Sun Wah BBQ is a widely-acknowledged gem of the Chicago food scene. It makes regular appearances on best-of lists, roundups, recommendation threads, and Sky Full of Bacon. But what if you just want a simple how-to? Enter MenuPages reviewer "edgewater eater":
No doubt that this is a very special place. Let me give you a few hints for real enjoyment:
Come in a small group (about 6) so you can rate a round table with a lazy susan in the middle so you can spin to what you want.
Eat family style so you can get lots of tastes.
Ask if the owner Eric is there. If he is, ask him to help you order. He might have some specials you might not have thought to order.
Have a Chinese beer with your meal.
Order one less entree than number of people. The servings are generous. Their noodles are made on site.
Tom Colicchio has a lot going for him. A pile of wildly successful Craft-brandedrestaurants far flung throughout the country, national celebrity as host of Top Chef, an oh-so-shiny bald pate. But one thing his fame and fortune haven't delivered is the one thing he started with in the first place: A kitchen of his own, where he could man the stoves himself and directly oversee the plating and service of a handful of happy diners.
So now that he's rich and famous enough to build a small, humble restaurant, he's building himself a small, humble restaurant: the tentatively-named Tom: Tuesday Dinner, which will be located in the private dining room of his New York Craft flagship, and will run dinner service every other Tuesday, to the tune of a few benjamins a head. The first seating is October 14.
While we can see this raising eyebrows in some circles, and we certainly see the ironic circularity of the situation, we are ultimately of the opinion that this kind of return-to-the-kitchen situation is precisely what's needed to counteract the current national scourge of celeb chef empires. For every Mario Batali, who can effortlessly pull off helming Babbo in New York and Osteria Mozza in LA with equal aplomb, there are a dozen wannabe-national chefs like Marcus Samuelsson, whose C-House flounders helplessly in Chicago while in New York, his Merkato 55 circles the drain. Not to mention Wolfgang Puck, who has become little more than a glorified Chef Boyardee: a well-known name and a smiling face, readily available on soup cans and in your grocer's freezer.
What Colicchio's doing is a smart antidote to Puck-style market oversaturation (or Samuelsson-style too-much-too-soon). While anyone with basic cable knows Tom's name and face, and anyone in New York, Atlanta, LA, or Las Vegas is within 30 minutes of a menu he's personally signed off on, he's taking it one step further. He's simultaneously appeasing his original fans, the ones who knew him by taste instead of by DVR, and also shoring up the core value of his celebrity. Both of these, fortuitously, are achieved merely by offering the real thing: Himself, in a kitchen, making a plate of food just for you.
So, Robert Parker wants us to boycott restaurants that over-charge for wine. The publisher of Wine Spectator Advocatereportedly writes in an upcoming article that restaurants jacking up the price of wine is, "nothing more or less than a legitimized mugging."
Strong words, no doubt. But for as much as we'd like to see his campaign work, it might be a non-starter. Parker decries the idea of wine as "a luxury item," but the fact is, for many people, it really is a luxury item. Take, for example, the recent study that found more expensive wine tastes better. And, as long as there is disposable income left in this country, somebody's probably going to dispose of theirs on fancy wines.
But he's right that it's infuriating to know you're overpaying by as much as 500 percent simply because other suckers out there are willing to do so. So yeah, go ahead and boycott those places that gouge you into the poorhouse, but you may just have to write them off for good. We don't think they're going to see the light any time soon.
if you do still want enjoy a glass of wine the next time you're out to dinner, get a look at Lettie Teague's Food and Wine tips for getting the best deals in a restaurant. Also, check out this 2003 New York Times article on how wines are priced.
Milwaukee's Public Market is a wonder: Local, independent vendors for everything from produce to sushi to artisanal bread, gathered under one roof, supported by the city, and visited by thousands upon thousands of shoppers.
The closest Chicago has to that are our greenmarkets — admittedly, nothing to sneeze at, but they tend not to stray from the produce and perishables department. But with tomorrow's opening of the Chicago Downtown Farmstand, the Local Beet points out that we could be one step closer to Milwaukee's local purvey paradise. All we've got to do is make the Downtown Farmstand so wildly successful that officials decide it's worth it to keep the market running year-round.
After all the hype surrounding Chicago Gourmet, we have to cop to a tiny bit of schadenfreude when reading all the "where's the food?" complaints, but ultimately we were rooting for the food festival to pull off its freshman effort.
The Reader's Julia Thiel pulls absolutely no punches: Summing up the various coverage of the event, she says "So far ... nothing I've come across has used to word "clusterf**k" to describe the event. Which is strange, because it's been running through my head all weekend."
Meow, Thiel, but the truth is she's on the money: Not enough food, too much wine, and a poorly organized flow of events that meant lots of standing around doing nothing, not a lot of consuming prepaid gourmet nutrients.
