The refashioning of junk foods as slightly more healthful items is nothing new, but recently, we've noticed something extreme happening in the snack world, and we're not sure what to make of it.

We never got the appeal of Snackwells, because we're pros at not watching what we eat, and there are just so many snack-able foods in this world that haven't come out of plastic wrap. That said, the whole class of slightly-less-terrible-for-you snack foods seemed innocent enough if you were really fiendin' for a sugar fix, and we couldn't really condemn their existence.

However, the times? They are a-changing, and there is a whole new frontier beyond Snackwells. The plethora of low-fat or sugar-free prepackaged sweets lining the racks of bodegas is already mind-boggling, but the ways that junk foods can be turned "healthy" does not end there.

Why, just last week, we walked into a drugstore only to be confronted with a "Snickers: Charged" bar, which contains caffeine, taurine, and B-vitamins. B-VITAMINS! In your candy! After the jump: some of the more head-scratching happenings in snack food and beverage offerings across the nation.

In March 2007, Coca-Cola unveiled Diet Coke Plus, which is basically just regular old Diet Coke... but fortified with B-vitamins, magnesium, and zinc! This totally means that we can stop eating vegetables, and start chugging soda, right? All flippancy aside, we have mixed feelings about a gambit like this. On the one hand, if you were chaindrinking Diet Coke to begin with and switched over to Diet Coke Plus, you're probably not worse off. On the other, the more likely outcome seems like a whole slew of arguments about how diet soda is "good" for you. We have yet to see anyone downing a Diet Coke Plus though, so it's probably too early for outrage (or ringing endorsement).

On the candy front, our attention was brought to a claim that Gummi Bears might be good for your teeth. Xylitol, the sweetener used in Gummi Bears, helps combat a certain kind of tooth decay. We're thinking that someone out there should promote the refrain "four Gummi Bears three times a day keeps the dentist away!"

Finally, we're still stuck on that amped-up Snickers, which is meant to jumpstart a midafternoon slump. The press release from Mars includes the choice tidbit that the new candy bar "offers consumers a bar of substance and a delicious and satisfying way to tackle the afternoon hours when one needs to ‘re-power.’"

Of all of the ways that we've seen junk foods revamped into healthier incarnations, this is the one that seems the most wrong. What's next, junk food manufacturers of the world? Marshmallows with 50% of our daily value of fiber? Calcium-fortified Twinkies? The line has got to be drawn somewhere.

Gummi Bears May Be Good For Your Teeth [Slashfood]
First Candy Bar From Snickers Brand Provides A Boost of Energy with Caffeine, Taurine, and B-Vitamins [Candy Addict]

• Chris Borelli gets the best assignment of the week: Kayak down the Chicago River and shout up to the restaurants to see who will serve him dinner without him having to get out of the boat. He gets some sushi, which is mildly exciting, but the real discovery is that if you paddle up to Robinson's #1 Ribs, you get a complimentary bag of chips along with your boneless rib sandwich. All done via a basket lowered with string! Also, apparently Robinson's serves kayakers "a lot." Which simultaneously blows our minds, and makes us want to kayak over there right now to test out this novel sandwich-buying process. [Tribune]

• TOC takes us on a glorious food tour of Lincoln Ave in Ravenswood, a stretch of street dubbed "Sin Strip" thanks to seedy motels that (we can only assume) rented out by the hour. But now! Lots of delicious food! We are particularly drawn to the idea of homemade sausages from Kiko's Market & Restaurant, and the Croatian coffee joint Cafe Uteja. Also, what decor decision could top that at Pueblito Viejo (5429 N Lincoln Ave, 773 784 9135): "a sprawling Colombian restaurant covered top to bottom in Christmas lights, fake flowers and dusty cowboy paraphernalia"? [TOC]

As for those critical opinion pieces we like to call "reviews":

• Cheap Eats pulls off another four-forker: Laura Bergstrom hits up a teeny-tiny Mexican joint in Geneva called Bien Trucha (410 W. State St., Geneva, 630 232 2665) that does what it does mighty nicely: a simple, straightforward menu of tacos, tortas, cazuelitas, and accompaniments, all made with top-notch ingredients and flavor-packed preparations. Small portions whisked to the table as soon as they're ready in the kitchen, margaritas made with fresh lime, rustic presentation — and everything's under $10. [Bergstrom, Tribune]

• Even though David Tamarkin's experience at Perennial is wildly inconsistent from one day to the next, he can't help but like the place. There's a sunny dining room, and ... well, apparently the room is enough. The food's not all bad — the chefs have "a wizardly knack for injecting the essence of summer into some of their dishes" — and Tamarkin's up for visiting again to give it another shot. In our humble opinion? The sinusoidal peaks and valleys in this review make for a less-than-convincing argument for this restaurant's ability to live up to its name. [Tamarkin, TOC]

[Photo: Corned beef & kraut on rye, at the O'Hare Berghoff, via Dotorious's Flickr]

You know there's a good PR team at work when a restaurant shows up on Thrillist, DailyCandy, JuliB, and UrbanDaddy. But who does it best? We subscribe, read, and levy judgment... so you don't have to

Today in showdown, dadaist masterpiece Duchamp (2118 North Damen Ave, 773 235 6434), which opens today. You'll note that the name of the restaurant is not, as is our wont, a hyperlink to its page in the MenuPages restaurant directory. This is because the contents of this restaurant's menu is such a complete and total secret that when we spoke directly to the nice PR folks in charge of its image, they sadly informed us that we couldn't have the menu so much as a day before opening. Because this is serious stuff, folks. This is Defcon freaking 5. Anyway, we now have the menu (note: it actually looks quite fantastic), and it will be up on the site in mere days.

Until then! Let's see what email machines UrbanDaddy and last time's loser, DailyCandy, pulled out of their hats based on the press release.

