MenuPages

We kind of love this: Uptown Update notes that the awning outside of D'Manilan's Fishpond, a Filipino restaurant at 4416 N Clark, advertises that from 7 a.m. until 11 a.m. it is not the Fishpond, but rather identifies as DMF Breakfast House. Two, two, two restaurants in one? Sadly no: we called the restaurant, and they told us that they stopped serving breakfast about five months ago, since customer traffic was "very slow." You'll have to go elsewhere for your "American Breakfast," but Fishpond did confirm that the "sports bar" and "fax service" are still a go. [Uptown Update]

Grant Achatz, on why diners at Alinea might not always get the same dishes as another table: "Alinea's food by nature is tedious, experimental and exploratory, and I mean that from the side of the guest and the staff that prepares and serves it. Because of the innovative approach, a new idea has to be worked out and refined before we can produce it for the masses. Baby steps, as they say: We often start slow, serving a new course to one or two tables a night. This allows us to get to know the nuances of the course from the operational standpoint. It is one thing to have a neat idea and make it once to prove it can be done. It is entirely another to produce the dish under strict time parameters and in the environment of busy restaurant while serving it to an audience that is unpredictable." [The Atlantic Food]

Hey, guess what: Taxim is open for daytime service! Like, actually for real. Yeah, we couldn't believe it either. But it's true. Now go eat Greek yogurt and mezethes and be grateful.

Previously:
Yes, Taxim Is Open For Lunch (and Breakfast) Today Wait, No It's Not
Will Taxim Open For Breakfast and Lunch on Monday?
Taxim Opening For Lunch in Mid-May

The comparisons are inevitable between the recently-opened Chicago's Dog House in Lincoln Park and Avondale's Hot Doug's — taking their cue from the king of encased meats, the boys behind the Dog House have turned to some nontraditional animals in putting together their menu. Adventurous eaters can order lamb, duck, or even smoked alligator sausages, as well as plenty of inspired riffs on the traditional Vienna Beef. But where the Dog House's brilliance really shines is in their aptly named Blago Dog: it's a classic Chicago dog with all the garden trimmings, but the whole thing has been sacrilegiously and embarrassingly doused in ketchup. If this is something you actually want (if, perhaps, it is something you find fucking golden?), the menu notes that the starting bid is $1000. You can also check out the Dog House's complete offerings after the jump.

Continue reading "The Brilliant Blago Dog at Chicago's Dog House" »

It's too hot outside to actually do anything. May we suggest you cap off your day with a brand-new-to-the-menu ice cream float from Goose Island Clybourn? Six bucks gets you a gourmet confection made with locally produced Black Dog gelato — pick from orange cream soda with lemon-ginger gelato, or the classic Chicago-style root beer with a scoop of vanilla.

While the restaurant's namesake fish isn't on the menu, there are other trouts: a three-way tasting of fish preparations includes orange-cured Tasmanian aea trout and applewood-smoked rainbow trout. Plus there's the entree we're calling for Most Likely To Be Mentioned In Every Review is their pan-seared Idaho golden trout, prepared "New Zealand style" — i.e. the way chef Sean Sanders and his wife cooked it up while they were honeymooning in Kiwiland, with brown butter, confit shallots, peas, mint, and toasted walnuts. Finish it off with the intriguingly named "Grandma Burns Chocolate Chip Cookies" — it's not clear if this is a recipe from someone called Grandma Burns, or if the lady has a tendency to overcook them, but they're served up with a glass of organic milk. Can't go wrong with that.

Check out the complete menu after the jump.

Continue reading "Eat Your Salad After Dessert at Browntrout" »

After all the furor raised over Felony Franks, the hot dog stand to be staffed largely by the formerly incarcerated, we're pleased to see that a similar operation has been running quite smoothly (and under the radar) in Uptown: Cafe Too, reports ABC7. The restaurant (motto: "We serve people on both sides of the register") is part of the Inspiration Corporation, which provides a culinary training program for ex-offenders: after off-site training on restaurant techniques, the men then spend time working back-of-house to get some real job experience. With this on their post-incarceration resumes, 75 percent of program graduates find new jobs after the training. And some stay on: Cafe Too's lead server, Tony Reinert, entered the program after completing a burglary sentence. He was hired full-time in 2005, and is going back to school. "Just like having a roof over your head is stabilizing so is having a job," he told ABC7. "I've proven not only to myself but also to the people at Inspiration Cafe Too that I'm not my past." [ABC7, via Uptown Update]

[Photo: Cafe Too/Official Site]

After providing a tantalizing glimpse at Alinea's latest gimmick boundary-pushing innovation in a tweet last March — "Figured out way to make entire tabletop a plate. Fun, engaging, and entertaining,but is it fine dining eating w/ hands from table surface?" — Grant Achatz reveals the method in a voice-overed photo slideshow on The Atlantic's Food Channel. Key to the method is a latex sheet which covers the table's entire surface, onto which Alinea chefs improvise a plating (often getting the diners involved, spooning out a puree or placing some microvegetable). Frankly, the idea of Grant Achatz handing us the tweezers, sitting back, and watching while we plate our own dinner is absolutely terrifying. That's not to say we don't want to do it, but we'd be scared witless the whole time. [The Atlantic Food — watch for a cameo from the same commis who assisted Grant at the Now We're Cookin' demo, here play-acting as an Alinea diner]

While North Pond is a beautiful, special restaurant all year round, we're of the opinion that the best time to visit is June through September. For these four brief, glorious months, chef Bruce Sherman unlocks the doors to his restaurant for the lunch crowd — and today's the first day of service.

From 11:30 to 1:30, Tuesday through Friday, plant yourself at an elegant table in the restaurant's enclosed patio, order something local and seasonal, and feel oh-so refined. The menu, which changes with the market's offerings, currently has highlights like green garlic-sweet onion soup served with crisp pancetta, pickled greens, and pumpernickel croutons; braised pork belly with artisanal farro salad, sheep's milk feta, ramps, asparagus, and pecans; squid cooked a la plancha with fresh egg fettucine, snap peas, garlic chips, and pepper flakes; and a grilled asparagus sandwich served open-faced on toasted ciabatta with caramelized onions, watercress, and a poached egg. And, of course, there's a cheeseburger.

Check out the full menu, after the jump.

Continue reading "What To Eat For Lunch At North Pond" »

If you had any upcoming dinner plans at Original Mitchell's, you might want to reschedule them: WBBM reports that as of today, the restaurant will only be serving breakfast and lunch. Doors close at 3pm, and for that you can blame the economy: "[Manager Steve Katsaros] said suppertime business has been "steady" and that the restaurant has had "a loyal core of patrons" at all hours, but said evening traffic has not been good enough to make money in a down economy." The restaurant has also raised its prices, and trimmed the staff. [WBBM708]

Anyone out there craving gado-gado? Chicagoans with a penchant for Indonesian cuisine are currently at a loss for restaurants. Starting in June, you can get your Halal on at Angin Mamiri, Muhammed Rukli’s soon-to-open eatery on West Touhy. Highlights will include traditional Indonesian chicken, beef and lamb dishes, soups and spring rolls, as well as regional selections from Rukli’s native South Sulawesi. [The Food Chain]

--Hanna Andrews

A kitchen fire last Friday at Sweets & Savories destroyed their Garland range. The restaurant, which is usually open daily, is closed for at least one more day until the kitchen is up and running. [foiegras/Twitter]

After Boka chef Giuseppe Tentori spent some time twittering about his new menu — "Just changed 75% of the menu, very yummy, peas- pigs feet, green olives and pinenuts, green curry, black garlic and corn" — we got all curious. A three-quarters menu change is exactly the sort of thing in which we traffic, so we're quite pleased to give you an exclusive look at Boka's new offerings.

From the seasonally brilliant "Cobia, green curry, baby artichoke, morel mushroom and pickled tripe" to a refreshing side dish of "Cucumber, mint and honey vinegar" (the sort of thing we'd like to add to our summer picnic repertoire), this is the kind of seasonal menu makeover that gives seasonal menu makeovers a good name.

Check out the whole menu after the jump!

Continue reading "A First Look at Boka's Aggressively Springy New Menu" »

The donuts that end a meal at L2O are a stark counterpoint to the flavors that precede it: the warm, familiar, homey spheres of fried dough are the diametric opposite of the refined, precise flavors found on the savory side of the menu. But they're addictive. And delicious. And, according to the most recent post on the L2O Blog, "a refill can be easily negotiated."

Donut [L2OBlog]
L2O [MenuPages]
L2O [Official Site]

Indiana resto-blogger Babelfish Tartare opines on the fundamental differences between dining at Alinea (which he hasn't done yet) and dining at Schwa (which he loves):

While I really appreciate what Grant Achatz is doing, and most importantly, his comprehension of food in general, I don't like what I've heard about the delivery. Even for me, 24 courses is an exhausting proposition, and while I could talk about food for days, five hours of quiet contemplation and discussion of progressive cooking techniques in a sterile, almost churchlike environment simply makes me want to stay home and watch "No Reservations." I have no doubt that Chef Achatz's food is incredible, really. But for me, it just doesn't seem very....well, fun.

Schwa, is like having a meal that is just as thought provoking, and presumably even as tasty, as that of Alinea, in an environment more akin to your college dorm room on steroids. In-wall air conditioner and furnace poking out, contrasting with two chrome mini-chandeliers hanging in garden windows that are covered with Value Village "lace" drapery, and an Ikea style wooden coat rack/art piece that all combine to imply that Michael Carlson could give a rats ass about interior design, and once we had our first taste of our grapefruit sorbet with black truffles, we didn't either.

Interestingly, the first reader comment is from alias "Grant." Wonder if it's that one...

Schwa La Land [Babelfish Tartare]
Schwa [MenuPages]
Schwa [Official Site]
Alinea [MenuPages]
Alinea [Official Site]

[Photo via Schwa/OS]

Yesterday, news of the Bleeding Heart Bakery Chicago Health Department-imposed closure ricocheted around the blogosphere. Just now, we received a note from bakery owners Michelle and Vinny Garcia, with their version of events. Curious set of coincidences, here:

On Sunday night, after service, our kitchen sink became clogged, once noticed in the morning, the sink was covered and not used. The hand sink near by was affected and was also closed. These are two of 6 sinks we have in the bakery, three of which are hand sinks. This in no way said that we were not either washing our hands (as there is a sink 15 feet away for that) or our dishes. We were not actually open and no food could have in anyway been affected. Drano (yes, I know...bad) had already been purchased and cleared the drain in minutes. Problem solved before 11am.

We get our trash serviced every Monday by Waste Management. They usually come around 10 am which they did yesterday. As our inspection was between 8 and 9, the garbage was not emptied yet. We pay for this service and they come faithfully every week.

There were two members of the staff present both of which had their sanitation license, they were not asked for it. However, the bakery was cited for not having a staff member with their sanitation license present. The owner, Michelle recently had surgery and had to run out for 1 hour to a post op appointment. This one hour just happened to be the hour the health department showed up. Interesting.

We have always prided ourselves on our cleanliness and have supported an open kitchen from the very beginning to prove we have nothing to hide.

We apologize for any problems this may cause people, we have already gone back to the city and will be re-inspected within 48 hours, which is routine procedure. We will be open for business this weekend or sooner, without a doubt, and we will be celebrating another wonderful Valentines Day.

The uncanny coincidence of the health inspector showing up at what appears to be exactly the worst moment possible for Bleeding Heart inspired us to check out the Health Department inspection guidelines [PDF alert] — turns out it's completely kosher to show up outside of operating hours, just before trash pickup, while the owner isn't present. And as much as we like Michelle and Vinny and want their business to thrive, we understand that it's smart for those guidelines to be in place. Bureaucracy: Keeping us from our organic vegan pumpkin cupcakes since, well, yesterday.

Bleeding Heart Bakery [MenuPages]
Bleeding Heart Bakery [Official Site]

[Photo: Chestnut cupcake from the Bleeding Heart Bakery's Flickr]

Time Out New York publishes the second in their multi-part series about New York non-professional-chef Michael Cirino (the mastermind behind A Razor, A Shiny Knife) doing a mini-stage in the Alinea kitchen. In part one, he showed up and was awed. In the second part, he tries to help out, but fate intervenes —

We had picked up two orders of sea bass and I was delicately placing a sheet of chamomile sauce on the fish when Dave Beran, the chef de cuisine, tapped my shoulder and explained that I was no longer needed in the kitchen. A table was being prepared for me in the dining room and I needed to go make myself presentable. I was in shock, having never expected such a gift, but amazingly grateful, as I had no idea how I was going to sneak a taste of the sauces or gels without risking ruining a dish or a plating.

Lucky duck! So now we know — the secret to landing a gratis, no-reservations-required meal at Alinea is simply to mount a massively ambitious recreation of a multi-thousand-dollar meal that takes places in multiple cities with equipment of varying reliability. We're on it.

Inside Alinea: Part Two [The Feed/TONY]
Michael Cirino Stages in the Alinea Kitchen [previously]
Alinea [MenuPages]
Alinea [Official Site]

[Photo: Alinea/Official Site]

Time Out New York gets the inside scoop on working in the kitchen at Alinea — via A Razor, A Shiny Knife's Michael Cirino, the guy behind the recreations of the Achatz-Keller dinners. How does Cirino know what it's like to buckle down in the Alinea kitchen? Achatz and the Alinea team invited him to stage.

In the first of a multipart series (quelle Dumas!), Cirino reveals the goings-on of the first two hours with wide eyes and a Bill Buford-esque attention to detail:

without warning it was 14:00—in Alinea parlance this means that everyone immediately stops what they are doing (literally) and cleans the entire workspace. The room was brutally scrubbed and the sheer force of action took me off guard. I have never witnessed this kind of militaristic rule over a team of people, and it was mind-blowing ... What I assumed at first was an uncomfortable break in the middle of prep was soon revealed to be the secret of Alinea’s success.

More to come (and be reblogged) tomorrow!

Update: Michael Cirino's second dispatch on the Alinea kitchen can be found by clicking here.

Inside Alinea: Part One [The Feed/TONY]
Alinea [MenuPages]
Alinea [Official Site]

[Photo: Alinea/Official Site]

The savvy bloggers from L2O offer us a rare glimpse into the process of dish development, with photos of first and second drafts of chef Laurent Gras's beet salad with watercress and frozen carrot. See if you can spot the differences:

SALAD, DRAFT 1:

SALAD, DRAFT 2:

I spy with my little eye that Draft 2 has four rounds of beet, not three, and also has a scattering of cress leaves. What do you see?

Beet Salad, Watercress, Frozen Carrot, First Draft [L2O Blog]
Beet Salad, Watercress, Frozen Carrot, Second Draft [L2O Blog]
L2O [MenuPages]
L2O [Official Site]

Perhaps inspired by the restaurant's starring role on last night's episode of No Reservations, Chicagoist has declared that this week is L2O week, and they're devoting one feature each day to some meditation on Laurent Gras's temple of haute fish.

Today, the 'ist's resident food photography genius, L. Stolpman, offers up a gallery of behind-the-scenes photos from this past Friday's kitchen. Precise dabs of meyer lemon, whooshing clouds of liquid nitrogen, more than one picture highlighting the use of tweezers as a plating tool — there's a reason dinner at this restaurant runs into save-up-for-a-month territory. But speaking from experience, every freaking bite is worth it.

Food Pron: L2O Behind the Scenes [Chicagoist]
L2O [MenuPages]
L2O [Official Site]

[Photo of prepped lobster tail by L. Stolpman for Chicagoist]

We had a super-special dinner a few months ago with Our Boyfriend* at L2O. While the edible component of the meal was a long string of hits with nary a miss, two things in particular had both of us basically jumping up and down with excitement: the menus and the water glasses.