A misplayed inaugural year doesn't mean Chicago Gourmet is dead in the water: the Aspen Food & Wine Classic has taken a quarter-century to get this big, and South Beach benefits from a partnership with the Food Network. So for an indie operation in its first year out of the gate, in this case, there's nowhere to go but up.
• Today the new FDA country-of-origin labeling requirements go into effect for produce and meat! [Seattle Times]
• ... for most produce and meat, that is. Mixed vegetables and Spam are exempt. [Bloomberg]
• Part of yesterday's failed bailout included a bill that would prevent non-ambulatory cattle from entering the food supply. [Pork Magazine (a real publication!)]
• Cadbury, Heinz, and Mars are all pulling their Chinese-made products, as they may contain melamine. Sigh. [Telegraph]
• Voters in California are debating Proposition 2, which would mandate that farm animals — including swine, veal, and chickens — be uncaged. In related news, why don't we live in California? [SF Chron]
You might or might not noticed that, oh, the past half-dozen posts on here were contributed by the eminently talented Bridget Houlihan and Tammy Green of the Chicago Bites podcast, who put on their MenuPages hats to cover this past weekend's Chicago Gourmet event.
The ladies return to their home medium with a wrap-up podcast, delivering their ex post facto survey of the food and wine festival that, as it turned out, was woefully short on food. Tammy put it best right around 5:25 when, comparing Chicago Gourmet to the Taste of Chicago, she said "I wanted the Rick Bayless version of a turkey leg!"
You can check out the full podcast here, with additional explication of the faint-praise overall judgment of Chicago Gourmet as an event that rates a mere 5/10 — as Bridget says, a good freshman effort.
Tammy's exceptional photographs of the weekend event — including those that appeared here on MP over the course of the past few days — are on her Flickr, with a final gallery of Chicago Gourmet highlights after the jump right here!
Rick Bayless grins while prepping his demo.
The radiant Alpana Singh, wine director for Lettuce Entertain You restaurants.
Let no one tell you that you can't live forever: immortality has been discovered -- well, for a burger, anyway. Death eludes the indomitable McDonald's hamburger. Consider the following evidence, via Serious Eats and courtesy of Karen Hanrahan's website, bestwellnessconsultant.com:
The burger on the left, purchased 12 years ago looks exactly the same as the burger on the right, circa 2008. No wrinkling, no discoloration... the cosmetic industry ought to take a hint.
The Big Mac's source of fountain of youth is not, as popular conspiracy theories would have us believe, children who had been sucked into the ball pits, but rather an elixir blend of powerful anti-aging ingredients: distilled monoglycerides, DATEM, ascorbic acid, azodicarbonamide, enzymes, ethoxylated mono- and diglycerides, sodium stearoyl lactylate, guar gum, mono-and diglycerides, calcium peroxide, calcium propionate and sodium propionate. And that's just the bun.
Now the patty is a real puzzle. According to the McDonald's website, the patty is composed of
"100% pure USDA inspected beef; no fillers, no extenders. Prepared with grill seasoning (salt, black pepper)." But this doesn't quite explain why meat that ought to have rotted beyond recognition still looks like a recent order. Got theories on this subject? Send us a line.
I leave you with one thought, however: wouldn't it be embarrassing (or poignant, depending on your point of view) if a millennium from now, an advanced future race discovered the only remaining fragment of our civilization -- the soul-less, youthful carcass of a cheeseburger? And, in any case, aren't there better alternatives?
Chicago put itself on the front burner this past weekend with the inaugural Chicago Gourmet, a weekend-long festival of food and wine attended by chefs and sommeliers near and far. Special MenuPages correspondents Bridget Houlihan and Tammy Green, of the dining podcast Chicago Bites, were on the scene. From Sunday: Big names, big fun.
Art Smith's shrimp and grits.
I think Gale Gand (of tru) and Art Smith (of Table 52) should start a TV show of their own so that they can cook together more often.
When they took the stage at Chicago Gourmet Sunday for a cooking demonstration, it was like getting a sneak peak into what that show would be like.
Both Gand and Smith are obviously at home in front of an audience because of the time they have spent in front of the camera, and they know how to put on a good show. They even had cookware prizes to give away! But there was also something more personal about their presentation.
The two friends cook together behind-the-scenes at events but rarely in public. Still, they know each other well. So Gand and Smith kicked things off by cracking open a bottle of wine. They raised a glass to Chicago Gourmet. Then they got busy helping each other cook.
Gand made apple fritters. And Smith whipped the egg whites for her. Smith made his famous shrimp and grits. And Gand helped with the sauce. Then they opened some champagne.
It was fun watching these two play in the kitchen! They share a love for food and cooking that's positively contagious.
I wish they'd come cook in my kitchen. As it is, I'm about to go heat up leftovers in the microwave.
Chicago put itself on the front burner this past weekend with the inaugural Chicago Gourmet, a weekend-long festival of food and wine attended by chefs and sommeliers near and far. Special MenuPages correspondents Bridget Houlihan and Tammy Green, of the dining podcast Chicago Bites, were on the scene. From Sunday: Hitting The Bottle
Jackie Shen telling her story at Chicago Gourmet.
