (which isn't to say the food isn't good, because it is).

In a much more compelling feature, the two writers team up to deliver a rundown of the best dishes in the 'burbs. Should you wish to get off your fat, lazy ass, now you know where to go and what to eat! And you get to keep being lazy, albeit intellectually.

For some reason, three bakeries opened in Wicker Park within a few blocks of each other. Quentin Tarantino can make the movie, and there will be blood-flecked flour everywhere! But it will be organic.

Touring The Tribune: Helen's, Vice, & Ambria

Today is a busy day at MPHQ, so we're going to keep this brief. A big chunk of today's Tribune food section is devoted to mourning Ambria, which is closing at the end of the month. Glenn Jeffers interviews executive chef Gabino Sotelino, who'd helmed the institution for twenty seven years. Highlight: "I raised [Ambria] like I would raise a child."

turkeyleg.jpg Trine Tsouderos heads down to Helen's Restaurant on 79th Street, and calls it one of Chicago's best soul food establishments. That's pretty serious! Note to you Tastegoers: Helen's provides the festival's turkey legs. Oh, and speaking of the fest, Phil Vettel has his rundown of must eats this year, and also shares a tremendously personal insight (but you have to read it to find out!)

Also, Monica Eng indulges in Vice, Vivo's new late night caviar lounge. But that's old news.

[Photo: A turkey leg: Holen One Farms]

Imbibing: Bora Bora Night @ Ben Pao

Bora-Bora.jpg Channeling one of America's more enjoyable 50's clichés, Ben Pao is putting on a three part "Passport to the South Pacific" cocktail and appetizer reception, and the first part, Bora Bora, is tonight starting at 6pm. This doesn't benefit the inhabitants of South Pacific islands that are threatened by rising sea levels or anything - it's straight up money for LEYE. Nevertheless, for $30 all inclusive, you get beer and cocktails (Malibu rum and Stoli vodka - totally evocative of the South Pacific, right?), and a whole slew of passed appetizers. These include: island beef sticks, sugar cane shrimp skewers, pork and pineapple sticks, duck and mango roti, tiki roll with shrimp and scallops (there's that tiki!), and tamarind grilled scallops, among others. The restaurants executive chef, Jim Hoveke, will also be doing a cooking demo, which probably constitutes the evening's raison d'etre. Anyway, it's cheaper than flying out to French Polynesia - we couldn't even find a flight, in the two minutes we spent looking for one.

Ben Pao [MenuPages]
Ben Pao [Official Site]

[Photo: Bora Bora, kaboodle]

FYI: Paris Eats Herself, With Apologies

• Non-local sore loser whiny about McPier decision [Tribune]
• China short-sightedly "guarantees" safety of its exports [Boston Globe]
• Paris tells King that prison food was "horrible" [NZHerald]
• Paris, home from the wars, thrilled to have "real" food again [News24]
• Paris's used dog food can on eBay for $1.5m; tainted, maybe? [Forbes]

June 27, 2007

Worth A Skimming: Endless Complaining About Food Issues

Man, people who love food also love to bitch about it. And everything else, for that matter. We think it has to do with the highs and lows of food-related dopamine addiction. Or maybe it's just general erudition that stems from keeping track of fifty different ethnic cuisines. More likely, it's none of these things. At any rate, the Internet has lately been full of food-related screeds. Here's a sampling:

• Congressional ethanol targets. There's not enough corn in America! warns the author. Maybe we should start processing the tea in China. ["The Great Corn Con," Slate]

• The dilution of the meaning of chocolate, via cheap substitutes to cocoa butter and governmental complicity. Many have addressed this issue before (including us, responding to the Sun-Times, back at the beginning of May), but never before in the Op-Ed pages of the Times ["Chocolate Fake," NYTimes]

• The lack of serviceable Cambodian food in the United States. A niche issue, but an important one: it's a damn fine national cuisine, and its due its day in the sun. Proves that Salon will run anything that's four pages long. ["Will Cambodian food ever catch on in America?" Salon]

Unfortunately, we agree with every single one of these articles. Did you think we wouldn't?

The Two Greatest Words In The English Language: De Fault!

So as everyone knows by now, the heretofore unstoppable champion eating machine, a.k.a. Takeru Kobayash, has been struck with a case of acute, sudden onset temporomandibular arthrosis, this according to a rough translation from his website. lips.jpg Basically, the guy can't open his mouth bigger than, oh, the size of an American nickel (blender? straw?). The timing of this misfortune, a mere week and a half before the July 4th hot dog eating contest on Coney Island, smells of foul play (and fetid hot dog juice). We noted the unexpected nationalist fervor we felt when we reported that American contender Joey Chestnut had beaten the world (and Kobayashi's) record in hot dog consumption. At the time, we speculated that Chestnut had a good shot at taking the title this year. Clearly, our government didn't want to take any chances, so they sent a spy to Japan to stick a rusty nail into the bottom of Kobayashi's foot while he was asleep. Well, guess what? Now, Chestnut's win is going to have an asterisk next to it, and we all know what that means. Shame. Deep, abiding shame.