UrbanDaddy's take on...
a cutesy title: A Little Surreal
the skills of the chef: "Like the restaurant's Dadaist namesake, Marcel Duchamp, acclaimed chef Michael Taus (Zealous) unleashes his playful side, turning everyday edibles into objets d'art."
weekend gimmicks: "just so things don't get too stuffy, Taus plans to throw dress-down barbecues on Sunday afternoons, where he'll flip burgers and grill Chorizo and Egg Quesadillas."
potential downsides: "In this case, the seating is communal. We know what you're thinking: fine for Randolph Street, but sort of drag for a neighborhood spot. And you're right."

DailyCandy's take on...
a cutesy title: "Hot or Not?"
the skills of the chef: "enjoy top-notch grub prepared by chef Michael Taus (Zealous)."
weekend gimmicks: "Bust out the fat pants for Duchamp’s Sunday backyard barbecue (weather permitting)."
a completely inexplicable opening sentence: "In T-minus three months, you’ll transform your apartment into a bomb shelter replete with sun lamps and Spam."

Winner: UrbanDaddy, who did a decent enough job (points for knowing that Duchamp-the-artist was known for controversy!), but to be honest, their victory is only an externality of...
Loser: DailyCandy, in a scathing, flaming loss. It's worth noting that along with the really deeply un-parseable first sentence — Bomb shelter? Spam? Is this a reference to winter? Do we know anyone who bunkers down in their apartment during the winter and eats nothing but Spam? — and the cringe-inducing mention of "fat pants," there are also zero references to Dada, surrealism, or the artist Marcel Duchamp. And, um, we are uninclined to chalk this up to restraint on the part of the DC writer. If you catch our drift.

Thanks for playing, everyone! See you next time!

Hey there, if you are not the sort of person who clicks on links, we highly recommend you make an exception to your screw-these-links policy and click on the one that reads "legos video by eddie izzard" in the previous post, because we have watched it (ok, listened to it) like five times now and we are STILL LAUGHING ANEW. Also we are going to say "penne alla arrabiata" in that precise accent for the rest of our lives, or until we find a funnier way to say it. Whichever comes first.

The office or school cafeteria, a little corner of the food-service industry rarely covered in these parts, deserves some credit. The same group of people makes lunch or dinner or both every day for the same other group of people using roughly the same ingredients on whatever cycle their deliveries happen to be on. And nobody riots except, occasionally, prisoners (and Darth Vader, in this hilarious Legos video by Eddie Izzard).

Some cafeterias, such as Google's, have a reputation as gourmet. Others are hallowed — see Gridskipper's list of some of Washington D.C.'s powerful lunchrooms, including the Supreme Court and the WTO. Some really suck (think every public school and also prison and also many offices). All, however, share a few key traits:

• The line: It's not a cafeteria if you don't move your little plastic tray down a metal line with the food all behind some pane of glass. Or some similar setup. There's something very comforting in this, as it brings a strong sense of order to the chaotic problem of figuring out what to eat for lunch. Or it's depressingly like an auto plant. You choose.

• The workers. It seems there's more interaction with cafeteria workers than with service staff in off-site lunch spots. While most deli counter staff will make your sandwich with little interaction, cafeteria workers are famous for providing the friendly exchange that helps brighten your day, or the surly banter that encourages you to eat outside the office now and then. When you think about it, you see these people just about every work day. Probably more than most of your friends.

• Plastic-covered desserts on little plates. Dessert tastes better when it's served like this. Don't know why. Don't care, really. Sometimes, at home, we cut a slice of cheesecake onto a little plate, cover it in plastic wrap and stick it in the fridge for an hour, just to re-create the effect. No, not really.

• They are going out of style. This is disturbing. The office cafeteria is definitely on its way out, as companies look for ways to reduce overhead and employees look for ways to not eat institutional food delivered by SE Rykoff. But that's nothing new. They've been going out style for decades now and they will never really disappear. As much as you'd like them to.

This is all by way of expressing a bit of envy for a sous-chef friend who is preparing to join the staff at Google in his former capacity as a web writer. Some people have all the luck, food-wise.

Darth Vader In The Cafeteria [Maniac World]
Washington D.C.'s Top Workplace Cafeterias [Gridskipper]
Google Food Photo Blog [Flickr]

[Photo: Just a workaday lunch at Google via Brett L./Flickr]

Food courts: Are they gross and mall-esque? Yes! Are they awesome and gross and mall-esque? Probably!* Are they super-annoying when they try to transcend their essential fluorescent dinginess and become "gourmet" and "high-end" and "fancy"? Definitely!

Along with these thoughts on food courts that give themselves airs, we also have a skeptical eyebrow kept on perma-raise for in-store dining (remember when the Old Navy on State opened, and it had a sandwich shop in it? That was the one exception to our eyebrow, because it was so cool and also we were like twelve years old, and thus too young to feel jaded), so the seventh floor "chef-centric" food court at Macy's is a double-whammy for us. Add to the mix that recently slammed carpetbagger-celeb-chef Marcus Samuelsson has just opened his booth there, and we are just brining over here in a vat of our own vinegar.

But we are nothing if not generous! The Stew and TOC have eaten there — or more likely, have received press kits, since they don't opine on the taste of the food in their posts. Though to hear The Stew tell it, it sounds mighty nice:

There's the BBQ burger ($8.50), seasoned with smoked paprika and topped with applewood-smoked bacon strips and a chunky, mild barbecue sauce. The meat is from grass-fed Black Angus cattle and is juicy enough to make the potato-bread bun a bit soggy. Six other burger choices ($7.95-$12.95) include a turkey burger option. The grilled chicken breast is seasoned with garlic and parsley, drizzled with an avocado sauce and placed on a bun. Very nice. Fish lovers, try the miso-soy marinated mahi mahi sandwich. For dessert, nothing beats the frozen vanilla custard cup ($2) or the much more decadent frozen custard milkshake ($2.95).

First Bite: Marc Burger [The Stew]
Just Opened: Marc Burger [TOC]

[Photo: Prof. Dr. Marc Burger, Forschungsinstitut für Mathematik, Zürich, Switzerland, via his faculty page]

*Bourbon chicken. We love it.

