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• Phil Vittel hits up Palatine's Agio and gives it two stars. From the "simply outstanding" eggplant parmigiana to the delicious ribeye, most dishes are winners, though a few suffer from odd pairings (veal saltimbocca with a baked egg and broccoli side? really?). [Tribune]

• David Tamarkin is blown away by Lakeview's Fianco, to which he bestows four stars. The shock of an excellent meal coming from a nameless chef in a generic strip mall is spectacular, with the milk-braised pork a particular standout. Prediction: "when people get hip to this food, they’re going to pounce, whether they like the surroundings or not." [TOC]

[Photo: Flatbread at Taxim, ehfisher/Flickr]

It seems like it's a requirement these days to visit Bridgeport newcomer Han 202 and then write about it on the internet. What does everyone have to say?

Chicagoist: "In a neighborhood dominated by carryout joints that specialize in breaded steak sandwiches, having a place like HAN 202 open can be downright frightening, if not a foreign concept. But if ever a neighborhood needed a restaurant that actually gave a damn about something besides “gravy bread” and “red sauce,” it’s Bridgeport. The service, interior and price also makes a great primer for budding gourmands on a budget. If it stays BYOB, HAN 202 should be a can’t miss."

Sky Full of Bacon: "The simplest, but in many ways the one that impressed me the most precisely because it did so much so delicately with so little, was this creme brulee-soft tofu speared— oh, sign me up for that job— with tiny sprouts ... I’m happy to have a Chinese restaurant run by people who seem aware of things happening in the broader food scene and ambitious enough to try to offer a fine dining-like experience at barely above cheeseburger prices."

Continue reading "Review Revue: Han 202" »

• It's Mean Girls redux rom Julia Kramer, whose take on Sepia is a litany of mild praise followed by mild complaints (a too-heavy pasta, some underwhelming mint, an under-herbaceous porchetta) punctuated with a similarly it's-a-compliment-no-it's-not final paragraph: Kramer praises the restaurant as the kind of place she'd recommend to her parents or visit with friends, but it's no better than dozens of other places she would presumably also have on that list. [TOC]

• Renee Enna checks out the apostrophically-challenged Gus' Diner in Rolling Meadows, where the standard diner fare (deft bacon cheeseburgers, soup or salad with every meal) shares the menu with unexpected dishes like juicy chicken fajitas and a Southern chicken salad topped with candied pecans. A brownie sundae is big enough for three and clocks in under four bucks — not a bad deal. [Tribune]

• After a gut renovation, Andersonville's La Tache has regained much of the vibrancy it used to have, reports a satisfied David Tamarkin. Expertly churning out standard bistro fare — high-quality onion soup, extra-crispy-skinned roast chicken — the new folks in the kitchen seem to know exactly what they're doing, except when it comes to dessert, an anticlimactic end to an otherwise great meal. [TOC]

• The latest entry in the city's burgeoning tapas scene, Eivissa puts a molecular gastronomy spin on classic Spanish flavors like gambas al ajillo or calamari with white beans. But to Anthony Todd's palate, while the foundation dishes are good, the foams and airs don't add too much to the table — and the restaurant's signature "chupitos" (liquid tapas) don't really work at all. But the cocktails — and the scene — seem to make up for it. [Chicagoist]

[Photo of Eivissa courtesy Chicagoist]

• Even though his drink took forever to arrive, and the hour-long wait for his burger was the result of the kitchen "losing" his ticket, Pat Bruno finds a lot to love about Market. Sure, the presentations are at times cloyingly cutesy — fish is served in a mini-rowboat, chicken comes with a plastic chicken next to it on the plate — but Bruno raves about everything, from buffalo wings down through a skillet-sized chocolate chip cookie. Even the burger, late as it was. [Sun-Times]

• Bruno also hits up District Bar, where the asymmetrical appetizer/entree offerings (about 5 to 1, by Bruno's measure) speaks to the bar-slash-restaurant's focus on the first half of its identity. Still, Bruno braves an order of shrimp de Jonghe (seriously, who orders that in a bar?) and comes away impressed. Ditto for "pork wings" and a pizza of the day, but the "Chicago cheesteak" (think an Italian beef with provolone) doesn't fare so well, overwhelmed by its bread. [Sun-Times]

• Anne Spiselman swings by Sepia to see how the kitchen's faring at the helm of new chef Andrew Zimmerman, and comes away duly impressed. The new menu puts a Southern spin on dishes like pork porterhouse, pan-fried rainbow trout, and a rabbit-and-biscuits dish that riffs on the chicken classic. Cornmeal and cherries pop up in desserts, carrying through the down-home theme with aplomb. What's lacking? The wines by the glass aren't plentiful, and the room is crazy loud. [Reader, first item]

• It's a less than perfect experience for Mike Sula at the revamped Goose Island Clybourn, with a good chunk of the menu unavailable thanks to supply problems. What did come out varied from cold to oversalted to over-breaded to over-baconed. Still, the menu shows good direction — if the kitchen's not quite living up to its potential. Sula hopes chef John Manion will get the message, and his execution will get better with time. [Reader, second item]

• In an oddly purple review of Evanston's Quince, Kate Schmidt juxtaposes the "dingier than ever" gray carpet with chef Pete Balodimas's confidently unexpected flavor pairings and platings. It all works: Guinea hen wrapped in La Quercia speck, a cheese-pistachio-asparagus baguette type thing, fried soft-shell crab with multicolored beets and a horseradish foam. Schmidt left too full to even try the desserts, but says they sounded good. [Reader, third item]

[Pictured: the bar at Goose Island Clybourn]

• Color us surprised to see Phil Vettel reviewing Terzo Piano less than a month after it opens. He loves everything — from the "uno due tre" mini-burgers to the soft-shell crab sandwich to the deftly produced desserts. It's pricey, sure, but take to heart Vettel's suggestion of drilling through the floor to steal some art, and your money issues are taken care of. [Tribune]

• Newcomer El Mariel charms Heather Shouse, despite the fact that its signature cubano is a little off balance in the meat department (Shouse cries too much! As if that were possible...). The house-made potato chips are a can't miss, and the flaky pastries do a body good. [TOC]

• David Tamarkin falls all over Wally & Agador's, praising the "over-the-top" sandwich constructions as almost too intense, too rich, for everyday consumption: the "Marilyn Monroe" pairs multiple pates plus brie, for example. Surely we can't eat like that every day, can we? [TOC]

• Do we have a new genre-defying blockbuster on our hands? Michael Nagrant makes the case for Han 202, a Bridgeport restaurant that reads "as if a hurricane picked up elements of Alinea, Opera and a grungy regional Chinatown spot and smashed them all into this old school brick and vinyl awning Chicago storefront on West 31st Street." The menu is, actually and literally, eclectic, with unexpected flavor combos like king crab miso soup, or a dessert of commingled vanilla and tomato sorbets. It's barely open a month, so expect great things. [NewCity]

• Pat Bruno waxes poetic about the carnivorous delights on offer from Goose Island Brew Pub, from the multi-meated "ham" burger to the piggy wallop of pulled-pork sliders. Even the tilapia po'boy clocked in a success, despite not containing any parts of the pig. After paragraph upon paragraph of effusive praise, the review concludes with a wan sentence berating the desserts for not being more "pub-grubby," since apparently Bruno likes his sweet stuff manly. [Sun-Times]

• Taxim has been blazing through the column inches with its refreshing take on Turko-Greek cuisine, and Mike Sula dives into the culinary inspiration behind owner David Schneider's vision. The idea is that the food is fresh, preparations are simple, and flavor comes before anything else — the boundaries of the kitchen go way beyond the staid Greektown staples. [Reader]

• Thomas Witom does all but damn Elmhurt's Wine and Vine to immediate closure in his review, which carefully avoids any explicit pans of the place, but nevertheless broadcasts its low opinion loud and clear. Descriptions like "anemic," "bereft of character," "off-putting." The place has some redeeming factors — nice wine list, a solid pork chop — but the prognosis is bleak. [Sun-Times]

[Photo: Michael Nagrant/NewCity]

• Despite its white-leather feel and "throbbing" vibe (more Miami than Chicago, on balance), Phil Vettel is charmed by nearly everything that comes out of the kitchen at Chaise Lounge. The menu's dominated by small plates, light and flavorful to a dish, but larger entrees are worth the double-digit price tags. And did we mention the throbbing? [Tribune]

• NoMI seems to have fallen of the city's radar a bit, so Heather Shouse David Tamarkin pays it a refresher visit. The food is, overwhelmingly, expertly prepared (a few off-notes, like a flavorless poached egg, pale against glowing descriptions of the lamb), but the toff atmosphere and chilly service don't do the restaurant any favors. Tamarkin's unspoken (if strongly implied) prescription: The restaurant should pull its head out of its butt, get over its pretensions and start cultivating a more hospitable, less formal environment. [TOC]

• Julia Kramer's early take on Noah Sandoval's kitchen revamp at Between Boutique Cafe & Lounge reveals a kitchen that's still figuring itself out: overcooked scallops and under-fried skate wing, bad; curry-carrot soup and blue cheese-cacao duck breast, good. It's all a little at odds with Between's moderately cheesy hypersensuous decor, but it works for now, and will probably work even better as Sandoval gets his sea legs. [TOC]

• Monica Eng's Cheap Eats take on Chutney Joe's is full of hedges: "bold if uneven," "tender if unremarkable." The restaurant's slick and pretty, but the food lacks consistency, flavor, quality, and soul. [Tribune]

[Photo: croquettes at Chaise Lounge; credit: James R. Lasky]

• The Grocery Bistro continues its blazing trail of A-minus reviews with Julia Thiel's take; flavor combinations are unexpected and assertive, preparations are deft, and the atmosphere is convivial. But the menu has occasional flirtations with poorly-balanced flavors. Not bad, just off. [Reader, first item]

• Pat Bruno has more of a beef with the bill than the food at MK — three courses for one a la carte will run about $60, and the check comes as a grand total rather than an itemized list. Thank heaven for the $45 prix fixe, which gives Bruno the chance to sample chef Erick Williams's considerable culinary talent at a "circa-1999" price point. [Sun-Times]

• Let's go to a country club in Wheaton! No, seriously, that is where Pat Bruno goes to review Arrowhead Golf Club, whose restaurant is open to the public. Chef Alan Pirhofer is a vet of paces like Brasserie Jo and Trio, and now slings his lobster lollipops alongside country-club fare like a mile-high corned beef sandwich and a burger menu. Bruno loves it all. [Sun-Times]

• It's a subtle rave from Mike Sula for Taxim, where fresh ingredients are used to their best effect in dishes that draw equally from Greek tradition and a spot on sense of old school-new school fusion. [Reader, second item]

• Martha Bayne visits Branch 27, and finds that the place feels "formulaic" — no surprises on the menu, no dazzling examples of execution. A great porkchop and surprisingly nuanced seafood salad don't save the menu from its plenitude of flaws. [Reader, third item]

• Blue 13 got off to a rocky start, its opening eclipsed by those of other marquee name restaurants, but Phil Vettel takes a closer look at chef Chris Curren's hyper-fresh take on New American and finds a menu with more highs than lows. Sure, the tamarind ketchup on the lamb is a miss, but seafood is near-perfect, the "steak and eggs on acid" is a winner, and a lobster pizza is "outstanding." [Tribune]

• Fuego Mexican Grill is part of a fledgling chain — its the second location of the restaurant — but Heather Shouse finds that the food belies that. Deft moles, flavorful tamalitos — everything's good, right down to the beans and rice. [TOC]

• Oak Lawn's Baja Sol Tortilla Grill doesn't pretend that it's not a chain, and Kevin Pang likes the free chips and salsa, doctors his guacamole to his liking, and falls for the sopapillas. Burritos are less pleasant: not enough shrimp, too much sauce. [Tribune]

• A visit to Izola's is at least as much about the scene — politicians, lawyers, judges, and general movers and shakers of the city's south side — as it is about the food. But what food it is, says Chris Chandler. Ham hocks with collard greens, short ribs of beef, stewed chicken and dumplings, and sweet potatoes cooked low and slow with butter, sugar, and nutmeg. [NewCity]

[Photo via Fuego Mexican Grill]

• Michael Nagrant adds to the ever-growing pile of positive-with-a-few-hesitations reviews for John Manion's revamped menu a tGoose Island Brew Pub. Generally speaking, you can't go wrong with the pork, but if — like Nagrant — you're getting a little tired of the trendy meat du jour, the fish tacos are revelatory. [NewCity]

• Wondering what to have for dinner? Chef John Bubala of Kendall College shows up at a Sun-Times writer's home and whips up ham fried rice and some salmon cakes. Sometimes all it takes is a creative eye. [Sun-Times]

• In honor of Mother's Day, Christopher Borelli pits two moms' meatloaf recipes against one another. The one thing they have in common is a surprise ingredient: oats. [Tribune]

• Chef Michael Taus of Zealous and Duchampshares his recipe for his grandmother's cheesy, potatoey gnocchi. [Sun-Times]

We've always thought that the major thing lacking from Mother's Day was some sort of government- or Hallmark-sponsored open bar. Whether it's to numb your pain, numb Mom's pain, or just give the two of you the liquid courage to really open up and have a heart-to-heart, getting silly on bubbly is our own surefire ticket to a successful momday.

• The granddaddy of the all-you-can-drink brunch is at Lakeview's Angelina Ristorante, where the menu options are run-of-the-mill, the room is packed, and your liver is the star of the show. $20 prix fixe, unlimited mimosas.

• It's a similar deal at Deleece: on top of the a la carte brunch options (frittatas, a killer BLT, grilled salmon caesar salad), $15 buys you all the mimosas you can throw down the hatch.

• The brunch drinks at Between Boutique Cafe & Lounge aren't unlimited, but they are cheap: $4 for a specialty Mother's Day cocktails made with P.I.N.K, a caffeine-infused vodka, and it's $8 for a trip to the bloody mary bar.

• Eat at Kinzie Chophouse this Sunday, and your table gets a complimentary bottle of champagne. Yes, bottle. Barter the last drink against mom's free dessert, which she scores by virtue of having given birth to you.

• $10 at David Burke's Primehouse lands you unlimited mimosas and bloody marys, which you can use to wash down the family-style servings of lobster scrambled eggs, french toast muffins, dry-aged beef brisket, and more.

• You can get it as boozy as you want it to be at Orange, where the brunch menu is pleasantly off-kilter (pancake flights are can't-miss) and the drink list — well, it's BYO. No reservations, so (especially on Mother's Day) show up early to avoid the line.

[Photo: quinn.anya/Flickr]

• The real Pat Bruno visits Phil's Stefani's (meanwhile, @therealpatbruno explains why it was chosen), where he plays the high-low game: can you get a good meal for cheap at the famously pricey restaurant? If $15 spaghetti with tomato sauce is cheap, then yes you can! But Bruno really swoons for the osso bucco and the "decadent" desserts. [Sun-Times]

• Mike Nagrant gets literary on us in his review of The Grocery Bistro — pining for a Hemingway-esque false nostalgia of neighborhood restaurants and jovial proprietors. As a resident of the west loop, he embraces chef Andre Christopher's newly opened restaurant and its unfussy take on contemporary American cuisine, the closest thing he's found to his sepia-tinged ideal. [NewCity]

• The food at Sunda earns Anthony Todd's love, which is a feat considering he had to wait nearly an hour past his reservation time for a table to be ready, and the tiny, poorly-laid-out bar area offered little respite. Oddly inconsistent menu pricing ($15 for three bites of sushi, compared with $20 for a wallop of braised pork belly) is another head-scratcher. His advice: wait until the scene quiets down. (Our advice: The day that happens, Dec will close the joint.) [Chicagoist]

• Bruno dives wholesale into the passive voice in his glowing review of Birchwood Kitchen, where the mono-named sandwiches knock his socks off. But not all is perfect: "another dish tried," the soup of the day, could benefit from a complimentary piece of bread. [Sun-Times]

• Julia Kramer takes a peek at Amelia's, and finds a menu awfully familiar to that of the chef's former restaurant Mundial Cocina Mestiza: Side dishes with aggresive, bright flavors that threaten to overwhelm the meats they're accompanying, to varying degrees of success. The out-of-the-way location adds a frisson of intrigue. [TOC]

• Heather Shouse is a little meh on Jerry Kleiner's revamped Via Ventuno (formerly Table 21) — its awkward, over-decorated space won't ever be the homey trattoria that Kleiner's food seems to be leaning for. In-house pastas and a stellar pastry chef go a long way towards counteracting the decor, though. [TOC]

• Mike Nagrant revisits Veerasway, after owner Angela Harper Lee got in touch with him after a previous tepid review. Happily, his second visit was notably better than the first, with the kitchen paying more attention to freshness and detail in their upscaling of traditional Indian flavors. [Veerasway]

• Monica Eng tries puts the newStarbucks breakfast "pairings" (that's code for "combo meal") to the test against the most popular breakfast combos at McDonald's and Dunkin Donuts. The 'bucks emerges victorious. [Tribune]

• Phil Vettel brings the "chatting up a cute girl" metaphor in this didja-ever thinkpiece about changing your entree order mid-meal. Turns out most restaurants (or, at least, Eve, Province, and a place in Louisville) are totally okay with it! [Tribune]

[Photo of food at Veerasway via Polomex/flickr]

The latest issue of GOOP, Gwyneth Paltrow's inexplicable email newsletter, focuses on kid-friendly restaurants. While we don't actually recall ever having heard of her come to Chicago with her kids in tow, she gives us some family-oriented dining ideas nevertheless: Table 52 ("a new gem in Chicago"), Athenian Room ("fantastic, super kid-friendly, and casual" with "the best cheeseburger in town"), Uncommon Ground ("mostly organic and local"), Brasserie Jo (shoutout to the kids' menu etch-a-sketch), Feast ("the perfect place for a neighborhood lunch"), and — not joking — NoMI, which is "surprisingly great for families." Thanks Gwyneth! Thanks so much! [GOOP]

• Coffee: so hot right now! Monica Eng files on how to brew a better cup. Is this her last Good Eats piece? *tear*

• Cocktail bread: so hot right now! If you were unaware, cocktail bread is a miniature loaf of bread, slices of which serve as the base of toppings at cocktail parties. Chicago is apparently the top producer. Who knew?!