The menus, if you have not experienced them, are printed on the most luxurious paper we have ever encountered. We had not, in fact, ever considered paper to be something that could be luxurious, until we touched these menus. They are velvety, not unlike a newborn puppy. Our Boyfriend spent a considerable portion of the ride home lovingly petting the menu our captain had given us to keep.

But the other point of obsession was the water glasses. They're razor thin, nearly weightless, and tinged an aquatic blue that deepens as the glass thickens towards the base. We flipped out over their awesomeness, and have been in a continual state of flip-outtage over them ever since.

Not too long ago, we came across them in real life, and we almost lost it right there in the store. We called Our Boyfriend in an excited panic and shouted into the phone OH MY GOD WE FOUND THE L2O GLASSES OH MY GOD, and then we didn't buy them, because they are ridiculously expensive.

The other night, we and Our Boyfriend revealed to one another that we both had, secretly, almost purchased the glasses for each other as Christmas gifts, but then didn't because — we had identical deterrants — they came in assorted colors, rather than L2O-blue. But it was a total Gift of the Magi moment, perhaps the first of that type to center around glassware.

It looks like we're not alone in our love for L2O's glasses: on the restaurant's blog, Anthony Cournia rhapsodizes about the search for the perfect blue water glass, and how they had to call the folks at Riedel to cut a special deal to get the blue glasses in quantity — sadly for all of us, they're only available to the public in those dealbreaking multicolor sets. And we didn't quite have the guts to ask our server if we could bring home a water glass along with the menu.

Blue [L2O Blog]
L.2O [MenuPages]
L.2O [Official Site]

[Photo via the MoMA Store]

*To prevent confusion: this is not Our Secret Boyfriend Mike Sula, who is our secret boyfriend. This is our real boyfriend, who does not know about our secret, one-sided love affair with Mr. Sula.

One of our favorite comic artists, Lucy Knisley, (seriously, y'all, read her book French Milk has written a strip about her dinner at Alinea.

Given how effectively the comic's use of dilating pupils conveys the transcendence of Lucy's meal, we can't help but wonder if perhaps the Alinea cookbook might have been better in graphic novel form.

New Friends and New Comics [Lucy Knisley's blog, via/a>]
Alinea [MenuPages]
Alinea [Official Site]

Does the drama never end? Last month we regaled you with the drama of Sweet Occasions bakery — the bounced checks, the stolen cash, the prostitution, the Land Rover, the European vacations, the potential prostitution. Soap-worthy, no?

Well Sweet Occasions closed when the pile of shit got too deep to dig out of, and reopened as a near-identical storefront in Wicker Park, under the similar name Sweet Thang. Which then lost its lease, and reopened in Roscoe Village. And now that location, Gapers Block reports, is closed — under mysterious (but somehow hauntingly familiar) circumstances.

Fortunately for the good guys, the employees who have been unpaid are staging a protest-cum-press conference, in conjunction with the Chicago Interfaith Committee on Worker Issues. Tomorrow (Thursday), November 20th, at 3pm in front of the store at 2142 W Roscoe, between Hamilton and Chicago. Full press release after the jump.

Sweet Thang Not So Sweet [Gapers Block]
Dessert Drama: The Bitter Tale Of Sweet Occasions [previously]
Sweet Thang [MenuPages]
Sweet Thang [Official Site]

[Photo: Sweet Thang's exterior, via yummyinthetummyblog's Flickr]

Continue reading "Workers Take Matters Into Their Own Hands at Sketchy Sweet Thang Bakery" »

Fire up your RSS burners, kids, because Laurent Gras et al — the team behind the superterrific L2O Blog — are adding another blog to their empire. The restaurant's sommeliers, Doug Marello and Chantelle Pabros, have fired up the L2O Wine Blog.

Much as the original L2O blog gave us unfettered access to the construction and conceptualization of a restaurant back in its early days, and now gives us a look inside the ongoing creative and business sides of running the place, Chantelle and Doug aren't pulling any punches when they talk about how they put the cellar together, or the secret workaround for the restaurant's limited by-the-glass list (there are usually 10-12 other open bottles that aren't listed, which are used for the tasting menu's wine pairings).

L2O Wine Blog [Official Site]
L.2O [MenuPages]
L.2O [Official Site]

[Photo: Wine service at L2O, via npinto's Flickr]

Today at 4pm, head to the corner of Wells and Schiller to celebrate Marion Konishi, founder of Kamehachi, as she is given an honorary street dedication (sadly, since the rededication is only temporary, we won't be changing our official listing to say that Kamehachi is located at 1400 Marion Konishi Way).

The late Konishi earned her street name by opening what is widely acknowledged to be Chicago's first sushi bar:

Marion Konishi opened Chicago's first sushi restaurant, Kamehachi in 1967. Located on Wells Street, in a neighborhood populated by hippies and folksy-type people, Kamehachi was an anomaly: a traditional Japanese restaurant serving items not yet popular nor familiar to Americans. As the years passed, Chicagoans interest in sushi began to increase and Kamehachi became one of the city's most popular restaurants. Its enviable location across the street from The Second City also aided the popularity of the restaurant when stars such as John Belushi, Dan Akroyd and Carrie Fisher would frequent the restaurant mixing in seamlessly with the local clientele.

Chicago's First Lady of Sushi Honored [ABC Chicago]
Kamehachi [MenuPages]
Kamehachi [Official Site]

[Photo: A party tray from Kamehachi, via their official site]

Lake Michigan in January: F'n cold.

When we heard that R.J. Grunt's had relabeled their famous Temperature Soup (pay the temperature) as Economy Soup (pay yesterday's Dow, divided by 10,000), we were curious how this would wind up working out for the folks at LEYE. Here's the cost of a bowl of soup (with entree purchase) over the last seven days, as it would have been under each pricing condition (we checked with R.J.'s, and on days when the market wasn't open the day before, they're going with the most recent closing time — so Friday's close gives you prices for Saturday, Sunday, and Monday):

October 30
Temperature: mid 60s = $0.65
Previous Day's Dow: 8,990.96 = $0.89

October 31
Temperature: upper 60s = $0.67
Previous Day's Dow: 9,180.69 = $0.91

November 1
Temperature: mid to high 50s = $0.57
Previous Day's Dow: 9,336.93 = $0.93

November 2
Temperature: mid 60s = $0.65
Previous Day's Dow: 9,336.93 = $0.93

November 3
Temperature: lower 70s = $0.73
Previous Day's Dow: 9,336.93 = $0.93

November 4
Temperature: lower 70s = $0.73
Previous Day's Dow: 9,319.83 = $0.93

November 5
Temperature: upper 60s = $0.68
Previous Day's Dow: 9,625.28 = $0.96

Looks like across the board we're paying more for soup. Unless the Dow tanks into the 2,000s sometime in the next four weeks, it's unlikely that trend will change.

Of course, if the Dow tanks into the 2,000s sometime in the next four weeks, we'll all have more to worry about than the gimmick pricing of a bowl of soup.

Economy Soup at R.J. Grunt's [LEYE]
R.J. Grunt's [MenuPages]
R.J. Grunt's [Official Site]

[Photo via dorkula's Flickr]

related/previously
Sun-Times Food, Digested: Best. Issue. EVER.

If you, like us, are currently obsessed with all things Grant Achatz and Alinea (we are still holding out for Grant to become our gChat buddy), you'll be psyched to take a look at this report from a recent NYC panel discussion with Achatz and Nathan Myhrvold (former CIO of Microsoft, current extremely wealthy dude with an insanely sci-fi kitchen) about the future of food.

Among other things:

Asked whether OCD plays a part in the success of his kitchen and other successful high end kitchens, Chef G thought about it momentarily and said, "Um...yeah..."

• a great discussion on Chicago's role as the home of the development of American cuisine, rather than NYC or San Fran [eat it, MP:SF!]

• Chef G saying he hears how a lot of New Yorkers are reluctant to try [New York restaurant] WD-50 cuisine, but he would love to open up a restaurant in NYC if the public would come and eat there. Later on, someone in the crowd (might have been Tim Zagat) goes, "Oh we would go! Don't you worry! You come to NYC and we'll go to your restaurant!"

Achatz and Myhrvold With A Hint of Reichl, Steingarten, and the Zagats [Jersey Diner, via]
Alinea [MenuPages]
Alinea [Official Site]
wd-50 [MenuPages]
wd-50 [Official Site]

[Photo via Jersey Diner]

Things to keep in mind while you watch this clip of Chicago 24/7 visiting Carrie Nahabedian in the kitchen at her restaurant, Naha, to make some gnocchi:

• The host, Katie Keogh, is wearing a purple satin cocktail dress and dangly gold earrings in a restaurant kitchen. Omg.

• When Katie asks Carrie whether her food has any Armenian influences, Carrie's hesitation is magical. It's a pure, crystalline moment of "have you seriously done no pre-interview research whatsoever?"

• While the preparation looks delish, the real talent of gnocchi lies in making the pasta itself, not in adorning it with sauce. Does Carrie make her yukon gold gnocchi from scratch? Probably. So why don't we get to see it?

• When Katie and Carrie are out of the kitchen, they're in front of a poster for Chicago Gourmet. Any recon on whether this poster is actually in the dining room at Naha, or whether Katie actually did this interview at CG, rather than in the restaurant?

• No, wait, is the cocktail dress actually a shirt? And is it actually crushed velvet? And is that better or worse?

Naha Restaurant's Chef Shares Her Secret [NBC5]
Naha [MenuPages]
Naha [Official Site]

Right: the gigantic book. Left: our filthy coffee mug.

The big thing about Alinea is that it's, well, big. This is not a throw-it-in-your-bag-for-some-light-reading cookbook — it's the sort of hefty, presence-announcing thing that the word "tome" was invented to describe. It clocks in at the weight of, approximately, a newborn, and has dimensions that renders it a little bookshelf-unwieldy. That's okay, though, because this is the kind of book that coffee tables were made to display: eminently browsable, plenty beautiful, intellectual enough to impress your guests.

A seasonal table of contents: Spring.

The organization is also pure Alinea. Like an awards dinner, the introductions are endless: Before even touching on a recipe, we read through essays from Michael Ruhlman, Jeffrey Steingarten, Mark McClusky, Michael Nagrant, Grant Achatz, and Nick Kokonas. Nick's note is titled "How to Use this Book," and contains what is, to us, a very important line: "Alinea is a kitchen based on precision, and the recipes often read more like a book on baking than a book on cooking." Avid home cooks will know exactly what that means: This isn't a book — nor is Alinea a kitchen — about improvisation, about throwing in a little of this, a little of that. Like baking, which is at its heart simply kitchen chemistry, the hundreds of recipes in this volume are daunting because of the attention they require (mini-step after mini-step), not because they call on any particular technique or skill that's above the level of the average home chef.

The equipment list (from Acetate sheets to Volcano vaporizer) and the ingredient list (from agar agar to xanthan gum) are daunting, and so is the introduction to centerpieces (they should be interactive) and menu construction (an annotated version of Alinea's famous spine of dots), but at this point we decided less to read this as a cookbook than as an artifact of the restaurant's innovation and importance, and all of a sudden it became much less scary than it could have been.

Instructions for assembly.

The note on which we want to conclude this review — or description, really, because we aren't convinced that our opinion on this book actually matters, because this is the kind of book that defies review, more cultural artifact than kitchen how-to — is the same note on which the book itself concludes. It's a list of contributors that reads more as a concise version of how the book we're holding in our hands came to be: Why do an Alinea book? And the answer that Grant and Nick come up with is something that should be emblazoned on the cover of this book: "sometimes the answers come in the doing, not the talking." We can tell you all day what this book looks like, or how it's organized, or how clearly the recipes read, or how illuminating Steingarten and Nagrant's essays are, but ultimately this is the kind of book that's worth holding in your own hands, and seeing for yourself.

The interior is pretty.

Yet another interior shot — note the breathtaking photography.

The minimalist cover: It took us a little bit to realize that was silverware..

Alinea [Amazon.com]
Alinea [MenuPages]
Alinea [Official Site]

We would like to note, for the record, that in the contributors blurb on Michael Nagrant, it is noted that "Michael was so prolific that some of the essays [he wrote for the book] will appear only online in the Alinea Mosaic." Have we used the phrase "ludicrously prolific" before? We think we have.

You heard it here first, nos petits choux! Esquire's November issue, out next week, names their 2008 Restaurant Of The Year, and it is none other than our very own L2O!

Heartiest félicitations to Laurent Gras and the entire team (including server extraordinaire Robert, who made the meal we had there a near-flawless experience, worth every bank-account-busting penny).

We'd call this win a coup, but hot damn if it isn't both entirely predictable and entirely deserved.

L.2O [MenuPages]
L.2O [Official Site]

[Photo via L2O's Flickr]

If you do nothing else in the next week or two, be sure to allot nineteen minutes to check out the latest edition of Sky Full of Bacon, Mike Gebert's HD vidcast of all things food-related. This episode centers around Vital Information blogger Rob Gardner's quest to buy a pig head, turn it into charcuterie, and eat it.

There are two notable faces to look out for in this particular episode.The first, around 8:40, is the first clear shot of the head of the pig, sitting on a cutting board at Mado, staring placidly up at chef Rob Levitt.

The second, billed as Special Guest Headcheese Taster, is me.

Me! First-person me! Not the vague MenuPages voice, but actual physical Helen, Your Intrepid Editor. I show up around 16:45, eat some headcheese, and make various revealing remarks about the culinary/psychological impact of childhood summers spent at Jewish sleepaway camps in northern Wisconsin.

Check out the full post for Mike's recap, plus Mado's recipe for testa, the Italian headcheese that we consumed on-camera.

And, for the record, "Special Guest Headcheese Taster" is totally going on my resume.

Sky Full of Bacon #4: A Head’s Tale [Sky Full of Bacon]
Mado [MenuPages]
Mado [Official Site]

Crain's reports that venerable Andersonville Italian restaurant La Donna will be shuttering in a month or so ... only to reopen a handful of blocks north on the same street, near Rogers Park.

Owner Antonella Barbanente attributes the move to "a shortage of convenient parking and increased competition from a growing number of restaurants in the trendy neighborhood." Which, um, reads to us as La Donna could no longer compete. Here's hoping there's a better reason for the move than just an inability to stay relevant, and that the restaurant thrives in its new home.

Upscale Andersonville restaurant moving [Chicago Real Estate Daily]
La Donna [MenuPages]
La Donna [Official Site]

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.

Farmers bet 'green' eatery will catch on [IHT/AP]
The Balanced Kitchen [MenuPages]
The Balanced Kitchen [Official Site]

[photo of a fruit quiche via The Balanced Kitchen]

So naturally what you must do is this: Mark your calendars for December 2. That evening Mister Achatz and Mister Keller (of New York's Per Se and Napa's French Laundry) are going to be sharing the proverbial stage: twenty courses over the course of what will undoubtedly be countless hours of culinary precision and gastronomical bliss. It's at Alinea.

Of course, it's not cheap: the price tag runs a hefty $1500, which includes both wine pairings and astonishing proximity to greatness.

Dining Calendar [New York Times, last item]
Achatz and Keller Team up For Epic 20-Course Menu [Eater]
Alinea [MenuPages]
Alinea [Official Site]

[Photo: The Alinea kitchen (one of these people will soon be Thomas Keller!), via Browners82's Flickr]

Is this burger enough to make you give up the localvore challenge?

It's almost enough to do in Chicagoist's Chuck Sudo, but not quite. Instead, he falls under the spell of Burrito House's off-menu fish tacos, and two bottles of Pineapple Jarritos.

Localvore Challenge Update: Uh-oh... [Chicagoist]
Kuma's Corner [MenuPages]
Kuma's Corner [Official Site]
Burrito House [MenuPages]
Burrito House [Official Site]

[Photo via]

If we are in need of some reliable workplace giggle-inducers, we point our browser to CakeWrecks, which chronicles the hilarious, the misguided, and the hilariously misguided decorated cakes that exist in this world. We chortle like a maniac every time we visit the site, and we visit it nearly every day.