• New Yorkers are taking their dining rooms to the streets this summer. [NY Times]

• A Chicago coffeehouse serves up conservative politics with its lattes. [Chicago Tribune]

• Investigators are closing in on the farm that produced those pesky tainted peppers we've heard so much about. [AP/MSNBC]

• Cities looking at banning fast food in poor neighborhoods. [Slate]

Photo of plain cheesecake, above: chernwei/flickr

Here's an intriguing one from Sashertootie on Flickr with red beans with a graham cracker crust. Looks pretty tasty, no?

This one has a brownie on the bottom and peanut butter cups on top. Want. Now. From mmmm, brains on Flickr.

I love love love this idea. Totally doing this for my next party. From ::fanny::.

Deep fried cheesecake? Seems...superfluous. From Scuzzi.

Melissss shares a great shot of a cheesecake that has a cookie crust and another layer of cookie on top. Looks heavenly.

The city's most half-assed Best-Of roundup has just released, to pretty much no fanfare: The AOL City's Best awards voted on by users and comprising of a list of winners, containing absolutely new editorial material.

Ok, no, seriously. It's always exciting to win best of something, and while the democratic element of this ensures that crowd favorites like Billy Goat Tavern wins best burger, some of the results are pretty intriguing:

Best Cheap Eats: Pompei, where a slice of pizza's under $4, a decent sandwich is under $6, and hand-cut gnocchi (drool) comes in under a Hamilton.

Best Chinese Restaurant: Ben Pao. Is this a joke? Maybe AOL subscribers are contractually prohibited from going to Chinatown.

Best Dessert: Eli's Cheesecake Cafe, which is appropriate given that today is National Cheesecake Day (no,seriously).

Best Fine Dining: David Burke's Primehouse, which we're willing to concede is a legitimate contender, but come on: Alinea coming in fifth? After N9NE, among others? Sacrilege.

Best Hot Dog: Portillo's Hot Dogs. Okay, now they're just asking for it. This is like saying that a Pizzeria Uno in New Jersey is the best deep-dish in Chicago. We are starting to have our faith in internet democracy shaken.

Best Pizza: Speaking of pizza, the winner here is Home Run Inn. Could've done worse.

For the full list, click the phrase that's about to follow the colon: this one!

[Photo: Eli's booth at Taste of Chicago, via zesmerelda's Flickr]

• "The style of the 45th parallel is complexity and elegance," he said. "There are more intelligent wines on the 45th parallel. It's wine more for the brain than the palate." ... "There's 'Under the Tuscan Sun,' " Currado said with a chuckle, referring to the book by Frances Mayes. "Here, it's under the Piedmontese fog. The 45th parallel is not Tuscany or Southern California. We have cold weather here." [Tribune]

•"First, notice that I'm using the term "burger" instead of "hamburger." Hamburgers are made of beef, but from this day forward, remember that great burgers come from many sources: lamb, pork, turkey, even salmon or crab." [Tribune]

• "I set out to create a personal chef in a can," reasons Chiappetti, executive chef for the past two years at Viand. [Sun-Times]

• Two fat ladies, a motorcycle with a sidecar, and more bacon, cream and butter than is good for anyone. It's an odd formula for compelling food television, but it became the stuff of genius when Jennifer Paterson and Clarissa Dickson Wright transformed it all into the deliciously campy ''Two Fat Ladies'' cooking show. [Sun-Times]

• Little does anybody know that behind the diner’s silver swinging door is a well-greased breakfast machine that will topple anything in the way of its mission “to provide customers with unsurpassed exceptional service with a joyful heart.” As it swings open on an unfortunate waitress’ elbow, her yelps of pain are lost among the clanking of dishes and the cracking of eggs. [NewCity]

[Photo: Baby Cheesus (get it?!) via joe_cool's Flickr]

To hear some analysts tell it, yesterday's left-field news of Bennigan's restaurants' chapter 7 bankruptcy is a harbinger of doom for the casual dining industry. From the Wall Street Journal's Market Watch blog:

"These restaurants share many subtle and complex challenges that extend beyond this difficult economic climate," says Ron Paul, president of Technomic. "To some extent, they've become victims of their own success--a mature category with too many units and not enough differentiation, at least in the eyes of consumers."
According to Technomic, the top 20 casual dining chains in the category in which Bennigan's operated had unit growth of 45 percent during the most recent five-year period, well beyond the growth in demand.

We listen to a lot of Marketplace on NPR and this story hits a few notes that have gotten a lot of play over the last year or so: You spend money faster than you can make it, make commitments that your wallet can't keep, and eventually you go broke and lose your house. This seems to be a general trend in the U.S. right now, from gigantic corporations down to individuals.

But there's another trend out there that might lend a hopeful counterpoint to the tired "sad music" they keep playing on that show, at least as far as eating is concerned: It could be, just maybe, that with the rise of the Food Network, the chef as rock-star, and the growing national obsession with eating fresh, local, creatively prepared foods and, the market for the kind of mass-produced family meals in which Bennigan's specialized is shrinking.

This is obviously not a hopeful sign to investors and employees over at the ill-fated chain, but to the national health and well-being, it's a good thing. To get really out there with it, there's a chance that these lean economic times and simultaneous food chic could do wonders for the nation's health: huge, meaty, deep-fried meals become too expensive and go out of fashion, while locally produced fruit, vegetables and proteins become the cheap and trendy option for more Americans. High oil prices may put more of us on bikes, riding to the farmers' market or co-op instead of the ever-pricier and low-quality mega-chain. Healthy lifestyles by necessity!

There will certainly always be a place for casual family dining chains such as Bennigan's, TGI-Friday's, Applebee's, etc. But based on yesterday's news and the subsequent analysis, it seems those gambling on Americans' obscene gluttony may have over-drawn.