• Famer's market pasta: so hot right now! Here's a recipe involving arugula, tropea onions, and green garlic.

• Coppola wines: so hot right now! Bill Daley takes a look at how the director-turned-winemaker's unconventional approach to vino works for the good (and, in some people's opinions, the not-so-good).
[Photo: wandering_angel/Flickr]

• Everyone loves Sunda! Pat Bruno sure does — he looks past his hatred of communal tables (here described as "danged") in order to fall for the chicken siu mai, the beef lollipops, and various sushis. Pork char siu isn't to his liking, but who cares when the scene is this hot. In uniquely Bruno cadence, we're informed that the place "has been stacking customers like cord wood." [Sun-Times]

• Mike Sula's also at Sunda, which he likes almost despite himself. There's a lot working against it: overly-twee menu item names, poorly contrived dishes like a "jerky-like" unagi and watermelon salad, and the overwhelming aura of Billy Dec's ego all conspire against the stuff that actually succeeds. But the "wa-machi" roll, the crispy pork pata (minus the foie gras gravy), and the "ridiculous" dessert all do quite well by Mr. Sula. [Reader, first item]

There's more food in this town than just Sunda, though:

Continue reading "Sun-Times, Reader, NewCity: Sunda, Sunda, Sundaaaaaa" »

• What works at Goose Island Brew Pub works explosively well, thinks David Tamarkin. The pulled-pork sliders, the fish tacos, and even the monstrous ham-burger all should have Chicago's reigning meat-masters paying closer attention. They're saved, though, by parts of the menu that are frustratingly inconsistent: among other things, crostini, mussels, and desserts all lack wallop.

• Happy happy hour! some deals to get you going from places like Aigre Doux, Farmerie 58, Zocalo, and others.

• Those of us who aren't lounge lizards already knew this, but David Tamarkin had to go and ruin the secret: some of the best cocktails around are at restaurants, not bars. Top-notch drinks can be found at restaurants all over town, from 312 Chicago to Moto.

• The good news about Pintxos is that it's priced right for these tight times. The bad news, according to Tamarkin, is that the food's as below average as the check: the Basque-style tapas run weak on flavor and presentation.

• says hello to The Ledge, a bar and grill that is not to be confused with The Stretch or The Spread (something we have already done like twelve times).

[Photo via Pintxos]

• "There's really nothing the restaurant doesn't do well," Phil Vettel says in his rave for the Martial Noguier-helmed Cafe Des Architectes. The restaurant caters equally to well-heeled patrons looking for a high-end experience, and with its affordable prix fixes and occasional BYO nights also positions itself as a cut-above neighborhood kind of joint. Vettel particularly recommends lunch, not least because of the $1.50 dessert options.

• Kevin Pang takes a break from cheeseburgers to check out the steaks at various chain restaurants. Cracker Barrel's sins are offset by gravy, Ruby Tuesday's is surprisingly beefy, Chili's is forgettable. He also hit up Applebee's, Outback, and T.G.I. Friday, but our brain can't handle much more.

• The Havana Dream Pie at Joe's Stone Crab is totally not Cuban in any sense, but aw hells is it good.

[Photo provided by Cafe des Architectes]

• The economy's in the tank, so we're buying cheaper cuts of meat. But they're tough! Also, we wnat comfort food. What's the answer? Braising. (We just wrote that summary without even reading the article. Not kidding. Let us know if we missed the gist and this is in fact some heretofore-unseen spin on the topic.)

• When Bill Daley talks about in-house wines, he doesn't mean fermented in the back of the restaurant, or even a house blend. He means wine you buy at the same grocery store where you get your Cheerios.

• Renee Enna suggests that you buy a cookbook entirely dedicated to spreads and dips, and then in the next paragraph points out that all cookbooks ever in the history of book publishing (basically) are available at the library.

• Here are some nutrition blogs, helpfully compiled. Nice that the Trib can see to hyperlink advertiser-driven keywords, but not actual URLs that appear in the story. Copy/Paste/Fail.

• We totally love Singapore noodles, but often feel embarrassed ordering them when getting takeout or at a restaurant. Fortunately, JeanMarie Brownson is here to teach us how to make them at home.

[Photo: adactio/Flickr]

This week at the Reader, NewCity, and the Sun-Times: obscure Italian herbs, Ethiopian gluttony, and the triumphant return of Thomas Witom!

• Let's start with the guy we've missed the most. Thomas Witom, the S-T's intrepid suburban restaurant critic, is up in Highland Park checking out the fare at Trattoria Valle D'Itria. His journalistic menu rundown is punctuated by a few things he actually did eat: calamari, minestrone, and lasagna, all great. [S-T]

• Bruno's a happy camper at Bull & Bear, where he gets his pub grub on. He orders the $18 "Bull & Bear Burger" and finds it worth every penny, but is disappointed by a poorly executed lobster roll. [S-T]

• Chris Chandler swings by Ethiopian Diamond, where chef/owner Almaz Yigizaw explains how she imports her butter and spices from Ethiopia. Her goal with the restaurant is twofold: to serve delicious food, and to be an ambassador of Ethiopia's history and culture. [NewCity]

• Mike Sula looks into the origins of mentuccia, an obscure Italian herb that chef Tony Priolo of Piccolo Sogno wanted to track down to use in some of his Roman dishes. The herb, related to mint, is "very sexual, very mysterious," and will be harvested for use on Piccolo Sogno's menu some time in June. [Reader]

[Photo via gennarino]

• Call us crazy, but we'd never have pegged Heather Shouse's visit to Sunda to land in a rave. But that's exactly what we've got here — albeit in slightly hedged form. The behemothic pan-Asian restaurant from the Rockit Ranch team is an exercise in excess, and to maximize that maximization Shouse steers us away from boring and expensive sushi, and to a pow-zing-wham list of unexpectedly good appetizers. Entrees fall short, but even that doesn't deter her jubilant attitude. [TOC]

• Even though it's been open for four years, Phil Vettel had never visited Hot Chocolate until it was time for this review, and he gets blown away. A mild curse word is used in regards to the nearness of the food's ability to knock his socks off! He doesn't dislike a thing, from the beer-poached pretzels to the charred octopus to pastry chef/owner Mindy Segal's signature Chocolate No. 1. He even falls for the cocktails. Swoon. [Tribune]

But wait, there's more!

Continue reading "TOC & Tribune: Warm Fuzzies for Sunda and Hot Chocolate" »

• The brilliance is not lost on us that an article promoting the controlling effect of kitchen twine is penned by a writer named Amy Scattergood. Could it get any better than that? Oh, wait, yes, with the accompanying recipe for bacon-wrapped pork loin with roasted apples. Who cares if it's autumnal in spirit; we want it in our tummy.

• Health reporter Julie Deardorff does time in the Good Eats section, introducing us to superfoods that we might not have considered before. Kamut and chia seeds, cool and new, but does grapefruit really count as a "new thing to try"?

• Chris McNamara goes inside (but not over the pots) the operations at Flaming Joe's, a hot-sauce company based out of Geneva. There is a real Flaming Joe — Joe Leicht, a software developer who works in the Loop — and he started the line after his hobby of homemade hot sauces caught some serious traction with his friends.

• Fast food from Carol Mighton Haddix: North African spiced shrimp. Never mind if they actually have shrimp in North Africa (do they? Our googling hand is broken).

• Beer of the Month writer Jerald O'Kennard's name kind of rhymes, if you say it the right way. (The beer is Capital Brewery maibock, btw).

[Photo: timlewisnm/Flickr]

• A complete guide to buying, carving, and serving your Easter Ham. Plus like six thousand three glaze recipes!

• Zak Stambor investigates the growing popularity of sour Belgian-style beers, like Goose Island's Juliet. Beer geeks are pretty sure sour beers are the next huge thing, thanks to the difficulty of producing them and the complexity of the flavor.

• Susan Taylor went to that Grant Achatz demo that we also went to last week. Susan! Why didn't you say hi to us?

• Back to Easter with JeanMarie Brownson, with a yeasty, yogurty bread recipe that can be purposed for loaves or buns of the hot-cross variety.

[Photo: thebittenword/Flickr]

• An opinion from Vettel! He hands over a deuce to Veerasway for its streamlined, American take on classic Indian cooking. Naan filled with goat cheese, onion, and red pepper isn't traditional, but it's good.

• The ricotta-stuffed French toast at Orange? Chris Borrelli really likes it.

• Monica Eng swings by 90 Miles Cuban Cafe. She's sold on the Cuban tamales, but underwhelmed by the cubano — believe it or not, they have too much ham. Too much ham!

• Margaret Sheridan checks in on the fried-matzoh options at some places around town. Our favorite's always been the version at Eleven City Diner.

Photo: 90 Miles Cuban Cafe]

• Phil Vettel, why aren't you writing reviews anymore? This is the second week in a row that he's denied us the pleasure of his opinion, instead running down a list of seven restaurants that offer brunch. And they're not even mini-reviews, just menu rehashes. We mean, yes, brunch at Hearty Boys is newsworthy, but tell us what to think about it.

• At least Joe Gray is holding high the flag of opinionism. He goes to bat for Cheap Eats with a visit to Cafe Orchid, where the baba ghanoush is "assertively smoky," and he falls for some lemony chicken kebabs.

• In the Food & Whine column (hint: it involves whining), Janet Franz gets articulately cranky about the rise of communal dining (here's where we stand on the issue). Plenty of chefs and other resto folks weigh in with the idea that communal tables are here to stay, and that they're not so bad as long as the restaurant can provide other seating options for diners who are less-than-eager to have their serviceware commingle with strangers'. Franz also hates it when servers ask for a drink order too soon.

[Photo: The communal table at The Publican, Bob Briskey Photography]

• Hot on the heels of last week's Cooking Issue it's Real Estate theme week at TOC HQ. In the food category, we get a look at foodie neighborhoods, rated on a total scale of 30 points (10 for groceries, 10 for cheap eats, 10 for fancy) for how well they'll sate the desires of an LTH-trawling flash mob of lolla rossa eaters (arugula? psh, so 2007). Lincoln Park takes the prize with a stunning 27, with the West Loop clocking in at 21. Greater Grand Crossing comes in last, its sad 14 due largely to an absence of good grocery stores or high-end restaurants.

• Heather Shouse cracks the lid on the secret menu at Berwyn's Bodhi Thai Bistro, where the specials don't compromise on authenticity. The kitchen — if prompted — will make a list of off-menu specials, like kana moo krob: "hunks of crispy pork belly and Chinese broccoli in a clingy paste of red chiles, garlic and oyster sauce."

• David Tamarkin offers up an official review of the Dolinsky-maligned Tapas Valencia, which lands only 2 stars thanks to a lazy menu and inconsistent kitchen (though there are some standout dishes). Tamarkin's pretty sure that the restaurant is a prototype scout for an eventual chain, which would explain the bland atmosphere and eh food.

• Goat! It's the new trendy meat! What are people doing with it? It's in ravioli at The Bristol, stew at Sikia, and barbacoa at Topolobampo.

[Photo courtesy Tapas Valencia]

The Chicago Reader's Best of Chicago issue est arrivee! Here's what we care about: the food awards. Over 20-some categories, the weekly's staff weighs in on their picks for stuff ranging from Best Cheap Eats to Best Foo-Foo Coffee Drink to Best Place To Go If Someone Else Is Paying.

Thing is, with a scant few exceptions (best new restaurant goes to Mixteco Grill, best wine list is Piccolo Sogno), the rest of the picks are a big old pile of nothing new: best bang for your buck, Sun Wah Bar-B-Q; best bread, Fox & Obel; best vegan, Chicago Diner.

Haven't we heard this song before? We get that if the winners of a best-of award truly are the best, then we'll read about them over and over and over again. And we're appreciative that the Reader changes up the categories from year to year, to avoid inevitable repetition. But come on guys, this reads like the pre-written list of Places You Should Check Out that we keep on our hard drive and email to our relatives when they tell us they're visiting Chicago and don't want to leave the beaten path. Where's the upset? Where's the underdog victory? Where's the amazing heretofore-unheralded discovery that you're thrusting into the spotlight?

Best of Chicago 2009: Food and Drink [Chicago Reader]

• James P. DeWan opens his article on the benefits of hand-kneaded bread with a turn of phrase that we just love: "Not to get all Baracky on you, but." Aaah! Also, it's a great little article. Is DeWan going to replace the hole left by Emily Nunn as Our Favorite Good Eats Writer?

• Monica Kass Rogers is all "use molasses in savory cooking!" And we're all, sure, lady, sounds yum.

• Bill Daley expands our repertoire of Chilean grapes, introducing Carmenere.

• In a move to get Jews to make their community ties closer, some groups are subsidizing Shabbat dinners. Reminds us a heck of a lot of summer camp, whatever the goal.

• It's The Cooking Issue this week at TOC, and the centerpiece story is a swoon-worthy smorgasbord of signature recipes from top Chicago chefs and restaurants. Admit it — you've been dying to makeUrban Belly's lamb-and-brandy dumplings at home, or Smoque's barbecue brisket, or the insane shortbread that Allison Levitt serves up at Mado. Now you can!

• Plus! Three writers get sent fully into the trenches: Rod O'Conner spends a day cooking at Mixteco Grill, where he learns that he is bad at filling corn husks. Heather Lalley rocks when it comes to making nonpareils at Bittersweet Pastry Shop & Cafe, but doesn't do so well at the chocolate curls. Michael Austin spends hours picking parsley for the cooks at The Bristol. Facing the wall, no less.

• Kevin Aeh lists off eight essentials for any kitchen. We concur with food processor, silpat, paring knife, saute pan, cookie sheet, silicon spatula, wooden spoon — but seriously? A pressure cooker? Works for some, sure, but not remotely on the same plane of essentialness as a freaking wooden spoon.

• Healthy cookbooks blah blah blah. Portion control blah blah blah. DIY Cheesemaking — now you're talking!

Oh, but we're not done — there are still restaurant reviews!

Continue reading "TOC: Cooking the Books" »

• Increasing nutritional demand for fish means that overfishing is a big problem — is the answer fish farms? Bill Daley looks at the world of "aquaculture" (say it out loud), in which fish farming is modeled on the ways we raise other animals for food, like cows and sheep.

• Oh, beer. Jane Ammeson introduces us to two new microbreweries: Half Acre Beer Co. and Metropolitan Brewing, both Chicago-based. Along with fundamental principles of deliciousness, both (unrelated to each other, except by brewmeister camaraderie) are dedicated to green principles, since local beer is good for the planet. Drink up!

• Bill Daley turns his oenophiliac eye to the region of Languedoc (so fun to say). Despite being one of France's largest growing regions, it's never been the cool kid —

[Photo: Vino Wong/AJC]

• In the Tribune, Phil Vettel drops two stars for the rustic Italian at Anteprima, which definitely passes the Dolinsky Grace Period Rule — it's been open for two years. Some misdirected appetizers (they were meant for the next table over) lead Vettel to try some "excellent" grilled octopus. Entrees are solid and homey as well, but the real draw is the bartender, Jasmine, who is "a rock star" — plus dining with her means you avoid the cramped seating and spotty service of the main floor.

• Moving down the street to the Sun-Times, Pat Bruno continues his tour of every single Italian restaurant ever in the world, taking comfort in the red sauce at Cafe Bionda. In an odd journalistic stroke, he refers to the restaurant by name in each of the first five paragraphs. Everything he eats, he likes.

• Bruno also checks out the fare at Coq D'Or, and we learn that his drink of choice is Dewars on the rocks — which, at the Coq, is an outrageous $12. He's mollified, though, by the meaty buffalo wings and the impressive fish and chips.

• Back to TOC, because yesterday we egregiously overlooked Michael Gebert's impassioned plea to save CJ's Eatery, a top-notch soul food restaurant in Humboldt Park that can't quite seem to muster up the neighborhood traffic to stay afloat. Thanks to the tanking economy, it's now open only on weekends — but that really should change, considering the killer shrimp & grits. If you were thinking about going to The Publican for brunch this weekend, but the (most likely) around-the-block lines deter you, head 15 minutes northwest instead and check this place out.

[Photo: Shrimp & Grits at CJ's, kaymack/Yelp]

• TOC goes BYO this week. Besides their expert guide (which we already hashed out against a similar setup from Chicago Mag), the team lays out an exhaustive list of BYOs around the city, covering nine cuisine categories from barbecue to Thai and everything in between.

• Michael Nagrant passes along tales of BYO Gone Badly (is there a DVD series there?), with patrons walking off with restaurants' glasses, or puking in full view of the kitchen. Hold your liquor, people.

• Julia Kramer sits down with Hoosier Mama Pie Co honcho Paula Haney, who'll be opening her long-awaited storefront shop this Saturday. She says rolling out pies all day is just about the same as the pastry work she used to churn out for Trio, back in the day, considering that the final product is judged ultimately on whether it tates good.

• Another one for Julia Kramer (is it just us, or is she getting more bylines lately?) noting the opening of Sunda, and its backstory's uncanny similarity to any given Judd Apatow plot. Run that as a double feature with the Alinea movie?

• This week's review comes courtesy of David Tamarkin, who takes a look at Bananas Foster Cafe in Edgewater. While he might not have been outed as a critic, he did get some special treatment from the owner — but it appears that's par for the course at this hospitality-oriented comfort food spot. Dinner, mostly one-pot meals, is hearty but not beautiful, but the real star of the show is brunch.

[Photo: the bitten word/Flickr]

• It's personal memoir time for S-T writer Maureen O'Donnell, who turns to her mother for a taste of traditional Irish cooking. In a classic lesson in family history-gleaning, she gathers her sisters and nieces to watch her mother make traditional Irish breads (brown and soda). Transliterating her mom's brogue ("It's all in me head") we get a recollection of families baking half a dozen loaves a day to feed 16-member families, and the real reason a cross is slashed in the bread top ("to let the fairies out").