Takeru Kobayashi [Wikipedia]
Temporomandibular Arthrosis [CancerWeb]
Takeru Kobayashi [Official Site]
2007 Hot Dog Contest [Nathan's Famous]

[Photo: What Kobayashi looks like right now, Girl Watching]

Saluting The Sun-Times: Rick Bayless, Sura, Hot Diggity Dog

And that's only the beginning! This week's edition is crammed with interesting features; aside from the ones we mentioned in the title, there's also the Taste Of Chicago, hot new salts and peppers, eggplants, rices, and partridge and a pear tree (no, but that is a servable dish, wouldn't you say?). To the material:

Sandy Thorn Clark writes a mash note to Ricky, who thoroughly deserves it. Everyone loves the man, and everyone loves his restaurants. He comes off as being humble and down-to-earth because he actually is both of those things. Not many other celebrity chef has pulled off Bayless's angelic image. Plus, he's down with the Radish Festival in Oaxaca, which is pretty hip in our book.

Speaking of lovin', Denise O'Neal writes an unwaveringly positive review of Sura, the like of which we've never seen before. Well, we're glad she enjoyed herself.

The final loving profile belongs to Joe Marisco of Hot Diggity Dog, serving just plain good Chicago-style hot dogs (and why not) in Streeterville to legions of tourists and regulars alike. The key to success? Remembering your customer's orders, and keeping up with the rent.

So, Taste of Chicago is almost upon us, and the S-T wants us all to know about the Dominick's Cooking Corner, where all sorts of demonstrations will be occurring during the festival. You can read for yourself what's going to be happening there (we can't do everything for you), but hint: Alpana Singh is involved. So now you'll go, right?

Retractions, Redactions, And Apologies

contrite Goya_Peter.jpg We come to you with a contrite countenance and doleful eyes, hoping we'll one day win back our credibility with you, should you ever deign to forgive us the grievous sin we committed yesterday morning. Do you remember when we suggested that you ought to take an architectural booze cruise on the Chicago River? Well, in our enthusiasm, we neglected to realize that the damn thing is happening today, not yesterday. To any of you who lined up at the Wrigley Building last evening (yeah, right), we offer you our sincerest condolences. Wait, that's not right. Eh, it's sort of right, but also, we're sorry. We should have been paying better attention.

Two bright spots: 1) You can still do the boat ride if you want to! 2) We got two posts out of it. Ha!

[Photo: St. Peter Repentant, Goya, 1823-25, Wikimedia]

FYI: Governments Acting Counterintuitively

• U.S. emergency food aid budget increases dramatically [ABCNews]
• Use of industrials chems. close 180 Chinese food factories [IHT]
• All the summer beverage ideas you can handle, plus anecdotes [NYTimes]
• Product-sponsored mayo TV show slinks onto Yahoo Food [WSJ]
• Indonesia VP condones use of marijuana as food spice... [Reuters]

June 26, 2007

Viewing Pleasure: Roasted Beet Salad @ Sola

sola beets.jpg

Wow, this is impressive. Did you know you could do this with beets? It's not end-of-the-world creative, but it definitely took someone whose left brain is as active as their right to generate and execute this concept. The salad, which sola serves with cumin seeds and blood orange vinaigrette ($7), cannot shock the palate, but it certainly delights the Cartesian in all of us. This is the sort of dish that makes us happy that restaurants exist - yo momma ain't gonna crimp beet squares for you.

sola [MenuPages]
sola [Official Site]

[Photo: knocking another one out of the park, zesmerelda/flickr]

Opening: Chaise Lounge

chaise.jpg

Dedicated readers know that we have a thing for restaurant names, and the newest New American in Wicker Park, Chaise Lounge, is no exception. That's definitely the cleverest lounge name we've heard in a while - nothing endears us quite like a pun. It means that they don't take themselves too seriously, a crime committed by virtually every other so-called "lounge" in Chicago.

The food, however, is quite serious. Chef Isaac Holzwarth (formerly of RL) has designed a menu for people who live to eat more than who live for the scene. We're talking pan-seared rainbow trout four ways (Veronique, Meuniere, Provencale, Lyonnaise), your choice for $12.50. We're also talking roast venison with an apple cider reduction, chestnut cipollini & raisin relish for $14. That's no joke! Even the heirloom tomato salad with candied fennel and crispy sweet onions for $10.25 is more than a step above necessary.