They say the secret is in the sauce, and folks rave about the sauce Jackie Shen serves on chicken at Chicago's Red Light restaurant.
"Honey, it comes from a bottle!" Shen admitted, with a rather devious smile during her "East Meets West: Wok and Wisk" seminar Sunday at Chicago Gourmet.
Of course Shen does a ton of stuff to that bottled sauce before she serves it.
You need to have a good foundation in cooking to know what to do, she says. Inspiration doesn't just strike. Finding the right balance of flavors is all about knowing what you're working with — and trial and error.
Shen went on to talk about how her entire cooking career has been about finding that balance. Originally trained as a French chef, she got bored with the cuisine (especially the sauces) about seven years ago and decided she needed a change.
"My dad said, you're not a chef anyway; you know nothing about Asian food," she said. "I wanted to prove him wrong!"
So Shen asked her mom to visit and teach her how to make wontons. She started to focus on the food she ate as a child in Hong Kong but didn't know how to make. And once she had a solid foundation in Asian cooking, she started to think of ways to fuse it with western-style food.
"I've had a good time going from fire to wok," said Shen. "People are traveling more, and trying new flavors. There can be balance between them."
Shen is currently exploring this further in a cookbook she is collaborating on in addition to teaching at Kendall College and working at Red Light.
One thing is for sure: I need to try that sauce from a bottle as soon as possible. Red Light here I come!
A story on the Barf Blog today raises a question so disturbing that much of our restaurant-o-phile readership will probably shudder at the very thought. But the evidence is there: Some restaurant and institutional kitchen food poisoning may be deliberate.
It's not pretty, but when you think we've all probably harbored some kind of sick revenge fantasy against a boss from hell or a job from hell or some such thing, you have to admit it's totally possible that some of the food poisoning cases in the world are no accident.
Barf Blog refers to a story of an International House of Pancakes in Texas that has been linked to more than 100 salmonella cases over the last five months. Police are investigating, and while they stopped short of calling the contamination intentional, they said they were, "investigating every option."
But don't let it scare you too bad. Really, when was the last time you heard a substantiated case of this kind of attack? Plus, it's one of those things you absolutely can't predict. So just try not to think about it, okay?
But do avoid the IHOP at I-40 and Western Street in Amarillo. Intentional or no, that's a shameful track record.
Chicago puts itself on the front burner this weekend with the inaugural Chicago Gourmet, a weekend-long festival of food and wine attended by chefs and sommeliers near and far. Special MenuPages correspondents Bridget Houlihan and Tammy Green, of the dining podcast Chicago Bites, are on the scene. Today: Tasting California.
In the tasting tent.
I tasted my way through the Alexander Valley in Sonoma County Sunday without even leaving Chicago.
Stefen Soltysaik from Rodney Strong Vineyards was my guide; his wine seminar at Chicago Gourmet, called "Examination of Cool to Warm Climate Cabernet Sauvignon," was excellent. We were each given four glasses of Cabernet Sauvignon. The first three glasses were from different Rodney Strong wineries in the valley, and the fourth glass was the vineyard's current pride and joy, the 2005 Rockaway blend.
Then the geography lesson began, and Soltysaik explained how climate impacts wine. Each glass was incredibly different because of the location of the winery where it was produced.
As we tasted and learned more, Soltysaik also detailed how the wine we were drinking was made.
It was a fascinating and well-put-together presentation. I've taken a variety of wine tours and have gone to a number of tastings. This one was far-and- away the most educational and entertaining I've attended.
The wine was spectacular too… especially the Rockaway 2005! I sought out that wine and sipped some more at the Grand Cru Tasting later in the day. It just might inspire me to go to Sonoma one day. (As if I really needed an excuse!)
An AP article that ran over the weekend highlighted the growing trend of farm-to-table restaurants, especially those outlets who take it one step further and ensure that their physical structures are LEED-certified. And tucked right in there at the end was a nice little shoutout to the north side paean to all things vegan and gluten-free, The Balanced Kitchen.
Manager Joshua Alper laments that the 20-seat cafe still hasn't broken even, but there's always hope: "There is a certain percentage of the market who need, or want or appreciate what we are doing."
Like, for example, us: Their raw "noodles" (really long threads of shaved coconut) with peanut sauce and their ever-changing brunch menu are almost enough to make us believers in the raw food gospel.