So we literally gasped — really, an actual gasp — when in our inbox just a few minutes ago landed an announcement from Chaos Theory Cakes, announcing their wedding cakes. These cakes? Are no freaking wrecks. Oh holy goodness gracious:

It's kind of a sweet deal — an $800 cake that feeds a hundred partygoers clocks in at a measly eight bucks a slice. And that one on the far right is almost enough to get us to pop the Q to Our Boyfriend, for cake purposes only. Heck, we'd pop the Q to anyone for a guarantee that this would be our rewarded dessert. Any takers? Anyone?

[All photos via the official Bleeding Heart/Chaos Theory Flickr]

As you undoubtedly already know, Grant Achatz is the chef at Alinea, and Alinea is one of the most-lauded restaurants in the country, if not the world. They also have a cookbook coming out soon (watch this space for some extremely awesome upcoming MP exclusives on that matter).

Andrew Zimmern has an interview with Grant Achatz up today, misleadingly titled "5 Questions with Grant Achatz" — in reality it's (we're counting, hang on...) thirteen. No matter how many, they're good.

While we get some tantalizing insights (Achatz has a weak spot for Potbelly Sandwich Works!), Zimmern has a hard time pulling juicy gossip out. Ever diplomatic and articulate, here's what Achatz says when asked about his "top three kitchen experiments gone wrong":

Well, we try things all of the time that simply don't work. We spent a while trying to make snow, to see if freezing various flavored liquids by spraying them into a chamber and allowing them to crystallize like snow does would produce a unique texture. We worked with Philip Preston at Polyscience on this and he rigged up a few different experiments that became increasingly elaborate and large. We made something that approximated snow, but we have not produce anything unique or worthwhile... yet. But all of our failures are temporary in some fashion... we just look at them as ongoing experiments that often lead to some place we did not expect.

We have been trying to blow a balloon from soft sugar, like caramel for about 6 years to no avail. And then there was the ill-fated concept of a lamb with charcoal crust. But really the guests never see the failures. We are very careful of self-editing ourselves. We know when a dish is menu ready.

To be specific…Ketchup, eggs, champagne, pickles, a moldy lemon, yogurt (likely spoiled as I can’t remember when I bought it), mustard (whole grain), capers, mayonnaise, and two sprigs of rosemary, grape jelly and three bottles of Evian.

[Photo: Achatz in the Alinea kitchen, via Stu Spivack's Flickr]

So sayeth Mike Nagrant, and he's pretty much on target. So far Monica Eng, Mike Gebert, and Steve Dolinksy have all swooned, to greater or lesser degrees, over the fare Chef Bill Kim doles out — and that's just the top of our Google Reader.

But Nagrant is the guy who knocked the wind out of Yats, and while his review of Urban Belly isn't quite as gleefully vitriolic as his takedown of the West Loop Cajun newcomer was, we get a healthy dose of his skeptical palate. The balloon isn't burst, kids, but there's a little bit of deflation going on. The very first sentence skewers the kitchen's offerings, and it doesn't move too far from there:

Urban Belly ... is decent Asian food for unadventurous pseudo-foodies and hipsters with money to burn.

I’m guessing many of the food-obsessed have secretly longed for our own local Momofuku, so we could lord it over any and all comers that there’s nothing Chicago doesn’t own. Kim’s spot seemed the logical anointee. I’ve never been to Momofuku, but if Urban Belly is truly like Chang’s spot, then Chang’s success represents a supreme golden fleecing of American food media.

It’s not that the food at Urban Belly isn’t good. It’s that it’s just not great.

Inside the Urban Belly [Hungry Mag]
Urban Belly [MenuPages]
Urban Belly [Official Site]

[Photo: Lamb with brandy dumplings, via Sky Full of Bacon]

We might have mentioned this place once or twice.

A New Burger In Town [Gapers Block]
Counter Countdown [previously]
Counter To Infinity [previously]
Counterstrike: A Rant [previously]
The Counter [MenuPages]
The Counter [Official Site]

Here's what we'd kill for: A torta milanesa from Maravillas, that we have pleadingly amended to include chorizo as well. Lettuce, tomato, avocado, no sour cream. A giant mug of coffee. And a pineapple Jarritos.

If you find yourself hungover and on the south side, that's what you need. If you're more northerly, the experience can be approximated at Arturo's, but we advise against adding the chorizo (it might make things worse).

Blargh.

Maravillas [MenuPages]
Arturo's Tacos [MenuPages]

[Photo: Arturo's torta milanesa (that's breaded fried steak), via nrsilver's Flickr]

Oh boy! Today's UrbanDaddy reports on the coming-up-fast opening of The Counter, that build-your-own burger joint that we might have gone a little ballistic over.

UD's got the line on a soft opening Friday night, and the friendly Counter employee we just spoke to on the phone confirmed an anticipated official opening for Monday. We've got to admit, we're sort of itching to try the place out ourselves, and see if our rageful rant was in any way warranted.

It's worth noting, by the by, that UD is still pushing Counter's claim that they have "so many thousands of burger combinations (312,000, to be exact)" and this is a blatant, complete lie. If you'll recall, we did the math on this one, and came up with a much more ambitious number of potential combinations: 8,247,808,800. And that's without paying for extra toppings.

We will, for the record, refrain from commenting on the fact that Counter's address in Chicago is 666 Diversey. That would be crass and, quite frankly, entirely beneath us.

Choice Meat [UrbanDaddy]
Counterstrike: A Rant [previously]
Counter To Infinity [previously]

[Photo: a half-eaten burger at the Santa Monica location of Counter, which, okay, we'll be honest, looks mouthwatering, via marshall astor - food pornographer's Flickr]

We love to find in restaurants: baby artichokes, baby corn, baby lamb chops, baby carrots. But baby people? MenuPages reviewer "thewolley" had his otherwise excellent dining experience at Big Jones marred by the restaurant's other patrons rolling their eyes at a kid in his party lays down the law:

Guy, roll those peepers back the other way unless you want some Tabasco in them.

Here's the thing. Kid-related eye-rolling is acceptable only when:
1) They're crying and their parents are calmly eating/chatting/cellphoning
2) They're tearing up the joint while their parents smile proudly
3) Their parent(s) run you off the sidewalk with immense strollers
3) There're so many of them you lose count

And you should roll your eyes at the PARENTS 'cos the kids simply don't know any better. Otherwise, you just come off as an irrational dumbass.

Big Jones [MenuPages]
Big Jones [Official Site]

[Photo via ladyhawker's Flickr]

With a little bit of a nip to the air today, our thoughts turn fondly to autumn: woolly sweaters, apple cider, and — oh god, yes — avgolemono soup. It's hard for us to describe avgolemono to the uninitiated without starting to sound a little soft-core. Silky. Creamy. Rich. Smooth. Luscious. Tangy. Smooth. But oh man, the lengths we would go for a decent bowl!

Avgolemono is an egg-lemon soup (avgo = egg, lemono = lemon) from Greece, and it's one of those dishes that is so devastatingly simple in its construction that it is epically easy to screw up. Three ingredients: chicken broth, egg yolk, and lemon juice. The key, of course, is to temper the egg so it doesn't curdle in either the heat of the soup or the acidity of the lemon juice, and instead it just gets all thick and creamy (a similar principle to, say, a hollandaise sauce, to which this soup is not entirely dissimilar). You can add some orzo or rice or bits of the soup chicken to the bowl, but the essential avgolemono is just a rich, thick, bright yellow broth.

We've had it in various incarnations ever since the inception of our obsession: served with fanfare (it was practically whisked together tableside) at a white-tablecloth restaurant, and glopped out of a soup steamer at a roadside Greek diner. We'll take either — heck, we'll take both. There's a universal deliciousness in the merging of lemon and chicken, and it all just goes over the top with the luxurious creaminess brought in by the egg yolk.

Unsurprisingly, some of the best avgolemono to be found in town is in the West Loop &mdash we cast our vote for the bowls to be found at Venus and, a few blocks away, at Greek Corner, where it costs a truly underpriced $1.75 for a generous helping of that steaming nectar.

Downtown, check out a slightly fancier version at Amira in the NBC tower. And we would probably visit Andie's even if they didn't serve the soup, but the fact that they do (and do it well) gives us all the more reason to visit one of our favorite pan-Mediterranean places in the city — what do we need in life? A bowl of avgolemono, a plate of hummus, and thou.

Venus [MenuPages]
Venus [Official Site]
Greek Corner [MenuPages]
Amira [MenuPages]
Amira [Official Site]
Andie's [MenuPages]
Andie's [Official Site]

[Photo: Avgolemono soup, via gto350's Flickr]

We love it when synchronicity happens. We feel all one with the universe and whatnot. Case in point:

Yesterday, Deb at Smitten Kitchen posted about Dorie Greenspan's recipe for Dimply Plum Cake, a perhaps unfortunately-named dessert that, nonetheless, is both exceptionally beautiful and perfect for the August/September transitional weather:

And then this morning, we woke up to a note from Cafe Selmarie letting us know that — what? what? — "Plum Season is here! Our wonderful Plum Cake will be available beginning Friday morning. If you've never experienced this cake you need to stop in! This delicious buttery cake is overflowing with sweet ripe plums."

And oh, how it is:

In conclusion, this is a wonderful day and everyone should eat plum cake.

Dimply Plum Cake [Smitten Kitchen]
Cafe Selmarie [MenuPages]
Cafe Selmarie [Official Site]

[Photos via Smitten Kitchen and Cafe Selmarie, respectively]

It's now on the dessert menu at HB Home Bistro, since Joncarl Lachman, the chef, hails from Limburg. The restaurant has this to say:

The traditions of Belgian, French, and German cooking are more pronounced in this cultural crossroads [of this region]. It's perhaps most evident in the vlaai — as it is much like a traditional French fruit tart.

HB Home Bistro: Features [RIA]
HB Home Bistro [MenuPages]
HB Home Bistro [Official Site]

[Photo: Vlaaien (plural!), via meffi's Flickr]

It is local only in that it comes from a Thai restaurant a block away and sustainable only in that I'm pretty sure no tofu was harmed in the production of the meal. It's really good.

—Fruit Slinger on the tofu pad thai at Spoon Thai Restaurant.

Untitled [Fruit Slinger]
Spoon Thai Restaurant [MenuPages]
Spoon Thai Restaurant [Official Site]

• The failing article in question is a review of Oak Park's Trattoria 225 (225 Harrison Street, 708 358 8555), a slightly upscale family Italian joint that's got a wood oven for pizza and a tendency to grill things (not necessarily a bad thing!). It gets a pretty even-handed treatment: some dishes are meh, some are really good (the grilled romaine in the caesar salad gets noted as a neato touch). He declares the wood-fired pizzas "more East Coast-style than Midwest," but points out that unlike the fresh clams used by the masters of the white clam pizza, Frank Pepe's Pizzeria Napoletana in New Haven, CT, the owners of Trattoria 225 go for the canned kind. Ultimately, though, Bruno's review makes it out to be pretty boring: Worth it if you live nearby, but not nearly exciting or innovative enough to merit a trek from another neighborhood. [Bruno, Sun-Times]

• Speaking of suburban Italian fare, Thomas Witom treks out to Hodgkins in order to visit Salerno-Pincente Ristorante (9301 W 63rd St, 708 354 0099) (fun fact! Google maps places this in Countryside!), which shares its space with "Chicago's newest off-track betting (OTB) operation," the bar Trackside. Witom finds the restaurant to be a solid operation, the pasta-heavy menu resolves into giant portions with minimal fanfare. Atmosphere is lacking, and service could be more polished. But hey, you're probably there for the horses. [Witom, Sun-Times]

This week the Reader is making up for lost time with a threefer: their reviewers visit new hotel-based restaurants C-House (at the Affinia), Perennial (at the Park View Hotel), and ajasteak (at the Dana, and we have just discovered that their website is basically seizure-inducing). Let's break it down:

• Prominently positioned in "one of the most boring restaurant neighborhoods in the city," Perennial seems to still be finding its footing. Mike Sula has nice things to say about dishes like Roman-style semolina-beet gnocchi, lamb with eggplant chutney, and a "devastating" (in the good way) watermelon-tomato-olive-oil. But these raves are preceded by some serious criticisms: peekytoe crab and avocado salad that's "in the running for one of the worst things I’ve eaten all year," and canneloni that "was a textural nightmare of overmanipulated manky meatstuff." Eww. [Sula, Reader]

• The review for C-House begins with the usual rundown of Marcus Samuelsson, but OSBMS refrains from calling him a chef, or an executive chef, or even a person. Instead, he's a media package, meant in presumably the least flattering sense of the phrase, and Sula's affront at the chef situation underscores the rest of the review. The food? As in other reviews, the land-based offerings score better than those from the sea — unfortunate, considering that seafood is the focus here. Sula's theory? Samuelsson "thinks we landlocked rubes don’t know from good fish. Then again, with a built-in customer base of tourists and travelers, maybe he isn’t thinking about us at all." Ouch! [Sula, Reader]

• Anne Spiselman heads to ajasteak, and finds a convenient workaround for those who are in the mood for Kobe, but don't want to pay $18 an ounce for it: get the yakitori appetizer, request it rare and unseasoned, and you'll find yourself hauling 2-3 ounces for $18 a serving, instead. She finds the restaurant's sushi delicious, if expensive, and the service and wine list are both well-executed. The non-steak entrees don't fare as well, with poorly balanced sweet-and-salty flavors and misleading menu descriptions. Plus the atmosphere felt like sitting "in a corridor" — next time, she'll sit at the sushi bar. [Spiselman, Reader]

[Photo: We couldn't find pictures on Flickr of any of these restaurants, so instead here's a photo of some puppies! Via gervo1865_2's Flickr]

Hey, anyone noticed that the P.J. Clarke's on Armitage is closed right now? The story is a bit juicier than one might imagine — intrigue! sex! scandal! Or, okay, none of these, but there is French food and a conflict of interest. Sexy! Per Chicago Business News:

P.J. Clarke’s in Lincoln Park has temporarily closed its doors while owners work on its redesign — and, coincidentally, open another restaurant. Jonathan Segal says he’s had a difference of opinion with the landlord ... and as a result has closed the restaurant while construction and redesign work is being done.

Ironically, the closure comes within weeks of Mr. Segal opening Madame Tartine, a River North French brasserie.

“We’ve had a difference of opinion on the build-out,” says Mr. Segal, son of convicted former insurance mogul Michael Segal, referring to landlord M Development. “That relationship has been getting better since we agreed to make the changes,” which include major reconstruction of the eatery’s upper level ... While work at P.J. Clarke’s is being done, Mr. Segal has been able to spend more time at Madame Tartine, which he describes as a throw-back to Parisian restaurants of the 1960s ... That the opening of Madame Tartine comes as P.J. Clarke’s is closing is “100% a coincidence,” says Mr. Segal.

PJ Clarke’s owner shutters eatery as new venture debuts [Chicago Business News]
P.J. Clarke's [MenuPages]
P.J. Clarke's [Official Site]
Madame Tartine [MenuPages]

Per their official website, Italian restaurant Il Fiasco "is closed for renovations and will reopen as Tapas Las Ramblas within a month."

We would just like to note the amount of restraint we are showing with regard to jokes about self-fulfilling prophecies. We demand bonus points for this.