Chaise is also serving brunch, and they're open til the wee hours (2am on Sun-Fri, 3am on Sat). Also, they have a roof deck. Roof deck! Yeah, this is where it's at right now.

Chaise Lounge [MenuPages]
Chaise Lounge [Official Site]

[Photo: Le Corbusier's iconic chaise lounge, Treadway/Toomey Galleries]

Best Of MenuPages Reviews: Unexpected Delights

We may not do reviews at MenuPages, but our legions of users are all over that. Here are three of interest

One common type of user review that come into MenuPages is of the form, "I had made an assumption about restaurant x, and I was wrong," or its cousin "you might believe one thing about restaurant x, but the other is true." Basically, upending a preconceived notion, real or imagined. Here are three examples from last week of the genre: On June 20th, "michelle" wrote in on her revelations about Osaka:
I love sushi and have been to a few places since I moved here, and all were ok, but not worth the price. I work near Osaka and never looked twice at it, until a friend told me to check it out. It's the best sushi I've had in Chicago by far. It's always very fresh and not expensive! Not for dining in as the place is small, but perfect for takeout. The smoothies are awesome too.
The lesson about not judging a book by its cover evidently applies to restaurants, too. Although the fact is, you usually can judge a book by its cover, because publishers use a variety of semiotic clues in the book jacket to grab the attention of the appropriate readership.
* * *

Later that day "Betty" chimed in with a shill paean to Anteprima:
We thought it would be just another Italian Restaurant in our favorite area, Andersonville in Edgewater. It all depends on what you want. If it's pizza or lasagne - forget it. If it's to be like going through the Italian countryside, then this is it. We were brought up to the minute on this delicious food by the owner, Marty Fosse, and he knows his stuff. Sauces and unusual side dishes make this above average. It is also beautiful and there is the most lovely back garden to dine in for summer faire. Glorious. Great wines, too.
The upturned assumption in this review is more a rhetorical device than a genuine surprise for the reviewer. We don't like it when a reviewer drops the owner's name in the review, but since the review fits in to this week's theme, we're letting it slide.
* * *

On June 22nd, "TS-000" (which is an awesome pseudonym, by the way) submitted a hot tip about sleeper That's-A-Burger:
I have lived near this restaraunt for years and never knew it existed until this year. The burgers are absolutely the best!!! They are HOMEMADE HANDMADE REAL BURGERS. To my understanding there is a couple who runs the place and EVERYTHING is cooked to order which is what I love most. Believe you me the wait is definately worth it!!! The prices are great for the freshness of the food and I have never had a complaint. I hope their doors stay open for many more years to come.
Yes! Now that's genuinely helpful, at least from a foodie perspective. Please, reviewers, continue to challenge the assumptions of the MenuPages community!

Osaka [MenuPages]
Anteprima [MenuPages]
That's-A-Burger [MenuPages]

Imbibing: Wine On A Boat

Have you ever taken one of those Chicago River architectural tours? It's certainly true that there's a beautiful array of buildings situated along Chicago's waterways...but the tours are, like, two hours long, and unless you are a serious student of architecture, your attention might tend to wane a bit. merch mart.jpg Eventually, the buildings start to blend together. Why not make them blend a little faster by combining your tour with a wine tasting?! Wendella Boats is offering a wine tasting cruise tonight, plying the river for its architectural gems, and you with a variety of wines from Kafka Wine Company. The tour, which pushes off from the base of the Wrigley Building at 5:45pm, costs $57 and includes hors d'oeuvres from Buca Di Beppo, a sampling of olive oils from Ta-Ze Olives & Olive Oil Boutique, and a complimentary glass of wine. To get the full tasting, you evidently need to go a la carte - a little tacky, but what did you expect. Anyway, we imagine it'd make a nice date, if you're into that sort of thing.

Wine Tasting Cruises [Wendella Boats]
Wine Tasting Architectural Boat Tour [LocalWineEvents]
Kafka Wine Company [Official Site]
Buca Di Beppo [MenuPages]
Buca Di Beppo [Official Site]

[Photo: Merch Mart from the river, Wendalla]

FYI: Huffing And Puffing For P.R.