• Uh-oh, Jack-o-Lantern (and pumpkin baked good) enthusiasts! Too much rain this summer = poor pumpkin harvest this fall. [Boston Globe]
• The poisoned milk disaster spreads its melamine tainted tentacles even further, with news that White Rabbit candies, the inexplicably tasty vanilla-flavored chews, are NSFE (not safe for eating). [LA Times]
• The North Dakota Farmer's Union is opening a restaurant in Washington, D.C., and they're shooting for making it the "greenest" in the city. Ironically, since this demands an emphasis on local crops, most of the food will not come from North Dakota farms. [AP]
• Would you like Starbucks in exchange for your empty milk carton? RecycleBank awards per pounds recycled, and those points can be redeemed for Starbucks, groceries, Coca-Cola products and more. Filling your tummy by emptying your bottles and cans? Pretty sweet deal. [Newsweek]
• 103,000 pounds. Sound heavy? That is how much meat the Utah Food Bank got from 4-H members across the state, in an incredibly weighty donation. [The Salt Lake Tribune]
Chicago puts itself on the front burner this weekend with the inaugural Chicago Gourmet, a weekend-long festival of food and wine attended by chefs and sommeliers near and far. Special MenuPages correspondents Bridget Houlihan and Tammy Green, of the dining podcast Chicago Bites, are on the scene. Today: How to taste wine.
Lined up and ready to pour.
Pairing wine with food is what makes wine great. And Master Sommelier Fred Dame says there's a scientific reason for that.
"Food is full of fat, and wine is acidic," he explained Saturday during a wine seminar at Chicago Gourmet. "Think about eating steak. You're essentially coating your palate with fat. As you sip wine, it cleans your palate so you can taste the next bite."
The first bite is always the best, he continued, and when you pair food with wine you get 30 first bites.
That's a good reason to become a wine lover, and once you start tasting a variety of wine it's a whole new world.
In the seminar "Tasting the Masters' Way," Dame walked us through that world a bit with a blind tasting. He detailed techniques sommeliers use to identify and appreciate wine and discussed what it takes to become a sommelier. Some of his best tips:
Identify the scents in the wine you're about to taste. What fruits do you smell?
Look at the color of the wine. Is it bright? Clear?
Keep in mind that white wines grow darker with age and red wines grow lighter.
Swish your wine around. Look at the legs. Wines with a lot of tannins are fuller-bodied wines.
Taste a variety of wine. It will surprise you.
Take notes whenever practical.
Enhance your skill with taste tests — especially blind ones.
Becoming a sommelier is not easy, and it takes additional years of study to become a master. But what I learned from Dame will surely enhance my wine experience — not to mention come in handy the next time I'm trying to select a bottle to go with dinner.
Chicago puts itself on the front burner this weekend with the inaugural Chicago Gourmet, a weekend-long festival of food and wine attended by chefs and sommeliers near and far. Special MenuPages correspondents Bridget Houlihan and Tammy Green, of the dining podcast Chicago Bites, are on the scene. Today: Food demos!
Jose Garces, head chef at Chicago's Mercat a la Planxa, prepares octopus.
Do you know how to "scare" an octopus? Dip it in boiling water three times before dropping it in to cook.
No joke. This simple technique, known as scaring, tenderizes the octopus, making it more succulent to eat.
Jose Garces, the head chef at Chicago's Mercat a la Planxa, explained this to a captive audience yesterday during a Best of Spain and Mexico cooking demonstration at Chicago Gourmet.
Sharing the stage with Rick Bayless, Garces got everyone's attention before he even started cooking, simply by holding up the octopus. Then he showed us how to cook it. I know I'm not ready to give this a shot myself, but it was utterly fascinating to watch. Until yesterday, I had absolutely no idea how to "scare" an octopus.
You know what else? Start saving the corks from the red wine you drink. When you throw them in the boiling water with the octopus it adds to the flavor. Cool, huh?
Watching a cooking demo at Chicago Gourmet is what I imagine it would be like to be on the set of a cooking show that airs on the Food Network. The stage at Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park is currently the home of a snazzy looking kitchen set, complete with professional appliances and cookware. Large mirrors hang over the prep tables so that you can watch the chefs work.
And it's really fun to watch a great chef cook. They make it look easy. Cooking and plating well is an art… and I like to see it as it happens.
Having said that, I must admit that I don't watch cooking demos often. That's because I find it very dissatisfying not to be able to taste the food I'm watching people prepare. I know for a fact that if I were to make the same dish myself it wouldn't taste as good. So I was really hoping to get to taste the food after watching live cooking demos.
No such luck. In some cases, I could find samples of the dish made in a demo at a tasting table later in the day, but not always.
Still, the demos were great to watch and they may even inspire me to cook! Garces certainly inspired me to eat: Tammy and I made our way Mercat a la Planxa for dinner last night and splurged on not one, but two orders of octopus.
—BRIDGET HOULIHAN
After the jump, photos of Rick Bayless's two demo dishes, plus salted cactus!
Rick Bayless' demo dish: Stewed ribeye.
A sample portion of the ribeye, served up at a tasting table later.
Salted cactus from another demo, "The Best of Latin Flavors."
Chicago puts itself on the front burner this weekend with the inaugural Chicago Gourmet, a weekend-long festival of food and wine attended by chefs and sommeliers near and far. Special MenuPages correspondents Bridget Houlihan and Tammy Green, of the dining podcast Chicago Bites, are on the scene. Today: Where's the food?