Bennigan's files for bankruptcy protection [AP]
Bennigan's Bankruptcy Indicative of Larger Casual Dining Woes, Says Technomic [Market Watch]
Starbucks closing 600 stores in U.S. [AP/B-Net]
Marketplace [NPR]

[Photo: A Bennigan's in Seoul, Korea via Rhett Sutphin/flickr]

Would you look at that: U.S. Cellular Field is the fifth most vegetarian-friendly baseball park in the nation, per PETA. The animal-loving organization highlighted the veggie dogs, veggie burgers, veggie tacos, PB&Js, salads, nachos with salsa, fruit cups, and corn on the cob that are all available at the home of the Sox, and which we personally have never ever noticed because we are generally blinded by hot dogs and beer.

Coupled with this actually pretty nice accolade, though, we also get this sideswipe from PETA Assistant Director Dan Shannon:

"Cholesterol-packed, meaty fare makes fans fat, so if you want to stand up for the seventh inning stretch, give the delicious vegetarian foods a try!"

We're the first to admit that we, ourself, could probably stand to lose a few pounds. But we spend far more time mindlessly eating Fritos (vegan!) than we do chicken breasts or bacon or — delicious, cruel, and very low-fat! — veal. And while we're totally happy that the White Sox cater to the more gastronomically enlightened portion of the population (we are 99% convinced that in a hundred years, historians will look back on our consumption of meat with the same horror that we today look back on, say, slavery), we don't mean "enlightened" in the pounds-and-ounces sense: we know plenty of fat vegetarians, plenty of skinny carnivores, and a whole slew of folks who fall somewhere in between. To claim that simply by dint of eating meat, we'll get so fat that we can't even stand? To put it concisely: Shut up, PETA.

White Sox rock with vegetarian eats, says PETA [The Stew]

[Photo: Uncommonly beautiful photograph of a hot dog at U.S. Cellular, via Tristan_Garret's Flickr]

• Rice costs triple what it used to in North Korea, which the World Food Programme warns is on the brink of a serious food crisis. [The Guardian]

• The Whole Foods-Wild Oats merger is stuck in court for the time being. [NYT via Salt Lake Tribune]

• Chef-driven restaurants are in store for the new terminal at JFK airport. Maybe people will actually want to show up early for their flights now. [NYT]

• About 13 percent of the average American family's food comes from outside of the United States. [Chicago Sun-Times]

• Australia is just getting the ball rolling on the trans fat issue; their food labels don't even have to list trans fat. [Canberra Times]

Unfortunately, we are skilled in neither software development nor large-number theory. Basically all we have to offer the world is our totally uninformed opinion on everything, plus a set of moderate home-cooking skills.

Enter the Google cookbook. This slim little volume was put in our hands the other day, and we feel a little bit like we've been handed the holy grail of the intersection of food- and internet-nerdery. It's 76 spiral-bound pages, and it's not available in stores, on eBay, anywhere &mdash unless, of course, you are a 6-year user of GoogleAds, in which case you get it in the mail along with a spiffy black Google-branded apron.

A quick google search of the google cookbook turns up surprisingly little: various corners of the internet, but nothing epic, nothing quite at the level that we, in our little nerdy heart, feel this deserves.

So we're doing this the right way: THERE IS A GOOGLE COOKBOOK! AND WE HAVE IT! IN OUR HANDS RIGHT NOW! AND WE ARE SHARING IT WITH YOU! RIGHT NOW! AFTER THE JUMP! (also: foie gras-stuffed falafel!)

First, gigantically, the cover:

The book is divided into four seasonal sections, starting with spring and moving through to winter. Each season is separated by a handy little tab, and each gets its own circular logo. The recipes in each season's TOC are divided into categories: Appetizer, Soup, Salad, Entree, Vegetable, Starch, Dessert. It's great. It's so earnest.

We're utterly charmed. We deeply, deeply love the variety of these dishes &mdash Wood-Roasted Lobster with Garlic Crisps and Blood Orange-Cilantro Vinaigrette! Sweet Potato, Spinach, and Shiitake Mushroom Gratin that calls for an entire gallon of heavy cream! Motherfreaking Foie Gras-Stuffed Falafel that is categorized under salad!! Can we just point out that in a cookbook of only forty-three recipes, two call for foie gras?

If you, like us, are now harboring very complexly detailed fantasies about working for Google, allow us to present to you Chef Wade Tamura's Fried Chicken, recommended for fall:

[Photo: Google cookie, via billypalooza's Flickr]

We already started a post today with a variant of OMG, and a link to 312 Dining Diva, but: OMG! 312DD has thrown down the gauntlet! Feuding in the Chicago Foodie Blogosphere!

Here's the scoop: Yesterday, 312DD neener-neenered Time Out Chicago, claiming that TOC hadn't actually scooped info on The Bristol as TOC claimed to.

In response to this, Heather Shouse (she of the Hub 51 slam that made us love her) sent 312DD's Audarshia quite a testy email, which Audarshia has now posted on 312DD, under the claim "Time Out Chicago Doesn't Respect Bloggers":

"I noticed in your post yesterday entitled 'Uhm, sorry Time Out...' that you claim we were one week late. You might want to read our post a bit more carefully. What we said was that we got the scoop on THE LOCATION of the Bristol and the fact that Il Covo was closing, and even pointed out that you and many other blogs basically gave the general info that it was going to be in Bucktown because your 'reporting' involved reading the RIA site. The Chicago Restaurant site did not involve the exact address when you first posted on it and linked to it. The address was just added since you reposted.

While we're 'talking,' I'm not sure that I completely understand the method of calling out established publications when you run a blog. Aren't you a 'freelance writer'? Wouldn't you benefit more from actually selling your information and, I don't know, writing articles as opposed to throwing rocks at the very few media outlets out there that could possibly give you work? Just a thought."

But, um, kids? It's time for a little bit of deep breathing, because — we hate to break it to you — but the first ping on our RSS for The Bristol comes courtesy of Chicago Magazine, who had it up a full ten days before 312DD. Penny Pollack and Jeff Ruby remain silent on the matter thus far, but — while we're big fans of Heather and Audarshia both — our hat's in the Chicago Mag corner.