• Aramark suing Schaumburg Professional Baseball...hahaha! [Daily Herald]
• Conventional grocery not as doomed as they want you to think [NYTimes]
• China noisily rejects U.S. food imports with bacteria [IHT]
• FG has these weird proteins that might be bad in huge quantities [Tribune]
• Fundraising: Obama @ Fulton's On the River, Clinton @ Palmer House [Pantagraph]

June 25, 2007

The First Step Is Admitting You Have A Problem

Now, we know that Bill Daley's wine column in the Tribune is about helping people with their alcohol issues, but sometimes, the issues are issues, and that's where we come in. Take, for example, the first question in yesterday's column:
Q. On an average evening I probably imbibe three or four glasses of wine (mostly white) without any feeling of intoxication ... just a need to relax and sleep. However, I've noticed lately the alcohol content in some of the popularly priced wines has grown to 13 or 13.5 percent. Therefore, can you suggest several 12 to 12.5 percent wines that don't come in half-gallon jugs?
Daley's answer, while noting that the quantitative differences between a 25-proof wine and a 27-proof wine are minimal, dances around the real issue at hand: the questioner's incipient alcoholism. Oh, this may be alluded to in the column's title ("12 percent solution won't help much"), but it's not really Daley's place to moralize.

Fortunately, we have no such compunctions. If you're drinking a bottle of wine every night to chill out and you claim you can't feel the effects of the booze anymore, something is wrong. Yeah, you're not drinking half pints of domestic vodka before work every morning, but you're heavily habituated to alcohol and you're not doing your liver any favors, either. You may be able to sustain this level of addiction indefinitely, but you'd almost certainly be better off without the sauce. Maybe switch to pills! And if nothing else, give in and buy the jugs - they're much cheaper.

12 percent solution won't help much [Tribune]

Blog Reviews: Week Of The Rise & Fall Of Daylight

Chicago's intrepid food bloggers were all over the damn place last week, in alphabetical order by restaurant:

chicago sunset.jpg

• Excellent, if occasionally uneven food at Avenue M, where the service is hip and impeccable [Olive & Mason]

• Unique and crusty pizza at Coalfire lives up to the considerable hype [Eat Chicago]

• A soft dinner (read: you're not invited) at La Pomme Rouge shows off the sophisticated lounge's sophisticated new American/new French smallish plate menu, which is still being perfected and readied for release [Stew]

• Even though Ole Lounge looks and feels like it's more about style than substance, the tapas is actually some of the best around [Chicagoist]

• The mini-burger at Poag Mahone's falls short of interesting, although it is at least in the realm of the edible. A little overpriced, too [Chicago Burger Project]

• Newly opened lounge Vice is a pretty good deal for some late night heavy snacking, or indulging your caviar tooth [Stew]

[Photo: earnshavian/flickr]

Opening: Al Primo Cantino

If we said to you, AYCE table service Brazilian-influenced Italian family-style dining for $29.95 in Edgebrook, would you have any idea what we were talking about? That's okay; it took us a while to understand what was going on, too. The restaurant in question is called Al Primo Canto, and it opened last Friday up on Devon and Central, where there are very few similarly ambitious restaurants. The deal is, everybody gets the $29.95 package, which includes any amount of several appetizers, pastas, meat dishes and sides, brought to the table roughly in order, with additional helpings on request.

The dishes sounds rather Italian, but with a twist: Eggplant Caponatto (roasted eggplant with tahini paste, lemon and garlic, finished with extra virgin olive oil) has the unexpected element of tahini; spaghettini Funghi (forest mushroom sauce finished with a demi-glace Madeira wine sauce and shallots) is made with Madeira wine; chicken marinated in white wine, fresh garlic, oregano, sage, extra virgin olive oil, gaucho style rotisserie over natural wood charcoal raises eyebrows with its "gaucho" appelation. Well, all these eccentricities belong to the Portugeue/Brazilian pantry, especially the conceit that all the meat dishes (aside from chicken, beef and lamb are served) are cooked over natural wood charcoal.

Anyway, you're starting to get the picture of what's happening. The restaurant has a full bar and a half dozen desserts, which are extra. The restaurant is planning brunch service in the coming weeks, and maybe lunch, too. stevez of LTHForum paid a visit over the weekend and generally enjoyed himself, despite some forgivable errors as the kitchen gears up. But the service was excellent, and there's nothing else quite like it in Chicagoland (that we know about), so give it a whirl. A veritable road trip, all within the city limits.

Al Primo Canto [MenuPages]
Brazil Comes to Edgebrook [LTHForum]

$150 Later: Taste Of The Nation Comes To Chicago

Hey, want to do something right by America's hungry children while reveling in the gustatory excesses of a corporatized benefit gala tonight? Well, you're in luck - Taste of the Nation 2007 is in town at the River East Art Center from 5:30pm to 9pm. For $150, you and a guest (who must also pay $150) can sample drinks and snacks whipped up by 30 chefs and 20 mixologists of local reknown. Participating restaurants include newcomers like Aigre Doux Restaurant & Bakery, Alhambra Palace and Crust, so you can taste what all the fuss is about. And if that's not enough, there will be a series of auctions that also benefit the cause. Last year, the event raised $100k, which was granted out to local food charities and educational programs, so your ticket is totally tax deductible. To make it happen, call Pam Gross at 312-972-4347, since online ticket sales have long since ended.