Dried fruit display at Pastoral Artisan Cheese
Chicago Gourmet is a food festival without food.
My tummy was rumbling when I arrived at the main entrance Saturday morning, primed to sample everything Chicago's best chefs had to throw at me. It turns out that wasn't much.
The majority of the booths at the main event, located on the lawn of the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, offered wine, not food.
"Isn't there supposed to be a Grand Cru Wine Tasting later today?" I asked Tammy, my Chicago Bites co-host, as she photographed the scene.
"Yeah."
"So what's with all the wine?" I asked, baffled. "Where's the food?"
So we set out on a tireless quest to find something to eat, relentlessly foraging from booth to booth.
The booths themselves were lovely. Many looked professionally designed, and were decorated with phenomenal flower arrangements and tempting pictures of food or large reproductions of restaurant menus. But time after time, we walked away with brochures and nothing to eat.
Then we saw a line stretching out of the Chaise Lounge booth… they were serving crab cake and salad! Victory!
"Have another plate," the owner said, after I'd devoured my first. "I've never been to a food fest with so little food."
True. And here's the kicker: I'd venture a guess that all that wine drove up ticket prices. So folks paid $100 to get in and drink on empty stomachs because they thought they were paying to eat.
Tammy and I were able to ferret out a few more food tastings throughout the day. But they was sparse and meat-heavy. Tammy is a "fussitarian": She eats fish but no meat. So she sat by patiently while I tried things like chicken salad wraps and bacon-and-onion tartlets.
She did get to sample A Mano's olive oil gelato though, which was one of the food highlights of my day. We both enjoyed Kefir smoothies from Star Fruit café in the Whole Foods kids' area, and there were a couple of booths with dried fruits and excellent cheese. I loved Rick Bayless' rib eye steak dish. But of course Tammy couldn't eat that.
—BRIDGET HOULIHAN
The crab cake at the Chaise Lounge booth was a saving grace.
Chicago puts itself on the front burner this weekend with the inaugural Chicago Gourmet, a weekend-long festival of food and wine attended by chefs and sommeliers near and far. Special MenuPages correspondents Bridget Houlihan and Tammy Green, of the dining podcast Chicago Bites, are on the scene. First up: The opening night reception.
When you know the bartender, the headwaiter, or the bus boy, you're in for a better dining experience. These are the folks whose service can make or break an evening.
So, when I spotted Carol, an acquaintance I met years ago through work, behind the bar last night at Chicago Gourmet's kickoff in Millennium Park, I had an inkling it was going to be an amazing night.
"I didn't even know you were a bartender!" I said, wandering over to say hello, while the press photographers were busy snapping shots of Mayor Daley.
"One of my four jobs," she replied with a smile. "This is such a cool event, isn't it?" she said, pouring me a glass of wine. "You've got to try the Seven Daughters white, it a blend of seven grapes. You'll love it!"
Chicago Gourmet aims to solidify the city's place as an international food contender through a series of cooking demos, seminars, and tastings this weekend. And the food I sampled last night was great, but it wasn't the most striking part of the launch.
The most striking part was a prevailing sense of excitement. Every chef and attendee I chatted with shared Carol's enthusiasm for the event and seemed genuinely thrilled that Chicago is finally flexing some culinary muscle. Last night's reception was attended mostly by presenting chefs, the media, and corporate sponsors, but it was anything but stuffy. It was more like a jolly convention of foodies.
I still have to wonder though if Chicago Gourmet will resonate with the general public. In Chicago, we're used to having a street fair every 15 minutes during the summer, so a weekend of food is nothing new. And as a result, we're also pros at eating food on a stick in a tent.
Ticket prices, chocolate pepper macaroons, and worries for the future, after the jump!
John Penn's salad gives me hope that the British won't starve!
But we don't usually have dark chocolate with sea salt on a stick as an option. And until Chicago Gourmet, we've never had to pay upwards of $150 just to get in the tent in the first place. This is not the Taste of Chicago. It aspires to something more.
The local lineup showcases Chicago's best, but just as impressive is the event's international flavor. Chefs from Chicago's sister cities throughout the world have flown in to participate, and last night there was much buzz about the 2016 Olympic bid.
In between chats with fellow foodies, I did manage to taste everything. The standouts for me were the tuna tartar starters, and the desserts – especially the chocolate pepper macaroons. Many of the main dish tastings were game heavy – featuring veal and ostrich. I didn't really like them, but appreciated what they were going for.
My favorite dish of the evening was John Penn's Haricot Vert Salad, a refreshing medley with some of the tastiest tomato and olive garnish I've ever had.
Penn is visiting from England, and when I lived there, I ate to live, not because I wanted to eat. If Penn's salad is any indication, he has the potential to greatly improve the food scene on the other side of the pond. He's a culinary teacher too… so he's passing his knowledge to others! There's hope!