[Photo: Blood Feud, via italiangerry's Flickr]

When people find out that we personally vet the user reviews on MP:Chicago, we get pretty varied responses, not always positive. We're convinced, however, that what we do is essential. We see the underbelly, let us tell you. We see the bad reviews, the cruel reviews, the libelous reviews — and we save you from them! Having seen The Dark Knight this weekend, we've realized that essentially, we are Batman: we might not necessarily be the hero you want, but we are the hero you need. Allow us to share with you a story of the sorts of crap we protect you from on those mean streets of MP!

Recently, we got in this amazing, glowing user review for a steakhouse — all 5s, lots of exclamation points, a long explanation of detailed menu items and their prices. It was capped with a pretty intense exhortation: "i cannot say one bad thing about it! i love it and strongly recommend trying it!"

This smacked of shill to us, so we held off on accepting or rejecting the review until we had a little more context. Not ten minutes later — ten minutes! — in came another amazing review for this restaurant:

After hearing about [steakhouse] from few friends, it took me few weeks to finally find an evening and go to [steakhouse]. The food is superb and you shouldn’t go if you want a quick meal. The walls are red and the entire place is fabulously decorated. My rib eye was tender with a sumptuous sweet potato no need for butter or salt. Between few plates of t-bones, ribs, salmon and steaks, there wasn’t a scrap left on the table. If it wasn’t bad manners I would've picked up my plate and licked the bottom clean. Three hours later and I was blissfully stuffed to the gills. The service was also very friendly and professional. Definitely highly recommend!

I ate at [steakhouse] a few weeks ago with my boyfriend upon a recommendation from a friend who said the "steak was to die for". Being steak lovers we gave it a try. The seductive ambiance impressed us right away -colors of red and gold, ornate chandeliers and distinguished staff members encircled us. We started with the Sizzling Canadian Bacon which he loved and I liked. It was thick and flavorful (worth the $5 to try), the Crabcake was large and all crabmeat (no breadcrumb type fillers), the Classic Caesar was great (we both LOVED the dressing), the Sherry & Aged Gruyere Onion Soup was AMAZING- Differs from your traditional French Onion in all the right ways! The calamari was just average (we are not huge calamari fans, so you may disagree:). FYI: this is a lot of appetizers for two (but the left overs were great!) Ok, dinner: We split the 16oz. Bone-In Filet. I have never heard of "bone in for a filet?!, but we were told it has the most flavor this way- and they were right! Tender- Juicy- Cooked to Perfection- and Flavorful (they offer different sauces on the side for the steak, but I preferred it just the way it was- I believe he liked the [steakhouse] sauce). There is more..The Sides: You MUST get the 5 Cheese Truffle Mac (don't miss out), we also got the Brussel Sprouts, which were loaded with bacon and the creamed spin. All three for $24 were great and nicely portioned. We clearly could not fit dessert, but I look forward to hearing how it was so post your review.....Enjoy!

I absoutely loved everything. Service=excellent. Food=delicious (from entrees to appetizers...and i must admit its the best mac&cheese i ever had). Atmosphere=totally cool, comfortable, classy!!! Cant say one negative thing. I cant wait to go back and order up a few steaks and martinis!!!!

All told, over the course of 24 hours, a total of twelve reviews came over the wire. All with across-the-board 5s. All with far more exclamation points than any human should be allotted in a lifetime. All straight in the trash.

Note to restaurateurs (and evildoers everywhere): We are watching you. We know. We will not let you win this war.

Note to our employers: Please let us start wearing a cape to work?

[Photo: Bat signal, via jtdgarlic's Flickr]

Today's an exciting day, food-blog-wise. You all know "The Waiter" over at Waiter Rant, right? Well, no longer! Now you know a man named Steve Dublanica, a former waiter who writes a blog and whose book debuts today.

The New York Post has the story of a man who shared in print many of the things the rest of us former service industry types wait to tell people until they're too drunk to remember. Serving food that may have come into contact with the floor, giving everybody decaf coffee, regardless of their order, spitting in food, these things happen. Not necessarily by Dublanica himself (well, the coffee thing, yeah) but they do happen, and he'll tell you about it.

For the last four years, Dublanica has made no move to cover up any potentially shocking aspect of the service industry as he cranks out sometimes bitter, sometimes philosophical, sometimes funny essays. He naturally kept his own identity and that of his restaurant a secret, and "Cafe Machiavelli," somewhere in suburban New York, remains unnamed.

Now that he's a big-time author, however, Dublanica has to do things like radio appearances on Bloomberg and Leonard Lopate, guest-blogging for Powell's Books, and being the subject of feature articles in the New York Post, so he had to come clean. He also quit his job, apparently. Now who's going to introduce you to terms like "crop dusting?"

Secret Service: The Waiter Gets Mad — And Gets Even [NY Post]
Waiter Rant [Official Site]

[Photo: An anonymous waiter via independentman/flickr]

HOMFG. Per the ever-reliable Audarshia, it turns out that Heather Mills, our absolute least-favorite famous individual (we won't even call her a celebrity, since that implies she is celebrated), was spotted last night at HUB 51.

Heather is ostensibly famous because she was married to Paul McCartney (our second-favorite Beatle!), but is basically in the press all the time because she is completely freaking insane. She's in the news right now (like, today) because her most recent publicist quit after — no, seriously — questioning the notion that Heather was God. Really.

Heather at Hub51 [312 Dining Diva]
Mills is Impossible: Publicist [Metro]
HUB 51 [MenuPages]
HUB 51 [Official Site]

• Produce gets sunburn? Apparently so — and now sunscreen, too. [IHT (AP)]

• L.A. chefs forced to become "food police," journalistic puns ensue. [LAT]

• There's $1.6 billion in food and beverage advertising targeted at kids. [NYT (AP)]

• Despite speculation, the EU has approved the merger of Mars and Wrigley. [Forbes]

• Weakened economy means more eating at home means higher profits for Kraft. [NYT]

(Also! MenuPages humbly suggests the New York Times revise their capitalization policy with regard to particles, because we stared at that Kraft headline for like a full two minutes, unable to parse it, before realizing the lowercase "in" was not a preposition.)