Taste of the Nation - Chicago (1) [Official Site]
Taste of the Nation - Chicago (2) [Official Site]
(Why two links? The site is poorly organized; what else is new)

FYI: Accepting & Rejecting Responsibility

• Logan Sq farmers market to take food stamps; yes! [Tribune]
• Europe sel"fish"ly eating up Atlantic tuna stock [NYTimes]
• SF says "non, merci" to plastic grocery bags [Tribune]
• Moscow, of all places, implements GM labeling scheme [SciAm]
• Wisc. farmers disown rising food prices [Wisc. Radio Network]

June 22, 2007

Is The World Ready For Lady Lakshmi?

Padma_Lakshmi.jpg Padma Lakshmi, the carefully calibrated co-host of Top Chef, is a reasonably amiable player, best known for being hot, and also for being Salman Rushdie's wife (something about writing cookbooks, too). Well, you had better start paying her a little more respect: Rushdie was knighted a week ago, and because of the way that the honorific works, Bravo is now the proud owner of Lady Padma Lakshmi. Let's hope that at least one chef-testant acknowledges this during the show, hopefully with a curtsey or bow (or both). Enjoy your weekend.

Top Chef [Official Site]
Rushdie knighted in honours list [BBCNews]
Knight [Wikipedia]

[Photo: That's Lady Bangin' to you, MyClassicLyrics]

Repeating The Reader: Delightful Pastries

No, that's not just the Reader's opinion; it's the name of the Polish-influenced bakery up on Lawrence and Austin, where chef/owner Dobra Bielinski churns out classic Eastern and Central European confections with American sensibilities. Alan Mammoser's piece on Delightful Pastries has more than its share of highlights. First of all, Bielinski has a Master's degree in foreign policy and decided to get into baking after spending a year at the Sorbonne. That's awesome! Second, the baked goods have less sugar than is normal in America, but more filling (fruit, cheese, etc.) than is normal in Europe - finally, someone paid attention to what is right in the world! Third, the stuff is way boozy: an ambassador tart is made with 95-proof grain alcohol, and the mocha butter cream, which goes on sponge cake, uses a liter of alcohol for every two dozen slices. And if that's not enough, we'll have the menu for you on Monday; something to look forward to.

The Polish Patisserie [Reader]

Deal Of The Day: AYCE Pancakes @ Bakers Square

bakers square gas.jpg Have you ever eaten at a Bakers Square? Us either, but it's evidently some sort of American casual chain with an emphasis on pies. They have locations all over the Upper Midwest and California, and three just inside Chicago's northern and western city limits.

Anyway, they're running a "Gas Relief" promotion (yeah, we thought "Maalox?" too), which entails AYCE pancakes for the price you paid for a gallon of gas. The promotion is ostensibly supposed to ease the pain at the pump, although the deal's structure perversely forces customers who pay more for gas to also pay more for pancakes. Either way, AYCE pancakes for under $3.50 is a pretty good value.

Bakers Square Gas Relief Promotion [Official Site]

[Photo: Bakers Square]

New! Brunch @ Green Zebra

green zebra1.jpg Vegetarians and aesthetes in general, listen up: there's a new brunch option for you in the Ukie Village vicinity, and it's called Green Zebra. Yes, one of Chicago's premiere vegetarian small plate destinations has just launched a brunch menu, replete with the local and seasonal ingredients one expects of GZ. The brunch dishes are not quite as fashion forward as the dinner offerings, but are still rather fancier than your average brunch fare. You have your standard Anson Mills grits with Southern greens, smoked mushrooms and poached eggs for $10 and challah French toast with black pepper and strawberries for $9 (black pepper? really?), but the fennel soup with candied Meyer lemon ($5!) for brunch is probably unique to GZ. And if anyone can do a caramelized vegetable hash with roasted tomato vinaigrette over baked eggs ($10) well, it's these people. Overall, a welcome addition to the scene.

P.S. They're offering five special cocktails with brunch, including the funny-sounding Bubbly Herb with mint and sparkling wine, for $8.

