• 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]

Summer is in full swing in the Chicago food mediasphere, with the Taste, hot dogs and pure, unadulterated fire dominating the headlines.

• Top five Taste deals, including Original Rainbow Cone's Patriot Cone: blueberry, vanilla and strawberry, the bounty of America on its birthday [Tribune]

• Mini-reviews of all the Taste items, as first seen on the Stew, featuring Vettel's famous "meh" [Tribune]

• Ice cream plus espresso (a.k.a affogato) is good; ice cream plus espresso plus cognac is better [Tribune]

• But our are there a lot of words on hot dogs today! The issue contains pieces on a bunch of classic hot dog stands around Chicagoland, plus a look under the hood of the dog and the always contentious ketchup conundrum. Is your favorite grease pit included in the roundup? You'll have to click to find out! [TOC]

• The pull quote from the entire series is: "Despite many complaints from mustard-faced customers, Gene & Jude’s didn’t even offer napkins until the ’70s. 'People would ask for napkins and Gene would hand them a hot-dog wrapper,' Joe says." [TOC]

• We will still never understand the endless, juvenile, largely irrational hatred Chicagoans have toward ketchup on their hot dogs. Does the red stuff really throw the balance of ingredients that far off? Hasn't anyone ever tried putting ketchup and mustard on their hot dogs? We can't think of a single analog in, New York, say, where a condiment-food item combination is so reviled that it's practically embedded in the city's core DNA. We're all for purism, but the extreme level of this ketchup thing is kind of a deranged application. We're not going to win any friends for this, but get over it! [TOC] (Then again, we have trouble being friends with people who order red meat well done. Or put peanut butter on their blueberry bagels)

• Wrapping up the frankfurter files, Hot Doug's is doing a design-your-own hot dog contest, and the winner gets their dog on the menu for a week. Which is actually not the world's most impressive prize, but it's really about the glory, right? [TOC]

• In other news...a scrappy pastry chef-turned-gelato maker...heavy metal vs. R Kelly in the kitchen...more Mexican than French at Mexique, which is not to say the tacos aren't tasty...progressive-sounding healthy concept Freshii falls flat with confusing ordering practices and mediocre salads

• Finally, in this week's Omnivorous, Mike Sula talks to the last guy delivering coal in Chicago (really?) and his two remaining customers, D'Amato's Bakery and Coalfire, the much-ballyhooed New Haven-style pizza place on Grand St. It's a nice story about the decline of one major Chicago industry that alludes to the rise of another major Chicago industry (restaurants).

Also, this reminds us of one our first targets for hypocrisy, Carbon. The name of the taqueria and their promotional literature imply that they cook with charcoal, and last April, we were appalled to discover that they actually run a gas-based operation. And we just called them again and it's still gas, and presumably forever more. But, as natural gas prices skyrocket and we remember that we're sitting on a few hundred years of coal reserves...who knows.

[Photo: an affogato avocado, best, via bigiain/flickr]

Two weeks ago, we wrote a post on some findings from a day of processing menus, including Mothers-In-Law (tamales in buns with chili) on the North Side and Mexico City-style tortas at La Baguette on the South Side.

All this piqued the interest of Peter Engler a.k.a. Rene G, one of the superstars of LTHForum, and the MIL expert we quoted about the no-MIL-on-the-North-Side thing. Turns out what he meant was, no one on the North Side calls it as such, but the component ingredients of the Mother-In-Law are on plenty of North Side menus. We stand corrected!

Engler also had insight into the torta chilanga (milanesa, chorizo, ham and queso fresco), one of the Mexico City-style tortas we mentioned in the post. He wrote:

Tortas chilangas are not too uncommon in Chicago. Doña Torta Chilanga (2152 W Cermak) sounds like a good place to begin. A large window sign also advertises tortas guapachosas (I had no idea what those were until today). BomBon Café (38 S Ashland) makes an upscale version with ham, salami, Serrano ham and queso Chihuahua. On the north side you can get them at Cardona's (3537 W Lawrence), filled with milanesa, queso Oaxaca and chiles poblanos. Although there are some common features, the ingredients tend to vary.

The conspiracy theorist in us didn't get very far along in its investigation because neither restaurant has English-speaking staff, but that could be a ruse! Incidentally, Dona Torta Chilanga's menu doesn't resemble Dona Torta's menu in the slightest. Go figure.

Anyway, there's still a mystery surrounding the tortas guapachosasa, which appear on both menus. La Baguette's has milanesa, queso y pierna (i.e. breaded steak, brick cheese & sliced pork shoulder), while Dona Torta Chilanga's contains milanesa, pierna, queso amarillo, jamon y salchicha (i.e. breaded steak, flank steak, cheddar cheese and a hot dog). What makes this all the more strange is that "torta guapachosa" receives virtually no hits on Google, while "torta chilanga" has several thousand (although the top two are Yelp's page for DTC and our previous blog entry on the subject, so take it with a grain of salt).