Il Fiasco [MenuPages]
Il Fiasco [Official Site]

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]

Continue reading "Seven Days of Ethanol" »

It is with great delight that we welcome back to the internet (and to our Google Reader) The Chicago Burger Project, which after a completely unacceptable month-long hiatus is back with a review of Max's Italian Beef. The title menu item is not on the docket, instead we have Max's Ghetto fries, an item we could not believe is actually on the official MenuPages menu, and yet there it is, in all its glory (it's the fifth-to-the-bottom item on the onscreen menu, right between a $0.59 side of American Cheese, and an $0.89 side of Merkt's).

These things get way too much attention for being standard-issue fries with a bunch of cheap condiments on top (to be fair, they'll only cost you $3.15). They're allegedly named for a former employee who went by "Ghetto Girl" and are decidedly not an attempt tap into the always-profitable stereotype of poor people putting Merkt's on everything (cf. Hecky's Mutt; Ghetto Latte). Anyway, these are exactly the sum of their parts---I'm a little mystified by a place hanging their hat on a dish so easily replicated by anyone with access to a Fixins Bar, but they've been around for 50 years, I think the sweetness of the sauce, the sharpness of the cheese, and the saltiness of the fries are supposed to play off each other, but they didn't do that so much as just kind of decompose into a homogeneous mass.

Max's Italian Beef [Chicago Burger Project]
Coffee Shop Threatens to Punch Customer In His Dick [The Consumerist]
Max's Italian Beef [MenuPages]

[Photo: Max's Ghetto Fries, via Chicago Burger Project]

Yes, it is prime dinner-eating time on a Friday night, and yes, we should be out gallivanting and living it up and generally inhabiting the world, but this is big: yesterday we asked WTF was up with that giant egg in front of the McD's by Wrigley Field, and today - via The Arab Aquarius - we have an answer:

The giant egg billboard starts cracking and opening up in the wee hours of morning. By breakfast time, the egg has already hatched, and you can see "Fresh Eggs Daily" written on the egg's yolk.

The egg stays open from 6:00AM till 10:30AM, to indicate the availability of fresh eggs during that time. Once the breakfast time is finished, the egg billboard shuts and stays closed as a whole egg till the next morning.

Hatching Billboards: McD's Giant Egg [The Arab Aquarius]

[Photo of the egg via The Arab Aquarius]

There is a giant egg -- like, really giant -- perched atop a metal pole in the parking lot of the McDonald's at Clark and Addison. The prevailing theory: it is to promote their breakfast sandwiches. Our theory: Brainbomb from outer space. Your theory: ?

Giant Egg at Mcdonalds accross from Wrigley field [LTHForum]

• A gentle reminder from Monica Eng that you should be calculating your server's tip based on the pretax total, not the bottom line. Especially now that Cook County tax hikes are raising restaurant bills across the bar - restaurant patrons will be seeing a total of 10.75% appended to the total (10.5% sales tax, plus 0.25% restaurant meal tax). Cue commenter backlash... now! [Tribune]

• Barbecue aficionados Barry Sorkin (of Smoque BBQ), Robert Adams Jr. (of Honey 1 BBQ), and LTH Forum grand master Gary Wiviott weigh in on a blind tasting of local barbecue sauces. The winner? The house sauce from Robinson's #1 Ribs rose above its damning faint praise to best Hecky's, Sweet Baby Ray's, and others. [TOC]

As for reviews...

• Phil Vettel wanders down LSD in order to two-star Park 52, the most recent attempt to restaurantify Hyde Park, and finds it eerily reminiscent of owner Jerry Kleiner's earlier (and similarly-named) venture, Room 21. On the whole, though, the food is solid - if uninventive - and the scene is a welcome addition to Hyde Park's more or less desolate upscale-dining landscape. [Vettel, Tribune]

• Highest possible praise - four forks - to Galapagos Cafe and its winning synchronicity of Ecuadorean and Japanese cooking. The flan, apparently, is swoonworthy, and we found ourselves drooling over Monica Eng's descriptions of the sushi rolls and milkshakes. [Eng, Tribune]

• TOC drops the first official review of much-buzzed graham elliot, and finds that the servers -- and menu -- are still in need of a little refinement. Heather Shouse gives it a four of six stars: she isn't amused by the seemingly random deployment of kitsch-chic garnishes like cheez-its, malted milk balls, and nilla wafers on dishes that otherwise hold their own, but sees promise lurking beneath the surface, plus occasional flashes of brilliance. Still, the laid-back atmosphere (servers wear Graham-approved chucks and jeans) clashes with the birthday-dinner price point. [Shouse, TOC]

[Photo: seared tuna and roasted whitefish at Park 52, via Kids' Writer's Flickr]

Usually when reviewers declare a restaurant or a dish to be "the best" in Chicago or the world or in the history of space and time, they are talking out of their asses. Anyone with the breadth of experience to be able to credibly make such a claim would never have the audacity to actually do so. And if they did, it would be with qualifying remarks that show some self-awareness of the subjectivity of the opinion. For better or worse, none of these strictures apply to MenuPages reviewers! So, then, here are some of the "bests" of the past week:

• On June 26th, "Christi" claimed that Aroy Thai has the "Best Thai food ever":

I'm a picky eater and definitely a Thai food snob, and this place is fantastic! Now, if only they would expand their space to accommodate me and my friends and family, then I would be the happiest customer.

• On the same day, "Chuck Debbie Glen Alexis and Danielle" had a conference and decided that Zen Noodles is the "Best of the best in Chi-town Panasian":

Parking was not too bad and the food was simply the best We've ever had. We did it "Family Style" and got to try several different things in one shot. We had one vegan in the bunch and she was floored by the "Tofu Saute', especially the peanut sauce. The rest of us had different favorites of the four dishes we shared. The Green Curry Chicken was voted in at #1, a blend of green curry coconut sauce with Thai Basil leaves, veggies and chicken. A close second was the "Rama Chicken", a plate of cooked broccoli and chicken covered by a peanut sauce that is "out of this world good"(sounds simple but what's wrong with that). Surprisingly in at third was my original favorite, when it was Hi Riki's(sp?), "Basil Chicken". which is a dish flavored by what has become one of my favorite spices, Thai Basil. In at #4 was "Garlic Shrimp" which is a spicy blend of a garlic sauce covering perfectly sauteed shimp and other good things( can't remember). We were in Chicago for a week and I have to say that Chicago does live up to its reputation as one of the best restaurant cities in America. That's what should make our endorsement of "Zen Noodles" even more exciting for lovers of PanAsian food. Can't wait get back Chicago and Zen Noodles. Oh yeah, the serving sizes were fairly generous and the price was what you'd expect to pay in any city in the country.

• On June 27th, "Kenneth & Isik" judged Cousin's to have "The Best Lehmacun in North America":

My wife and I live in Minnesota. We drive 6 plus hours just to eat Demir Bey's lehmacun and pide. It is truly the best you will find in the USA. We been to several different restaurants that provides Turkish cuisine, but have never found anything that compares to Demir's. However, the most important of all he always make time to greet and have a chat with us.

• Also on the 27th, "bklyn" wrote a short review for Arturo's Tacos entitled "Great":

The Shrimp soup and Chorizo Tacos here are the best!!!! The price is right too.

• Finally, on the 30th, "Pat P." unilaterally declared the "BEST DONUTS EVER" to be from Old Fashioned Donuts:

I have been eating these donuts since 1973, and I have not tasted anything near these great tasting donuts. If you have not tried them you should . Not only do they have good donuts, they also have good food. The polishes and fries are to die for. Now that I live out of town, I only get them when I visit the city.

[Photo: Arturo's Tacos al pastor, via Fancy Toast (who calls them the best in Chicago, for what it's worth)]

• One of Chicago's more successful Peruvian restaurants, Ay Ay Picante impressed Bridget & Tammy enough to earn a 17/20 [Chicago Bites]

• Most of the restaurants participating in Kid's Restaurant Week excreted out the same mac and cheese that parents spend the rest of the year avoiding, but Coco Pazzo Cafe put some effort into it and made real adult dishes tweaked toward younger palates [Drive-Thru]

• For fried chicken without the leaden aftereffects, try Crisp's light and crispy Korean preparation [Chicagoist]

• It's a shame that Drake Bros.' Bookbinders soup is made with red snapper instead of turtle like in good old days, but it's very tasty anyway [Hungry]

• Super-healthy built-to-order salad spot Freshii is a good idea in theory, but the slow service and tasteless results make it less appealing in practice [Stew]

• Early word from graham elliot is, they're still finding their sea legs with respect to service, but you can't argue with their fat, juicy pork chops [Food Chain]

• A fabulous piece of parrotfish, among many other dishes at L.2O, succeeds at impressing...even if the dish's description was overwraught and possibly inaccurate [Food Chain]

• Pairing culinary minimalism with scratch cooking and a sophisticated sensibility about ingredients, Mado has been winning the affection of foodies and the praise of critics in the few months it's been open [Drive-Thru, Gourmet (the latter adapted from TOC)]

• While Margie's Candies may have gotten accolades in Forbes for having the best ice cream in Chicago, our local food corps has vehemently disagreed; just because a place is old and cramped doesn't mean it's great, and did you know that the science of ice cream-making has improved dramatically since the Depression? [Drive-Thru, Serious Eats Chicagoist]

• The vanilla-on-vanilla cupcake at Swirlz Cupcakes disappoints, but specialty flavors like Key Lime make a trip worthwhile [Chicago Bites]

[Photo: wonder what the fortune was...via mousiekm/flickr]

Reviews galore on this, the very last Friday of our employ. Oh yes, it's true; Independence Day will take on a myriad of meanings this year. (Don't worry! We're not abandoning our post for anything less lofty than post-graduate education, with the goal of yet increasing our insufferability.)

But enough about us; Mike Sula, David Hammond, and Pat Bruno have things to say about Pho Xua, Lincoln Korean Restaurant, Taqueria La Oaxaqueña, Ecuador Restaurant, L.2O, and Veerasway, respectively. They will soldier on, sowing the seeds of restaurant knowledge in the rich soils of their Chicagoland readership, whether we're here to criticize them or not. So let's get to it.

While much of the Reader is devoted to Best Of Chicago 2008 this week, there's still an Omnivorous, containing some of Mike Sula and David Hammond's favorite cheap ethnic eats.

Sula shouts out Pho Xua as an alternative to the hegemonic Hai Yen on Argyle Street, and is down with their Chinese-influenced, house-braised pork belly. He finds unusual accessibility at Lincoln Korean Restaurant on...Lincoln, of course, although actually, only 40% of the restaurants in our database with the word "Lincoln" in the name are actually on Lincoln Avenue — the rest are in Lincoln Park. We're escaping our point, though which is that Lincoln Korean has all the authenticity of those Lawrence Avenue no-English DIY places, but with the straightforward ordering process of, say, a Korean restaurant in...Lincoln Park. Finally, Taqueria la Oaxaqueña serves the fine cuisine of Oaxaca (i.e. mole, on rabbit no less!) at truly Mexican prices.

Hammond tell us that Restaurant Ecuador in Logan Square dabbles more in the country's coastal culinary tradition than that of the interior highlands. You can get black clam ceviche there, which is really all you need to know.

Bruno has a two-fer in the Sun-Times today, slobbering all over L.2O — he has good company in this respect — but coming in fourth, doesn't bring much new information to the table. Actually, not true! He's included a glossary of fancy words on L.2O's menu that we can't say we didn't enjoy reading. However, we must take issue with Bruno's theory that L.2O has "what is probably the shortest restaurant name ever;" on the North Side alone one can find Tut, Zia and Zad, and T's puts them all to shame.

Bruno also visits upscale Indian fusion spot Veerasway, which doesn't seem to...resolve its station in life to satisfaction. Like, why is the mutter paneer $14 when it's just peas and cheese? Then again, Bruno doesn't bother telling us how it compares to budget Indian places, so we're not really sure what to make of his judgment in this case. Speaking of, possibly our final pet peeve about Bruno's reviewing style is that he never writes a conclusion to his pieces. They end with the dessert, to be sure, but there's no tying together of the various strains of opinion littered throughout the reviews; the reader needs to have a takeaway, and Bruno never provides a succinct one. This is probably due to the fact that his reviews lack a thesis, generally. Pat, we have no idea if you've ever read any of this, but all we want to do is help!

Okay, have a good weekend; next week, daily teary goodbyes...

Taqueria La Oaxaquena [MenuPages]
L.2O [MenuPages]
L.2O [Official Site]
Veerasway [MenuPages]

[Photo: grilled cactus at Taqueria la Oaxaqueña, via ohtoberich/flickr]

The very bestest time of the year is Taste of Chicago, which starts as soon as tomorrow! Phil Vettel reports that this year's Taste will be the biggest, healthiest and greenest one yet, although probably only by the smallest of margins. To help you edit your Taste menu, the Trib's dining staff put out a list of their recommendations, and published a map of the best booths according to Monica Eng's heroic sampling of all 253 dishes at last year's Taste.

All in all, a pretty light week for the Tribune. Seems like the center of gravity has shifted over to the Stew in recent months, where they report actual news like Alinea being named #1 in Zagat's latest survey. The real story here may be located in the URL of that post, which is leisureblogs.chicagotribune.com/thestew/2008/06/judy-this-is-em.html. Judy (Hevrdejs, presumably), this is em...barrassing? Empathetic? Embellished a little? Empty and hollow? Empirically untrue? Each possible permutation is more delightful than the last.

Meanwhile, the main story in Time Out Chicago is about road trips for Midwestern specialty food, which is awesome. Back in the day, we drove six hours round trip to go to the Machine Shed in Davenport for their many preparations of pork and free cottage cheese, but gas only cost $2 a gallon then. Still, if you can get a car full of people in on it, any of the suggested trips would be worthwhile.

New openings include Perennial, a Lincoln Park hotel restaurant with some big names attached, and Angels & Kings in River North, the second branch of a bar co-sponsored by Pete Wentz of all people (the first one's in New York), and not to be confused with the recently opened Wicker Park Mexican restaurant Angels & Mariachis. Or actually, please do confuse them.

Finally, David Tamarkin files a hell of a review for L.2O, the hottest new meal ticket in town. The various complicated and glorious seafood dishes are described in detail, and don't get him started on the macaroons. One does wonder what it takes to get six stars out of six, though, if L.2O only earns five!

Alinea [MenuPages]
Alinea [Official Site]
L.2O [MenuPages]
L.2O [Official Site]

[Photo: skate wing at L.2O, via npinto/flickr]

Everyone seems to be craving Middle Eastern food this week!

• Albany Park's Al-Khayameih not only serves some of the best Lebanese food in the city, they do it with flair [Chicagoist]

• A new chef and a revamping of the menu at Ben Pao doesn't take away from the fact that the BBQ pork is fabulous, and relatively authentic to boot [Chicagoist]

• While not breaking new culinary ground, Bluebird does a good job with small plates, has a wide selection of beverages and attentive service [Gastronomic Bypass]

• Very new Albany Parker Dawali Mediterranean Kitchen is still finding its desert legs, but the schwarma's pretty decent [Food Chain]

• Much-hyped Epic Burger in the South Loop has fancy ingredients, but the burger has trouble living up. Decent value, though [Food Chain]

• At the soft opening of Melman spawns' Hub 51, exactly the type of industrial hip sophisticated comfort food you'd expect. But good! [The Stew]

• Everyone loves the moles at Mixteco Grill, including Bridget & Tammy. Dessert's also recommned, and it's BYO (17/20) [Chicago Bites]

• Persian stalwart Noon O Kabab gets very high marks from Bridget & Tammy for their kabobs and other delicacies (18/20) [Chicago Bites]

[Photo: the Chicago River's very own alligator, via Sun-Times. You can eat them, you know!]

Pat Bruno has a monumentally boring review of Topaz Cafe in Burr Ridge. It's a Contemporary American with a little flare! Everything's delicious! And so forth.

But the Sun-Times' relationship with Centerstage, rarely highlighted, saves the day; Mike Nagrant has a useful feature on where tourists should actually eat as opposed where they were planning to eat. Dozens of mediocre, overpriced meals might be avoided because of this!