The Risotto with Veal Sweatbread & Crawfish Moussaka was rich and flavorful, but not my thing.
As many tastings as there were at the reception, there wasn't nearly enough of it to make a real meal out of it. The ticket price was for quality, not quantity. There were also very few vegetarian options. That's unusual in a city that is normally veggie friendly.
My initial impression of Chicago Gourmet is good. But I do wish the price tag wasn't so high (although I'm told that it is much less expensive than similar events in New York) because everyone should have the opportunity to taste the best Chicago has to offer.
Will folks pay the price and show up for events today? Or will corporate sponsors make up the majority again? I'll keep you posted! No matter what, I'm looking forward to good eats. And I'd better get to it.
The TOC Blog breaks the news of who'll be helming the forthcoming no-doubt-going-to-be-awesome Eater Chicago site: Ari Bendersky (left), whose email link Tamarkin has set to give the auto-subject line "Hey sexy!"
Ahem. Get an internet-room, you two.
Meanwhile, we learn this about Bendersky from some quick-and-dirty googlestalking:
He loves his dog, Emma, and his partner, Drew, spicy shrimp tempura rolls, skim vanilla lattes, a respectable Turkey Club, biking, San Francisco (his former home) and a great bottle of red wine, preferably a spicy Zin or jammy Pinot. Oh yeah, and he thinks Scrabble rocks-- even though Drew will never play with him. Some day he'll get off his ass and write a book or two.
Does a food blog count as a book? Also, Mister Bendersky, consider yourself officially challenged to a game of internet-scrabble. We are hella good.
"as much as I enjoy some of the food ... I think it's time somebody took a hard look at the menu and made some changes; it's beginning to look just a little bit dated."
But wait, un-stop the presses, 'cause he quickly reverts to the old Bruno we love and are exasperated by, entirely failing to elaborate on how, exactly, the menu of cheeseburgers, chili, and pasta with red sauce is any more dated here than it is at the dozens upon dozens of other Chicago restaurants with entirely identical inventory. Whatevs. He likes the food, and we learn almost nothing. Same old same old.
Riddle me this: if Follia, which clocks in for Bruno's second review this week is so Italian that the dishes mentioned in the writeup are IN ITALIAN, then WHY FOR THE LOVE OF GOD is does the little info box next to the review read "Cuisine: American"? WHY IS THIS THE CASE? Anyway, Bruno is smitten by the pizza at this west loop joint, taken in by the pastas, and finds the desserts to be hit or miss — ultimately, the experience isn't bad for the price, but Bruno (weirdly) spends a lot of time dropping hints to the staff on how to make the food better (a side of broccoli rabe, a garnish of raspberry sauce, etc etc etc).
Witom's back on his suburban beat (does he ever leave it?), at Cafe Havana(5 N. 105th St, Itasca, 630 773 8822), a recent open whose menu is still, per the manager, a work in progress. Witom's menu rundown has few surprises: pressed sandwiches, ropa vieja, black bean soup, bistec al cubana served with what sounds like chimichurri to us (WItom IDs it as "a special herb-infused olive oil dipping sauce"). Maybe our undies are still in a bunch from Tamarkin's Criticgate 2008, but this review is a freaking waste of space.
Hm. Yes. It is kind of obvious that we are. Thank god it's Friday.
There are, as Mike Sula points out in this week's Reader review, no Cambodian restaurants in Chicago. So to dive into the cuisine of the south Asian country, he finds a backdoor: The festival of Pchum Ben, Ancestors' Day, a fifteen-day religious celebration that is celebrated this weekend with copious amounts of food, and is open to the public.
On his visit, Sula finds dishes that are reminiscent of — but not identical to — Thai flavors: sweet curries, distilled fishy flavors, coconut, pickled greens, basil, mint, lemongrass, peanuts, and cucumbers all come into play. But the dishes are much subtler: where Thai food is, say, extreme mega bmx snowboarding, Cambodian food might clock in as fencing: not so much brute-force adrenaline, but still plenty engaging and calling on skill and technique. He also checks in with Kathy Reun, a who works for the Cambodian Association of Illinois, and is an active figure in the fight against diabetes — the disease is prevalent among the Cambodian community.
You read that right. As if our hot dogs, pizza, and Italian beef — oh, and the Taste — weren't enough, Chicago is putting itself on the haute culinary map this weekend with the inaugural Chicago Gourmet, a weekend-long festival of food and wine.
While much of the talent is homegrown — Frontera's Rick Bayless, Top Chef's Stephanie Izard, Gale Gand of Tru and PBS — the festival's got global reach, with chefs and wine experts flying in from all over: from Terrance Brennan of New York's Picholine and Maricel Presilla of Hoboken, NJ's criminally delicious Cucharamama and Zafra, to Mpuhe Dhlomo of Africa Meets Europe in Durban, South Africa and Francesca Marsetti from Milan's Brasserie Iseo Brescia.