• Lisa Donovan looks into the culinary origins of callaloo — the leaves of the taro plant. The leaves lend their name to a silky soup in which they form the base, plus any number of additional ingredients: spinach, eggplant, green papaya, and aromatics.

• Keeping with the Irish theme, Dave Hoekstra dives into a bottle of McCoy's Real Irish Hot Sauce, a mild, tomato-and-horseradish based hot sauce that comes not from Ireland, but from Union, Illinois. But it's thick enough to pour onto eggs or potatoes, and Hoekstra's sold.

• Gary Baca, chef at Joe's Stone Crab, urges home cooks to cast off their fear of cooking whole fish, with a basic rundown of fish cooking techniques. At the end he bails it all out, though, saying that if you're too intimidated by the whole sucker, you can just buy fillets. Rug, consider yourself pulled out from under.

• It's a fake story from Kevin Allen, who reports that as of right now, neither the Sox nor the Cubs have any plans to lower concession prices to attract more recession-spenders. But at the same time, a White Sox spokesman says "But that could change by Opening Day.'' In summary: The Sox and Cubs might or might not be lowering their prices. We're on the edge of our seat, here.

[Photo: rumble1973/Flickr]

• Given the looming, drunken specter of St. Patrick's Day next Tuesday, we'd have been shocked not to see a cover story on Irish food in today's Good Eats section. Bill Daley delivers on schedule, but insead of bogging down in the usual corned-beef-and-cabbage rut, he takes a look at what's really going on in contemporary Irish cuisine. Much like contemporary American, the focus is on hyperfresh ingredients prepared to maximize their inherent flavors, but there's dissent about how much liberty to take with the old recipes. To add wasabi to mashed potatoes, or not to add? What the heck, it's green.

• Daley again, on the wine beat, but instead of drinking the stuff he's tracked down Matthew Lew, a Chicago-based artist who paints with the stuff. It's not just a bloody barolo flung up on the canvas — he mixes the wine into his paints, in order to imbue his landscapes with "a sense of place."

• JeanMarie Brownson suggests that if we're making dinner tonight, we make squash risotto with ginger and smoked gouda. We suggest that JeanMarie Brownson is our favorite person in the world for suggesting that.

• Tonight is the premiere of NBC's Chopped Chopping Block, and Monica Eng interviews the show's host, British chef Marco Pierre White. A classic "bad boy" (he's the proto-Ramsay, having mentored the other vitriolic chef back in the day), he's surprisingly tame in the interview, talking lentils at home and that he hopes his show will help parents cope with a chef in the family.

[Photo: Ireland, via]

Chicago Tribune, paper with a crazy owner

• Phil Vettel teams up with Trib music critic Howard Reich to check out three potential all-in-one date spots: music and food, at one table, under one roof. Except here's the catch: besides also covering their own bailiwicks, Phil reviews the music, and Howard reviews the food! Zing! Switcheroo! First up they visit Andy's Jazz Club, where Howard has totally burned salmon (which he and Phil both like) and Phil has some "insipid" onion soup. Still, as Phil points out, folks don't go here for the food. They also pay a visit to Pete Miller's Steakhouse in Evanston (food's really good, music's solid) and check out Jilly's in Naperville, for "not-great" food and a weird battle between the piano singer and the myriad sports-blaring flatscreens.

• Some commandments from Our Lord Vettel on how restaurants should be taking care of customers in these lean times, so we'll want to go give them our money in exchange for a plate of linguini con aglio olio that costs approximately $0.14 in raw materials. They basically boil down to "don't be a dick to your customers," "value your good staff," and "be flexible in your expectations." But Vettel says it prettier than we do.

Chicago Sun-Times, paper with a crazy board of directors

• Pat Bruno's review of Pizano's Pizza & Pasta starts off with a broad criticism of the restaurant's overly ambitious menu that sounds like it can go nowhere good. But then we get an abrupt U-turn: after panning the gnocchi ("all wrong"), the rest of the review is a litany of the good things Bruno found. The minestrone, the meatball sandwich, the pizza sauce, all get the benediction.

• Bruno also checks in on his old favorite May Street Market, which is still going strong three years after its opening. Super-strong, actually, as Bruno practically does backflips for everything on the menu, from backfin crabcakes (he helpfully explains what a dumbbell is shaped like, and we tried very hard not to make a joke here) to Terry's Toffee blondie bars.

Chicago Reader, crazy paper

• In a tour de force, Mike Sula spends a day working in the kitchen at Moto. It's everything you might imagine it would be: Sula doesn't get to see the Class 4 Laser, but he does watch an edible birthday candle give off spheres of fire in a microwave, plays with some sort of projection-based expediting system (sounds very Minority Report), and passes along the stunning revelation that the Moto team is working on "a riff on Moons Over My Hammy at Denny’s that featured saffron-butter-filled ravioli made from a protein-binder-manipulated scallop fused with a piece of house-cured pork belly." Well, duh.

[Photo: Moto/Official Site]

It's Media Roundup Extravaganza Friday, because why the heck not, and we feel like it.

Time Out Chicago, weekly magazine and live-blog hosts-with-the-mosts
• The centerpiece is a look at silent partners — not actual investors-who-don't-participate, but the folks who aren't chefs, staff, or money dudes who actually make the restaurant go. Highlights include the inimitable Ellen Malloy, uber-publicist behind RIA, and Tony Polega, the guys from Bukiety Flowers who does the arrangements for Alinea and others. Painters, beer suppliers, and kitchen logicsticians round out the collection of folks who should be on every restaurateur's speed dial.

• David Tamarkin takes a look at the new Terragusto on Armitage, where the crowd is packed, the service pushy, and the food (especially the pasta) is just barely on the right side of the "is this really worth the crowd and pushy service?" question.

• The new Tocco is up for , which is sleek and design-y but doesn't carry that meticulous attention to detail through to the food. A solidly executed thin-crust pizza can't make up for the astonishingly vacant service, clueless waitstaff, and all the rest of the uninspired food.

• Piccolo Sogno chef Tony Priolo has two espresso machines and just got engaged on the ponte vecchio in Florence.

[Photo: storem/Flickr]

• Make bread at home in just five minutes a day! It might sound like an informercial, but it's a cookbook — one that's apparently taking the world by storm — and Leah A. Zeldes has the scoop. It's based on a single no-knead recipe, so we're not entirely sure why you need an entire book when you can get a similar version for free from the New York Times.

• Lisa Donovan is happy to tell us all about empanadas. Are they the new cupcake? Maybe!

• If you're one of those people who clips recipes (you're probably not, since you are reading the internet right now, but hey — it could happen), and you've found that they're disorganized and you're not happy with that, here's a solution.

• Chris Macchia, chef at Coco Pazzo, loves him some braises.

[Photo: breibeest/Flickr]

• Now this is a cover story we can get behind: Monica Kass Rogers dives into the tricky art of making homemade chips. Not owning a deep-fryer ourselves, the one time we tried this, we found it to be seriously time-consuming but the results were more than worth it. Rogers checks in with how some top-notch chefs do it, and they're not limited to potatoes — L2O fries up artichokes, Carnivale does a mix of tubers. But it gets even more awesome: at sola, Carol Wallack makes dessert chips.

• Bill Daley takes a page from the carpe diem poets (Andrew Marvell, pre-religiousness John Donne, the usual) and urges us to open our best wines now. For tomorrow we die? No, that's a mixed literary metaphor. It's because this Friday is Open That Bottle Night, a kick in the butt holiday designed to get wine-hoarders to actually uncork and enjoy the darn things. We can get behind this.

• Jeannine Stein re-reports on the study that noted that changing portion sizes in The Joy of Cooking means that, correspondingly, the calories per serving are going up. We didn't really understand why this exercise in basic math was newsworthy when it first hit, and we're still not sure now.

• Rick Asa checks in from this past weekend's American Culinary Federation's Regional Chef of the Year competition, held at Elgin Community College. Much like in the pageant system, the winner advances to a more geographically inclusive regional competition, and then the winner of that gets crowned Miss America.

• Chicken and dumplings: super-delicious.

[Photo: (nutmeg)/Flickr]

With tomorrow being Fat Tuesday and all, we're craving a classic New Orleans Mardi Gras style celebration with beads and beignets. Here's a roundup of the best places to get your gumbo on:

• Yats is supplementing their always wicked-cheap Cajun/Creole menu with a live band from 6pm until they close at 9 — dancing and other forms of revelry heartily encouraged.

• The West Loop location of Wishbone is offering up an $8.95 buffet all day on top of their usual menu, and dinnergoers will dine to the riotous music of a genuine N'awlins brass band.

• Unsurprisingly, Heaven on Seven is planning a rock-out Mardis Gras fest, with live music, a special menu, as many hurricanes and Sazeracs as your liver can handle, and some serious door prizes: They've flown in traditional King Cakes from the Mississippi delta, each of which is baked with a little trinket inside. Get the trinket in your slice, and you'll be showered with gifts.

• Head to Big Jones for a truly authentic Mardi Gras feast — among plenty of other items, on offer will be duck gumbo, oyster po'boys, and pours of Abita Turbodog, among New Orleans' finest brews.

• Even Italian goes Cajun around this time of year: Harry Caray's Restaurant is throwing a Phat Tuesday Party, with a $25 buffet spread including alligator gumbo and the New Orleans parade showing on their big-screen.

• Jerry's Sandwiches brings back their stellar Mardi Gras menu, starting with a classic muffuletta and going all the way to a half-dozen po' boys, with sides like sweet potato fries with creole dip and fried green tomatoes with remoulade over a biscuit.

• Calypso Cafe is throwing a family-friendly celebration, anchored by a a prix fixe that lands you four bon temps courses for $16.95, plus beads, masks, prizes, and $5.50 hurricanes.

• In his effusive roundup of the best grilled cheese sandwiches in town Christopher Borrelli has a revelation: "Every grilled cheese is the greatest grilled cheese mankind ever made." He clarifies: "I was not high, either." His journey goes from France to the Kraft corporate headquarters and dives into the philosophical question of intent vs. execution. It is delicious the whole time.

• Phil Vettel heads to Arlington Heights for this week's review, where he takes on Yanni's, where the avgolemono soup is top-notch and there are plenty of Greektown-quality entrees under $20. Service could use some tightening, but then again so could the service pretty much everywhere else.

• Monica Eng goes to bat for beignets — little fried-dough bites that are traditional New Orleans fare. If you don't want to hop the Amtrak down the Mississippi, she recommends the ones on offer at Dixie Kitchen & Bait Shop, among others.

• Kevin Pang checks out the offerings at Estrella Negra for Cheap Eats, and finds that the painfully hip background music sets the stage for a weird-but-inspired menu (cheese fries in a fried tortilla bowl, or vanilla ice cream topped with spicy candied mangoes, brown sugar, honey and ground cinnamon) that has some inconsistencies but, whatever, that's not really the point.

[Photo: faeryboots/Flickr]

• Pat Bruno visits Gaylord India for this week's review, and oh my god, we are trying so incredibly hard to be mature about this. The man opens his column with "My comfort level with the food at Gaylord India has always been high" and it is really hard not to crack a joke right here. Oh, and the food's really good there — despite the S-T's categorization of it as "American," it's solid Indian fare.

• But it's a twofer, with Bruno hitting up a very Bruno-esque joint, Club Lago — an old-school Italian supper club where the atmosphere is fantastic but the food falls woefully short. Bruno accuses the kitchen of becoming "complacent" — a low blow from the usually effusive reviewer.

• Meanwhile, over at the Reader, Mike Sula works his usual verbal magic with a piece that's half profile of D'Candela Restaurant (4053 N. Kedzie, (773) 478-0819), and half love letter to Peruvian food. Sula takes us through the process of D'Candela's owner, Luis Garcia, as he puts together a menu that highlights the best that this proto-fusion ethnic cuisine has to offer. Comforting lomo saltado, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink soups, and of course the famous Peruvian pollo a la brasa. Our mouth waters at the very thought.

[Photo: dan perry/Flickr]

• It's testament to the faith of Chicago's foodophiles that we've gone this long without a seriously excellent open-to-the-public bread bakery. David Tamarkin takes us into the kitchen of the man who's poised to change all that — La Farine's Rida Shahin, a breadmeister who peddles his yeasty wares to restaurants like Blackbird and Hot Chocolate, and who is going to be opening a storefront bakery in a few weeks.

• Providing some friendly ammo for V-Day, the Food & Drink team also round up three new Cheap Eats suggestions: French-African Le Conakry, where the menu descriptions are vague but the flavors are beautiful; Chicago Curry House, which strays from the traditional Indian lineup into Nepalese territory, with one of our personal favorites: momo (traditional dumplings); and then there's Cafe Senegal, where the flavors are out of this world.

[Photo of momo: anantab/Flickr]

Before we dive into the content here, a quick bit of Tribune Dining inside baseball: According to his twitter, Kevin Pang is going along for the ride on tonight's Vettel review-dinner. Do we smell the inevitable progress of generational handover? Is Kevin Pang going to be promoted from Cheeseburger Bureau Chief to the Editor-in-Chief of all Handheld Meats? We can't help but wildly speculate...

• Speaking of Vettel's reviews, this week he takes on Eve, and hands the Gold Coast newcomer three shiny, shiny stars. He raves about a menu marked by tensions — between sweet and savory, hot and cold — is at its best in the appetizers, but entrees and desserts hold their own. The worst Vettel has to say about the place is that it's loud, but even that's attributed to the guests rather than the space. Wowzers.

• On the Cheap Eats beat, Renee Enna brings her forks to Penang (1720 W. Algonquin Rd., Arlington Heights, 847 222 1888 — not to be confused with the Penang on Wentworth). She finds bright, vivid flavors and impeccably helpful service, and some serious chili pepper heat.

• In honor of Black History Month, Phil Vettel profiles John Meyer, proprietor of BJ's Market — he's trained in classical continental cuisine, and brings that sensibility to bear at his collection of (truly kickass) traditional soul food restaurants.

[Image via BJ's Market/Official Site]

• Two Valentine's Days ago, Our Boyfriend surprised us with an extravagant tasting menu at a jacket-required. Last year, we put the kibosh on that and insisted that we cook dinner, together, in order to avoid both financial asymmetry and our unattractive habit of falling asleep at the table after three hours of wine pairings. The Trib's Renee Enna is speaking our language with a love-themed menu to prepare at home. Heart-shaped meatloaf is an inspired pairing of kitsch and kitsch, and the beet salad comes with plenty of puns.

• JeanMarie Brownson suggests that we make honest-to-goodness pudding, the from-scratch kind — not that jank-ass Jell-O bullshit. Our language, not hers.

• Short ribs are on the menu practically everywhere these days, and Bill Daley rounds up suggestions for the best pairings for the rich, unctuous meat. Most of the suggestions are mid-bodied reds with a hint of acidity &mdsah; though one freewheeling iconoclast suggests that it's a cut of meat best served by a rich, round white. That's crazy talk!

[Photo: pengrin/Flickr]

• Gotta love the creative twist on the otherwise-predictable V-Day coverage: Michael Nagrant talks about object love, specifically his deep and monogamous relationship with cast-iron cookware. His passion isn't his alone — the love is endorsed by cooks from Mado and graham elliot, plus a handful of anecdotal stories about century-old heirloom skillets. For our part, we would be delighted to receive a cast-iron skillet for Valentine's Day. Screw diamonds — these suckers are forever.

• Oh mah gah. Taste of Peru offers a soup called Sopa Viagra. Lisa Donovan reports: "The reason we call it Viagra is it has 14, 15 types of fish and crustaceans in it and so much iron, so much phosphorus, once you drink it, it makes you very tired. But once you wake up, it makes you very alive," says Cesar Izquierdo, owner of Taste of Peru. "You're full of life -- put it that way." Amazing!

• Chicago Chef Billy Parisi has started a website on which he helps hapless home cooks fix their recipes. The site is called fixmyrecipe.com, and we are pleased by it.

• Ina Pinkney of Ina's shares her recipe for flourless chocolate cake, one of her signature dishes.

• Various restaurants are offering goodie-bag incentives to get couples in the door for V-Day: You can get body wash (!?) at NoMI, a souvenir menu at Between Boutique Cafe & Lounge, and at Lawry's The Prime Rib you'll go home with a key chain shaped like a carving cart. Romantic!

[Photo: cybrgrl/Flickr]

This Valentine's Day, perhaps more than those of recent years, has a particular economy-aided flavor to it. So our little spin on the usual V-Day dining options rundown is to break it all down by price. Yesterday we brought you The Splurge, no-limit options for deep-pocketed lovers. Today: The Recessionist — special meals under $50 a person.

• Brasserie Jo has a three-course menu on hand that, at $49/person, takes full advantage of the restaurant's classically romantic decor. Select your appetizer and entree from selections including such to-die-fors as smoked duck breast, seared sea scallops with saffron rice and champagne butter, and salmon filet with potato leek galette.

• On the vegetarian front, Mana Food Bar will give you two glasses of prosecco and three shared courses for $50 per person. Good for those poor planners out there, bad for those unaggressive of elbow: They're not taking reservations, so show up early to guarantee your spot.

• For $39, get three courses at The Bristol — a very civilized set of appetizers for the table, your choice of entree, and shared desserts. Plus you can get all silly on beer.

• Clocking in at $45/person, the Valentine's Day menu at Province includes three courses from a selection of aphrodisiac options — oysters, blood oranges, Tasmanian salmon that's been very slow-cooked. Rrrowr.

• At La Madia, a relatively paltry $22/person lands you and your honey some panzanella salad, the pizza of your choice, and a silky chocolate panna cotta. Make it $29 a head and they'll throw in some prosecco.

• For a cruelty-free V-Day, head to Green Zebra for a $55/person four-course menu (yeah, we said under $50 — you can spare five bucks, can't you?) that'll be so aggressively seasonal that they haven't even decided what's on it yet. Throw in wine pairings for $35 and seal the deal.

• Hot Doug's's isn't doing anything special at all, but we firmly believe — with no innuendo implied — that nothing says "I love you" quite like encased meats.