Meanwhile, several new reviews from the Reader. First, Anne Spiselman reviews Jack Rabbit, a new southwestern restaurant in Lincoln Square with big portions of inconsistent quality. We'd never heard of it, because that location seems to get a new restaurant every few months; Spiselman's not sure how long this one will stick around, either. But they have a website and serve brunch, so maybe there's a chance yet.

Mike Sula revisits Avenues, now that Graham Elliot Bowles is off somewhere and Curtis Duffy (formerly of Alinea) has taken the reigns. Sula points out that Bowles is a tough act to follow, but finds that Duffy is doing an admirable job of keeping Avenues avant-garde and delicious. Note that this opinion runs contrary to Heather Shouse's line, but maybe things have shaped up in the past two weeks? Both think that the restaurant is probably overpriced.

And then, the claws come out. Sula rips into ZED451, the all-you-can-meat suburbo-rama in River North. We've been a bit catty on the restaurant ourselves, and even Pat Bruno didn't like it (David Tamarkin thought it was okay). But all this pales in comparison to Sula's visceral loathing of the place, which certainly seems to fall into the substance-over-style trap. Much of the review is quotable, but perhaps this sums it up best:

This is the human counterpart to confined animal feeding operations, the industrial meat (and shit) factories that supply the sort of unexceptional product served here.

[Photo: a feedlot, via Socially Responsible Agriculture Project]

Two interesting tidbits we came across while putting some new menus online for you:

1) The mother-in-law is an ostensibly South Side (also, Mississippian) concoction involving tamales, chili and hot dog buns, and often all three. The gut-buster got some coverage recently because of the Southern Foodways Alliance's tour of Chicago in May, which was written about in the Sun-Times and Reader. One of the points made in the Sun-Times article is that mothers-in-law are all but impossible to find on the North Side:

[Chicago food historian Peter] Engler is convinced the mother-in-law is a South Side phenomenon, just like bad bad Leroy Brown.

"I made a concerted effort spending a couple of days going all over the North Side asking about mother-in-laws," said Engler, who worked in mouse genetics at the University of Chicago between 1988 and 2007. "Nobody knew. It's not on any menu."

2) The menu for La Baguette, a Mexican restaurant on 43rd and Ashland, contains several heretofore mysterious epitaphs in the tortas section. Tortas are delicious Mexican sandwiches, of course, but the category is inscruitably subtitled with "Las Guapachosas," and sub-subtitled with "Estilo D.F."

So we consulted with Carolina of MP:South Florida, who translated the latter as "in the style of Mexico City," where D.F. = Distrito Federal. While tortas are served all over Mexico, they're especially popular in Mexico City as street food. The menu lists a specific Mexico City torta called the Chilanga. It has milanesa (breaded steak), chorizo, ham and queso fresco, plus the standard beans, lettuce, tomatoes, avocado, onions and mayo; a classic torta.

The explanation for "Las Guapachosas" comes from another torta on the list, "La Guapachoza," or the Groovy Torta. This differs from the Chilanga in that it has pork shoulder instead of ham or chorizo...clearly a groovier ingredient, right? Lest we have to explain why the Russian Torta includes hot dog and pineapple!

These tortas are all $4.25, so you can't really go wrong in any case.

Clark Street Dog [MenuPages]
La Baguette [MenuPages]

[Photos: a mother-in-law from Fat Johnnie's on the South Side, via Southern Foodways Alliance; torta de chilanga from Seattle, via ascheele100/flickr]

• Chris Borrelli's rant about being asked by waiters if he'd dined at their restaurant before — as a preamble to an explanation about how the restaurant "works" — is on par with Christopher Hitchens' screed against wine pouring practices: more sensical to read as a parody of restaurant reviewers' complaints than as the real thing. Because, really, is it that annoying to be walked through a restaurant's idiosyncratic menu and service style? Certainly one could feel one's intelligence is being insulted, but that happens in myriad ways all day every day anyway. This is worth singling out? Not really.

• Meanwhile, Kids' Restaurant Week is about to start [Tribune]

What's happening in Time Out?

• Well, Mike Nagrant hunts down M.I.A. Chicago chefs from Christmas Past. Some of them live in really boring places like Jupiter, Fla., and others are gearing up to open new restaurants in Chicago. If you recognize all of the names, you get a Foodie Gold Star.

• Sometimes we wonder how the themes for the Three-Way feature are chosen. This week it's basil seeds, an obscure ingredient in the best of times. There's Find-a-Food Search and all that, but this is the sort of ingredient that doesn't stay on the menu long enough to get put into a database, if it's on the menu at all. So how to discover that L.2O uses it with fluke sashimi and Veerasway makes a cocktail with it? An abiding mystery.

As for the reviews...

• Mercat a la Planxa not only makes some of the best Spanish food in Chicago, but also offers infectiously upbeat service and a cool atmosphere (Vettel) [Tribune]

• Con Sabor Cubano serves homey Cuban fare in Albany Park, and excels at a massive Cubano sandwich. Their unique, spicy burger would go well with some BYOB (Borrelli) [Tribune]

• Little Brother's is more than an Asian fast food joint; much care is put into the Korean specialties, even if they're then put into a Styrofoam box (Tamarkin) [TOC]

• Skewerz is a healthy, doable option for post-partying lining-of-stomach in Wicker Park, even if the name is stupid and the themes are tacky. Best bet: graham-cracker-crusted sweet potato fritters (Shouse) [TOC]

[Photo: you have to order this from Mercat in advance, via fenger8/flickr]

This cheeseburger dress is the coolest thing that's ever been knitted. The artist, Joy Kampia O'Shell, has created several of these one-of-a-kind pieces, and they are the real thing (i.e., wearable). Could you imagine actually sashaying into a burger joint with this on? Let's take a stab at it:

Places Where This Dress Would Help

• Hamburger Mary's would probably let you eat and drink free for the night, or possibly even join the stage show. You'd be signing autographs left and right! Extra points here for creative stowage of your pickle

• Kuma's Corner has a notoriously long line during peak times...unless you were wearing this dress. Because you know what? Dressing as your dinner is pretty f'n metal. The waitresses would clear a berth for you at the bar, and maybe someone would even whistle appreciatively! Probably better to be a lady for this one, though — metal has its limits

Places Where This Dress Wouldn't Help

• Boston Blackies' touristic clientele might think you were a charming fixture of Chicago cosmopolitanism, and the sports fans glued to the big TV in the back might not even notice your presence. But the suburban children milling about the place will call as much attention to you as their whiny little voices and flailing limbs allow them. You may not get the best seat in the house

• Billy Goat Tavern Original at least gives you a chance at making the papers, but not in a good way

On the whole, we say, worth it.

[Photo: Joy Kampia]

This week is very foodie concept-oriented, even if it doesn't always deliver.

• Mike Nagrant rounds up Albany Park, of one of Chicago's best dining neighborhoods, where you can flit from Central American to Middle Eastern to Korean without breaking a sweat (at least in the winter) [TOC]

• We love this cocktail feature with Sepia's Peter Vestinos. This week, he's recommending a strawberry pisco sour. Once, in Lima, we had a coca pisco sour — it was very strong [TOC]

• The couple behind Mado like head-to-tail pork, Kuma's Corner, and the New Pornographers. Totally! [TOC]

• Monica Eng compiles a ranking of Chicago's chain store iced coffees. Seattle's Best wins, with Starbucks coming in second. No artisanal ice coffees are included in the piece, which is disappointing. And where's the requisite shout-out to cold-brewed ice coffee? Oh well [Tribune]

• This photo gallery of the iced coffees is strange, but archival and informative. Plus, Eng sneaks in a few artisanal iced coffees, after all. Don't let Zell hold you down! [Tribune]

• Phil Vettel gets in a lengthy post-Beard interview with Grant Achatz, and it's informative. Well, not really; we've heard a lot of this stuff from Grant before. But still, of the moment! [Tribune]

• Christopher Borrelli continues his love affair with breakfast in this mash note to oatmeal. Borrelli has uncovered a rare subspecies of the pan-seared suburban variety, and goes on to describe the "perfect summer oatmeal" [Tribune]

And the reviews:

• Phil Vettel can't get enough of Tallulah, the Lincoln Square New American bistro. He lists the dishes he likes (most of them) and doesn't (...) in a fairly straightforward manner to drive his point home [Tribune]

• David Tamarkin goes to Viaggio, formerly Jay's Amore (note to restaurants: please keep your Fax ID up-to-date! We can't tell you how many restaurants have sent us menus with the space's previous tenant on the header; Viaggio's menu will be online tomorrow), and finds a serious Italian feast in progress. We're kept in suspense for the entire review about the gravy, which turns out to be delicious and monstrous in portion [TOC]

[Photo: this oatmeal cookie ice cream sandwich is our preferred summer oatmeal treatment, via jen_m_stewart/flickr]

In this age of precocious little journobrats eating scorpions and snails and Top Chef Junior (not to mention 2007 Beard Award-winning Spatulatta), we were completely unsurprised to receive a notice about Chicago's very first Kids' Restaurant Week.

The week-long festival starts on Saturday, June 21st at the Green City Market, and it's being sponsored by Cookie (some kind of modern mother magazine) and Gourmet (some kind of food publication). That day, George Bumbaris of Prarie Grass Café, Rick Bayless of Topolobampo and, in fact, the Spatulatta Girls, will be giving cooking demos.

Blue Water Grill, Lula Cafe, Zealous , OTOM, Vie, and Uncommon Ground (among other notable restaurants) are also on board, with kid-friendly tastings and the like. It's $20.08 a person, but kids under 12 pay their age; reasonable enough. A buck from each meal goes to the Green City Market, which is a cause.

If you insist on introducing your kids to expensive restaurant dining — which, given the industry we're in, you absolutely should — better to do it in this discrete environment far away from our 8pm table. God forbid, the children might even learn something!

Kids' Restaurant Week [Official Site

[Photo: we refuse to make a baby-in-the-microwave joke, via lincolnblues/flickr]

Lots of important food news for the papers to digest today! Between the tomatoes, the Beard Awards, Top Chef and Father Day, you could write a whole book.

• What we didn't know about vanilla: it's indigenous to Mexico, and not the Indian Ocean islands where it's more famously produced [Tribune]

• At the Beard Awards, winner Grant Achatz makes the observation that doctors have no way to test one's sense of taste [Tribune]

• Stephanie Izard gives a pre-finale interview (one of many, actually), and talks about her upcoming restaurant [Tribune]

• Bill Daley picks the best wines for Father's Day &mdash key words include "big" and "bold" [Tribune]

• A very newsy article on the tomato salmonella crisis; California and Florida have been cleared of any wrongdoing [Sun-Times]

• Missy Robbins of Spiaggia pens a paean to Italian cheeses [Sun-Times]

• News about the Taste of Chicago: ticket prices are up 15%, and instead of country music, Chaka Khan will be performing (!) [Sun-Times]

And there are three life story stories that so enamor the Sun-Times:

• On Chris Favero of Frankie's Scaloppine and his pizza-making childhood [Sun-Times]

• On Finnie Haire of Haire's Gulf Shrimp, frying up his mother's shrimp recipe in Chatham [Sun-Times]

• On Tony Plum of Cinners and the oft-told tale of how he got his chili recipe [Sun-Times]

[Photo: Mexican vanilla on sale at a Oaxacan marketplace, via planeta/flickr]

As you know, our favorite reviews are not necessarily the utter raves (although that was our topic last week). It's just as good when things are middling! Here are two examples of subparity from the past week:

On June 3rd, "West Village Wanderer" panned Skewerz with a review entitled "a $2 skewer not worth .50 cents":

I wanted to like this place, but didn't.

With the exception of the Yuca fries and the beef skewer, which was tender and flavorful, the food quality was questionable. My chicken skewers looked like left over pieces from the weekend's skewers, ditto for my vegetable skewers.

Also, don't force me to have rice if I'm willing to pay the difference to get Yuca fries, and dont charge $10 min for credit card purchases.

On June 9th, "DaeLeeAkUh" wrote in about BBop, titling the observation "Not the best, but not the worst":

I've bad duk booki and bi bim pap at BeBop, and I wasn't impressed. If you've never had Korean food, you'll like it. If you know what Korean food is supposed to be like, you might be rather sad. They poured the duk booki into a frying pan out of a pre-made tub. The duk was the kind that is found in duk mondu guk rather than the finger-shaped duk usually found in duk booki there was way too much sauce, and there wasn't a hard boiled egg in it. The bi bim pap totally tasted like fast food and was tiny. The prices are high for the amount of food and lack of panchan. Street food at the Korean Street Festival or in South Korea itself is better than Bbob's fast food. Alas, I'm still glad there is a Korean restaurant in my neighborhood. It's better than nothing!

We especially like it when mediocre reviews are constructed without slander or foul language. Keep them coming!

Skewerz [MenuPages]
Skewerz [Official Site]
BBop [MenuPages]
BBop [Official Site]

[Photo: hipster preparing purportedly inauthentic Korean food at BBop (points for their mod website, though)]

• Above-ground underground tasting menu at Bonsoiree keeps 'em coming back for more, Saturday after Saturday [TastyBeat]

• Everyone who's gone to graham elliot, which has only been open a week and a half or so at this point, has raved (or at least mostly raved). We're excited to see who has the first formal review [Chicagoist]

• In the summer, it's hard to turn down one of Karyn's Raw sandwiches; they're the right temperature, the vegetables are fresh, and they'll wash down all that BBQ you've been inhaling [Chicagoist]

• What do you make of Kuma's Corner's foie gras burger that comes with a donation to MADD? Also, this reviewer thought the fries were a little overseasoned [Drive-Thru]

• The classic American bar food at Midtown Kitchen + Bar isn't very good, but it beats the service by some distance [Gastronomic Bypass]

• At Shaw's Crab House, portions are generous, flavors are solid but bold, and the service is classy [Gastronomic Bypass]

• Another whole-hearted endorsement of Take Me Out's super-spicy Asian hot wings [Chicagoist]

[Photo: Grant Achatz wins!!! via AP]

A hundred zillion new reviews hit the presses today for restaurants new and old, major and minor.

Even Pat Bruno can't muster too much excitement for uninspired All-You-Can-Meat ZED451. He chides:

But a lot of what they offered was either dry (the chicken and the pork) or not hot enough (the mahi-mahi) or rather tasteless. Zed 451 should consider putting an assortment of sauces on the table and guiding the customer accordingly.

Meanwhile, the Reader's featuring three reviews for notable mid-scale openings. Mike Sula had the same reaction to Mado that David Tamarkin did: everything is seasonal, fresh, delicious and occasionally overpriced, and it's impossible to recommend individual dishes because they'll be off the menu by publication date. Still, certainly an endorsement!

Anne Spiselman quite likes fancy new Indian restaurant Veerasway, although the appetizers and sides seem to best the entrees. David Hammond wants to make sure we realize that Mixteco Grill is not just your run-of-the-mill taco joint. Instead, pan-Mexican mole madness! Or something to that effect.

As if that wasn't enough, the Reader also published a slew of new reviews for evidently less notable restaurants like Big Jones, Park 52 and Shochu, which have been given big play in other publications. One wonders how feature-vs.-supplement decisions are made...

[Photo: salmon cucumber nage at Veerasway, via kayovv/flickr]

Today's food media roundup is extra-packed today, because Time Out Chicago has a food feature; namely, insights on cheap ethnic eats from local chefs. Let's start there and work backwards toward the Tribune, which is less sparkly.