Of course, MenuPages will be on the scene as well: special correspondents Bridget Houlihan and Tammy Green (of the can't-miss dining podcast Chicago Bites) will be bringing their formidable skills to the table, filing regular reports throughout the weekend, starting with tonight's opening night gala.
For cop-out Friday, check out this classic Sesame Street video with Grover doing his best impression of yours truly as a waiter. No, not really. But seriously? If we're ever called upon to take up the mantle of the service industry once more, we're totally going to forgo a notebook in favor of Grover's rhyming memory technique. "Round and tasty on a bun..."
There's more going on in Millennium Park this weekend than Chicago Gourmet — launching tomorrow and running for the next two weeks is Wired NextFest, "the premier showcase of the global innovations transforming our world."
The free event is a must-visit (and a must-swoon) for all the techsters out there. Gapers Block's Andrew Huff was at a press preview where he saw Mayor Daley relaxing in a magnetically-levitating lounge chair. But poking around on his Flickr we realized that there are some entirely food-relevant components to this nerdfest (we use the term with utter affection). Like, up on the left there? That is SMELLOVISION. Straight out of Futurama, and into our lives. With pie!
Excitingly, the amazing serving pieces from Alinea are on display as well, which should be no surprise to anyone familiar with the expectation-defying work of Grant Achatz. And for the record, no, we are not on Alinea's payroll. Even though, yes, we talk about them entirely way too much.
Isn't there a restaurant in Chicago with that chef, who just won some crazy award, who's like, "I will poach the...idea of a pine needle, and insert it into your vagina at some point during your visit." Do you know what I'm talking about? It's called Alinea or something.
Pitchfork: I have no idea what you're talking about.
I know it's in Chicago. Check it out, and then you must go! Some courses are served in motions, like, they have a sex swing that they put a piece of broccoli rabe on?
Pitchfork: I'll have to look that up.
I think you should make a reservation for tonight.
– Nico Muhly, impish savior of classical music, on dining out in an interview with Pitchfork
• Europe is concerned that their condensed milk could be of the tainted Chinese variety. [New York Times]
• People in Japan and Taiwan have already become sickened by the melamine-tainted milk. [Washington Post]
• Hong Kong residents are staying as far away from food imported from China as possible. [Bloomberg]
• Here in the U.S., we don't need to worry about tainted food because the FDA has the resources to stay on top of it. Oh wait. They totally don't. [Chicago Tribune]
• Even amidst the financial meltdown, there's good news for at least one group of rich people: McDonald's shareholders. [LA Times]
Big news in the world of big guns: one sixtyblue has hired a new executive chef.
Taking the helm at the beginning of Octoberwill be Michael McDonald, who comes to town from Restaurant Charlie at the Palazzo Hotel in Vegas, but cut his chops in New York at Cafe Gray, and at Napa's Sonoma Mission Inn & Spa. (MP:SF editor Adam: "huh?")
Rest assured, this guy's a solid one. We look forward to the revamped menu, oui?
But the real meat this week is Phil Vettel's take on Piccolo Sogno, which he awards with a solid two stars. When TOC reviewed it a little over a month ago, they were more taken by the patio than the food — Vettel acknowledges the lure of the outdoor space, but also finds no savory dish worth complaining about (though the tomatoes in a seafood pasta dish clock in "dangerously close" to an overpowering level), though the desserts aren't spectacular.
[Photo of panzanella at Piccolo Sogno from Maes Studio]
We wrote about the delightfully eccentric Kenny Shopsin, of New York's Shopsin's, but a couple days ago and that same night, he appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. For those readers who have never been to Shopsin's, and perhaps may never go, this clip is a pretty stellar example (minus a lot of cursing) of what to expect from Mr. Shopsin. For those who have , he's in fine form, no?
The video is a fun watch, not only for the way these two banter (seriously, have two people ever looked more perplexed and befuddled by the other?), but also, because of what they cook up. Mac and cheese pancakes? A pancake with a tiny little burger in it? S'MORES PANCAKES? Kenny Shopsin is truly blowing our mind with all of these reinventions!
What's more, this video &mdash plus all of the Shopsin-mania swirling around the release of his cookbook &mdash just happens to fall during the same week as National Pancake Day, which is tomorrow. As far as coincidences go, this one could hardly get better: Shopsin has whet pancake appetites nationwide + you basically have no recourse but to stuff your face with pancakes tomorrow.
We can't all rush to Shopsin's for mac and cheese pancakes, but that doesn't mean that there aren't mighty fine pancakes to be found elsewhere in the country. So run on down to Orange tomorrow and remind yourself what a real short stack tastes like. Hell, order yourself a side of macaroni and see what happens.
The headlining article in today's TOC is something near and dear to our hearts: the state of the restaurant critic in the age of the internet. While David Tamarkin's piece could read as the next stage in his feud with Steve Dolinsky, it's much more interesting to see how the various restaurant critics in Chicago view the rabid hordes of Yelp, LTHForum, and (though it's not mentioned) this very site — not to mention how they self-define against this new blogger context. Lots of names weighing in here, from Chicago Mag's Jeff Ruby to the Sun-Times's Pat Bruno to NewCity's Mike Nagrant (who posts his own, extended take on the matter on Hungry Mag).