[Photo: The main dining room at Province]

Our brother blog over in San Francisco notes with alarm that the new Zagat Dating Guide for L.A. and New York includes suggestions not only on where to start, elevate, or consummate your relationships — it also suggests good places to end the damn thing.

The Zagateers recommend that the deed be done in "comfortable, crowded restaurants where a scene would be less likely," and double-whammies it with the suggestion that you do it near a train station — so you can make a quick getaway.

With those criteria in mind, if you're planning to dump your loved one in this pre-Valentine's Day week, we imagine you can't do much better than to drop the bomb at any of these selections:

• The Publican — it's really loud, which will mask the shrieks of "You're what?! To me?!" Not to mention it's convenient to multiple El and bus lines.

• Aria — it's a scant block from the Millennium Park Metra terminal, easy access to all points south. Just be sure to time your breakup with the train schedule, since there's little more anticlimactic than storming out in a huff and then having to wait thirty-four minutes for the next late-night University Park train.

• Rainforest Cafe — not only are the drinks cheap and potent, but all that stands between you and the Dan Ryan is a valet parking attendant and a 30-second stretch of Ohio Street. Bonus: If things go awry, you can hide amidst the animatronic wildlife.

• Bleeding Heart Bakery — Take your loved one here, ask him or her to read the sign. When you get an uncomprehending stare, cruelly point out that their heart will soon be bloody and broken. Your formerly-loved one can drown their sorrows in frosting, while you go get treatment for your obvious sociopathy.

[Photo: Sister72/Flickr]

This Valentine's Day, perhaps more than those of recent years, has a particular economy-aided flavor to it. So our little spin on the usual V-Day dining options rundown is to break it all down by price. Today: The Splurge.

• At Blackbird, $115 per person lands you and your loved one a special tasting menu featuring flounder with hazelnut, Swiss chard and blood orange molasses, short rib with passion fruit and carob, and some surprises. It's capped with sparkling wine, mais oui.

• TRU has a weekend-long Valentine's Day deal (the 13th for your mistress, the 14th for your wife, and the 15th for your other mistress?) with a choice between the $200/person Chef’s Market Collection menu and the $250/person Aphrodisiac Collection. They're also taking the guesswork out of the accessories — the restaurant is happy to arrange a box of housemade chocolates ($36) or flowers ($125), just to make sure you hit all the notes.

• A special 7-course degustation awaits you and your sweetheart at Everest, $145 with an optional wine pairing for $89 per person. The menu includes Warm Maine Lobster Salad, Pino Noir Carnaroli Risotto, and other lovable delights. Don't forget that for a slim $15, you can be chauffered in a town car. So glam.

• You'd be hard-pressed to find a more romantic Valentine's day setting than L2O's $90/person, six-course Tête-à-Tête menu — which changes daily, depending on what's at the peak of freshness — served to you in the insanely decadent white onyx booth. Le Swoon

• Alinea, sadly, is all booked up. As always, the reservationista suggested that those in dire need of a table give them a call a day or two before V-Day — not such a bad idea, considering that pre-Valentine's is a hot time for breakups, which means canceled reservations, which means Hot Potato Cold Potato for you and your loved one.

[Photo: The white onyx booth at L2O — chilly, expensive, and decadent. Perfect for offsetting a red dress, too.]

• Pat Bruno visits Mike Ditka's Restaurant, where he finds on the whole solid food (the "Fridge" burger — remember him? — and yummy sole amandine), but robotic, rushed service. This all delivered in a package of Bruno's patented prose poetry that's even more free-versey and stream-of-consciousness than usual.

• Jennifer Olvera (who's on our Twitter list) has a rundown of dining deals at upscale restaurants. Get in on special prix fixe deals from L2O, C-House, Feast, N9NE, and other special occasion spots.

• Pat Bruno up for a second at-bat, with a bargain-busters review of White Eagle, a Polish restaurant/banquet hall in Niles whose name is a reference to the central image on the Polish flag (even though we prefer to think of it as a thrashin' name for a nu-metal group). It all reads very Eastern European dim sum — waiters pushing carts unload endless victuals onto your table, and it's wicked cheap — all you can eat for $8.95 at lunch, $11.95 at dinner.

Extra-Special Bruno Observation! The phrase "fresher than fresh" appears in both of his reviews this week!

[Photo: wallula junction/Flickr]

• Things are saucy 'round Trib HQ — specifically, fancy ketchups and mustards. Monica Eng hits on a trend — a trend, a palpable trend! — with the rising profile of house-made condiments at on-the-radar restaurants. The usual suspects — The Bristol, Blackbird, blah blah blah. The two accompanying slideshows smack of pageview-bait.

• Phil Vettel bestows three stars on Randy Zweiban's Province, highlighting the restaurants uncanny economic prescience: Prices range from a recession-friendly $3 all the way up into the more standard mid-double digits, with the option to downscale an entree's size (and, thus, price) on request. Great food, too. (Critical Anonymity shoutout: "Service is excellent—informed, approachable, attentive—though it was pretty clear that I was spotted as soon as I crossed the threshold." Ahem.)

• Monica Eng heads to Naperville to check out Mapo for Cheap Eats. The kitchen churns out reliably spicy, flavorful Hunan and Szechuan Chinese food, with particular highlights to be found in the form of beef noodle soup and some of the Taiwanese selections.

[Photo: magerleagues/Flickr]

• My first thought upon realizing that Monica Kass Rogers's cover story was about ice fishing was "What? Are we in Minnesota now?" And then it turned out that the narrative part of her article takes place in Minnesota! And I feel really good about myself! Also there is a type of ice-fished fish called "crappies," which Rogers urges us to pronounce "croppies" but yeah, right, I'm really going to do that when I can instead cook this fish for someone and say "How's your dinner? Is it CRAPPY?" And then get indignant when they say no, no, it's not crappy at all.

• Monica Eng herded a bunch of food people into telling her what they'd like to see President Obama do about food policy. Carrie Nahabedian, MacArthur Genius Will Allen, and others all wave the old local/organic/sustainable/natural flag, with some shoutouts to school lunches and urban agriculture. The notes are condensed in Eng's article, full statements are on the blog.

Slow week, kids. Everything else is from a different Tribune Co. paper, or is Emily Nunn's recipe for potatoes and onions.

[Photo: sailorbill/Flickr]

Our apologies to Mike Sula, Anne Spiselman, and Michael Nagrant, who are the authors of the three restaurant reviews and one pre-Superbowl catering option roundup that this post recaps. Why apologies? Because it is almost going-home time on Friday and we are not, as Ice Cube would like us to do, putting our back into it. Don't click that link if you're at work and your speakers are on. Do click it if you like late 90's hip hop that doesn't stint on the dancing=sex innuendo.

• The Reader has mini-reviews of three restaurants that are each, in their way, new. Trader Vic's has newly reopened (Sula can't help but love it, even though the menu's inconsistent); La Trattoria del Merlo is just flat-out new (Sula enjoys the food, but the portion/price ratio's hard to swallow); and Farmerie 58 has a new chef (Spiselman hits high highs and low lows on the menu, but desserts are solid).

• Over in NewCity, if you haven't made your Superbowl plans and don't want to pull the rug out of your guests with yet another year of mediocre guacamole and whatever off-brand tortilla chips are left at the grocery store, Mike Nagrant is ready and waiting with a half-dozen takeout options for the discerning host or hostess, from Take Me Out's seemingly made-for-the-Superbowl Little Hotties to sugarbombs from Old Fashioned Donuts, it's an easy road to a memorable spread. Speaking from personal experience here, sometimes there's more glory in catering with style than there is in cooking with crappitude.

If it's Friday, it must be Sun-Times Dining Roundup day!

• Pat Bruno visits Cafe Des Architectes to check out the kitchen under newly installed chef de cuisine Martial Noguier. What he finds is basically a revolution: The formerly unmemorable food at the restaurant is now super-awesome (not his phrase). Interestingly, Bruno also reveals that he visited the restaurant more than once in the course of his review (something he seems to almost never do), and his prose also seems kind of punched-up. Color me impressed.

• In the second portion of our program, the Brunster takes us deep into the smoking world of barbecue, with not one but two articles on the topic — a main review of Smoke Daddy, and a runners-up list that includes Smoque, Lem's, and Robinson's #1 Ribs. Yay, barbecue, eat it. But here's the thing: Copy editors. It was a copy editor's fault that the headline of Mike Nagrant's NewCity piece on barbecue was completely unparseable. And then on the S-T dining directory page, we get this:

So hey, Sun-Times copy editors, dudes, please, get your style guide on. If, by some extraordinary failure of journalism, the Sun-Times has not provided you with one, by all means use Adam Kuban's foodblog style guide, which is comprehensive and consistent. And is also correct about the proper spelling of this goddamn word.

Attn chefs! This is what David Tamarkin and Heather Shouse look like!

• In the Hot Seat this week is Paul McGee of The Whistler. We learn many exciting things about him, like that even though he looks like your secretly sexy accountant uncle, he really likes hip hop and the internet. I am mostly fascinated by the fact that his bookshelf appears to be sorted by color, which implies either that he he never actually reads his books, or he spends a lot of time looking for the one he's looking for, or his brain thinks of color as language, which would be awesome.

• It's cold outside! Julia Kramer wants you to drink tea! Editorial aside: The bowl of tea in the picture looks like pea soup!

[This was supposed to run yesterday. Please direct all letters of complaint to Moveable Type Blogging Software, and tell 'em I say hi.]

• Emily Nunn pays some much-deserved homage to Andrew Dornonburg and Karen Page's book "The Flavor Bible," a meticulously cross-indexed reference of preparations, ingredients, and their component flavors. As a reference book geek I am completely swooning over this title from a purely organizational perspective, but this is the kind of book that should be packaged and sold along with Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking" as a You Seriously Ought To Own This If You Are Going To Be Into Cooking boxed set. Also, I have completely failed to comment on the substance of Nunn's review/profile, but you can just click the link.

• JeanMarie Brownson's Dinner At Home column this week is about sandwiches, which is both Super Bowl apprope and awesome because it reinforces the prediction I made back in December. Also loving the time-honored technique of making a sandwich out of an entire loaf of bread, then slicing it up crosswise. Geometry!

• Bill Daley reads my mind: I ordered a glass of Malbec last night, and here he is being all hey, you should drink Malbec! Done and done, Mister Wine Columnist! The Argentinian red drinks like the crazy bastard child of red zin and cabernet, it's cheap as hell, and it's rapidly surging in popularity. Remind you of anyone? (cough. cough.)

• James P. DeWan is all "make your own Hollandaise" and I am all "I would rather watch my new internet crush the Wheezy Waiter make Eggs Benatar using Hollandaise from a packet." But James is probably right. Also, hilarious. To wit: "as with every human endeavor from buttering toast to performing an appendectomy, one can't expect perfection the first time one tries it." Extreme examples are always funny!

• In elementary school, we were told that a good five-paragraph essay would answer an easily expressable question. Jeremy N. Smith uses ten paragraphs to answer the question How do you drink an avocado? with the answer "buy it in smoothie form at a Vietnamese restaurant."

[Photo: themiadotcom]

I generally don't read the paper version of the Tribune. If I have to defend that, I'll spin some crap about the environment, but really it's just that I spend all day with my eyes trained to the lighting level of my computer monitor, and if I look away at an non-self-illuminated page, I'll lose all momentum. That being out there, sometimes when I check out the food and dining sections of the various newspapers that I read, I get this pervasive feeling that I'm missing something. Like today, when the Trib's site doesn't have a restaurant review from Phil Vettel. OH NOES.

• Instead! One paragraph about hamachi guacamole available at Ajasteak. It is exactly what it sounds like!

• It's certainly not don't-pass-judgment day at the Trib, since Trine Tsouderos has a review — she gets the Korean fried chicken at Crisp, feels kind of vaguely positive about the food but not overwhelmingly so, and then the next day the jones hits her like a steam engine to the gut. No fork rating! But I suspect this is a print-to-web translation oversight, since cracklike cravings imply at least one utensil.

• Monica Eng looks into the emerging trend of restaurants hosting special semi-educational dinners — chef lectures, mixology lessons, movie screenings, bead bracelet making (for reals, at Red Light). She's got an extensive list, and suggests them as perfect date nights. Hearty endorsement! Great idea!

[Photo of Crisp menu items from their official website]

• Louisa Chu, a fixer for Anthony Bourdain's show "No Reservations, spills on the shooting process (the long-awaited Chicago episode, which airs Monday, was structured around the Michael Mann movie Thief), and delivers a play-by-play of where Tony (and she) ate around town.

• It takes a lot to cook for the Super Bowl. Ron Krivosik of Levy Restaurants is heading to Tampa to whip up 55,000 hot dogs, 32,000 pizza slices and 2,500 pounds of seafood. Top Chef jokes!

• Lisa Shames discovers this curious, heretofore undocumented trend of nose-to-tail eating. No, I'm not being fair. They're serving goat-brain ravioli at The Bristol! Also I think it is about time we created a celebrity-couple name for chefs Brian Huston, Chris Pandel, Paul Virant, and Rob Levitt, to save typing energy. HuPanVirEtt?

• Sunchokes are yummy. Cook with them!

[Photo of a sunchoke attacking a city (note: they do not actually do this) via tillwe's Flickr]

• I was waffling over the propriety of recapping Pat Bruno's restaurant reviews after that little outing incident and its aftermath, but then I realized that this street goes two ways: If Bruno thinks he can fairly review a restaurant even if the chefs and floor team know his face, than I can surely review his reviews with him knowing and fearing my mad YouTube skillz, right? So rock-n-roll, amigos, as the Brunster drops by on the newly-opened Trader Vic's, where we are instructed in the contents of a Mai Tai and informed in two nearly-consecutive sentences that "You get your own mini (and modern) hibachi to finish off the hunks of beef impaled on a bunch of skewers" and "You get to finish off the cooking by holding the beef over the flame." But on the whole, despite his love for the retro-Tiki decor, he finds the menu uneven.

• Meanwhile, over in the Reader, Mike Sula does another amazing job uncovering an underdocumented culinary subculture. This time, it's Shadong ren — Chinese food cooked for Korean tastes — which is served at a handful of Chicago restaurants. Besides the delish food, Sula loves the "dim, faded, red-dressed ambience" that marks all these restaurants — gotta say, it would definitely impress a date to take them out to one of these places after having read this article for know-it-all ammo.

• And last but certainly not least, NewCity's food section clicks us through to BoozeMuse, where Ernest Barteldes issues a paean to cachaça, the Brazilian liquor that, in a staggering journalistic coincidence, I personally consumed last night. Considered a poor man's alcohol in Brazil, a few enterprising importers are trying to upscale it for the American market. Considering that my aforementioned cocktail clocked in at $15, I'd say they're doing a bang-up job.

[Photo of old cachaca bottles via Mauren Veras's Flickr]

Ha ha, I made a joke about your mother. But hey, it's TOC's Cheap issue! All things cheap! Because of the economy, but also because even before the economy tanked, a lot of us were poor anyway! Herewith and henceforth, the food parts;

• Fire up your dayplanner, because Heather Shouse has a day-by-day breakdown of dining deals at restaurants and bars. $13.00 all-you-can-eat tacos at Zapatista Cantina, free pate and olives with a glass of wine at A Mano — good stuff.

• David Tamarkin, master of the workaround: If you want to be organic (for the health benefits? for the social cred?), but you're lacking in the cash-or-credit department, he offers a slew of kinda-sorta options that bend the rules a little, preseving both your virtuousness and your bottom line.

• Julia Kramer investigates the least painful cafeteria options, venturing to such unromantic places the basement of the Bank of America and Chase buildings in search of the cheapest salad bars and most bang-for-your-buck steam lines. Speaking as someone who is congenitally incapable of bringing her lunch from home, I would like to say that my name is Helen Rosner and I approve of this article.

• David Tamarkin gets me to laugh out loud for the first time today (it's been a bleak day) with his collection of cocktail napkins on which he's scrawled notes about the budget-friendly alcoholic offerings at various chain restaurants (not to mention wondering whether he's been hit on by an animatronic elephant at Rainforest Cafe). Sneer down your nose at T.G.I. Friday's all you like, but they count to five when they pour the tequila.

• Jordana Rothman, who usually writes for TOC's New York sibling, checks out the imitation Achatz-Keller dinner put on by underground cooking club A Razor, A Shiny Knife. For a fifth the price — $300 a head rather than a grand-and-a-half — rogue culinarians Michael Cirino and Daniel Castaño prepped and served a nearly plate-by-plate reshoot of the culinary experience in NY, and are bringing the show to Chicago this weekend.

• I almost opened this bullet with "Heather Shouse rides the sausage train" but then I thought better of it. Instead, I made it meta! Anyway, she lists off three intriguing ways that local chefs are using entubed meat: Cassoulet from Mark Steuer of Hot Chocolate, lobster sausage from Troy Graves at Eve, and Peter Camphouse serves up jahrhundertwurst (Google it) at Century Public House.

[Photo of T.G.I. Friday's (if you squint, it could be Trader Vic's!) via jetalone's Flickr]

• Leah A. Zeldes pulls the rug out from under all those folks comparing today's hard economic climate to the Great Depression, citing statistics and oral histories that have families living on nothing but starch, making do without refrigerators or heat-regulated ovens, and hot dogs that cost ten times as much as potatoes. That setup doesn't really work in today's microwaves-and-additives food culture, now does it?

• Remember that Anthony Bourdain episode where he eats birds' nest soup? According to Lisa Donovan, not only is the soup valued for its rarity — the nests in question have to be harvested from caves, dried and processed — but it's also known for its restorative and beautifying properties. The title of this article, I could not make this up if I tried, is "Botox in a bowl." This is a surprisingly accurate analogy, only inasmuch as Botox is the voluntary injection of the botulism toxin, and birds' nest soup is the voluntary ingestion of bird spit.