Chicagoist's roundup of the best places to get biscuits & gravy has us quite literally on the verge of calling it a day and taking off to consume the artery-clogging perfection. Our pick: Hawkeye's Bar & Grill (if only because it reminds us of our youthful years).

Still, we're pretty freaking intrigued by Chuck Sudo's suggestion that you "Keep a close eye on your wallet or purse while you're" at Huddle House (4748 N. Kimball, 773-588-5363), which "looks like the place where runaways go to permanently disappear." Wonder how long it'll take before the authenticity-hounds at LTHForum are swarming all over the place (not, for a moment, that we blame them).

Where to Go For the Biscuits and Gravy [Chicagoist]
Hawkeye's Bar & Grill [MenuPages]
Hawkeye's Bar & Grill [Official Site]

[Photo: Biscuits and Gravy, via su-lin's Flickr]

New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni expressed surprise today at seeing a modest Manhattan eatery, La Sirene, included on an Open Table list of the city's 10 best:

But I wonder. Is this somehow another sign of how Internet-savvy the restaurant’s chef and owner, Didier Pawlicki, is?

As I noted in my review, he personally replies to almost each and every diner comment about the restaurant on the Citysearch web site, either thanking happy diners or reasoning with unhappy ones.

Has Mr. Pawlicki or someone in his corner gamed Open Table? Or have his aggressive Internet ways spawned an especially Internet-oriented, Internet-activist clientele?

While marketing firms offer business owners like Pawlicki search optimization and other online services, this could be a case of general customer satisfaction that filtered all the way to those customers' online habits, or maybe some very shrewd outreach. The premise of Bruni's blog entry seems to be that Pawlicki is either an online marketing genius or a culinary genius, and indeed he may be a little of both.

At MenuPages, we editors get a chance to see the user-review sausage being made. It's thanks to a personal look at every user-submitted review that we rarely end up on Eater's Adventures in Shilling. And this process gives some insight into how so-called "black pr" (or sock puppets or shills or some possibly nicer, yet-to-be-coined name) works. It's not hard to spot a shill, but what is hard is determining what we'll call here a partial shill.

This may be somebody who knows an owner or staffer and eats at the restaurant as a paying customer and then is asked to post a glowing review. It may be someone known to the staff or owners who actually receives something for free in exchange for a good review. It may be a staffer or owner trashing the competition.

But it can be very hard to pinpoint, in the larger discussion, when a satisfied customer becomes a shill. Would it be a conflict of interests if a restaurant owner, circulating amongst tables of chatty satisfied diners, mentioned that he'd appreciate any feedback in a certain online forum? Probably not. What if he then sent over a dessert or a coffee? Well, yes, then it would be a payoff.

But what if he was planning on sending out that dessert or espresso anyway and the topic of online reviewing came up naturally in conversation? Well, the adage says something about the appearance of conflict of interest being tantamount to actual conflict of interest, but if everything were that strict, restaurateurs and diners would only ever discuss the weather. And where's the fun in that?

Also, doesn't it make sense that an increasingly net-savvy dining public would naturally post a lot of positive feedback if a particular restaurant regularly impresses? Of course, and you won't find a much more net-savvy group than lower Manhattan diners.

What does all that say about Pawlicki and La Sirene? Well, we don't know yet, but one sure thing is that La Sirene is now on our radar for the next time we're hungry in TriBeCa. Something's working for him.

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other
New York Dining [Open Table]
La Sirene [MenuPages]
La Sirene [Official Site]

[Photo: via La Sirene official site]

• Blue Sky Bakery does a lot of things: they employ and provide job training to disadvantaged kids, who come away with work experience and references, and they make a killer breakfast or lunch. They don't usually do dinner, but Chicago Bites had the hookup. [Chicago Bites]

• Where oh where can you get Duck Nachos? Dorado, that's where! French-Mexican is brilliant, we must say. [Tasty Beat]

• Some excellent image manipulation (check out the biblical revisionism) and a truly spectacular post title in this rave of Mixteco Grill. [Chicago Gluttons]

• Fresh-baked bread, nostalgia-heavy atmosphere (baskets full of chips!), and inspired sandwich combinations: these are the things that make Panes (subtitle: Bread Cafe) absolutely worth the wait. [Hungry Mag]

• Average pastas, cold gnocchi a "spastic" server who admits to knowing nothing about the wine list, and prices that outpace the quality all conspire against the much-hyped Piccolo Sogno. Arugula pizza's not awful to share, though. [Gastronomic Bypass]

[Photo: The Yob Burger at Kuma's Corner, via rachelleb's Flickr]

A couple of Friday reports helped shed a little light on the recent fiasco of a salmonella scare that started with tomatoes and ended with red-faced public health officials.

According to an AP story on the ABC News website, part of the difficulty in conducting a speedy, efficient investigation had to do with poor record keeping that was a result of weak regulations lobbied for by fruit and vegetable growers themselves:

The industry pressured the Bush administration years ago to limit the paperwork companies would have to keep to help U.S. health investigators quickly trace produce that sickens consumers, according to interviews and government reports reviewed by The Associated Press.

The White House also killed a plan to require the industry to maintain electronic tracking records that could be reviewed easily during a crisis to search for an outbreak's source. Companies complained the proposals were too burdensome and costly, and warned they could disrupt the availability of consumers' favorite foods.

The apparent but unintended consequences of the lobbying success: a paper record-keeping system that has slowed investigators, with estimated business losses of $250 million. So far, nearly 1,300 people in 43 states, the District of Columbia and Canada have been sickened by salmonella since April.

"If the FDA had been given the resources and authority years ago that it asked for to solve these kinds of problems, I think we would have solved this already," said William Hubbard, a former FDA associate commissioner.

On July 3, Minnesota e-mailed the feds. After tracing credit card receipts — to find what the restaurant's healthy customers didn't eat — there was good evidence that the jalapenos were sickening people. And, officials had a diagram tracing the pepper shipments all the way back to three farms in Mexico.