The cuisines covered in the Cheap Eats feature are: Mexican, Chinese, Italian, Indo-Pak, Vietnamese, Middle Eastern and Korean. Some of the pieces are better than others; David Tamarkin's writeup of Rick Bayless' favorite Mexican spots and Lisa Shames' tour of Chinatown stood out for us, while Tamarkin's exploration of the food folkways on Middle Eastern Kedzie Avenue has a fascinating ethnographic quality to it.

And then, Tamarkin uncovers a strawberry/balsamic vinegar cocktail at Vermilion. Busy week!

Also, we're kind of blown away by Sepia mixologist Peter Vestinos' instruction to put honeycomb in a jar of tequila with aromatics for two weeks, and then drink the results. Yes please!

On the Tribune side, a series of discourses on outdoor dining. Like, it's unpleasant when it's next to the El! Phil Vettel presents his al fresco favorites, and Glenn Jeffers finds out under what circumstances you can smoke at a restaurant's outdoor tables (15 feet minimum from any doors or windows).

The best article in the issue is another Jeffers piece on dog-friendly outdoor licenses, of which only twenty-eight have been issued. And restaurants can only provide water for the dogs! In the age of organic, artisanal dog food, that's very limiting.

Finally, the reviews:

• Phil Vettel finds happiness at a DL New American in a strip mall on the Naperville-Aurora border called Chef Amaury, where a five course tasting is $60 and is served with a smile [Tribune]

• David Tamarkin has been following mole expert Raul Arreola all over town for years. Mixteco Grill, Arreola's latest perch, does a decent job at the staples, but truely excels with its moles [TOC]

• Now that Graham Elliot Bowles has moved on from Avenues, is former Alinea sous chef Curtis Duffy adequately carrying the mantle? According to Heather Shouse, not really. The ultramodern cuisine isn't hitting all the notes it used to, and it doesn't feel like a good value [TOC]

[Photo: nothing wrong with a dog in a restaurant, via ardorius/flickr]

Because of Memorial Day (which we spent remembering Trapped in the Closet scene by scene), here are two weeks' worth of blog reviews for your consideration

• Brunch generally a good bet at New Southern Big Jones, but make sure your beignets are freshly fried [TOC Blog]

• Despite all the promise of organic/local/seasonal ingredients at the newly-reworked Cafe at Wild Things! at the Lincoln Park Zoo, most of the food is conventionally sourced, and crappy to boot [The Stew]

• The only thing worth eating at Deta's Cafe is the burek, but it's so worth eating, wow [The Stew]

• A vegan can survive at Epic Burger on the hot, oily fries. Also, they make mushroom burgers [Drive-Thru]

• At not-too-expensive Frontera Grill, you can sample what made Rick Bayless famous without feeling like you bought the farm [Gastronomic Bypass]

• Fondue is romantic per the obvious sexual symbolism, and Geja's Cafe continues to be up to the task of providing that kind of atmosphere [Chicagoist]

• Despite being in soft opening, graham elliot churns out a flawless haute comfort experience [Chicago Foodies]

• Hard to do better than Hai Yen for casual Vietnamese south of Argyle [Gastronomic Bypass]

• Seafood temple L.2O is successfully bridging the gap between haute and molecular gastronomy (and worth the money) [Hungry]

• A largely positive assessment of chef-driven Mado recommends the antipasti and chicken dishes [Chicagoist]

• Many mixed reviews for Mundial Cocina Mestiza (although this one's positive), but the one thing they all agree on is the BYOB policy [Gastronomic Bypass]

• Another vote for the "Park 52 is fine by Hyde Park standards, so-so by Jerry Kleiner standards, and not worth the trip in either case" ticket [Food Chain]

• South Side culinary school restaurant The Parrot Cage is tasty and affordable, but the 9/20 rating from Bridget and Tammy means it won't change your life [Chicago Bites]

• Cell phone-free Perry's Deli in the Loop makes an excellent classic sandwich with turkey, ham, and the undersung Russian dressing [Chicagoist]

• New American bistro Tallulah gets 11/20 from Bridget and Tammy, but the potential for greatness is there [Chicago Bites]

[Photo: R. Kelly pretending to be ice cream in a waffle cone; "pls lik me?" via TheBestGossip]

Welcome to the giant food media roundup, where we see what's hot — and what's to trot — in Chicago right now.

• Lisa Shames reports that smart chefs are now using "food glue" in everyday dishes; it's not just for molecular gastronomists anymore [TOC]

• Bill Daley's let's-ask-top-Chicago-chefs-for-gourmet-off-beat-hot-dog-recipes idea was a pretty good one. But we have to say, Charlie Trotter's Asian seared tuna dog is not going to happen outside of a whimsical high-low restaurant [Tribune]

• Chuck Sudo dumbs himself down to Sun-Times readership level for a roundup of barbecue places that have opened in the past year. Can you imagine not knowing about these places (Smoque, Honky Tonk) the second they open, at the latest? Ah, ignorance is bliss [Sun-Times]

• Michael Tsonton of copperblue reminds you that fresh spices are just as important as fresh produce and meat and what have you [Sun-Times]

• Monica Eng knows that now is the time for frozen custards. She investigates the treat's tentative foray into the city limits [Tribune]

• Graham Elliot's eponymous new restaurant is opening imminently. Get excited! [TOC]

• Last week, we missed Mike Sula's profile on Willi Lehner, possibly Wisconsin's most famous cheesemaker at the moment. New to us: spraying dirt on cheese makes it delicious [Reader]

And the reviews:

• Both Phil Vettel and Heather Shouse go to Shochu, the Asian tapas lounge. These two reviews are a little more sober than previous ones, highlighting the restaurant's reasonable value while faulting some of the dishes for being boring. Still, it's good for the neighborhood [TOC, Trib]

• David Tamarkin is quite smitten with Mado, the new chef-driven seasonal American in Bucktown. They have an ever-changing menu that is fabulous when everything is cooked right, which is most of the time, but should something go wrong, the super-simple fare has little pomp and circumstance to fall back on [TOC]

• Denise O'Neal takes a much less critical route than Heather Shouse did when she reviewed Park 52 a few weeks back. O'Neal finds the food — mostly standard Kleiner upscale comfort — "worth the trip," while Shouse pointedly does not [Sun-Times]

[Photo: mmm...enzymes, via wurmouroboros/flickr]

The Sun-Times restaurant section is weird. This is not a new story, but it's told a different way each week. First, Bruno reviews the newest location of the Fleming's Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar chain on Ohio Street, and finds it utterly uninteresting. Although not in so many words! While his steak seems overpriced and mediocre, Bruno still writes from the perspective of, okay, if you go, at least this and that will be alright. Where is the line between service journalism and reviewing for Bruno, exactly?

Another piece of his this week makes the distinction even less clear. His write-up of Carlos' in Highland Park begins: "The quote below is lifted word for word from the Carlos' Web site (there is no way I could say it any better)." And indeed, more than half the words on the page are from the restaurant website (excuse us, "Web site"). That's kind of crazy, when you think about it!

Finally, Bruno's microreview of The Gage is pegless (why now?) and bizarrely brief considering how much he seems to like the hopping gastropub ("But the food here is so good, it has a way of drowning out the noise.") So why does he devote so many more words to Flemings? Because it's new, yes, but you get the point.

Back in normal land (i.e. on the Reader), there are a bunch of reviews pertinent to your life. Because it's barbecue weekend! Mike Sula and Gary Wiviott highlight four of their favorites (Uncle John's BBQ, Lem's, Cole’s Choice Barbecue, and Honey 1 BBQ), and then tack on a whole mess of other BBQ reviews for reference. By the way, does anyone go to Fat Willy's anymore? We hear they've gone way downhill.

[Photo: Gary Wiviott knows what he's talking about; these are his ribs, via MMChicago]

• Attached to Ada's Famous Deli in the Loop is 14 Karat Lounge, which features the deli's full menu, and booze! [Drive-Thru]

• If you like Eastern European breadstuffs, try the khachpuri cheese bread at Argo Georgian Bakery on Devon [Drive-Thru]

• Cheap, wonderful soul food secretly available at Doggy's S.S. Soul Eatery on the West Side, if you don't mind flying under the radar [Food Chain]

• Still somewhat new Just Indulge is very obliging with its vegan ice cream cones [Drive-Thru]

• Despite the kitsch, Harry Caray's Restaurant is not a tourist trap and has good service [Gastronomic Bypass]

• River North Middle Easterner Kan Zaman does not bring it on the hummus, forcing Bridget & Tammy to assign it a 7/20 [Chicago Bites]

• So far, nothing but unbridled ardor for L.2O, the new seafood restaurant so surpassingly good that you can't even snark on its LEYEness [Hungry, Stew]

• Don't let its modest setting fool you; La Gondola is some seriously hearty and decidedly tasty Italian [Chicago Foodies]

• Another condonation of Lao Sze Chuan's xiao long bao, and also their short ribs [Chicago Foodies]

• Reviews go both ways for Mundial Cocina Mestiza, but this one is pretty positive. Extra points for BYOB [Gastronomic Bypass]

• Fax-machineless and much-liked brunch spot Over Easy certainly impress Bridget & Tammy, who give it a 15/20 [Chicago Bites]

• Embattled New American Sweets & Savories totally drops the ball on its Kobe burger for one reviewer [Chicago Burger Project]

[Photo: geese in a Chicago parking lot, fearless and ignorant, via beartnow/flickr]

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The Tribune's on fire today! Between the point-counterpoint on restaurant pet peeves and the paper's continuing excellence in breakfast coverage, our attention has definitely been kept.

• Phil Vettel says: service is more important than food quality! [Tribune]

• Monica Eng says: food quality is more important than service! [Tribune]

• And together they say: the most important thing is who you're eating with. (Aww. Unless you're dining solo, of course!) [Tribune]

Meanwhile, on the breakfast beat, Chris Borrelli is excited about:

• What celebrities eat for breakfast (answer: nothing too crazy) [Tribune]

• Whether the high price of eggs will affect the five-egg omelet at Pauline's (answer: in price only) [Tribune]

TOC doesn't have much editorial stuff this week, but note their Farmer's Market calendar, which you can compare to the Tribune's for reference. Also, the interview with Ben Roche, Moto's pastry chef, is pretty good.

Review time!

• David Tamarkin has a good experience at Big Jones, despite itself. The cocktails were weird and it's unclear how tethered the restaurant is to the Southern narrative, but the food is tasty and well-executed [TOC]

• Antipasti, pasta and rectangular pizzas are a hit at I Monelli, which is BYO. Skip the desserts [TOC]

• Who reviews Schwa and Green Zebra as part of one review? Oh wait, it's Phil. We guess it makes sense to lump the good restaurants into one thing? No, obviously these each deserve their own treatment. Then again, to be fair, these are both re-reviews, and they both get three stars [Tribune]

[Photo: Pauline's five egg omelet via Zesmerelda/flickr]

What could be more auspicious than opening a fabulous new restaurant on the day that the foie gras ban got repealed? This is how L.2O was welcomed into the world, and based on the reactions of Mike Nagrant at Hungry (who supplied that quote and also, magnanimously, the menu) and Judy Hevrdejs at the Tribune, L2O is already in the pantheon of Chicago's top restaurants. And with dishes that have descriptions like "lamb tartar, ebi shrimp, pickled peach, tarragon" and "gold egg yolk, kampachi, Kurobuta pork, sake" and "shabu-shabu medai, kombu bouillon, citrus, King Trumpet," this is not hard to believe.

The ball of Ossetra caviar you can't help but stare at is sitting on a bed of fluke; while this exact preparation is not on tonight's menu, you can get something similar in the $110-$140 range. A twelve course tasting menu is $165, and a four course prix-fixe is $110. Eh, we've seen worse. The photo is from the restaurant's official flickr pool, which is hot. When LEYE wants to do something, they really do it.

Anyway, we're excited.

First Sip: L2O [Hungry]
First Bite: L2O [Tribune]

L.2O [MenuPages]
L.2O [Official Site]

[Photo: Ossetra caviar on fluke at L.2O, LGras/flickr]

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

• New tapas spot Bull-eh-Dia's a bit uneven on its spicing; 9/20 from Bridget & Tammy [Chicago Bites]

• So far so good at C-House, Marcus Samuelsson’s new seafood restaurant that's currently serving breakfast only [The Stew]

• Classic Italian subs at Conte di Savoia on Taylor Street; go during the weekend for home made mozzy [TastyBeat]

• For uptown dim sum, you could do a lot worse than Furama; try the xiao long bao, and don't lament the decor [Chicago Foodies]

• The banh mi at conveniently located Nhu-Lan Bakery is as cheap and as good as anywhere else [Chicagoist]

• You can pass on the shochu at new pan-Asian lounge Shochu, but the food is actually quite delicious and a good value, too [The Stew]

• Move over, M. Henry; you're not the only brunch game in Edgewater/Andersonville. Enter Tweet with huge portions of solid American brunch fare, and they serve on the weekdays (also, check out the pix!) [Chicago Gluttons]

[Photo: Men's Vogue (this is actually from last year's article, but we like the picture more than the one from last week's)]

• Upscale Dim Sum at David Burke's Primehouse and Shanghai Terrace, which Vettel deems mother-safe [Tribune]

• Downscale Dim Sum, probably just as enjoyable. But you can't make reservations! [Tribune]

• A bunch of non-Dim Sum Mother's Day options that may or may not still be available [Tribune]

• Monica Eng goes to Drew's Eatery in Wicker Park North Center ; liked the dogs, but not the soups. Also, to whomever pays attention to this sort of thing: the number of forks awarded to restaurants in the "Cheap Eats" feature doesn't show up online in either Firefox or IE. Just so you know! [Tribune]

• Outdoor dining! Includes newcomers like ZED451 and oldcomers like the Route 34 Drive-In outdoor movie theater in Earlville [TOC]

• Comparing the food at Cellular and Wrigley; the Sox come out ahead by an inch [TOC]

• Cynical Jerry Kleiner makes Park 52 just good enough for Hyde Park, rather than taking the effort to make it good, period [TOC]

• Cynical Tony Plum makes Cinners just good enough for Chicago, rather than taking the effort to make it good, period [TOC]

• Soft shell crabs lose their shells, and their lives, at various Chicago restaurants. We can't all be winners in springtime! [TOC]

[Photo: "who are you calling yellow?" ginakb/flickr]

Okay, the Review Matching Game was a bad idea. Nevertheless, for the record, here are the answers:

1) a; 2) g; 3) h; 4) f; 5) e; 6) d; 7) i; 8) b; 9) c; 10) j

As a consolation prize, we got three hilarious reviews for North Side Asian restaurants this morning from an IP address belonging to Automotive Rebuilders Supply in the Loop. Wow, it's totally invasive of us to post that! Oh well, to the reviews:

• Nohana:

NOHANA is a great place to eat very cheap and is fast service, I've been going there since it opened and never gotten sick,very clean..

• Matsu Shita:

This restaurant is okay, very pricie for small portions very bland the place is very clean the owner is the Sushi Chef very freindly but if you want really good Sushi this isn't the place......