Green Zebra [MenuPages]
Green Zebra [Official Site]

[Photo: the interior, Green Zebra]

FYI: Status Quo Under Fire

• Farm bill battle heating up in Congress [NYTimes]
• Bob Evans (of Bob Evans fame) dies at 89(!) [CNBC]
• Sbux continues march toward middle with lunch salads [Tribune]
• Malaysia puts the kibosh on fast food ads for kids [NSTimes]
• Owner of Captain's Hard Time in Chatam wins nat'l award [ABC7Chicago]

June 21, 2007

Viewing Pleasure: Walleye Pike Sandwich @ Southport Cafe

walleye pike.jpg

Last time we did a viewing at Southport Grocery & Cafe, it was of a gorgeous biscotti on a cup of coffee. Well, we're upping the ante a bit with this walleye pike sandwich, added to the menu just a few weeks ago (it replaced the cod). The pike is seared, and served on toasted challah with tomato and cabbage slaw, and it goes for $10. Clearly they're not skimping on the fish, which looks tender, flaky, juicy and crispy all at once. The bacon appears to be of optimal thickness, texture and color. The slaw adds the fourth and final crunch, this time of pickled vegetable. The tomato will lighten things on the palette a bit, and the creamy mayonnaise ties all the ingredients together. Simply marvelous, isn't it?

Southport Grocery & Cafe [MenuPages]
Southport Grocery & Cafe [Official Site]

[Photo: Elizabeth L./flickr]

Traipsing Through TOC: Ice Cream! Y Delicioso Y Sabroso

This week's TOC screams for ice cream, with articles on homemade ice cream flights at sola, locally made root beer for your float, stout milk shakes (ice cream blended with coffee- or chocolate-flavored beers, and they taste good, too), and a run down of the best cheap ice cream maker on the market (hint: don't trust anything built after 1982). We are not ice cream novices, but we found the beer/ice cream milkshake concept to be highly titillating and we want one for lunch tomorrow.

Also on the docket are several recently opened and soon-to-be opened restaurants. David Tamarkin wrote the main review about Delicioso y Sabroso, a Mexican restaurant with a great pedigree (it's helmed by Geno Bahena of Tepatulco), two menus (casual and fine dining; we'll have them soon enough), delicious food (hence the name), and one of the more bizarre locations in recent memory (10468 S Indianapolis Blvd). One gets the sense that Tamarkin finds the restaurant confusing, or at least lacking a raison d'etre.

More hope is held out for African Harambee, a new upscale pan-African restaurant being opened in Rogers Park by the co-owner of Ethiopian Diamond. This is a welcome addition, not just to the neighborhood, but to the American dining scene in general: it's really hard to find African cuisine here that's not Ethiopian or West African, which represent only a fraction of what's eaten on the continent (we are particularly partial to the Swahili pantry).

Top nosh [TOC]
sola [MenuPages]
sola [Official Site]
Bag it [TOC]
The beer geek [TOC]
War of the machines [TOC]
Delicioso y Sabroso [TOC]
Tepatulco [MenuPages]
Tepatulco [Official Site]
African expansion [TOC]
Ethiopian Diamond [MenuPages]

Truncating The Tribune: MK, Sura, Xni-Pec, Organ-o-mania

This week's Trib hits a few hotspots, but first we want to talk about Monica Eng's trend piece usda_organic.jpg on the growth of certified organic restaurants, and the use of organic ingredients in restaurants more generally. Much ink and many bytes have been devoted to describing Crust's certified organic status, including in these pages, but suffice it to say, a restaurateur has to be truly devoted, and frankly militant, to obtain and retain the label. Eng outlines the requirements for certification, which include keeping a "description of how products will be handled and the physical barriers that will be used to ensure organic and non-organic products won't mingle." This sounds an awful lot like keeping Kosher; what's next, two dishwashers? Eng goes on to report that many fine restaurants, in an effort to maximize quality, simply pick the best ingredients available, whether they're organic, local, sustainable, or none of the above. Certification is all well and good and pure and dogmatic, but it's not the only way to do right by the world, or one's body.

Xni-Pec in Cicero may not be certified organic, but people can't seem to separate themselves from its complex and pleasing Yucatecan moles and seafood long enough to complain or notice. Robin Mather Jenkins recommends visiting when time isn't of the essence, and ordering the signature Mayan food rather than the humdrum Mexican dishes on offer.

Meanwhile, in Tablehopping, Phil Vettel still loves mk, and Ms. Eng continues the tradition of coming up with a funny description for Sura's interior ("the set of Woody Allen's 'Sleeper'") and being ambivalent about the food.

Restaurants face challenges going totally organic [Tribune]
Crust [MenuPages]
Yucatecan fare stars in Cicero [Tribune]
Tablehopping [Tribune]
mk [MenuPages]
mk [Official Site]
Sura [MenuPages]
Sura [Official Site]

[Photo: the certificate of organicity, Organic Facts]

Summer Solstice Occurs...Now!