One of those farms shipped peppers through the same large warehouse in McAllen, Texas, where Food and Drug Administration inspectors weeks later would find a single contaminated Mexican-grown pepper being packed by a neighboring vendor.

AP: Food Industry Bitten by Its Lobbying Success [ABC]
Pepper tip helped salmonella hunt continue

[Photo: Jalapeno peppers via Florian/flickr]

Dear MenuPages, My husband and I are going to be in Chicago in early August and we are staying at the Trump Towers. I just checked out the menu at Sixteen and I am less than thrilled. As a professional chef myself, I find it hard to stomach the prices on the menu — especially considering the reviews that I have read! We live in San Francisco so we thought that we have been paying top dollar to go out — I guess not.

My question to you is this, where can we go within walking distance (or cab) to get a nice meal? We will be in town for our fifth anniversary so we do need someplace nice but, also would like a nice diner kind of place for breakfast and some Chicago-y kind of place for lunch. We LOVE secret insider kind of spots! Next time you come to San Francisco I'd be happy to sare some of my favorite places too!

Thanks a bunch!
Amy

First of all, let us say that we are thrilled — seriously, thrilled, that you have proven yourself to be ensouled by sharing with us our nose-wrinkling at Sixteen. Seriously, we are not a fan. But secondly, on to your query. You're looking for a full day of food, here: breakfast, lunch, and dinner, all within easy reach of your smack-in-the-middle-of-downtown hotel. We can do this! Full breakdown after the jump.

For breakfast, our first thought is generally Yolk. It's an invigorating 1.5-mile walk down Michigan Avenue, all the way to the bottom of Grant Park (we'll never call it Millennium) down by the Museum Campus. Walk along the lake and then cut back in to Michigan for a beautiful start to your anniversary celebration. And while Yolk's Irish Benedict might ruin your breath for smooching (corned beef hash = not quite the most romantic meal) it is our absolute all-time favorite early-morning calorie bomb. Of course, if you want to stay a little closer to home — and be a little less yuppie, more diner-y — West Egg Cafe is just a couple blocks away. If it's a weekday, you should be fine at any hour. But if it's a weekend, we highly recommend setting your alarm to beat the rush.

As for lunch, you want something Chicago-y? Pop a Lipitor, friends, and resign yourself to meat, likely encased in bread. Choice one: Al's No 1 Italian Beef, where one of you will order a Combo and one of you will order a Big Al. Choice two: CND Gyros & Lounge, where you will both be ordering gyros melts. Choice three: Heaven on Seven on Wabash (though if we're being honest, the food at the one on Ohio is just as good, and closer to your hotel, but the atmosphere at the original cannot be beat), where you'll get truly the best cajun/creole outside of the delta. One of you is ordering a fried oyster po' boy, the other one is getting hoppin' john with andouille, and you're both getting gumbo and splitting a side of cheese grits.

Finally, if you can stomach it, dinner: A fifth anniversary? Congratulations! For traditional romance, it's hard to top the one-two punch of the swoony atmosphere and top-notch food at Les Nomades, in a lovely brownstone off of Michigan ave. The seasonal specials are straight from the greenmarket. Speaking of the greenmarket, though, our personal choice for an anniversary dinner (are you reading this, Our Boyfriend?) is Mado, where the food is inventive, intensely flavorful, and exquisitely presented. Plus it's light enough that you won't feel weighted down for any... let's say, post-dinner activity. Reservations highly recommended for both of these places.

Until next time, we remain

Yours faithfully,
MenuPages Chicago

Do you have a food question that needs answering? Ask anything, various and sundry, by dropping us a line.

Yolk [MenuPages]
Yolk [Official Site]
West Egg Cafe [MenuPages]
Al's No 1 Italian Beef [MenuPages]
Al's No 1 Italian Beef [Official Site]
CND Gyros & Lounge [MenuPages]
Heaven on Seven [MenuPages]
Les Nomades [MenuPages]
Les Nomades [Official Site]
Mado [MenuPages]
Mado [Official Site]

[Photo: I Love Chicago, via emergingartist's Flickr]

• Iowa workers protest conditions at a kosher meatpacking plant. [New York Times]

• A DC raw foods restaurant will be nation's first "crowdsourced" restaurant, offer oat-hemp balls. [Washington Post]

• Users of Los Angeles food banks are hungry. [LA Times]

• West Bank Palestinians are thirsty. [Chicago Tribune]

• Meanwhile, in Japan, they're going wild for eel drinks. [San Francisco Chronicle]

It was Tuesday that we read the horror story of the glass of whiskey that cost more than a bottle of that whiskey, served at — surprise, surprise — Rebar at Trump Tower. For reals: a whiskey that's $41.99 per bottle at Sam's Wine was a whopping $57 at le bar du Trump.

It was only this morning, however, that we remembered what this reminded us of: Eater's Johnnie Walker Blue Index. Developed by William Tigertt, proprietor of NY hipster hotspot Freemans, the index is quite simple: you can measure the precise location in the stratosphere of the markup rate of any given establishment simply by dividing the wholesale price of the portion of Blue Label by the list price at your bar or lounge.

So we decided to turn our eyes away from the glare of the computer screen and actually pick up the phone. A very helpful Angela answered the phone at Rebar, and happily gave us the cost of a glass of Blue Label as $42 — a price that's corroborated by their online cocktail menu, which we should have looked for in the first place.

A quick search of Sam's Wine inventory tells us that a 750ml bottle of Blue Label is $209.99, and a case of 6 is a discounted $1,139.94. (6 x 209.99 = 1259.94 — decent savings!)

Let's assume Trump buys smartly, by the case instead of a single bottle, which puts one of those six at $189.99. Considering a 2oz pour, of which there are about 12 per 750ml bottle, that's a wholesale cost of just about $15.83 per glass. Since they're charging $42, that gives us a markup of 265%, meaning a JWBI for Rebar of 2.65 — not that bad, actually.