• Phil Lempert launches his new "Shopping Smart" column, which promises to be chock-full of helpful tips and tricks to get the most out of your grocery store experience. He then proceeds to give information that we suppose will be novel and life-changing to people who have never been to a grocery store before.

[Photo of the Edible nest swiftlet, so named because its nests are used in soup, and then eaten. Via Lip Kee's Flickr]

Last night I found myself insomniacally watching Bring It On 2: Bring It On Again. This is an actual movie that actual people decided to fund with actual money. It is truly, deeply horrible. But it has the upside of making my head completely full with the rat-a-tat syncopation of shouted, rhyming cheers. I choose to channel that riotous energy into recapping today's Tribune Good Eats section.

• Our centerpiece article this week comes from James P. DeWan, who reviews Fat, the new cookbook from Jennifer McLagan. (Fun fact: I have a copy of this book sitting literally arms length from me at this very moment. Endorsement!) DeWan moves beyond the standard book review, though, and dives into McLagan's dogmatic pro-animal-fat position. He gets quotes from Vie chef Paul Virant and Brian Huston of The Publican, who both get behind the notion that the flavor, economy, and not-horribly-processed-ness of animal fat makes it a smart culinary choice.

• Bill Daley reports from the wine world on pairings that complement a feast for the Chinese New Year. He popped a quiz to Chicagoland wine professionals, listing off some traditional Chinese New Year dishes and asking them to come up with optimal pairings. The overall theme seems to be slightly sweet, sharp whites, which will cut through the spice and textural weight of most of the dishes. I'm particularly intrigued by the idea of Blanc de Blancs (a sparkling white) with lion's head meatballs — there's something wickedly Auntie Mame about that pairing. (The fact that I just described a wine pairing as "wickedly Auntie Mame" means I am now irrevocably That Unbearable Wine Person, doesn't it?)

• Also anticipating the Year of the Ox, Renee Enna tests out freezer-case chicken egg rolls. Amazingly, the mos unexpected of the bunch — Jehling brand, from Aldi — comes out the winner. Bonus recessionomics! It's the cheapest variety, one entire cent less than the next most inexpensive.

• Joe Gray delivers one of his Seriously People We Are Not Ripping Off Rachael Ray recipes, a 30-minute throwdown of pistachio-encrusted turkey burgers. No buns here — they come over kale and orzo. Shazam!

• Agave nectar! It's better for you than refined sugar! So says Zak Stambor, who reports on the honey-like substance. It gets the stamp of approval from Chicago's most media-friendly mixologist, Nacional 27's Adam Seger, who likes to use it in margaritas. Makes sense, since tequila is also a product of the agave cactus. It's kind of like frying up a pork chop in bacon fat, eh?

• Joe Gray recommends Amarcord—Marcella Remembers, the new memoir from culinary Italian grand dame Marcella Hazan. It fills in the gaps left by her personality-rich cookbooks, telling the tale of her start in Italy and her peripatetic journey from cooking school to cooking school, finally coming to rest at the top of the cookbook hierarchy.

The nice people at Time Out Chicago said some very nice things about me (and some very unkind things about Andrew Zimmern), so I am feeling sprightly and smiley. Hurrah for all that!

• David Tamarkin plays on the other side of the burger table from Kevin Pang, pitching some hometown burgers that are juicy and wonderful enough to be exported elsewhere. In Tamarkin's world, the rest of the country sets aside their In-n-Out fetishes and braces for an influx of Billy Goat, Epic Burger, Patty Burger. A boy can dream.

• Tamarkin also paints a picture of the Drake Hotel's Cape Cod Room that is so charming, so endearing, that it makes me want to give the restaurant a big old hug. The place is old as the hills (okay, 1933) and goes to great lengths not to be modern. All this with delish throwback menu items like Bookbinder soup.

• Also blasting from the past, Heather Shouse checks out the 75-year-old Bruna's. While the original Bruna is long gone — and her 89-year-old daughter isn't too involved either — the current owners respect the history of the place, even as they've update the classic Italian menu. But not too updated: Bruna's original chicken still gets made every Sunday.

• Publican chef Brian Huston reveals his deepest, darkest secrets: The Publican's "secret spice" is espilette pepper, and he listens to the same yuppie-emo-intellirock music that we do! (Radiohead, Wilco, and Yo La Tengo, what's up!)

[Photo: The Cape Cod Room, Kristie Kahns/TOC]

• Phil Vettel's review of that other high-profile Chicago gastropub, The Bristol, has an almost zenlike presence in my RSS reader. It shows up in edited form, the entire thousand-word thing cut down to just this: "The Bristol: 2 Stars (and that's good for Bucktown). I'm sitting in the Bristol and feeling old." That's basically it, right there. This is high-quality neighborhood fare meant for the pre-AARP crowd. If your kids are in junior high, daddy-o, make your damn monkey bread at home. Otherwise roll around in that egg-yolk raviolo goodness and revel in your spry joints and long-distance vision.

• Vettel also corrals some of Chicago's high-profile restaurateurs, getting their take on the year ahead — a dreary-looking one, at best. Recurring themes seem to be that customer loyalty is going to be worth its weight in gold, and that restaurants should work on enhancing the value for the dollar. Heck yes, we can get behind this.

• Christopher Borrelli checks out Summer, a new Thai restaurant whose name is a little bit of a loop-thrower this time of year. Small plates are flavorful and interesting, larger plates fall flat. Decor? Summery, of course.*

• Kevin Pang puts on his Cheeseburger Bureau Chief hat (seriously, how much do I love that the Trib runs with this? So much.) as he revisits his year of burger reviewing (book proposal!), what with all these fancy-schmancy outlander fast-food places opening in Chicago, he's been very busy. So he chows down one more time on five representative patties. And I also just realized that oh my god, if there was ever a party at which Kevin Pang, Adam Kuban, and Josh Ozersky were all present? I would really really really really also want to be at that party.

[Photo via mrmatt's Flickr]

*Kebabs? No, there are none.

Oh Restaurant Week, what a complex and confusing animal you are. Here is the basic haps: From February 20-27, a hefty selection of Chicago restaurants will be offering 3-course lunches and dinners for $22 and $32 respectively. The complete list of participating restaurants is here, but our favorite choices include:

• C-House, offering a $32 dinner with your choice of a mixed greens salad with sheep's milk cheese and pistachios or butternut squash soup, an entree choice of fish & chips, salmon with parsley and parsnip, or roasted chicken with winter vegetables and dumplings. Yumsters.

• It's dinner only at one sixtyblue, but for $32 the chance to check out three courses from newbie chef Michael McDonald is a sweet deal. We're sold on the pheasant confit that garnishes the chicken breast entree, and sticky toffee date cake is our kind of dessert. Menu here.

•One of the best deals is the lunch at David Burke's Primehouse. Your three-courser includes apps like kobe beef sashimi or surf & turf dumplings (a duo of short ribs and lobster lemon), and entrees run the standard protein gamut — chicken, salmon — with a couple of different steak choices and the kick-ass 40-day dry aged steakburger. They're also offering dinner, but the extra ten bucks is so not worth it — the menus are nearly identical — the only difference is that at dinner there are the added entree choices of a bone-in filet mignon or David Burke's signature "Angry Lobster" (which we've had, and which we can assuredly say is not worth it). Lunch menu here. Dinner menu here.

• There's a perfect light lunch at Cafe Spiaggia: you'll get a starter of potato-leek soup, an entree of hand-crafted cappellacci (that's a tortelloni-esque pasta filled with butternut squash), and your choice of gelati and sorbeti to close.

• For a taste of Bayless, Frontera Grill has a lunch menu of sopa Azteca, tacos al carbon, and a chocolate pecan pie bar. Meanwhile, over at Topolobampo, the same $22 buys you
(presumably the same) sopa Azteca, and your choice of pork loin in mole poblano or vegetable enchilada with roasted tomatillo sauce, plus dessert of a crepa with ice cream and cajeta. Menus here.

• One of the sweetest deals is at Texas de Brazil, where their entire million-billion-item salad bar and unlimited meat lunch — normally $34 — is ratcheted down 35% to the restaurant week standard of $22.

Be sure to make reservations — or at least call ahead — because these seats will fill up fast.

Chicago Restaurant Week [Official Site]

[Photo via C-House's official site]

Second verse, same as the first! A little bit louder and a little bit involving completely different publications!

THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, newspaper with a confoundingly awful website
•Pat Bruno sets aside his love for all things Italian and chows down on some falafel at Chickpea (2018 W. Chicago, 773 384 9930). This review, blandly positive, basically reads like a vocabulary checklist list for Middle Eastern food — list item, explain what it is, say it tastes nice. Also this fun call-and-response part: "Kabobs? Yes, several." I'm going to start asking people "Kabobs?" at random junctures now, and I will be sad if they don't answer "Yes, several." Very sad.

• The triumphant return of Thomas Witom, lord of the suburbs! (Okay, he's actually been bylining since December, but that was a crazy month what with holidays) He goes on an odyssey to Lombard to check out Odyssey (see what I did there?!), a traditional-foods-oriented Greek restaurant with solid offerings. Try the daily specials.

• Bruno's more substantive review is of Oak Park's Briejo (also reviewed this week in TOC). He likes it a lot, yay. More importantly! We get some insight into the patented Bruno Reviewing Philosophy: "I don't usually write about salads; greens are greens. However, when I do come across a salad that is something special, I believe I should bring it up." Thanks, Pat, super-helpful.

THE CHICAGO READER, beleaguered alt-weekly
• Martha Bayne has the byline this week, profiling Josh Deth, the (awesomely named) proprietor of Handlebar, who's putting together a brewpub for his (also awesomely named) Revolution Brewing Company. It's been nearly a decade in the making, but an end is finally in sight. Of course, it will be green (In the -er-than-thou sense, not the color-of-Kermit sense), but it also sounds like it will be very very good.

[Photo of Briejo via their official site]

Thanks to some now-it's-up!-now-it's-down! internet yesterday, you did not receive your regularly scheduled dose of media review roundups. How did you ever survive? So, kids, put on your Thursday hats (shh, we won't tell anyone) and enjoy this double-scoop of TOC and Tribune recappery. Plus a bonus peek at CS magazine!

THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, venerable newspaper
• The headlining review here is a bit of a doozy: Phil Vettel visits The Most Important Restaurant In The History Of Chicago, a.k.a. The Publican. Vettel's review opens with an interesting phrase, which I will probably come back to in some screed or rant or whatever on the state of restaurant reviewing: "within the parameters of what it wants to be, it's spectacular." The summary judgment taken care of, the rest of the review is a nice rehash of information that those of us who live on the internet already know: oysters, pig products, blah blah blah deliciousness.

• Here's something I love: Onomatopoeia. It's used in Eric Gwinn's boxing match (get it?) of cardboard-box-borne lunch meals from KFC and Taco Bell. He declares KFC the winner, though doesn't give it too much explanation. Still, it is a newspaper article that is written like a blog post, and for that we can do nothing but hold it close and whisper in its ear how much we love it.

• Vettel again, pitching "Taste of the Aztec World," the restaurant promotion that goes hand-in-hand with the Field Museum's (super-awesome) exhibit "The Aztec World." It runs this Sunday through the 17th, and participating restaurants will serve Aztec-inspired flavors and dishes.

TIME OUT CHICAGO, esteemed weekly magazine
• Mike! Gebert! Is! Everywhere! Here he's mapping out the best Middle Eastern eats to be had in Bridgeview, the southwestern suburb that I always think is a neighborhood.

• David Tamarkin reviews Oak Park's Briejo (211 Harrison St, Oak Park, 708 848 2743), where he finds the menu unadventurous (dated haute standbys — goat cheese, mango) but on the whole quite delicious. Also the cheesecake (pictured, above) looks to us like nothing so much as a chicken giving the stinkeye.

CS MAGAZINE, monthly publication with a weird website
• The ludicrously prolific Mike Nagrant gets his review on (warning: weird quasi-PDF page) with a take on The Publican, where he stumbles onto a dirty trick: the (deliciously) salty, fatty food simply demands copious beer. But is that necessarily a bad thing? Like Vettel (and, you know, the rest of the universe) he declares The Publican to be a hit.

[Photo: the cheesecake at Briejo, Kate Gross/TOC]

• Jennifer Olivera goes to bat for pudding. Not the Jello instant kind — the bread-based, ooey-gooey, oven-baked kind. And it doesn't end with dessert! Or rather, it does, but it doesn't begin there! You can also make savory puddings. We are counting down to the appearance of some sort of offal pudding showing up on The Publican's menu in 5, 4, 3 ...

• Lisa Donovan would like to remind you that January is National Oatmeal Month!

• A seriously weird headline-content relationship going on here in Stefano Esposito's rundown of a study that compared the diet and exercise habits of women in Chicago and Nigeria, and then ties together the root vegetable cassava with Oprah's weight-loss plans. Editor out to lunch for this one?

• The S-T is starting a new weekly column about saving money with home cooking. Start with your freezer. According to this article, I'm supposed to be able to name 10 things in my freezer without looking. Right now I can go with: ice, Ikea meatballs, vodka.

• Everyone (including Dave Hoekstra!) just loves the new Trader Vic's. Wahoo, tiki! There's even a recession angle (pu pu platters are wallet-friendly!).

• Whoa, did I just step into an internet portal to the ninth dimension? Chuck Sudo (who we usually epithetize as "of Chicagoist," but oh those freelancers, always throwing us a curveball) checks out Ladies United for the Preservation of Endangered Cocktails, which is exactly what it sounds like. The organization holds events and classes, is totally opposed to super-gross sweet-ass girly drinks, and will occasionally let dudes come by for a drink.

[Photo via iateapie's Flickr]

• Emily Nunn takes us on a whirlwind safari of inexpensive supermarket items. 'Cause we're in a recession, dontchaknow. It strikes me that the super-cheap foods highlighted — beans, kale, eggs — are also among the healthiest things on the planet. I think it has also probably struck the nine billion other people on the internet who have also made my exact point.

• What goes better with an El Cheapo dinner than a bottle of El Cheapo wine! (That was an exclamation point just there because that was a rhetorical question just there.) The cute and fuzzy Bill Daley reports that wine merchants all over town are seeing spiking sales in the sub-$15 category, and reminds us that we should be thinking in terms of value, not just bottom line.

• Janet Helm has 10 predictions of food trends for 2009. I'm sure they're good but I am religiously forbidden from reading or recapping year-end roundups or pre-year predictions.

• What's up, fraud? Monica Eng takes us into the seamy world of olive oil bamboozlement, wherein the ol' single-press is being diluted with oils of other plants — peanut, soy, and others — and sold as "extra-virgin olive oil." Scandalous! Never has going to the foofy oil aisle in Whole Foods felt so much like buying drugs in an alley! Not that we know anything about that!

• In Tempo Chris Borrelli tries the #!@%¿ Blagojevich Burger at Kuma's Corner: a buger and a slice of baloney (get it?!) sandwiched between two grilled-cheese sandwiches (that's four slices of bread — see AHT's fatty melt) with a dollar sign of yellow mustard for flourish. Satirical!

[Photo via bryangeek's Flickr]

Apologies to all those on this list who are miffed that, unlike Barack Obama and Grant Achatz, you do not get your own personal What You Missed post. I'm really truly very sorry, but I do not know if there is a word in existence that can appropriately describe what it is like to come back after two weeks and look at your RSS feeds. Perhaps Joseph Conrad said it best in Heart of Darkness: "The horror, the horror!"

Anyway, here are some highlights of what went down:

• Cartoonist Chris Ware tore into hoity-toity food, and Mike Nagrant tore into Chris Ware.

• Speaking of Mike Nagrant, he reviewed the newly-opened Meatloaf Bakery. Ahem. Twice. And so did Chicago Gluttons.

• Chuck Sudo of Chicagoist sabered a bottle of Champagne, and the entire internet was duly impressed.

• My brother went to buy a futon, and ran into the LTHForum bacon clock!

• Graham Elliot Bowles (of the eponymous restaurant) celebrated his birthday. In my head I made the old "not a wunderkind, just a wunder" joke for like the nine thousandth time, and still found it funny.

• The Green City Market is now running year-round, on a biweekly basis through the winter.

• Alpana Singh started prefacing her LEYE-related posts with "Shameless Plug," and I felt a little responsible.

• Chef Philip Foss of Lockwood made some resolutions. Among them:

I assume this will be to little fanfare, but I will also be making a conscientious effort to keep posts less controversial and more about the food on the pages rather than the other way around. I have plenty to say about plenty of topics, but prefer to have the focus on the cuisine rather than my opinions. A wise man once said, “Opinions are like assholes… we all have them and nobody thinks that theirs stinks.” I’m not making any promises though...

[Photo of the Meatloaf Bakery via Chicago Gluttons]

Oh, our mediagenic president-elect! He is from Chicago! He eats! He's just like us! Here's what he was up to while I was on vacation:

• Significantly before I even got to the airport, he was eating on camera. Back in his salad days (har har) — then a state senator — Obama appeared on an unaired episode of Check, Please!. His never-before aired segment, set at Dixie Kitchen & Bait Shop, will show on WTTW on Friday, January 16th. (And because I am just that nerdy: no, it does not overlap with the BSG premiere.)

• The Trib's Terri Colby offers a tour of Obama's favorite Windy City eateries, from the oft-discussed Spiaggia and Topolobampo to Hyde Park mainstays like Medici and (my personal favorite) Valois. Yes We Can! See Your Food!

• And of course, since Barack is the Doer Of Miracles, he is finally integrating the fight against hunger with the fight against obesity. Yes, they're related.

• The blog Obama Food-o-Rama got a traffic-flooding mention in the New York Times. Guess what it's dedicated to!

• Obama just loves salted caramel. But that's not all! He likes smoked-salt caramels! Foodie cred = infinity.

• And at the diametric opposite of the food-snob spectrum, he also had a snack of some spam musubi — egg, sushi rice, seaweed, and spam.

• Carol Blymore of Alinea at Home cooked up "Skate, traditional flavors powdered" on Christmas eve, complete with a contextually relevant (yet still terrifying!) photograph of Jocelyn Wildenstein.