Well, it's 1:06, and the summer solstice just occured here in Chicago (and everywhere else in the northern hemisphere). From here on out, the days will get shorter and darker. Ha!

Opening: Roti

Roti means many things to many people. Sometimes it just refers to the round, flat, flaky bread made in South Asia; other times, like in the West Indies, roti describes a wrap with some variety of meat stew. Roti wrap shops have been spreading across the country's downtowns like wildfire, since wraps are easy to eat for lunch, usually cheap, and can be easily adapted to house the curries common to a wide belt circling the globe just north of the equator.

Well, a branch of the aptly named, Palatine-based Roti has opened in the West Loop with a broad array of largely Middle Eastern and Mediterranean wrap options (protein choices include chicken, steak, salmon, tuna, lamb and chickpea), customizable with a selection of vegetables and sauces. In order to not scare away customers with alien specificity, Roti also offers these things in pitas, on platters, and with salads. While we have a preference for places that serve one thing and do an extremely good job, this cuisine lends itself well to multiple forms of packaging without losing its sense of self. And by that we mean...sometimes we don't even know what we mean. Anyway, if you work around there, get a lamb roti with "very" spicy roti sauce ($8.50, comes with cous cous salad), and tell us it isn't at least interesting and different.

Roti [MenuPages]
Roti [Official Site]

FYI: All This Smacks Of Desperation

• Sweden to privatize Absolut, which is sort of sad [Tribune]
• Taiwan holds food show in bid to retain diplo. recognition [EUX.TV]
• WFP halts Afghan food deliveries after 85 attacks in a year [WP]
• Prison food by Hare Krishna all the rage in Bangalore [Metro UK]
• New twist in Hyde Park Leona's murder: it was for revenge [Tribune]

June 20, 2007

Elsewhere In The Menuniverse: Idiosyncratic Food

No, we're not talking about stereotypical food, like deep dish or Italian beef. We mean...what is created in the deep, unconscious crucible of a city, and when it bubbles to the surface, unmistakably belongs to that city. What that might be in Chicago will have to wait for another day, but consider the following two idiosyncratic foods that our brother blogs MP:Philadelphia and MP:San Francisco highlighted (with photos) today:

• Philadelphia's entrant is brilliant, obvious, disgusting, and clearly Philadelphian, all at once. It's called a "Philly Taco," and consists of a cheesesteak wrapped in a slice of pizza. We're having a Zen moment over it, really we are.

• San Francisco is the birthplace of New American cuisine whether you want to admit it or not, and this photo set of dishes at Brick gives credence to the contention that SF is still very much at the locus (or at least one of the loci). Even though the pictures aren't of the highest quality, the freshness of the ingredients comes through and somehow screams Northern California, and the not-immediately-obvious charms of the dishes tell us this is intended for foodies. Yup, the real deal.

A Balanced Kitchen At Spiaggia

The issue of female executive chefs - their rarity, their relative performance, how they're received - keeps coming up on the blogosphere, no matter how anachronistic the controversy seems. The latest brouhaha was in New York, where restaurateur Keith McNally accused NYTimes Dining critic Frank Bruni of systematically giving bad reviews to restaurants helmed by female chefs (most bloggers came down on this claim as specious).

At any rate, it was nice to see an unneurotic (bordering on somnolescent) interview in NRN with Missy Robbins, executive chef at Spiaggia. Robbins comes off as a nice, pleasant chef working in a nice, pleasant kitchen, churning out nice, pleasant, top-quality Italian cuisine. On gender in the kitchen, Robbins had this to say:
Men and women definitely work differently. You have different skill sets. I worked in only one kitchen where I was the only woman, at my first job. I have close to 40 percent women here. Tony [Mantuano] has had a woman chef for years. I enjoy a balanced kitchen. It’s great to have those differences.
Forty percent! If only the Senate could be that progressive. On another note, she describes Chicago's chef community as "tight" and "supportive," in implicit contrast to the New York Chef community, which is loose and combative. You wanna make sumpin' of it?

Spiaggia [MenuPages]
Spiaggia [Official Site]
Italian spirit at Spiaggia [Nation's Restaurant News]

Surfing The Sun-Times: Fish and Pig Edition

Among all the things that are going to disappear completely in the next 50 years - Social Security, winter, our grandparents, fish - fish is clearly the most tragic. Jennifer Olvera leads the section with a piece on what we can do to slow the disappearance of our favorite seafood items. Sustainable fishing practices would be a good start, for example, and it probably wouldn't hurt to stop heating up our oceans. On the consumer end, get acquainted with what species of fish are sustainably caught, and eat them instead of endangered fish, which seem to have the lion's share of mercury, anyway. Speaking of, did you know that Chicken of the Sea sells cans of Mediterranean yellowtail tuna in olive oil? That company should really change its name; we think it's vulgar, like Taco Bell's "think outside the bun" campaign. Guess what? Tuna and tacos can stand on their own merits without being dumbed down via comparison with chicken and burgers, thank you very much.