Compare this to the $3.50 per two-ounce serving it cost Trump to give the friend of Gapers Block his Glenrothes, for which he was charged $57. That, friends, is a one thousand, six hundred and twenty-eight percent markup. An equivalently marked up glass of Johnnie Walker Blue Label would run $257.80. And kids, that's before tax and tip.

Trumped Up Prices [Gapers Block]
On The House: The Johnnie Walker Blue Index [Eater]

[Photo: Johnnie Walker Blue, via tristanstephenson's Flickr]

Lately, Brooklyn-based duo Matt and Kim have been in pretty heavy rotation in our music library. These guys are just so poppy and summery, it's great. But we had no idea just how fun and apparently food-obsessed they were until seeing this video. Look at that! Wouldn't you totally like to have lunch with these two and talk about things like Mr. Potato Head's psychological problems or how awesome frozen grapes are? Answer that after you watch this, the funnest foodiest music video ever:

Matt and Kim [Official Site]

If you find yourself with nothing to do this weekend, we've got a suggestion for you. In fact, if you do have something to do this weekend, we've got a suggestion for you (though it will involve canceling your something and replacing it with this):

Right now, at this very second, and lasting until this Sunday, the town of Whitinig, IN, is experiencing Pierogi Fest. Polka music, carnival rides, and mashed potato encased in dough: heaven!

Grab A Pierogi And A Babushka In Whiting This Weekend [Chicagoist]

• To make up for the dearth of S-T reviews, we did something we've (perhaps shamefully) never done before: we read readers' letters to Pat Bruno. We're not surprised by the attitude of mature cantankerousness that seems to run through most of them (a certain Tom Ward, on why restaurants play music so loudly: "Most of the waitstaff are young people who have to have music playing for whatever activity they are doing." Loving the imperative!), but Bruno also gives us some solid insight into his ratings system, when his four-star for L.2O is questioned:

In a recent review, you gave L20 a four-star rating. Considering that this is a new restaurant, shouldn't you wait until it has proven itself before you hand out your highest rating?
Lucille R.

You make a good point, Lucille. However, a restaurant of this caliber, with the way it is being run, should only get better as it ages. So I would bet the farm, if I had a farm, that L20 will live up to its four-star status.

• In the matter of real reviewing, though, Bruno takes us through lunch and dinner at C-House, the latest in a slew of Chicago restos helmed by non-Chicago celeb chefs. The guy behind this one is Marcus Samuelsson, best known for his New York places. Bruno calls out Samuelsson for being a little bit disingenuous in his connection to the restaurant — though his server does solemnly swear that Marcus was there for a few weeks, "doing whatever a celebrity chef does when connecting his or her name to a venture." We'd say: watch out. The guy doesn't even put in full time at the NYC ventures he puts his name on, something the NY Post's Steve Cuozzo calls him out on.

But who cares about the name over the door if the food's good, right? Well, hm. Bruno's not too thrilled: "The food was good, but there wasn't a lot that rocked my world," and the fish and chips fall way short: they were "the worst fish I've had in many a moon." Besides a few other notablye subpar dishes, there are a blessed few positives: the fish mini-tacos, the asparagus risotto, the lunch-menu-only salmon pastrami sandwich, the desserts, the raw bar. But Bruno's 1.5-stars says it all: a chef of Samuelsson's magnitude should deliver better, and we deserve better from him. [Bruno, Sun-Times]

• Meanwhile, at the Reader, OSBMS has taken the week off (slow review week for everyone, it seems), and given the reins to the eminently capable Michael Gebert (he of the Sky Full of Bacon podcast, which we highly recommend), who visits P & P BBQ Soul Food (3734 W. Division, 773-276-7756). The non-Sula Mike hands it a rave: this simultaneous soul food eatery and serious barbecue destination pays equal attention to both facets of its dual identity, plays both hands brilliantly, and even manages to create culinary harmony that makes Gebert wonder why this hasn't been done a million times before. The aquarium smoker is helmed by Texas-trained, Chicago-perfected pitman Keith Archibald, and he churns out reliably juicy, smoky piles of meat. Plus, there's the feelgood element: 51-year-old owner Patricia Ann Parker has dreamed of opening a restaurant since she was a little girl, but was sidetracked by other jobs ranging from the post office to the Palmer House. But a brain condition affected her optic nerves, and she's now fully blind. Surrounded by family and friends who help with the sight-required matters, Patricia still knows exactly what to give to her customers:

"...Sometimes you want real soul food, get off that fried food,” she says. “You want that good home cooking, and everybody wants barbecue on the weekends.”

[Photo: Interior of C-House, via Affinia Chicago]

• Mac and cheese, please, filled with fancy ingredients. [MP: Boston]

• Oh, let's just have a basic dinner: a tiny bird drowned in Armagnac. [MP: Chicago]

• A crepe would not be creepy! [MP: Philadelphia]

• Can we just have some damn coffee cake that won't kill us? [MP: San Francisco]

• How about just some fish that won't give us food poisoning? [MP: South Florida]

Ohgod we love this city. Finally the madness at The Weiner Circle (2622 N Clark St, 773 477 7444) gets the journalistic preservation it deserves. Via no less than yet another of our secret boyfriends, Ira Glass of This American Life. (Relax, Mike Sula, we still love you.) This place puts Ed Debevic's to shame: the crazed hostility that reigns at The Weiner Circle is gleefully profane, totally NSFW, and tons of fun for everyone — let's say, 89% of the time.

The first portion of this segment is a celebration of a uniquely Chicago institution. But right around minute 5:30, the moody music kicks in and Ira calls attention to that other 11% of the time — excruciating, embarrassingly racist behavior courtesy of the drunk, white patrons, directed at the predominantly black employees. It's not pretty.

The employees at The Weiner Circle stay on, despite the scumface drunken racist losers, because the pay is good and the stand's owners, Barry Nemerow and Larry Gold, treat them incredibly well. And the customers? As Larry says (right around 3:10):

I think they drink at night... I think they want to be punished.

[via Kottke]