The way we want to imagine it is, two brothers from Mexico City were up late one night with the munchies and they each constructed a torta that, under the circumstances, they named "groovy." And then they came to Chicago and opened competing torta shops, and one did quite well (La Baguette has a dozen locations, it seems), while the other has had to languish in his brother's shadow. Isn't this narrative more entertaining than the truth?

Because the truth would have to encompass an explanation for why there's a hot dog in DTC's guapachosa, an addition truly beyond the bounds of rational behavior and certainly good taste. We would, nevertheless, eat this sandwich in its entirety.

Dona Torta Chilanga [MenuPages]
La Baguette [MenuPages]
La Baguette [Official Site]

[Photo: Dona Torta Chilanga's guapachosa torta, via Peter Engler]

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]

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]

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]

We don't mind when legitimate reviewers are absolutely in love with a particular restaurant, and choose MenuPages to share that love with the world. Here are three short paeans from the past week:

• "Delicious" wrote a review for The Gage on 5/27 entitled "Outstanding":

After 2 weeks of substandard fare and service, Gage, restored my faith in American cusine. Definitely in my top 5 best ever meals. Can't wait to go back

• On 5/29, "Mrs. Adrienne" contributed a review entitled "Excellent 5.0" for Miss Lee's Good Food:

I have visited Miss Lee Good Food on several occassions and the food is always great. The workers and the owner is very friendly. The customers are very found of Miss Lee good southern home cooking. Miss Lee will also give you the receipes to any of her dishes, most people who cook dont like to give out there receipes. I pray that god will continue to buisness her buisness.

• 5/30 brought an anonymous first review for Mado entitled "fresh, seasonal, delicious!":

Everything is market and farm fresh, so flavorful, and cooked to perfection. The wood grilled whole trout is amazing, as is the shortbread and dates with ricotta, coffee, and walnuts.

[Photo: an elk saddle at The Gage. American enough for you? via Zesmerelda/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]

You'll want to lick your plate but don't
Hotties make you come for more
I want it to be this good every time!

Wait, what? These are the review titles for writeups on Shanghai Terrace, Take Me Out and Sunrise Cafe, respectively. Lines one and three make sense on their own, but the middle one needs a bit of explanation.

Take Me Out is the Sino-Korean wings spot that opened recently in Pilsen. It's a familial spin-off of cult favorite Great Sea in Albany Park, and has been garnering rave reviews, including the one referenced in the poem:

I would definitely go back for their chicken hotties. Too bad they don't deliver or I guess better for me or I'd eat these wings at least once a week. Their Kung Pao taste good but they're light on the chicken.

By the way, the chicken crack we were referring to is the three chili chicken at Lao Sze Chuan and its brethren in Chinatown. But there's room enough for two preparations of addictive Asian chicken in the Chinatown/Pilsen area, if not four or five.

Shanghai Terrace [MenuPages]
Shanghai Terrace [Official Site]
Take Me Out [MenuPages]
Sunrise Cafe [MenuPages]

[Photo: a blurry likeness of the progenitor to the hotties, Great Sea's chicken wings; via design_drafter]

It is your patriotic duty to eat barbecue at some point this weekend. Perhaps you'll do so at a party with friends and family, but failing that, we've compiled a slideshow of worthy barbecue from around the city, and nearby parks where you can picnic. The park photos are from Microsoft's new Live Maps "Bird's eye" feature; hopefully they won't sue us for using them!

Rib tips from Honey 1 BBQ, via andrewc:

Humboldt Park is a short drive away:

Three more pairings, after the jump...

Continue reading "Viewing Pleasure: Barbecue And The Parks In Which To Eat It" »

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]

It's Friday afternoon, and that means a slew of new reviews:

Pat Bruno visits an old favorite of his that recently had a face life — Cape Cod Room. The food is just as good (or at least the same) as always, although Bruno admits that he "doubt[s] if the twentysomething crowd would dig this restaurant at all." Feh. On the contrary, sometimes we crave historical authenticity! Especially when it just had a face lift. Meanwhile, Pat felt the need to put scare quotes around the "points" in toast points, because...what, are toast points newfangled all of a sudden? Oh well.

Nevertheless, we're happy to see Bruno pointing his audience toward Army & Lou's, one of the city's most estimable soul institutions. But here's a paragraph we don't understand:

The buzz words at Army & Lou's are "scratch cooking." I don't get to go into the kitchens of the restaurants I review, but I will take it as gospel that A&L is making a lot of its food from scratch, simple food that is prepared with care.

On the Reader side, Mike Sula has two reviews: he enjoys Mercat a la Planxa as much as everyone else has and highly recommends the order-in-advance pigfest, and provides some nice background on Take Me Out, a Northeast Asian fried chicken joint in Pilsen of all places. Anne Spiselman doesn't think nearly enough has been said about Ukrainian baked goods wonderland Shokolad, whose delicious pastries should not stop you from trying their savory offerings.