• What was that about Carol Blymire? Looks like there's another game in town — a dude named Martin has started Alineaphile, yet another cook-every-recipe-in-the-Alinea-cookbook site. Pretty pictures!

• Grant Achatz has a Facebook fan page! Now you too can pledge your internet allegiance to the puckishly handsome uber-chef.

• Under the Zagat banner, Mike Nagrant dug into the Achatz/Keller dynamic, right down to Grant's ingrained ability to interpret Keller's critical facial expressions and immediately change his own behavior. (Shoutout to our therapist!)

• Time magazine declared that Grant Achatz is #9 on their list of Top 10 Food Trends of 2008. Can a person really be a trend? Philosophical!

• The Reader's Julia Thiel and Decider's Emily Withrow made an appearance on WBEZ, along with Nick Kokonas's sons. They revisited the grade-schooler freres Kokonas pwnz0ring the profesh foodbloggers at cooking from Alinea.

• Flickrer biskuit made a New Year's Eve meal inspired by the French Laundry and Alinea cookbooks, and it looks so beautiful that I am sort of dying of personal inadequacy. (For my New Years Eve, I ate: vodka.)

If all this has lit your appetite aflame, Alinea has reopened from their holiday break and the delightful phone-answerers (honestly, in our experience the friendliest and most willing to answer our inane blog-related questions) are presumably standing by, ready to take your reservation. (Hint: Valentine's day!)

Alinea [MenuPages]
Alinea [Official Site]

[Photo via edseloh's Flickr]

• Heather Shouse delivers a rundown of the best places to eat on New Years Eve. Holy crap, Heather, it is not even Christmas yet. It isn't even Hanukkah. Why are you pulling this New Year's stuff on us? We realized out of the blue yesterday that New Years is in a scant two weeks, and a week after that is our birthday, and then we will be old as shit. So thanks for using an article in a mid-December issue (admittedly, okay, a double one) to reminding us of our approaching decrepitude.

• Speaking of approaching decriptude! Heather and her cohort David Tamarkin list their favorite alcohols. Note that the spirits on this list are beers and wines, and that true self-medication rarely calls for descriptors like "coppery, with a complex, slightly funky nose and figgy flavor with good bite." But for those of you aiming for gustatory pleasure rather than numbness, this is a solid list.

• Tamarkin jumps on the 2009-prediction wagon, soothsaying a rise in goat meat, a smallening [Is that even a word? –Ed] [Ha ha, we don't actually have an editor. –Self] of portion sizes and prices, and that non-Chicago celeb chefs will continue to be non-Chicago celeb chefs. And he's gunning for a rise in UK-style pub food, a topic with which we totally agree. (In fact, we've been gunning for a "gastropub" category for restaurants here on MP.)

• Mr. T also reviews Century Public House (is this the last-minute replacement review for the now-closed Mantou? We have no idea what TOC's pub lead time is, we're just wildly speculating.) Chef Peter Camphouse "has a way with ... encased meats," which isn't a double entendre: This is a place to go for the sausage. Comfort-food staples like pot roast and roasted chicken round out the solidly executed entrees, though the apps, bar menu, and dessert enter hit-or-miss territory.

• Heather Shouse (you know, we're going to go off on a tangent here for a second to note that we are so impressed by the TOC food team. They have like eleventy billion food articles up a week, plus the blog, and most of the time there are only two of them writing. And the Tribune and the Sun-Times each put out fewer articles with triple the staff, and those articles are of wildly varying quality. Someone give these kids a raise.) Okay, anyway. Heather Shouse advocates that we all go spend some dough at Shokolad, the French-Ukrainian bakery that's suffering thanks to UV's gentrification. Save that bakery!

• Heather again, corralling three chefs to tell us what they do with juniper (fun fact: did you know that "juniper" is the same word as the name "Jennifer"? And it's what gives gin — essentially juniper-flavored vodka — its name? When we learned these things, our mind was freaking blown.) At one sixtyblue the berry shows up in sauerkraut, Northbrook's Prairie Grass Cafe amps up their martinis, and at HB Home Bistro they're using it to marinate squab.

[Photo of juniper via kretyen's Flickr]

• Jennifer Olivera suggests using chocolate in non-dessert foods. Mole!

• Lisa Donovan is all "hey! Pannetone! It's not gross, like fruitcake is!"

• Misha Davenport plays all the current cooking-related video games! She doesn't hate ICA as much as we did, but thinks Alton Brown looked like he had cornrows.

• Jim Romanoff is the Grinch that stole Hanukkah, suggesting that we lighten up the latke's oil load. Doesn't he understand that, like the Iraq war, the oil is the point?!

[Photo via su-lin's Flickr]

• One of our cousins has a really, really serious allergy to nuts. He would probably go into anaphylactic shock and basically die just by reading the centerpiece article of today's Good Eating section: Emily Nunn cracks open (forgive us) a nutty (sorry) collection of Christmas recipes, all of which center around a particular ingredient we bet you'll never guess. And it's not just restricted to desserts — vidalia onions with sausage and pecans, duck with pistachios, our cousin can get out his epi pen for every single freaking course.

• So hey! That latke cookoff at Spertus happened this weekend, and Heather Lalley was on the scene. Under the judging eyes of Ina Pinkney and Aaron Freemen, four competitors went up against Spertus exec chef Laura Frankel, with a variety of recipes ranging from soft and fluffy to vitamin-C-aided white. We're intrigued by the fact that all competitors were women, since in our family (is it just us?) the latke-maker is and always has been our dad.

• Speaking of people named Ina! We originally read Emily Nunn's profile of Ina Garten as a profile of Ina Pinkney, and we were pretty darn thrown by the description of the chef as having "glossy dark hair." But we got ourselves up to speed. Weirdly, Garten claims never to have heard of Grant Achatz or Alinea. Can it be true that there are people in this world who don't live and die by the actions of Chicago's highest-profile chef? Our entire weltanschauung is threatened!

• Bill Daley takes us on a tour of the scandal-ridden Brunello wine — the oeno-world was abuzz last year with assertions that winemakers were adulterating their brunello stocks with other grapes. Dramz! The highly-regulated wine is a great choice for celebratory dinners — it's $50+ price tag rules it out for everyday consumption for most folks — and Daley suggests pairing it with robust, salty, umami-laden meals.

• As long as you're popping open that Brunello, might as well do it with a decent corkscrew. Bill Daley reviews a few models, giving the ol' twist to four basic models: waiter-style, rabbit-style, electric, and wing-style. We've been huge fans of being the designated bottle-opener ever since we learned that you could just pull off the foil vertically (no need for cutting!) and that impresses the heck out of everyone within sight range. Unfortunately, that grandness fades as soon as we start flailing around with a wing-style contraption that we're pretty sure we inherited from a garage sale our mom visited. So we're quite welcoming of these new recommendations.

[Photo via macinate's Flickr]

• It was a bad idea for us to read the roundup of casino steakhouses that's double-helmed by Phil Vettel and Chris Borrelli so close to the end of the day, because now we are lusting after big hunks of meat. The wonder twins (seriously, Tribune powers-that-be, do everything in your power to keep Borrelli on the food beat) visit seven steakhouses located in Illinois and northwest Indiana casinos, and find quality that ranges from opulent (melt-in-mouth wagyu and riotous ribeyes) to the Tom Waits-ian (scruffy-voiced waitresses and the smell of despair). Two in a row have "signature" dishes of Filet Oscar — steak topped with crab and hollandaise — which we had never heard of before right now and which we don't ever have any desire to try.

• Bonnie Miller Rubin (we used to babysit for her!) is thrilled about Bergstein's NY Deli in Chicago Heights (we went to high school with managers Mike Mesirow and Bill Davis!). The daughter of a deli-owner, Rubin's excited that Bergstein's gives the South Suburbs the classic Jewish deli goods that previously necessitated a drive to the North Side.

• Rubin's valuation of Bergstein's is corroborated by Chris Borrelli, who gives out two forks in his Cheap Eats review of the joint. Due largely to the limtations of its suppliers, the deli is currently better in theory than it is in practice — rye bread isn't sturdy enough to stand up to the pastrami, the chicken broth doesn't live up to its matzoh balls. But its heart is in the right place, and its kitchen is on the right path.

(Borrelli spills much of his ink comparing Bergstein's to its New York prototype, and here we have to raise a questioning eyebrow: Believe us when we tell you that we've spent plenty of time in New York-style delis that are actually in New York, and they're pale imitations of the ideal as well. The truest approximation is a pick-and-choose from all the famous places — soup from the 2nd Avenue Deli, sandwich from Katz's, sides from Russ & Daughters, and absolutely nothing whatsoever from Carnegie — that place is a waste of time.)

• For those who aren't interested in trekking down to the south 'burbs for pastrami (though we suppose you could make it more time-effective by swinging by Flossmoor Station and picking up a growler or three), Monica Eng has the master list of NY-style delis elsewhere in the city.

[Photo of Katz's in New York via dpstyles's Flickr]

The centerpiece of this week's Time Out Chicago is a tremendously intimidating (at least, to this humble recapper) list of the 100 best things that Heather Shouse and David Tamarkin have eaten all year. Since they split up the reporting duties, it comes to only 50 each, which is a little less huge. But still! We can barely think of 100 anythings we've eaten lately, let alone 100 awesome things. [That is a blatant lie. You remember everything you have ever eaten. –Self]

Unsurprisingly, the stars of the list fall into three overwhelming categories: Pork, Comfort, and Asian. (If we drew a venn diagram of this, the epicenter of 2008's delicious trends would probably be Urban Belly). There's a strong showing by the non-pork fats: butter, notably, but also various sausages, rillettes, and livers. This list is a true omnivore's hundred, and we have a shiny nickel (plus a shot of pepto) for whoever proves to us that they've eaten a dent into it. (Heather and David, you do not quality for this exciting offer.)

• But wait — there's more! Heather Shouse pays a visit to the recently-opened Eve. Like the owners' other restaurant, Tallulah, she finds that behind the beautiful interior design there is a maddeningly inconsistent kitchen. The luxe-heavy plates don't seem to occupy any middle ground between insanely delicious and frustratingly overwrought. Shouse's advice? Simplify, motherf***ers.

• David Tamarkin files on Antica, the new pizza joint in Andersonville that's obsessively focused on a minimalist, perfect pizza. No whizbangs and fireworks — just a solid (not mindblowing, but solid) slice.

• Chris Pandel, chef at The Bristol, sits down in the hot seat and dishes that he's into goat meat, and loves eating at The Publican.

[Photo: Crispy veal sweetbreads at Blackbird, one of the top 100 dishes. Photo by Anthony Tahlier]

Okay, so "desperately craving" is a little bit of a misnomer, because we actually just ate chicken-fried steak for lunch and it is resting merrily in our stomach, getting psyched for its digestive journey.

But the extraordinary excitement that we felt when we popped by our usual lunch spot and saw "Special: Billy's Famous Chicken Fried Steak" written up there on the chalkboard? That was the kind of excitement that doesn't crop up very often. The last time we had this iconic southern dish — cube steak that's been pounded flat, then breaded and fried, and served with cream gravy — we were in an actual roadhouse in the vast emptiness of eastern Texas. That was some serious chicken-fried steak. While today's wasn't quite as good (no city-folk seasoning can measure up to looking out at rows of gun racks mounted on rows of pickups in the parking lot), it reminded us of how wonderful this dish is.

Where can you get it? Unsurprisingly, Heaven on Seven does a solid version, aggressively seasoned and without the stringy chew that this inexpensive cut of meat often possesses. A similar Nawlins-style take comes out of Hyde Park's Dixie Kitchen & Bait Shop, where the pan-fried piece of happiness comes with three sides, and we suggest you set aside any beverage-snobbishness (who, you?) and accompany your meal with a glass of orange soda.

For an approximation of the east-Texas grit, your best bet is Hollywood Grill — the venerable 24-hour joint serves up theirs (which they call "country-fried steak") in both sandwich form (on hot bread with cream gravy) or with two eggs, hangover-breakfast style. Alternately, check out the offering from Stanley's, where we once had the sacrilegious (but delicious!) experience of swapping out the mashed potatoes for sweet potato fries, a spectacular foil for the salty gravy.

Only on the weekends (but entirely worth the trip) is the chicken-fried steak at Flying Saucer, which gets brunchified with the accompaniment of cheese grits, two eggs, and a biscuit, and which a friend tells us, in reverential tones usually reserved for describing Scarlett Johansson, is "pretty amazing."

[Photo via Craig C.'s Flickr]

The pre-Christmas lists are in full swing at the Sun-Times — appropriately, since we just this afternoon realized that the big day is in exactly two weeks. When the heck did that happen? Oh passage of time, you are a fickle mistress.

• In a charming feature, various S-T staffers wistfully reminisce about their favorite cookbooks. Regular MP readers will recognize Lisa Donovan (favorite: Junior League of Denver's Creme de Colorado Cookbook, 1987), but there are plenty of new names listing off old favorites like the original New York Times Cookbook and, obvs, The Joy of Cooking. Staffer Albert Dickens has the best story — a 55-year-old copy of Ida Bailey Allen's Step-by-Step Picture Cook Book, given to him by his mother when he realized that Betty Crocker wasn't a real person. Moment of quoi?: Dickens, "an older gentleman with a kind voice and twinkly eyes," is an editorial assistant. We were once an editorial assistant — when we were, like, 23. Someone promote that dude!

• Four Seasons exec Chef Ken Hickey says that the "haute chocolat" service at The Cafe at Four Seasons Hotel is inspired by the 2000 movie Chocolat, and that it's so good that "every time I drink a little demitasse of it, I get a little high." Whoa.

• Sheila! Lukins! We love that lady so much, and we're excited by Janet Rausa Fuller's profile of the legendary cookbook author as she promotes her latest title, Ten: All the Foods We Love and 10 Recipes for Each. Disclosure: We provided some editorial assistance for that title (see above), so if you won't trust our biased endorsement of the book, trust Fuller's: she's a big fan.

• Laura Cid Perea, the pastry chef at Bombon Cafe, looks back fondly on her grandmother's bunuelos, sweet Christmas pastries. She doesn't hold back on the schmaltz: "Abuelita Blanca is now in heaven. In her memory, we make bunuelos at Bombon Cafe." Sugar-coated, f'reals.

[Photo via sporkist's Flickr]

With the all-Blagojevich-all-the-time news cycle right now, we were surprised the Trib even ran a food section at all today. But then we learned from Bill Daley's twitter that the Good Eating team plans their story schedule literally a year ahead of time. Therein, we believe, lies the difference between blogging and Legitimate Journalism, because we plan our story schedule approximately twenty seconds before hitting "publish."

• The whole GE team banded together for a pre-holiday cookbook rundown. With gift-giving in mind, they've divided the 2008 crop of cookbooks into ten categories ranging from baking to expert advice to seafood. It's been a good year for Chicago kitchens, with local names showing up — Mercat a la Planxa's Jose Garces takes home the prize for best Spanish-inspired, and the Alinea cookbook gets a runner-up nod in the "expert advice" category. The supplemental photogallery has some other hometown offerings — who knew the Hinsdale Junior Woman's Club had a cookbook? Who knew publishers were still willing to publish cookbooks from Junior Woman's Clubs?

• As long as we're giving books as gifts (helpful hint: don't have Amazon pre-wrap your presents, because it makes it look like you didn't put in any effort! Which, if you're ordering pre-wrapped books from Amazon, you didn't!), aforementioned twittermeister Bill Daley has some ideas for wine books. Wine books are great gifts because they help your uncle recontextualize his borderline alcoholism as "intellectual appreciation."

• We have a vague childhood memory of learning that a "white party" was a very chic thing to throw. It involved white tablecloths and white wine and all-white foods. If you are feeling throwbacky, Janet Helm has profiled various pallid vegetables, such as cauliflower and onions.

• Renee Enna does a sort of product-review-cum-recipe about quick-cook barley. She suggests it for a chicken stew, and recommends that we accompany the stew with "a glass of low-fat milk." It might just be us (we grew up keeping kosher, which has lingering psychological aftereffects) but that sounds totally weird?

• Renee is back again, taste-testing a $36.25 veal chop from Allen Brothers against a comparatively el cheapo $28 chop from Whole Foods. The extremely surprising verdict: They're both delicious.

[Photo via pizzodesevo's Flickr]

• Back in September we promised that we would find something to make fun of about the winners of the Trib's holiday cookie contest. The thing is, the first few paragraphs of Emily Nunn's coronation of the winners really, you know, wins us over:

What makes the ultimate holiday cookie? Is it the prettiest pastry on the platter? The biggest biscuit in the box? The chemically perfect confection?

Or is it the cookie with homely looks and/or culinary imperfections but a truly beautiful soul?

As much as we'd like to say it's the latter, we can't. A big tin of bad cookies does nothing but make people sarcastic and cranky no matter how tender the back story; they're hard to swallow—even with a glass of milk.

Sarcasm! Crankiness! We are among our people, O staff of the Tribune! The first place winner of the holiday cookie contest is a pretty cookie, to be sure, but it couples its attractiveness with a charming backstory. (Looks and personality? Winning cookie — call us!) The confection in question is Baba's cream cheese kolacky, submitted by Emily Dressel of River Forest on behalf of her grandmother. We're also not sure whether this statement is made in jest (awesome!) or in sincerity (even awesomer!): "Baba herself compares winning our contest to 'getting three pain pills at once,' said Dressel. 'She has arthritis.'"

• Heather Lalley reviews 'Comfort Foods Made Healthy,' a new cookbook that sort of gives it all away with the title. We're sort of seeing this as The Sneaky Chef, but for grownups. Make of that what you will.

• We ourself are throwing a holiday cocktail party this year, so we're particularly delighted by JenMarie Brownson's collection of easy-peasy recipes for nibbly bits. Then again, this is also the nine hundred billionth article we've read on holiday cocktail parties, which are apparently the recession-chic entertainment vehicle this year.