• Sticky Rice:

I've been to other Thai places and nothing can't beat Stick Rice this place is awsome siply tasty authentic.. 3 THUMBS UP

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

• While some of the appetizers are quite tasty, Big Jones isn't ackin' its Southerness sufficiently for this very opinionated reviewer [Chicago Gluttons]

• After renovations, Bob San is back to being a comfortable, high-quality neighborhood sushi spot [Chicago Foodies]

• Is Brasserie Ruhlmann a secret bargain dinner? Raves about beautifully prepared, giant portions make it seem that way! [Gastronomic Bypass]

• While not everybody has expressed joy at Honky Tonk Barbeque's offerings, their beef brisket sandwich is apparently pretty tasty [Chicagoist]

• What's not to like about a family-run Costa Rican BYOB? If you go to Irazu, the steak sandwich is recommended [TastyBeat]

• A giant fire came and took Manee Thai away! Hopefully they will overcome [TOC Blog]

• Kitschy sports memorabilia aside, Mike Ditka's serves more-than-adequate classic American pub fare [Chicago Foodies]

• Wicker Park yuppiehole Moonshine is great place for a soggy burger and tequila shots spilled on your person [Gastronomic Bypass]

• High rents killed Moonstruck Chocolate Cafe's retail front, but you can still buy the confections online [Chicagoist]

• The silkiest tripe in the city may be at Nelly's Saloon, a Northwest Side Romanian restaurant that occasionally screens the local version of Dancing with the Stars, and is never as crowded as Kuma's Corner [Hungry Magazine]

• An utterly generic burger awaits you at Riverview Tavern, very much not a foodie destination [Chicago Burger Project]

• A flowery review for Asian small plates lounge newcomer Shochu, which focuses on the eponymous tipple. Not that we doubt it's good! [Chicagoist]

• German beer garden? Well, okay, you've twisted our arm. Uberstein is purported to be one of the less annoying drinking options in Wrigleyville, and they have schnitzelwiches [Gastronomic Bypass]

• Two omnivores chime in about Veggie Bite, Wicker Park's vegan fast food dispensary, and are impressed by the crap you can make without animal products [Metblogs, Drive-Thru]

[Photo: CTA Starts Free Rides For Military, via Chicagoist (EHP)]

• If you've been meaning to try Sally Lunn bread (all but pound cake; and who hasn't), good news! The new Andersonville new-Southern restaurant Big Jones is making sandwiches and French toast out of it [The Stew]

• Hyde Park's branch of the Dixie Kitchen & Bait Shop chain serves a credible catfish po'boy despite its hokey atmosphere [Chicagoist]

• Would you ever get so flustered by a 90 minute wait for Kuma's Corner to resort to Burger King? We're not even going to say anything. But apparently there's a rumor they're opening a store in Las Vegas?! [Drive-Thru]

• Solid, classic Italian at Lincoln Square's La Bocca della Verita'; the carbonara comes highly recommended [Chicagoist]

• What's better about Colombian bakery Mekato's — the pastries, the coffee or the prices? For us, it's the repeated use of "Columbian" instead of "Colombian" in the post, because we're horribly petty [Drive-Thru]

• Two nots about the South Side: Park 52 is not yet open for brunch to everyone's chagrin, and the service and food quality at Rosscoe's Chicago Home of Chicken and Waffles have not been helped by the name change [Chicagoist]

• The cookies are small and unassuming at Twisted Sister Bakery, but no less tasty for it [TOC]

[Photo: cemi-photographic 101/flickr]

It certainly sells more newspapers (or attracts more clicks, really) to review the newest hot restaurants each week, but the dining community has just as much need to know about the workhorses of the world. Actually, much more need! And so, Bruno went to the Berghoff, which still exists in some form for some reason. Zombie restaurants! Anyway, while Pat gets all huffy at menu misspellings ("'Orchetta [sic] pasta with rock shrimp'"? Woe is me. If you can't spell it, can you cook it?"), he finds some of the classic dishes to be at least palatable if you absolutely have to go down memory lane.

Actually, can we point out that Thomas Witom's review for a suburban John Barleycorn also critiques menu spelling? "[A]nd the menu cries out for a proof-reader to clean up such gaffs as filet 'mingon.'" Haha, the Sun-Times is totally copping our steez! Well, the more, the merrier.

This week's Omnivorous uses the conceit of "restaurants near Wrigley Field" to talk about some of the staff's favored ethnic spots. Mike Sula leads with Cafe Orchid, a family-run Turkish restaurant that opened around the same time as Nazarlik, but to less fanfare; try the seafood and handmade doner. Mike also recommends TAC Quick, disclosing once and for all that the popular Thai restaurant's name stands for Thai Authentic Cuisine. Chip Dudley (not a nom de porn) thinks you'd be hard-pressed to find a better value for meat than at Tango Sur (then again, maybe it is a nom de porn). Finally, Ann Sterzinger has a review on the somewhat strange pan-European restaurant Rick's Cafe, which has the serious virtue of being BYO.

Okay, go out and try some B-listers this weekend!

[Photo: khâo khlûk kà-pì at TAC Quick, sazerac2k/flickr]

We're looking at the Tribune, Time Out Chicago and Sun-Times dining sections this week, and they sure are a hodgepodge. We'll get to the reviews momentarily, but first, the substantive pieces:

• Phil Vettel does some cultural analysis concerning Houlihan's makeover from cheesy mid-scale casual restaurant to soulless mid-scale casual restaurant [Tribune]

• Chris Borrelli colorfully compares breakfast sandwiches, and is surprised to find himself enjoying McD's new chicken and biscuit entry [Tribune]

• A new breed of recipe websites let you search by ingredient and do other web2.0-type things, but the article is somewhat muddled by the overused comparison to music websites [TOC]

• Did you know that beer makes for as good, or maybe even better, a match to cheese as wine? Of course you did, because you haven't been living under a rock for the past three years [Sun-Times]

• Although this is similarly old news, we always find articles about Dippin' Dots charming, if suspicious [Sun-Times]

• You can never have too many upscale bakeries in Auburn Gresham...but one's a pretty good start [Sun-Times]

As for the reviews...

• Phil Vettel chimes in on Prosecco, the swanky River North wine bar. He seems highly impressed by the lounge's sophisticated aesthetic and by the competent regional Italian cooking, but gives little indication why it got two, as opposed to one or three, stars [Tribune]

• Joe Gray's review of Chant, the upscale pan-Asian restaurant in Hyde Park, refers to the broccoli in the pad se-eu as "toothsome." Puh-leeze! [

• David Tamarkin is duly impressed by Habibi, the Devon Ave Middle Eastern restaurant that has the presence of mind to put onions (i.e. thought) into their labna (and cooking, generally) [TOC]

• Heather Shouse approves of Kan Pou, a little Thai restaurant that makes up in quality what it lacks in exoticism [TOC]

[Photo: McDonald's Southern Style Chicken Biscuit, looking kind of sad (chickensandwichblog/flickr)]

Bunch of one-namers, these are. Okay, sort of a lie; Stages is actually Stages Family Restaurant. Chuck Sudo attested to the charm of the Bridgeport diner's open face hot turkey sandwich, which we can confidently report to cost $6.75 and include mashed potatoes and a bowl of soup.

Shochu is a somewhat bigger story, as the New American/Asian small plate lounge in Lakeview opens TO-NITE. It's run by the Deleece people and is the first Chicago establishment to get on the shochu bandwagon. Shochu is a recently popularized 50-proof Japanese alcoholic beverage that's "cool" right now in America. Small plate lounges are also a recently popularized 50-proof Japanese alcoholic beverage that's "cool" right now in America. Um, anyway, here you'll find a handful of Thai curries, some upscale izakaya-style tapas, raw fish in various preparations, and skewers of meat (yakitori) served with any number of fusion-y sauces (blueberry teriyaki! Miso lychee aoili! White soy Dijon vinaigrette! And so forth)

Speaking of skewers, Skewerz! The name doesn't indicate this, but it's a Hawaiian fast food restaurant, opening "hopefully next week" in Wicker Park. Proteins available on a stick include: chilied chicken (with a red & black pepper marinade; four for $7), lemongrass tuna (with a lemongrass emulsion, three for $9), and flank steak (grilled with five spices; four for $8). Each of the aformentioned come with a rice (e.g. jasmine or brown) and a condiment (red curry peanut sauce sounds exciting). They'll be open until 3am on weekend nights, which sounds like the right time for this kind of food.

Finally, everyone else in the world may have known that the Butcher's Dog on Clark and Harrison closed a year ago, but we only found out yesterday that it's been replaced by Villains Bar & Grill. The menu offers nothing you haven't seen before (buffalo calamari for $9, mushroom swiss portobello burger for $10), but vodka drinks are only $3 on Terrible Tuesdays, an appellation we wholeheartedly agree with.

[Photo: grilled lamb chop with mandarin mint salad and white soy dijon vinaigrette at Shochu]

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

• According to Bridget & Tammy, Cafe Bernard is starting to lose some of its French mojo. Only a 10/20 for the old man [Chicago Bites]

• Guess what's still the same, basically, after its makeover: the Cape Cod Room, so you can all exhale and eat your thermidor [The Stew]

• Everyone likes Glenn's Diner, really a quality seafood restaurant with all the diner accoutrements thrown on for variety [Drive-Thru]

• Every time we read a review for Magnolia Cafe, it's favorable. Glowing, actually [Chicago Metblogs]

• Classic to the point of kitschy, RL does a decent job at fancy mid-century American food, albeit at inflated prices [Chicagoist]

• Tourist spot Rockit Bar & Grill does not quite do it for Bridget & Tammy, who give it a low 11/20 [Chicago Bites]

• Explore the functional boundaries of sandwichdom with the Stages' open face hot turkey mess, a cheap lunch in Bridgeport [Chicagoist]

• Sharing a name with the important Japanese film, Tampopo dishes up a merely adequate bowl of ramen [Drive-Thru]

• Early word on American churrascaria ZED451: all the food is good but never great, and where they really shine is the drinks (not a good sign for foodies, but surely profitable) [Gastronomic Bypass]

[Photo: Chicago in peril, via Fire Prevention Week]

Actually, it's called the Pizza Expo, but our name is better. Pat Bruno went out that way and reported on...well, not all that much. Apparently, Pat "conduct[s] seminars on various aspects of the pizza business," but instead of telling us what the hell he means by that, we get a perfunctory word on the winners of the Gourmet and Traditional pizza competitions — neither of whom are Americans, naturally — and a sort of tepid round-up of our man's favorite pizzas around the country. Witness the profundity in statements like "California pizza is, well, California pizza." The article is unfocused; we just did a Google News search, and it doesn't seem like the piece has been syndicated anywhere else. Why so little connection to the Chicago market, then? Very strange.

On the other end of the local interest spectrum, Mike Sula gets the DL on Cinners, the Cincinnati-themed bar recently opened in Lincoln Square. The big story here, if we might be so bold, is about the provenance of the Cincinnati-style chili that is the bar's raison d'etre. Owner and former nightclub promoter Tony Plum says his great-grandfather got the recipe from the famous Empress Chili in the Nasty Natty, which may or may not have actually happened. We certainly wouldn't put it past Plum to completely fabricate the story, given the classiness of his other promotional materials. What remains to be seen is whether the chili's actually tasty; so far we've heard decent things.

Cinners [MenuPages]
Cinners [Official Site]

[Photo: see, we'd wanted Bruno to write about crazy pizzas like this one from last year's Expo, with smoked salmon, creme fraiche, tobiko, basil and capers (Captain Scooter/flickr)]

Chris Borrelli owned the Tribune today, with pieces on the subtle/non-existent qualitative differences between fries and frites and the pernicious disappearance of toast from brunch spots around Chicagoland. Why the double whammy on flash-heated starches, right as we're heading into ramp-and-morel season? Timing aside, the articles are great, especially the one on fries vs frites.

Borrelli touches on how the supposed sophistication of frites allows restaurants to charge more for them, but basically, fries and frites are both subsets of the larger world of blanched-and-fried potato sticks, which vary widely from country to country, region to region, kitchen to kitchen. No one way is best, and Borrelli provides a number of options for you to run the gamut.

French fries are kosher for Passover, which sort of surprises even though it shouldn't. Judy Hevrdejs rounds up some last-minute seder caterers for the Jew on the run.

On the TOC side, David Tamarkin tries to explain to us why you'd bother to get a Master Sommelier certification, and the answer is...mostly because it's there. Next up: a similar certification for beer.

As for reviews, Tamarkin's at Mercat a la Planxa, the Catalan tapas megaplex in the South Loop. The tapas are delicious, but the restaurant comes off as soulless. On the other hand, if Miss Asia is guilty of anything, it's having too many souls. You don't want to order from the Thai menu? How about Malaysian, Singaporean, Cambodian, Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Japanese, Laotian, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Nepalese or Mongolian instead? But surprisingly, it's all pretty good.

Mercat a la Planxa [MenuPages]
Mercat a la Planxa [Official Site]
Miss Asia [MenuPages]
Miss Asia [Official Site]

[Photo: Pommes frites en gras de canard à Hot Doug's, by Chuck T./flickr]

We're not positive we'd actually like this cupcake, but we're sure glad we've seen it, and we bet it appeals to at least some of you. Texture combinations aside, this looks like something out of Wonka or the Nutcracker, or maybe Marie Antoinette. The aesthetic is whimsy, but the reality is much starker: there are only three of these left at Bleeding Heart Bakery, where Michelle Garcia dreams up all manner of limited-time cupcakes that rotate in and out of the line-up. All cupcakes at Bleeding Heart are $3.50, but for your money you get something 1) unique 2) attractive and 3) organic.

Anyway, if popcorn's your thing, you know what you have to do.

Bleeding Heart Bakery [MenuPages]
Bleeding Heart Bakery [Official Site]

[Photo: Bleeding Heart Bakery/flickr. They put their cupcakes photos online. Why doesn't every restaurant do this?!]

Nevertheless, here, here and here.

• New Andersonville New Southern restaurant Big Jones is kind of a big deal (and the Hungry link has photos to prove it) [Drive-Thru, Hungry Mag]

• There's a whiff of controversy bubbling over the origin of Cinners' chili recipe, which is slightly spicier and less sweet than standard Cincinnati formulations [Food Chain]

• So far, Great Lake has been getting unremittingly great press for their superfancy pizzas. (Anyone want to source us their menu?) [The Stew]

• The smart Chicago diner will forget about North Pond in Lincoln Park at his or her peril! [Chicagoist]

• Solid 7/10 rating for Prosecco from Bridget & Tammy; the wine bar's weakness is in the value department [Chicago Bites]

• Contrary to the reports of some naysayers, Spacca Napoli is still churning out delicious pizza [Drive-Thru]

• Vegetarian fast food joint Veggie Bite opens second location in Wicker Park; the tofu textures are purportedly strange, but the milkshakes are good [Chicago Foodies]

• The solid, classic breakfasts at West Egg Cafe are served with practiced efficiency [Chicago Foodies]

[Photo: Big Jones' interior]

This is going to be very fast! Everything you ever wanted to know about:

• Hyde Park dining, by someone who should know [TOC]

• On a related topic, Park 52 is finally open [TOC]

• Tallulah, the Lincoln Square New American, is hit or miss [TOC]

• Natalino's, the West Town Italian-American, is pretty good, if a little kitschy and not at all relevatory [TOC]

• You know what's exciting about Spring that isn't ramps? Morels! [TOC]

• Mike Sula's story on Masouleh, the Persian home cooking restaurant in Rogers Park, has fascinating political angles [Reader]

• Phil Vettel loves Sixteen, a big fat duh [Tribune]

• Earth Day is coming up, and Monica Eng has a list of green restaurants for you [Tribune]

See? Fast.

[Photo: this morel mushrooms is moderately frightening. But delicious! (J-Fish/flickr)]

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

• Bucktown gastropub Bluebird gets the smackdown for alternatively bland and overspiced dishes [Drive-Thru]

• First word on the Cincinnati-themed bar Cinner's Cincinnati-style chili - "good" [Hungry Mag]

• "The Mess" at Costello Sandwiches is salami, ham and capicola topped with cole slaw and fries, but the real story is the review itself, in poetic form! [Chicagoist]

• Classic Wrigleyville bakery Dinkel's still doing its thing — and doing it well — all these years on [Drive-Thru]

• Mike Nagrant lists a few of his favorite things, including the Philly cheesesteaks at Granddaddy's Subs on Taylor Street and the crispy tacos at Mexican Inn on the Southeast Side [Hungry Mag]

• If you don't order a cocktail at Room 21, they'll screw up your order on purpose! Or...maybe not, but also, the food reminded the reviewer of a "hotel buffet line" [Gastronomic Bypass]

• At Chicago's only Laotian restaurant, Sabai-Dee, skip the buffet and order off the menu. For example, the shredded chicken curry noodle soup [Chicago Foodies]

• The Lincoln Park Sushi X is less trendy than it's Ukie Village sister, and BYO for the moment [Gastronomic Bypass]

[Photo: Schlitz's reformulation marketing campaign, which highlights the use of the beer's 1960s recipe. The ad campaign intones, "Gusto is being correct rather than politically correct" and "Gusto is still having a phone that rings, not sings," and "Gusto is believing a firm handshake is the best form of contract," and "Gusto is not even knowing the meaning of the term ‘metrosexual.'" Ah, yes, nostalgia for the time when middle-aged white men ran the country, the corporations and the culture. Long sigh.]