But it can't all be about fish, can it. Lisa Donovan reminds us that what people really like is hot dogs, especially at Wrigley and U.S. Cellular, where wieners are #1.

In other news, Hungry Hound Steve Dolinsky roasted a pig to raise money for his son's school. A sly critique of capitalism, perhaps? Probably not - the pig was raised on milk only, injected with garlic, olive oil and white wine, and rubbed down with soy sauce and spices. Four hours later, eighty people "pigged out" on thirty pounds of pork. If we had been there, it would have only fed seventy people, and that's the truth.

Aside from a profile of baker Courtney Dohman and the standard event listings, that about covers it for this week.

Fish For The Future [Sun-Times]
Outta the box [Sun-Times]
No rivalry when it comes to favorites at the ol' ballpark [Sun-Times]
Pig roast, city style [Sun-Times]
Baker revels in sweet life [Sun-Times]

Imbibing: Pinots Noirs @ Park Grill

Okay, so the weather is beautiful and Park Grill is hosting a Pinot Noir tasting tonight from 5:30pm to 7:30pm; pinots noirs.jpg for $35 inclusive, those with reservations will be able to sample wines from top Pinot Noir growing areas like Burgundy, California and Oregon. Not you, though, because it's already booked! Normally, we don't write about booked events, but we have something we want to discuss: the pluralization of Pinot Noir. Obviously, we've already expressed our opinion in the title of this post. Google tells us that "Pinot Noirs" has the edge over "Pinots Noirs" by a huge margin (195k to 17k, or 11.5:1), a ratio that we think mirrors Internet-wide idiocy rates. Actually, that's not fair. Unlike "Attorneys General" or "Whoppers Junior," Pinot Noir is a French term, and when it's pluralized, the adjective "Noir" (black or dark) has to agree with the noun "Pinot," leaving us with the correct "Pinots Noirs." (Incidentally, the number of earnest "Pinots Noir" hits on Google is an insignificant 1170.) Park Grill got it wrong, but obviously that didn't stop patrons from booking solid the tasting. Still, we can at least feel smug in our grammatical superiority, can't we?

Park Grill [MenuPages]
Park Grill [Official Site]

[Photo: Les Pinots Noirs sont arrivés! le Blog du Domaine SAUVAT]

FYI: Old Ideas, New Ideas

• Rich white people win McCormack Pl. food service bid [Tribune]
• Untreated Camembert under fire in France [NYTimes]
• Urban farming goes virtual, vertical [BBC News]
• Biofuel sustainability conf. to convene next month in Chi. [FoodProdDaily]
• Wine pairings via txt msg? You betcha! [TechDigest]

June 19, 2007

Breaking News: Coalfire Has Updated Its Menu!

Yes, readers, you've heard right - after six weeks of operations, Coalfire has reflected on their various successes and tweaked their menu a bit. DON'T WORRRY - they barely changed anything. But we'll give you a rundown, for good measure.

Probably the most significant change is the elimination of five of the nine meat toppings. Ready for some specifics? You can skip this part if you don't care, but hot fennel salami, sopressata, capicolla, meatballs, and peppered salami are no longer offered. Remaining strong are pepperoni, hot Calabrese salami, prosciutto, and Italian sausage. Maybe it was too many options for people, and the economics of offering nine meat toppings just didn't pan out. The calzone lineup changed a little bit, too, although the basic cheese, veggie and meat options are pretty similar to their old incarnations. As for prices, nothing catastrophic: the pesto pizza went up a buck, and the prosciutto rose a whopping forty nine cents.

The change that we found most interesting is the use of fancier language in describing the pizzas and toppings. Consider, for example, the description of the White Pizza on the old menu (mozzarella, ricotta, romano, oregano, basil, black pepper, garlic olive oil) vs. the new menu (mozzarella, ricotta & romano cheeses, fresh basil, garlic infused olive oil, oregano, and fresh ground black pepper). None of the ingredients changed, but the cheeses are now demarcated, and three of the four other ingredients picked up swanky adjectives like "fresh," "ground," and "infused." We think that this format is more appropriate to a restaurant of Coalfire's calibre than a mere list of foodstuffs (even though we're generally fans of literalism). Yup, movin' on up to the West Side.

Coalfire [MenuPages]