• Emily Nunn's profile of chef Jose Garces (of Mercat a la Planxa) does double duty: it's both an illuminating look at his philosophy and background ('"You must do your research, but also travel," he said. "In Spain, we were able to really dissect dishes, to understand them, before figuring out how to adapt them...to what we do in the restaurants."') and a plug for his new cookbook, Latin Evolution.

• Christopher Borrelli writes a touching tribute to late food writer Laurie Colwin, who passed away a decade ago. Her cookbooks — touchpoints in the genre of cookbook-as-memoir — are works of everyday poetry, and we echo Chris's recommendation that they make excellent gifts. We've given them ourselves over the years, and every time we do we get a phone call or email six months later saying something like "I finally paged through that cookbook you gave me and OH MY GOD it is SO GREAT." Which is basically the goal in any gift-giving scenario, no?

• Bill Daley pairs up some wines with one of our favorites — beef stroganoff — which, like popcorn, is totally having a day today, since it turned up not only here but also on one of our favorites, Closet Cooking. One of Daley's experts recalls a pairing of stroganoff with a bottle of 1961 Chateauneuf-du-Pape, but since we don't have hundreds of dollars lying around, we prefer the more accessible options presented: a California pinot noir, an Australian rosé, a sugary Alsatian riesling or gewurztraminer. Much more in our price range.

[Photo of beef stroganoff via Closet Cooking]

• We retract our earlier eyebrow-raise over David Tamarkin's official review of Randy Zweiban's Province — now that Pat Bruno has also visited, we suppose we'll bow to the consensus. And this is certainly not a knock on Province, but holy goodness Bruno's review is so boring. He professes deep love for the restaurant — everything he samples is a hit — but slogging through paragraph after paragraph of tepidly measured praise is just bleh. Maybe it's his overreliance on the passive voice. "This was good. This other dish was also good. Additionally, another good dish was tried." ACTIVE VOICE. IT IS YOUR FRIEND. Also, synonyms for "dishes"!

• As long as we are wearing our Cranky Hat — and before any of you loyal readers ask us when we are not wearing our Cranky Hat, please know that our Cranky Hat is mutually exclusive with our Extremely Excited Hat and our Stalking The Alinea Staff Hat. So yes, we demonstrably are sometimes not wearing our Cranky Hat — anyway, as long as we are wearing our Cranky Hat, we are curious why Bruno (or his editors!) saw fit to put quotes around the word "joint" in the headline of his roundup of sub sandwich shops. "Joint" is not quoted when it is used within the article. If it were not quoted in the headline we would not mistakenly believe that the article was about marijuana rolled in paper or a point of connection between two bones, no more than we would expect that the word "subs" referred to underwater boats or Mrs. McDonnell during 7th period. But no matter. Bruno lists his five favorites for "a fine sub sandwich" and — Mike Nagrant probably saw this coming — every single one of them is an Italian sandwich shop.

Bonus! If you email Bruno your picks for your favorite sub shop, two people chosen at random will win a copy of his Chicago-style pizza cookbook, first published before we were out of diapers!

[Photo: A sub at Bari, one of Bruno's picks, via onlyonelifecd's Flickr

Two big ol' honkin reviews from our Mike pals — Sula at the Reader and Nagrant at NewCity. What is up, cuban sandwiches and noodles?

• Sula delves in to the curious ethnic mashup that is Cafecito: insane Cuban sandwiches made at the hands of Philip Ghantous, a Lebanese-American who grew up in Peoria. (In our minds, this is like when our Egyptian-Palestinian boyfriend who grew up in New Jersey microwaves us a perfect Italian pizza, except significantly more awesome). Sula spends some time outlining Ghantous's cred for helming a decidedly un-Middle-Eastern kitchen, and this gets us thinking about the very notion of ethnic kitchen cred in the first place. As is revealed by Ghantous's academic dissection of his cubano creation process ("How big do you want to make it...Do you want to kill somebody? Do you want them to enjoy it? The most important thing to me is you want it be warm on the inside. Because a lot of these places are good, but they’re not warm. Very rare is it hot throughout, the cheese melted. When it is, that’s when all the flavors come together. That’s why you want that mojo in there. You don’t want to just go off the mustard and the cheese and the juice from the pickle—you want the mojo.”), the key to authenticity isn't a matter of blood — it's just a matter of craft and passion.

• Nagrant's review of Noodles by Takashi, in the Macy's State Street haute food court, begins with a freaking awesome trip down Food Writer Memory Lane, as we learn that the young Mikey N. really really deeply desired one of those Ralph Lauren Bear Sweaters that were all the rage back in the pre-internet days. But that's just preface to the revelation that is Noodles by Takashi — a "pop-Asian" counter with a menu awfully similar enough to Urban Belly's. And while the pork belly in Takashi's ramen isn't quite as fantastic as that in Urban Belly's, the noodles are better and so's the price — $9 for a bowl, rather than UB's $13. Nagrant concludes his review by calling himself a label-whore, which we think is almost as adorable as the mental image of him in the bear sweater.

[Photo: Ramen at Noodles by Takashi, via jhritz's Flickr]

super-mega bonus points to whoever knows what song lyrics we are referencing in our post title! No googling!

• Interesting: Province has been open for exactly one month and five days. And Tamarkin is already on the scene with an official review. Fortunately for everyone involved, it's a good one: The food is across the board delicious, and — in Tamarkin's words — "when a dish disappoints it’s not because it’s bad, but because it can’t compete with the more aggressive food on the table." That's the opposite of damning with faint praise. It's ... praising with faint damnation?

• Tamarkin and Shouse, kind souls that they are, have rounded up a septalogue of do-gooder foodie gifts. From charity cupcakes from Bleeding Heart Bakery to a meal subscription at First Slice that also provides meals to needy Chicago families, there's a lot of good to go around.

• Wondering what chefs are doing to riff on the ol' Thanksgiving classics? Judy Sutton Taylor knows: there's Thanksgiving In A Sandwich at The Goddess & Grocer (that's turkey, gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce, lettuce, and sage mayo on sourdough — we'd call it The Morning After); there's a cranberry sazerac at the bar at Big Jones; and M. Henry offers some tantalizing pumpkin empanadas.

[Photo: Bocadillos at Province. Photo by Laurie Proffitt Photography]

For a recap of how we feel about pre-Thanksgiving food journalism, please click here.

• Leah A. Zeldes enumerates the various ways one can cook a turkey. There's a chart involved, and we sincerely hope it looks better in the paper edition of the S-T, because this is a less-than-aesthetically fulfilling visual experience.

• Lisa Donovan tells the history of the famous Campbell's green been casserole. No joke: it was invented by a woman named Dorcas. We know that is a biblical name but still. Giggle.

• Sue Ontiveros wishes us to know that the California Walnut Board is sponsoring an initiative to get people to eat healthier this holiday season. Betcha that involves some walnuts, huh?

• Janet Rausa Fuller corrals a gravy-makin' expert for the secret to smoothness. Turns out it is: straining.

• A guy named Jonathan Miller makes his own protein bars, and has turned that into a business.

• Chef John Caputo of A Mano has his grandmother's lasagna on the menu.

It's not that we hate Thanksgiving — we don't, we absolutely completely don't. Thanksgiving is, in fact, our absolute all-time favorite holiday, being as it is devoid of political, religious, or romantic overtones and instead focusing all its holiday powers on the consumption of food. Much of which is covered in delicious, delicious gravy.

But what we do hate is Thanksgiving coverage. We realize that it is impossible, in this day and age, to be a food-related media outlet that does not immediately do the journalistic equivalent of shouting "how high!?" at the merest mention of locavorism, bacon, or Top Chef. And we understand that thematic holiday eating — especially when the entirety of the holiday is eating — is a welcome injection of topical focus for the otherwise freewheeling and trend-driven world of food writing. You can pre-write your Thanksgiving articles months ahead of time — if not years — and then sit back and watch as your little bit of Thanksgiving How To (make your own turducken / de-lump your gravy / inject some ethnic flair to the table decor / not strangle your vegan in-laws) trickles into the stream that joins other streams that forms the massive Thanksgiving How To ocean, all of it culminating in a gestalt of turkey puns and Butterball white noise that renders impossible the likelihood that any one particular journalistic droplet could stand out for its angle, wit, or helpfulness. Not a chance. It's all been done.

None of this is to knock the valiant efforts of our biffles over at the Tribune. They are required by law to commit today's food section in its entirety to pre-Thanksgiving coverage, so it is not their fault. Though we are curious who, specifically, was in charge of calling the section "Holidaily."

• Bill Daley kicks off the centerpiece suite of articles, a sort of less-horrible-Sandra-Lee take on Thanksgiving that relies on precooked purchased foods to round out a homemade turkey. We have absolutely no problem with this as a technique (in fact, we don't see how anyone who regularly eats at restaurants can wrinkle their nose at outsourcing the creamed spinach), and are further swayed by the fact that when we were at Whole Foods recently, it was in fact significantly cheaper to buy pre-chopped onions than it was to buy the whole onions themselves.

• JenMarie Brownson goes the "Traditions With A Twist" route. No, that is actually the title of her article. You don't even need to read it now.

• Renée Enna finds herself on the compare-contrast beat: a maple syrup roundup (winner: Maple Grove Farms) and an alternative parts of the turkey price check (Jennie-O Turkey Store Lean Turkey & Gravy frozen oven-ready entree: 32 ounces, $5.99 ).

• Bill Daley again (HoliDaley?), recommending Riesling as the perfect pairing for a Thanksgiving table. On a related note, we've noticed a particular spate of Thanksgiving wine articles this season. Are there actually more this year, or are we simply noticing more of them because we have finally reached a point in our young adulthood at which we feel unembarrassed to be seen reading a wine article?

• If all else fails, call someone who cares.

[Photo: A turkey float from the '05 Thanksgiving parade, via →lulu←'s Flickr]

Now that we're safely ensconced in the chilly, fickle embrace of mid-November, everyone seems to have gotten it into their heads that it's roundup time! Since we round things up for a living, and as such have to round up the roundups, the meta just builds and builds and unless we handle the situation very delicately we are liable to find ourselves with a wholesale existential crisis on our hands.

So be cautioned, gentle readers: What you are about to read is a recap of the Chicago Reader's' Food Issue. It has been attempted by a trained professional — do not try this at home. And if you do, don't come crying to us.

• You know in the movie Almost Famous, when the kid turns in his story to Rolling Stone and it opens with him on the airplane in a lightning storm about to die, and you are sitting in the audience just thinking "oh my god, that is such an awesome opener I almost cannot handle it"? Mike Sula takes a cue from that in the opening of his thoughtful essay on The Whole Hog Project, except that instead of being in an airplane in a lightning storm, he chokes on a pork rind in the car on the way to a slaughterhouse. It's a fitting metaphor for the overall Whole Hog Project experience — Sula describes the mulefoots as "friendly, intelligent, beautiful young creatures," but the ironic fact remains that the best way to revitalize their dying breed is by raising them to be slaughtered.

The three pigs whose death Sula witnesses eventually make their way to the table — they're the centerpiece of a six-course, multi-chef dinner hosted by Blackbird, where we have the sneaking suspicion that much of the existential, stare-into-the-face-of-death slaughterhouse drama that Sula illustrates in the middle section of his article was lost on most of the diners. There's an accompanying slideshow, of which several images made our stomach churn — in an ethically aware, morally ambiguous, must-look-in-order-to-be-worthy-to-eat-this kind of way.

• Some of the chefs who participated in the Whole Hog Dinner also contributed their recipes. There's Green apple jam with celery oil from Jason Hammel of Lula Cafe, crepinettes from Paul Virant of Vie, and porchetta from Brian Huston of The Publican.

• Departing from the pig track, Martha Bayne corrals some of Chicago's top culinary talents and ask them where they eat, and it's hilariously incestuous, with everyone naming everyone else's restaurants. Sometimes we wonder if there was no food in Chicago at all until The Publican and Urban Belly opened, and we all just gasped desperately for nutrients in the air, and drank the brackish waters of Lake Michigan.

• Sula and the entire Reader review team compile the reviews of their favorite new restaurants of 2008, and it's an eclectic bunch: Birrieria Zaragoza, Cafecito, L2O, Mado, Masouleh, Sixteen, Takashi, and Viaggio. Honorable mentions, listed online but not in the print edition, are a much more predictable set: The Bristol, Duchamp, Veerasway, Perennial, among others.

[Photo: Jason Hammel's pork belly from the mulefoot dinner, via the Reader]

• Whoa, it is totally Gender Relations Week in the world of Chicago's newspapers — first the Sun-Times pubs this roundup of women chefs yesterday, and in today's Trib Phil Vettel dissects various rules of dining in (and serving) co-ed groups. Inspired by a sommelier who sacrificed efficiency for chivalry, Vettel looks into the current status of a number of restaurant-dining gender dictates. Among them is our personal favorite, menus without prices, which we sincerely believe should make a comeback, thus destroying one of our all-time pet peeves: dining companions who order the second-cheapest thing on the menu.

Speaking of our own personal experience with gendered dining, last night we were at an extremely fancy dinner with Our Boyfriend, and we were served separate desserts — one for the gentleman, and one for the lady. Vettel doesn't touch on this issue, but we don't mind that much because our dessert completely kicked the ass of Our Boyfriend's.

• Somehow Vettel found the time, amidst all the round-tabling and the gender-norm-dismantling, to review not one but two restaurants this week.

First up: Ajasteak, the Asian-inspired steakhouse inside the Dana hotel. Vettel balks a little at the prices for Kobe (priced by the ounce), a little less for American Wagyu, and finally tucks in on some "good old USDA prime" ribeye. He's smitten with the pork chop, the creme brulee, and the dunkable cookies-and-milk dessert, and loves the un-steakhouse-like decor. Bonus: Vettel reveals that he is a Desperately Seeking Susan fan!

And second, way on the other side of the steakhouse spectrum, there's Fleming's Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar. It's one in a national chain of 55, but the space is nonetheless beautiful. Again Vettel goes for the ribeye (he has something in common with Ray's mom!) (Yes that was another Achewood reference, we know), and loves it. On the downside, there's a "drastically overcooked" lamb chop. On the upside, everything else gets a rave — except the molten chocolate cake, which gets a yawn and a grudging thumbs up, because Mister Vettel has had plenty of lava cakes in his life, thank you very much.

• OH GOD IT IS MORE VETTEL. Dude, do you ever sleep? All we do is write a freaking blog and by 3pm each day we are already basically ready to die. How do you write so much legitimate print journalism each week? (In our mind we imagine writing things for print is vastly more taxing than prose of the internet variety.) Anyhoodle, Phil counterpoints his Ladies' Night bit (above) with a rundown of the "Man Cave" at the Brick House Tavern in Downer's Grove. And here is the thing: We got this press release too, and we were like delete. But Phil decides to check the place out, and discovers that it is a bar with lots of TVs showing sports, an all-female staff that is scantily clad, lots of meat on the menu, and the servers will sit down and chat with you for a while. We are going to avoid creative rhetoric here and just point out that that sounds exactly like a strip club, except without the pasties.

[Image via Achewood]

Hangover edition! Let's pretend it's yesterday afternoon, and you're reading this as we put it up on time.

• Bill Daley continues his oenophiliac world tour along the 45th parallel with a stop somewhere less unexpected than China or the Russian steppes: Oregon's Willamette valley. The Willamette is a recent but established contender in the "let's grow French grapes outside of France!" school of winemaking, churning out pinot noirs (pinots noir?) by the bucket. Pop quiz: How surprising is it that hippie/hipster winemakers in Oregon talk a lot about climate change? Answer: not remotely!

• Susan Taylor profiles Sweet Miss Giving's, a bakery operated by Chicago House that provides employment to homeless and disabled Chicagoans. They don't have a storefront, but orders can be made online. Meanwhile, our hearts are swelling with compassion and happiness, which is kind of an unfamiliar experience over here.

• Augh, more the world's most boring food expo. Poor Janet Helm. We're sure that this was actually not as horrible an experience as all that, but probiotics and omega-3s? Tell it to Gwyneth Paltrow, and pass the bacon.

• Joe Gray does a Q&A with Cheftestant Radhika (raise your hands if you watched the premiere last night!) Rad apparently lurves her lobster: when Gray asks her what's best on the menu at Between, she answers "curried lobster bisque, macadamia-encrusted lobster cakes and a warm lobster salad."

• Heather Lally has some coffee with the Meinls, pere et fils, to discuss the finer points of joe. The conversation here is "edited for space," and we are dying to know what was left on the cutting room floor.

[Photo: cupcakes from Sweet Miss Giving's, via their website]

Hello hello, Chicago Sun-Times. How is your Wednesday going?

• Sandy Thorn Clark suggests — gasp! — Thanksgiving without the turkey. We personally are firm members of the everything-but camp, liking to fill our plates with sides and stuffing. In fact, for the last three years have celebrated Thanksgiving without the whole bird in the center of the table (we've done capon, brisket, and [cheating a little] turkey breast pinwheeled with sausage, pancetta, and rosemary). Molly Harrison of Green Zebra weighs in with her suggestions for a meatless Thanksgiving.

• Dave Hoekstra profiles Michael Vaughn. Do you know who that is? You should, because he is the freaking Ringling Bros Circus Chef. Who cooks his meals on a train car. And he got the job how? Oh, he ran away from home as a kid. TO JOIN THE CIRCUS. AS A CHEF. We're flipping out a little with the awesomeness of this — the sheer Tim Burton/Roald Dahl-esqueness of the scenario of being the dining car cook for a circus train. Detracting from the article's super-awesomeness is this slightly odd quote: "Challenges of diversity on the Pie Car are similar to running a diner in Manhattan. There are at least 10 ethnic groups in the circus troupe." Um. Can individuals only eat food from their own ethnicity?

• Our Favorite Sun-Times Reporter Ever, Lisa Donovan, checks out the cemitas at Cemitas Pueblo — the crispy, avocado-y sandwiches are freaking delicious.

• Misha Davenport sits down with last season's Top Chef winner, Stephanie Izard, to talk shop. Izard's "Mediterranean-inspired gastropub" is still in the planning stages — she's scouting locations and refining the menu. And of course everything will be locally sourced, because that is basically the rule for every single new high-profile gastropub-esque restaurant.