Lito's Empanadas, operating out of a little storefront in Lincoln Park, has built a nice reputation for itself since it opened late last year. We're happy to see a family-run place that decides to offer only one thing, and does a really good job at it.

Look how positive MenuPages reviewers have been!

Make it a point to get to Lito's. Lito's is a very small, sparkling clean place which has a few window seats for dining in. Much of their business seems to be take out. The empanadas which are fabulous, travel well and stay warm. Try my favorites: beef,olives,rainsins, rice or the beef and rice. My ultimate favorite is the choco-banana. The empanadas are inexpensive -a wonderful deal for the money. The owner and his wife are very friendly. These would be great to take to a party. If you are in the neighborhood, stop by. If you are not in the neighborhood, make it a point to get there. I am convinced you will not be disappointed.

Lito's empanadas range from $2.09 to $2.29 (regular unleaded, premium unleaded circa 2005?), with the beef and rice smack in the middle at $2.19. Which is a bargain, compared to how empanadas are priced elsewhere around town. Que Rico! does two cheese and spinach empanadas for $6.80 (but we didn't want two!); Cafe Ba-Ba-Reeba's are $5.25 a pop for your choice of chicken or beef; and it doesn't get much better from there. No, Lito's is pretty unique in what it's doing — if you've never had an empanada before, this is a good place to start.

Lito's Empanadas [MenuPages]

[Photo: R.A.M.O.N.E./flickr]

When it rains, it pours. Most of these are just opening or about to open. Some are from a few months ago, and one has eluded us since 2006! But all are worthy of note, not least for the reasons given:

• Big Jones — offers New Southern (i.e. fancified New Orleans and Charleston) cuisine starting April 9th. Sipping the Zeitgeist, they have a tea menu!

• Cinners — is Chicago's only Cincinnati-themed restaurant? They serve the city's famed chili over spaghetti, starting April 4th.

• Edgewater Lounge — has a MySpace, which is not so unusual. Music tastes include: Hank III, Drive by Truckers, The Verve, David Bowie, The Stone Roses, Mastadon, Van Halen, OutLaw Family Band

• Habibi — this Edgewater Lebanese restaurant, which drew the ire of the Dish last week, makes a point of saying they're open 365 days a year, including New Year's, Christmas and Thanksgiving. It's right on the menu!

• Harry Caray's Tavern — a spawn of the River North original hard by Wrigley Field, indulges in the irritating habit of placing a little ® next to "Holy Cow!" all over their menu, refering to their burgers. COME ON.

• Miss Asia — has every major South-East Asian cuisine except for Burmese. But that's the one we really wanted!

• Nellie's — purportedly has Chicago's only Puerto Rican breakfast buffet! It's $11.95 for adults and includes coconut oatmeal...

• Risqué Cafe — is Betty-themed. What a powerful cultural meme! Makes their barbecue sound plausible, ain't it; the chain of association being Betty-Route 66-BBQ. Correct us if we're wrong.

• Spicy Pickle — a national sandwich chain planning 9 more locations in Chicagoland!

[Photo: five spices pork leg, $14.95 at Miss Asia]

• If you're willing to brave the lines at Bongo Room and not get a brunch item, their sandwiches are delicious [Chicagoist]

• Everyone likes soup when they're sick. If you're sick at work in the Loop, Ginza's udon will steam the virus right out of you. And it comes with green tea! [Chicago Foodies]

• Bridget & Tammy love the burgers and mac and cheese at Kuma's Corner, but are a bit irritated by the service. (16/20) [Chicago Bites]

• Brunch at wildly popular Milk & Honey Cafe possibly not worth the long and aimless wait [Drive-Thru]

• The cupcakes at Molly's Cupcakes may not be the best thing that ever happened, but they brew a decent hot chocolate! [Chicago Foodies]

• Betraying a wicked sense of humor, an order of the Eggs Benedicto XVI at Polo Cafe comes with a framed photo of the current Pope that watches you while you eat. Really? [Chicagoist]

• Randomly garnering two reviews last week, Ras Dashen is a solid Ethiopian option in Edgewater with unique daily specials [Drive-Thru, Chicago Foodies]

• If you score a reservation to newly-reopened Schwa, see if you can break out of your gorging reverie and ask Chef Michael Carson about your dishes, eh? [Food Chain]

• The vegan menu and calming atmosphere at Spa Cafe makes it a good Loop lunch spot for anxiety-prone non-carnivores, and maybe you too! [Drive-Thru]

• Newcomer Twisted Sister Bakery, another entrant into the fearsome world of cupcakeries, is so far good! [Chicago Bites]

[Photo: a good way to start / a good way to depart, Steve Brandon/flickr]

Three little ethnic restaurants opened recently, and we got their menus!

1) Kam Fung, in Chinatown. Exciting menu item: Chinese-style fried chicken, $15 for the whole bird

2) Snow Spice Thai, in Ravenswood. Exciting menu item: avocado fish salad, $7. And they deliver!

3) Tacos Erendira in Bridgeport. Exciting menu item: chiles rellenos burrito, $4.50. Exciting menu quirk: menudo is $5.50, but menudo to go is $6.50. Those plastic containers don't come cheap, we suppose.

Okay, have a good weekend. Try someplace new!

When a restaurant first shows up on MenuPages, its popularity will often spike past the regular strong performers as people search for what they're reading about in the papers and on the blogs and what have you. But, say, two to six months in, if a place is still showing up in the top ten, it means it's got some legs.

And so, we salute:

• Brasserie Ruhlmann, in 1st place Downtown! It's a definitely a big-name restaurant, but such a distinction was not preordained; they earned it with their consistently delicious and innovative French fare

• Crisp, in 3rd place on the North Side. Impressive for a little, insider-y Korean fried chicken place, no?

• The Balanced Kitchen, tied for 3rd on the Northwest Side. It's way the hell out there in North Park, and it's vegan, but never discount those niche clickers!

[Photo: Raw Plate (organic raw cashews made into cheese; served with flax seed crackers; and an assortment of dehydrated fruits & vegetables) at The Balanced Kitchen]

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

• Do you think Avec, with its artisanal meat-heavy menu, would have any problem delighting a fussy vegan? No, of course you don't think that [Drive-Thru]

• Torta-type sandwiches at Bombon Cafe are worth the stomach space during lunch; try the chicken milanesa version dubbed "Clasica" [Chicagoist]

• Hearty chili, unfortunately still necessary this time of year, is available at Cooking Fools with ethical seitan instead of evil beef [Drive-Thru]

• Little Andersonville pizza shop Great Lake may only serve a few different varieties of pie a night, but they're all delicious. Also, BYO [Drive-Thru]

• Apparently picking up steam from its previous round of hopeful but disappointed reviews, La Cocina de Frida now impressing diners with its grandmotherly Mexican cuisine [Metblogs]

• So far, mostly great reviews for Mercat a la Planxa, the new Catalan restaurant in the South Loop. Mention "pan tomate" and Chef Jose Garces will come out and kiss you on the forehead [The Stew, Gastromic Bypass]

• Fancy Vietnamese on Argyle Street? Yes, at Pho Xua, where the decor won't scare your lily-white grandma, if you have one [The Stew]

• Is the stripper pole at Rockstar Dogs functionally unusable? Mike Sula's strip-o-philic friend and Monica Eng say yes. The hot dogs themselves are decent enough, but overpriced [Food Chain, The Stew]

• Jerry Kleiner's Room 21 serves the same upscale comfort food in the same atmosphere as all his other places. Why not a menu from the Prohibition era for your fancy location, Jer? [Chicagoist]

• New Chinese fast food spot in Pilsen, Take Me Out, has tiny but solid menu that features Chinese fried chicken [Hungry Mag]

• Bahena production Tepatulco serves decent authentic Mexican food that warrants a visit, if not an obsession [Chicagoist]

[Photo: pick your poison, Hilary74]

• New stylish froyo spot Berry Chill fulfills the promise of healthy, chilly tang, but wow is it pricy! [The Stew]

• There's no dedicated vegan menu at Cafe Ballou, but they will gladly cobble something together from their dishes' non-animal components [Drive-Thru]

• You can never have too many family-run rotisserie chicken places like Chato's Chicken & Mashed in University Village [Hungry]

• Mostly a fried chicken spot, Feed will also do a burger. Stick with what they know, though [Chicago Burger Project]

• For the new Seuss movie, IHOP is using spinach to create the "green eggs and ham" look. This excited Monica Eng for some reason. Oh, maybe because her kids ate free as part of the promotion. Yes, free! [The Stew]

• Gimmicky late-night hot dog dispenser Rockstar Dogs finally opens in Ukie Village, stripper pole and all, but the kitschy themes don't make up for the lackluster franks [Hungry]

• New Bronzeville restaurant, revealingly named Rosscoe's Chicken & Waffles, drawing huge crowds to a rocky start [The Stew, Hungry]

• In addition to the rest of the Vietnamese repetoire, Tank Noodles also makes a decent banh mi. It is worth reading through the angry and then conciliatory comments on the original post [Chicagoist]

[Photo: Stephane Izard's winning duck dish, Bravo Recipes]

LTHForum user "djenks" writes:

"The thing about the vienna beef cafeteria that boggles my mind is that, imo, the two most average things they have there are the hotdogs and fries. The fries are bad and the dogs just....are pretty average. Sure, they are vienna and really good - but the prep just doesn't sit with me well."

(In all fairness, djenks does say that sandwiches are generally good, and one would be hard-pressed to find a better place in Chicagoland to purchase uncooked Vienna hot dogs in bulk, especially the natural-cased version.)

Other hot dog options in the area:

• Hot Doug's in Logan Square is an obvious choice; in addition to all the crazy foie-gras-style stuff they do, they also offer Vienna dogs

• What's the Beef in Lincoln Park offers eponymous existential quandries, but also online ordering!

• Big Boy Gyros in North Center gets great reviews on MenuPages, and is said to be the best of its kind in the area

Vienna Beef Cafe [MenuPages]
Vienna Beef Cafe [Official Site]
The Vienna Beef Cafeteria [LTHForum]

[Photo: they're called sport peppers? Yes. (Vienna Beef - Building A Chicago Style Hot Dog)]

Cop's only eat here cuz they're poor. They get free pizza. [REDACTED] avoids health inspection. Cops=[REDACTED]=rats=happy. Viola. DO. NOT. EAT. HERE

the waitstaff is terrible, and the place is loud and cramped. unfortunetly they have lost my family and I customer due to there lack of compitent people who work there! This is absolutly notthe first time i have had a bad expierence here, it really is sad.

This Buffet Palace is very good place to go even they don't have crab lag is okay, As long as there other food to eat. One this you have to keep in mind is the resturants is cleans. I have been Anothers resturants I never see place is the cleanese. pluse the price is cheap you only paid last than 15.00 dollar person. compare to other resturants like old county Buffet they charged about 17.00 dollar person for dinner. Chinese food is always good for you. last oil and no fat. So few free go their and try it. the best buffet in town.

Bad choice, should've bought the lotto - If you want attitude, so-so food and a punishing experience, then you belong here. I tried the pulled-pork "world-class" sandwich and I think the name is correct for a third-world place in a first-world country...not so good. Rib tips were maybe less than average. Service gets a zero from me and if you want to know why, just visit this place and it will be obvious when they short you on your food, your taste, but not the cost, Calvin's website states that "...if you don’t really like people, you’re in the wrong business..." well guess what Calvin, either you change your staff or delete this from your webpage, because it's not happening dude. Most importantly, looks like Calvin needs to go back to St. Louis for retraining immediately if not sooner. [Ed.: haha]

Was a huge fan of Fat Willy's in the beginning. Absolutely LOVE their spicy bbq sauce. Recently, however, I notice the prices are high and the service is low. I called for delivery on evening and was rudely put on hold (had to hang up and call back 5 times) before being told that delivery orders aren't taken until 5pm (it was 4:55). Overall - the cold and soggy food that arrived was very expensive, in my opinion. Two sandwhich dinners for $30.00. Will be trying some over, more down-to-earth bbq joints from now on.

The only thing missing...is a bigger dining room with an actual wait staff. We went here on a Saturday night and the place was PACKED! Not that I mind rubbing elbows with strange people at a picnic table...but they have the volume to warrent a bigger space. That said, the food was DELICIOUS!!! I had the pulled pork sandwich with fries and mac & cheese. YUM! Love the fact that it's BYOB. A great value, too.

Opened in 2005, this simple little rib joint has 3 folding plastic tables and 6 or 8 folding chairs... friendly store front atmosphere... and slow (attention to detail) service. This place has the best ribs... pork and beef, super greens and beans, and killer cornbread. Typical of a lot of small rib joints there is no diet pop. Oh well... try it! It's great.

Honey 1 has amazing ribs and excellent sauce. Their hot links are also very, very good with the right amount of zip. My only (small) complaint is that the pulled pork sandwich, while delicious, is tiny and seems overpriced at 8 bucks. Overall, this is the best BBQ I've had in Chicago and I HIGHLY recommend it.

Mon.-Wed. food specials are a reeeeal good deal. When I used to live in Chicago, I used to come at least once a week. I think Tuesday was 1/2 off sandwiches, and the prime rib sandwich was extra delicious, for only $4 or something, too. I agree that for the 1/2 off appetizers, the spinach-artichoke dip and quesadillas are the way to go. The nachos are gigantic but the toppings are like plastic on top and you'll have plain nachos about a quarter the way through. But it's so cheap, even if you get 'em, you won't be mad. Great place, hope they still do the great specials.

I was in a hurry and ran in for a quick bite. Very satisfied. They were freindly, fast and very good. I tried their Cornbeef on rye with onion rings and a small side of macaroni-n-cheese. That mac-n-cheese was exellent. I will definitely be back, maybe for a beer next time.

This may be the world's last true bar. No pretenses. Not a place to take the kids who have seen the SNL bits on nostalgia DVDs. Maybe the other Billy Goat locations are different, but this one is a little cave with booths still populated by journalists and other folk who work up above on Michigan Ave. lots with bad booze problems. The smoking ban hasn't changed the place much, as it always smelled overpoweringly of grill suet. So climb down from the bright sunlight into dark, have a drink or two, and maybe a slider and chips, and revel in the world's last bar.

This place is amazing. Doesn't look like much from the outside, but the food does amazing things for your insides. Fries could be the best in the city. Burgers are huge, and the crab cakes are dreamy. One of my all time favorites in a city of great food.

If you're into a not so authentic soupy, cold, sour shepherds pie topped with lots of parmesan cheese, this place is for you! I ordered for pick up during lunch and was very disappointed. Surprisingly, the food was ready quickly. When I took my first bite of the pie, it was cold and had a sweet/sour after taste. A cold mound of mash was in the center of the dish and was surrounded by a mot of soupy, cold ground beef and small pieces of vegetables that looked like they came straight from a can. I also ordered a quesadilla appetizer filled with "irish" salted bacon, salted spinach and authentic "irish" queso (extra salty). If you are looking for an irish restaurant downtown, this should not be your first pick.