It's semana del Tamarkin at TOC, apparently, as David steps off his soapbox to compare/contrast the various savory cupcake offerings from newcomers Chaos Theory Cakes and More Cupcakes. Going head-to-head are the dueling bakeries' bacon, curry, and tomato mini-cakes. Whose cuisine reigns supreme? There's no clear-cut overall winner. Psh.
We feel this sort of centered peace upon seeing the ol' Heather Shouse byline again (hi Heather! Welcome back!), as she profiles (see Tamarkin's first article to grok that this is not a review) Jamaica Jamaica(1512 Sherman Ave, Evanston, 847 328 1000). Bet you can't guess what kind of food they serve! The restaurant is from the owners of Good To Go, and the classic island fare — jerk chicken, meat patties, other good stuff — is augmented by a 25-plus-item smoothie menu.
Shouse also profiles the just-opened Bristol, but we are guessing you already know everything you need to know about that place.
"That’s gonna be great. We’ve got the culinary and we’re bringing in some international chefs from some sister cities. We’re really highlighting that because now culinary and hospitality–we’re about the second city almost, close to New York. We have great restaurants. Really, New York they always have some top three or four, but we’re very, very close. We have original, original creators and all types of chefs. We’re doing very well. I mean, this is gonna quite a show."
– Mayor Richard M. Daley, on Chicago Gourmet, which kicks off tomorrow night.
So, um, remember that Swiss Chef we reported on, who was playing with the idea of using human milk in his restaurant dishes? Yeah, well guess who lurrrrved that story? PETA, of course.
The animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals hopped right on the human milk bandwagon, sending a letter to Ben and Jerry's co-founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield asking them to replace cow milk with human milk in their famously counterculture-embracing ice cream.
In response to our letter, Ben and Jerry's issued the following statement: "We applaud PETA's novel approach to bringing attention to an issue, but we believe a mother's milk is best used for her child." Hey, guys, that's our point: Cow's milk is for baby cows.
Funny. The idea of breast-milk-based food made the rounds as recently as April 1. As a joke. But perhaps all this attention will legitimize the stuff enough for some local joint to give it a try? Well, you can always search our menus to find out.
Monica Eng's sit-down with a bunch of Chicago chefs is so full of fodder that we are actually sitting here in a state of disarray, so much is there that we want to talk about. It is glorious.
And we were going to do a sort of topic-by-topic recap, but then we realized that virtually everything that got our undies in a bunch came out of the mouth of one mister Bowles. Like, for example:
Chicago vs. New York: Graham Elliot Bowles counters Bill Kim's claim that "New York is still the top city" by pointing out that "in New York the chefs that you talk about today—Daniel [Boulud], Jean-Georges [Vongerichten] and [David] Bouley—are the same ones you talked about 20 years ago. It's not very feasible for people to [open a new place] unless it's way down in the Village or way in Brooklyn."
Dude. Graham. We showed that quote to MP:Boston editor Leila and she said "that is retarded." And she is right! Plenty of new-guard NYC chefs who own their own places are all over the national foodie radar: Chang, Hamilton, Dufresne, Zamarra — just to name a few. And believe us when we tell you we have lived in New York, and opening a restaurant "way down in the Village or way in Brooklyn" is not an "unless" scenario — it is a best-case scenario. Midtown is for tourists and businessmen, and upper west and east sides are culinary wastelands. Downtown or Brooklyn is where you go if you want to be taken seriously as a chef.
A good Chicago bakery: GEB claims that his restaurant doesn't even serve bread, "because we aren't able to make it in-house and there are really no great bakeries to source it out."
And then Paul Kahan is all, dude, what about Fox & Obel? Hmm? And we are all THAT IS RIGHT, PAUL KAHAN. YOU SHOW HIM.
Bloggers: Ouch: we and our ilk are universally hated, of course, but GEB draws an odd analogy: "Why this obsession with food online? You don't see people blogging about their new shoes in the same way."
In his defense, GEB has nice things to say about food trends, and we support his decision to consume a $10 lunch at a gyros place on Chicago Avenue. And we hear very nice things about his restaurant. But still.
Tom Colicchio has a lot going for him. A pile of wildly successful 
Milwaukee's 
An AP article that ran over the weekend highlighted the growing trend of farm-to-table restaurants, especially those outlets who take it one step further and ensure that their physical structures are LEED-certified. And tucked right in there at the end was a nice little shoutout to the north side paean to all things vegan and gluten-free, 
The TOC Blog 
• Bostonians are dumbstruck with grief after a grease fires one of the area's best burger joints. [
There's more going on in Millennium Park this weekend than 
Big news in the world of big guns: 
Monica Eng's 