[Photo: deep blue skies/flickr]

• 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]

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)]

Park 52, Jerry Kleiner's recently opened upscale comfort food restaurant in Hyde Park, has been getting decent play in the neighborhood, all things considered. The Dish reports finding the place "packed" at 9pm on a weekday night, despite prices well outside the normal range for the area, and food alternately described as "limp," "dineresque," and "copycat." The Chicagoist went by over the weekend and found people "disappointed" that the restaurant's not open for brunch. We're sure a serious review will hit the internet sooner or later, but in the meantime, we have the restaurant's very first shill on MenuPages to share with you.

User: Patricia (correctly capitalized first names are so infrequently used for legitimate reviews that their presence raises eyebrows — you know, because real people are lazy and illiterate)

Title: Wow! Just what Hyde Park needed!! (use of sentence case makes us nervous. It's true that Hyde Park needed a sophisticated, modern restaurant of some sort, but the title plays into that notion too heavily. Also, non-ironic double-exclamations are frowned upon)

Rating: 5/5/5/5 (an amateur shilling tactical error. Clever shillers realize that 5/5/5/5 is a big red flag, and often go with 4.5/4.5/4.5/4.5 instead)

Review:

What a great place! Absolutely wonderfully decorated (if you like that sort of thing). Great eclectic menu (not really). Food cooked to perfection (cliche). Chef ad libbed on a mustard sauce because I'm allergic to tomatoes and mushroomsit was superb and complimented the meal extremely well (lovely detail, well-intertwined with the narrative)! I felt like I was downtown but didn't have to travel a long way to get home (talking point). Great job!!! Please don't get stalechange the menu every so often and stay upscale (the neg). Valet parking is great idea, but please advertise (this is, in fact, the advertisement). I called and was told to park in the lot around back, but would have gladly paid the $8 to have the car parked and returned for me (wow, what a lazy person. Also, if they're from the neighborhood, why are they driving here?). My friend and I had a lovely time and I am definitely going to make it a "spot" to meet friends for a beautifully comfortable but upscale time in the neighborhood (scare quotes around "spot" and multiple modifiers on "time" are suspicious). Fantastic!!!!! (tell us what you really think)

All this said, we're sure the food is fine, and Park 52 will likely do very well. But we'll only participate when it's fair and square!

Park 52 [MenuPages]

[Photo: glazed salmon at Park 52, Kids' Writer/flickr]

• 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]

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]

For some reason, we got a bunch of reviews this past week from once and future New Yorkers raving about their favorite Chicago restaurants. And it's a really odd assortment! Observe:

• User: "Kompare" | Title: "Gotta Try It!" | 4/10 | Chuck's Pizza:

I have been eating this pizza for 25 years! I now live 2 hours away and drive in multiple times a year an pick up as many as my freezer can handle. No it's not a family dining or a sports bar, but it IS the best pizza I have come accross. If bambinos in new york is a 5 chucks is a 10. Hands down! Fox's is a good pizza, Rossi's is a good pizza, but I still remain loyal! If you have not tried it, DO.

• User: "New York Girl" | Title: "Happy With Happy!" | 4/13 | Happy Cafe:

I have lived in NY for the last 4 years but whenever I come back to Chicago we hit Chinatown for my dose of Happy Cafe. If you are looking for ambiance you are looking in the wrong place, however, if you are looking great down home Chinese fare look no further! It is further down Wentworth than most people venture but it is definitely worth the few extra blocks. I highly recommend the dul mui (pea pod shoots) as your green veggie and the Peking style pork chops. You will thank me later. :)

• User: "I'm Hungry" | Title: "Rating the Burger" | 4/15 | Weber Grill:

Its is one of the best burgers I've ever had. I am from NYC just moved to Chicago. My friends all say the same thing, go to Weber's for the burger, its amazing. I agree, the burger was juicey, big, cooked perfectly, and the meat tasted really fresh. I am only rating this place on their burger. I will definately go back for this reason.

[Photo: brady frequent traveler and eater/flickr]

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)]

When Rosscoe's Chicken & Waffles opened last month, we cautioned that

trying to ride the coattails of the established LA institution doesn't sit all that well with us. We realize the owners are just trying to maximize their business, but given the dearth of decent dining options in the area, simply providing good food and decent service would have taken care of that. Using the name Rosscoe's (misspelled as it might be) just opens you up for increased scrutiny and ire.

Equally relevant is Roscoe's logo, which is also protected. The trademark has a disclaimer that states "NO CLAIM IS MADE TO THE EXCLUSIVE RIGHT TO USE "CHICKEN N WAFFLES" and the illustration of waffles APART FROM THE MARK AS SHOWN." Let's take a look at the mark!

The chicken on the left belongs to Chicago's Rosscoe's, while the chicken on the right is property of LA' Roscoe's. There are differences between them, to be sure; um...for example, they're looking in opposite directions. The owner of Chicago's Rosscoe's, Darne