• Wahoo! The Goose Island Brew Pub on Clybourn isn't closing!

• Stacy Warden of Centerstage swings back at the largely male Chicago celeb-chef scene (think Tramonto, Bayless, Achatz, Trotter) with a rundown of some toques who run on estrogen: Judy Contino of Bittersweet and Carrie Nahabedian of Naha, among others (where's Gale Gand?). We tend to bristle at these sort of "Hey! Us too!" articles that profile individuals of a less-represented gender or ethnicity, since it's hard for them not to strike a condescending tone. But we won't get into a long screed on feminism and diminished expectations on this blog. Instead, we'll just turn the mic over to Mindy Segal, who "believes that it's especially important in a male-dominated industry to create opportunities for women, but says the real key to culinary success is "putting your nose to the grindstone."

[Photo: Mushrooms at Green Zebra, via twobythree's Flickr]

The Reader has three reviews this week! Three! We are so excited we can barely keep ourselves seated to type this up.

• Mike Sula visits The Bristol, where he finds himself helpless in the face of Scotch Olives (olives encased in pork sausage, then deep-fried) and applauds the restaurant's dedication to serving "the fifth quarter and other uncommon proteins" (band name!). For all its various successes, there are areas in which the kitchen shows incongruous timidity in flavoring the food. Still, it's a strong enough showing that Sula wants to see a gastropub like it on every corner, or at least in every neighborhood.

• 90 Miles Cuban Cafe has gotten a whole lot of media attention, and the Reader's no exception. Sula shows up to the inconsistent performer (Dolinsky finds their cubano out-of-whack, Shouse , Nagrant thought everything was undersalted) and does it a solid: The sandwich-heavy menu holds up to scrutiny, especially the less-ubiquitous-than-the-cubano offerings like guava and cheese or lechon with plantains. The sandwiches are a little overstuffed, though — a good thing when you want a seven-inch-tall pastrami on rye, not such a good thing when you want a harmonious, subtle balance of lechon, pickles, and melted cheese.

• Anne Spiselman visits Jaipur. No, not the city — the Indian restaurant on Clybourn. You'd think that being across the street from high-profile Indian restaurant Veerasway would help them out (the Diamond District Principle — similar business cluster together, increasing quality and sales for everyone), but they fall woefully flat. Yawn-worthy entrees, underspiced and unevenly cooked, combine with subpar service for an overall cruddy experience. Good naan, but what's the point after everything else?

Good Beer, Broiled Eel, and Foot-On Chicken [Reader]

[Photo: Meat encased in carbohydrates at 90 miles (bottom to top: yucca frita, cubano, ropa vieja sandwich) via LTHForum]

Pat Bruno reviews Clarendon Hills' Soul this week, and after a quick glance up and down the article we actually tore ourselves away from the computer monitor to call the Sun-Times. We wanted to inquire about how many days transpire between when Pat Bruno submits his columns and when they actually run in the paper, but — lingering effects of Obamamania? — no one answered any of the numbers we dialed.

Here's the thing: a recent review from Phil Vettel made much of pastry whiz Stephanie Prida, who has since moved on to one sixtyblue. And Bruno raves about the desserts — both in execution and in concept — without any indication of whether his visit occurred prior or post October 28, the termination of the Prida era at Soul.

Not mentioning Prida's departure is something we could chalk up to journalistic laxity — maybe he filed the article two weeks ago and is of the disposition that there's no looking back, or maybe he visited Soul two days ago and filed the article yesterday and didn't feel the need to mention a former pastry chef whose creations he didn't consume. But the review also, strangely, doesn't mention executive chef Karen Nicholas, whose refined-Southern cuisine doesn't so much influence the menu as define it. Instead, Bruno namechecks restaurateurs Howard Davis and Bill Kim as the masterminds behind his (incredibly delicious) meal. We guarantee that if Bruno had a spectacular meal at, say, L2O, he would be giving credit to Laurent Gras, not to Rich Melman. So we wonder what's afoot with this snub of Nicholas's formidable kitchen talents.

Journalistic idiosyncracies aside, Bruno's a big fan of Soul — the only flaw are some overly dry potatoes in a potato-and-sorrel salad — and he's a fan of the service, the atmosphere, and (blessed relief for the old guy) the volume. So that's great for Soul, but we wish he'd given credit where credit's due.

Sweet Soul [S-T]

[Photo: Blackened walleye at Soul, via LTHForum]

(An aside: Anyone know what's happened to Thomas Witom and his suburban beat? Surely he can't have eaten at every faux-French and redsauce Italian family-style that the Western Suburbs have to offer...)

• Monica Eng offers herself up in the name of science, as she tasted a few dozen of Chicago's finest (and not-so-finest) veggie burgers. The results of her epic quest are chronicled here — the four overall winners hail from Grand Lux Cafe, The Counter, Ed Debevic's, and Highland Park's Michael's Chicago Style Red Hots. Though there's a long list of runners-up by category, she plays nice and doesn't reveal the losers.

• Phil Vettel hands over two stars to chef Dan Nguyen's Viet Bistro, a "cute and comfortable" restaurant on West Devon that delivers intensely flavorful Vietnamese food to an incongruously empty dining room. Vettel wants to put asses in chairs, though, and makes a strong case for it with a laundry list of dishes like catfish in a clay pot with a caramel-based sauce, banh tom (fried sweet-potato-and-shrimp cakes), and classic pho. Desserts aren't made in-house, but who comes to a Vietnamese restaurant for dessert?

• Joe Gray files for Cheap Eats on Rocks Lakeview, an offshoot of the Rocks in Lincoln Park. Here's what you need to know: It's a sports bar, and they serve sports bar food — tacos, wings, mini corn dogs. Doesn't sound like anything's exceptional, but it's a cut above average.

• Feeling unintelligent in the beer department? (Beer is the new cupcakes is the new bacon, or so we hear.) Tony Regan lines up local bars where you can order flights of beer — Jack's Tap, The Yardhouse, and D4 Irish Pub & Cafe will all let you order multiple mini-glasses in one go.

[Photo: the veggie burger at Dunlays On Clark, which Eng qualified as "grainy but great," via lindsaygrrrl's Flickr]

• With a week to go until the premiere of Top Chef, David Tamarkin kicks things into high gear with an interview with Chicago's own Radhika Desai, chef at Between Boutique Cafe & Lounge and a favorite on the upcoming season of the Bravo show. As Tamarkin notes in the extended interview (on TOC's blog), "we're all Bravo's bitches now" — even though the interview adheres strictly to PR-approved topics and reveals absolutely nothing juicy, we still lapped up every single word.

• Heather Shouse drops the very first official review of Farmerie 58 OKAY PEOPLE we are not going to finish this because this just happened. Suffice to say we think it would make an interesting article for Shouse to revisit in a month and re-review.

• David Tamarkin, meanwhile, delivers a review of Detroit's famous Steve's Deli, newly transplanted to Chicago, and give us a second here as we wait to see if we get an email informing us that Steve is quitting his job. ... Okay. We're good. Tamarkin doesn't love the chicken broth, or the bagels, but they are mere vehicles for the conveyance of perfection in the form of perfect fluffy matzoh balls and ideally smoked fish, respectively, so who cares? Also, Martha Williams's accompanying photograph is beautiful enough that we would hang it on our wall.

• The TOC team kicks off their special Dessert Issue section with a little wordplay: "They’re the sultans of sugar. The demigods of desserts. The overlords of…okay, you get the picture." THAT IS NOT COOL, Julia, Heather, and David. You cannot leave us hanging like that. What is the O-word that you were going to fill that ellipsis with? We asked various folks via AIM and got suggestions like "i can literally only think of 'oreo' and 'orgeat'" and "oatmeal raisin cookie?" and "orange sherbert?" and NONE OF THOSE ARE GOOD CHOICES. Is this an Obama reference?

Anyway, there is an intense and massive breakdown of various desserts — cannoli, gelato, cake, candy, pie, cookies, chocolate, nostalgic desserts, seasonal desserts, and nontraditional savory sweets — each with an extended profile of a local restaurant, bakery, or individual who does that dessert right. Like Lisa Alexander, cookie baker, whose Berry White (oatmeal-blueberry-cranberry-white chocolate) is both delicious, and named after Barry White. Or Tim Dahl, Blackbird's pastry chef who somehow managed to turn pretzels, mustard, and beer into a palatable —nay, delicious — dessert.

[Photo: A dessert at Blackbird of veal sweetbreads, among other things, via stu spivack's Flickr]

Y'all. The Sun-Times is insanely on point today. Seriously, this is a majestic collection of midweek food articles. We are intensely impressed by the work of whoever the hell is in charge of this section this week. (Features Editor Amanda Barrett? Should we send the flowers to you?)

• Sandy Thorn Clarke kicks things off with a discussion of buzz — that most elusive, most desired of qualities in a newly-opened restaurant. We're tempted to assign this article as required reading to anyone who asks us "so what is it that you actually do all day?" (hi, Mom!) Various experts weigh in on what, exactly, buzz is: Rich Melman thinks it's questioning whether you'll be able to get in (we disagree), whereas the Dolinskster gives a lot of credit to the word-of-mouth effect of blogs. Also, Melman offers R.J. Grunt's as an example of a restaurant that's kept its buzz going since it opened in 1971. And that noise you just heard was our head exploding as we tried to hold in our snorting laughter.

It's also worth noting the sidebar, listing the current "Restaurant A-List," which cites as the current buzz crop L.2O, The Publican, and Urban Belly, all of which totally deserve the categorization. And then also includes Sixteen and Hub 51 — two widely-panned restaurants that, well, no one really cares about anymore. Could it be that their owner/managers were interviewed in the story? MAYBE. WHO KNOWS.

• Speaking of buzz! Seanan Forbes goes to NYC to watch Alinea chef Grant Achatz lead a seminar on aromas as part of the Gourmet Institute. He's a mad dictator-meets-enthusiastic teenage science nerd, all with his characteristic charm. Sidebar shouts out Alinea At Home, which makes us happy because we are sort of obsessed with Carol Blymire.

• Speaking of being sort of obsessed! Mike Nagrant, the Ludicrously Prolific One, tells the tale of the Saccameno family, who pull astonishing hours at their Italian Superior Bakery on S. Western Ave — Angelo Sr. comes in at 1:30am to give a full shift before going to his day job at the Merc. Holy chronic fatigue syndrome, Batman! But seriously, folks, the bakery has been in the family for just under a century, and they've even got the hottie mchotterson 24-year-old sons involved. Gotta love a serious-looking man holding a peel.

• Speaking of hearts beating faster! Lisa Donovan puts her coronary health on the line to try the country-fried bacon at Risque Cafe, which is served with a side of country gravy [for those of you keeping score at home, that's (1) bacon, (2) dipped in egg, (3) deep-fried (4) in breading, served with (5) gravy that's made out of (6) bacon fat]. If you want to keep it simple, she also suggests the monthly "bottomless bacon bowl" at Chinaski's.

• Speaking of hot meat! Susan Maddox, this week's guest chef columnist, runs a restaurant called Le Titi de Paris and her article is entitled "Any day is a good day for stuffing," and we are just going to leave those two facts there for you to think about.

[Photo: The salmon at L2O, via suzi edwards' Flickr]

The centerpiece of the food section in today's Tribune is the reveal of the 10 winners of the 2008 Good Eating Awards — a selection of "those who are making a difference in Chicago's food and beverage world" as culled from dozens of nominations by the Good Eating team. Unlike many annual awards, we've always felt that the Trib's Good Eating Awards (the Geets?) are admirably unswayed by PR and trendiness. While they've honored obvious choices like Grant Achatz and Rick Tramonto, they're also willing to look beyond the usual crop of boldface chefs and restaurateurs — in past years they've shined the spotlight on folks like Gary Wiviott (for his invaluable work launching LTHForum), Alpana Singh (Lettuce Entertain You's masterful wine director), and Lloyd Nichols (of the greenmarket-ubiquitous Nichols Farm).

This year's honorees are no less deserving — nd they're all over the map. Our favorites: Maria Rago, an eating disorders counselor who runs a program in which her patients cook for and eat with residents of homeless shelters. Darlene Austin, a culinary arts teacher with Chicago Public Schools. Rodney Alex, whose Juicy Wine Company has turned most Chicagoans' notion of a wine store on its ear. Ina Pinkney, the crazy-awesome-opinionated-did-we-mention-crazy proprietor of Ina's, who is basically who we want to be when we grow up.

Also in today's Trib:

• Now that the weather's crisp, our thoughts turn to creamy soup. Enter Bill Daley with advice on pairing whites with hearty chowders. It sounds like sweetness is the key to cutting through the cream — he recommends viogniers, pinot gris, and rieslings, among others.

• JeanMarie Brownson reworks the classic Moroccan bestilla — a.k.a. pigeon pie — with a slightly more accessible foundation of chicken, plus suggestions for throwing a full Moroccan feast.

• Emily Nunn wants a sandwich. Specifically, pan bagnat — a Nicoise salad in portable form. She suggests you weight down the sandwich with heavy pots and cans. We prefer (no, seriously) to wrap it in lots of plastic wrap and give it to someone to sit on. Someone who has not eaten any legumes recently.

[Photo: Eggs at Ina's, via LStolpman/Chicagoist]

The election is everywhere. There's basically no other news today. In fact, we imagine that there are only, like, four of you reading today because everyone else has their eyeballs surgically attached to CNN.com.

Relax! It's not even lunchtime! In the meantime, sate your obsessive curiosity by checking out party guides from the Tribune, Chicago Foodies, Time Out Chicago, Time Out Chicago again, and 312 Dining Diva. Unless, of course, you are one of the million who will be in Grant Park, in which case have we mentioned how attractive you have been looking lately? And how smart and engagingly witty we find you?

For our part, we will be spending this evening at home, as the Sun-Times suggests, with the added detail that we will be huddled under a blanket, afraid to look at the TV for fear of jinxing it.

[Photo: the Obama rally in Denver, which will be dwarfed by tonight's extravaganza, via CruxPhotography's Flickr]

We just spent a merry few minutes on The Google trying to figure out exactly how old Pat Bruno is. Why? We're actually kind of struck by the levels of old-man snark that Bruno attains in this piece. For starters, the headline of his review of The Bristol actually contains the phrase "noise and prices too high." You might as well ask the restaurant to get off your lawn, Pasquale. And he continues his streak of hating on communal dining, suggesting that the Bristol team replace their multi-party eight-tops with a handful of two-seaters, and he really doesn't like the way the small places are priced. Get a dose of this rage:

there is the elephant in the room known as cost vs. value. It has to do with that concept known as "small plates" and "sharing."

Elsewhere in the Sun-Times, Jennifer Olvera rounds up twenty-two different restaurants that have orange foods on their menu. Oh and in the letters section, a reader condemns Bruno for panning 200 East Supper Club, wondering "How could you betray one of your own (Italian)?" How indeed, Pat?!

[Photo: the $16 prawns at The Bristol]

• It was all the way back in late July that Duchamp opened, and about a month later we a review from TOC, with a Reader review arriving a month after that. And now a month later, Phil Vettel is finally settling in for his surrealism-inspired restaurant review. Again, we note with some eyebrow-arching that he is both the latest-arriving and most-forgiving of the reviews out so far, and we wonder whether there is some causation (is the kitchen better? the service more polished?) or just correlation (is Vettel just lazy on the openings and overly forgiving?). Nonetheless, this is a good restaurant to be reviewing right about now: The food is on-trend, with bacon and reimagined comfort food to be found everywhere. And the prices are on-trend, with entrees topping out under $20. Vettel hands the place two stars, but — like Sula at the Reader — finds the seating lacking: apparently his butt is too big to fit in the chairs. NOT A JOKE. Yet hilarious!

• Vettel's butt size is probably not helped by the shortrib pizza at Mercat a la Planxa.

• Renee Enna has been landing mucho bylines lately, which is pleasing to us thus far in large part because her name has lots of consecutive letters, and that is fun for us to type (of the nine letters in her name, four are Es!). She's on the Cheap Eats beat, heading out to Palatine for the amusingly named Fusion Land (1939 Plum Grove Rd., Palatine; 847 705 7740). The menu isn't fusion in the haute sense — just one item, the teriyaki burger, mixes cultures on the same plate — but rather offers a melange of Japanese and American fast-food-esque options. Enna falls for the high-quality maki and udon, and suggests a rename: "Stick With the Japanese Menu Land." Three forks out of four.

• Jennifer Day suggests scary food to be found at Chicago restaurants, with a spooky focus honing in on Vampire Bait (cubed pork blood tossed with noodles and ground pork in curry broth at Sticky Rice), the death-defying Country Fried Bacon at Risque Cafe, and The Bristol's ELT (eel, lettuce, and tomato), which makes the grade as a "sea monster." Really? Sea monsters qualify for Halloween-spooky now? Kids these days need to get the hell off our lawn.

[Photo: Risque Cafe's country-fried bacon, via Chuck Sudo at Chicagoist]

• Complete waste of space Denise O'Neal is — surprise! — completely wasting space with her recap/profile of C-House (which the Sun-Times' own Pat Bruno reviewed back in July. Absolutely no new information is imparted to the reader by Denise's writeup, which sketches chef Marcus Samuelsson's biography and prattles of talking points about the menu that sound like they're straight from a PR blast. Who signs this woman's paychecks? Useful journalism fail.

• On the sunnier side of things, our favorite Sun-Times writer, Lisa Donovan, opens her profile of the candy Turkish Delight with a Madonna reference. Yesss! The only thing that would make this profile of the supersweet jellied goodness any better would be a shout out to Edmund and the White Queen from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Lisa Donovan is our new Sun-Times crush.

• Sue Ontiveros did some investigative journalism into the scandalous world of walnut harvesting. We exaggerate a tidge, but did you know that they actually shake the trees to harvest the nuts? With a special shaking machine!? OMG we love technology sooooo much.

• The S-T eschews the pre-Halloween coverage (for today, at least) in favor of getting its readers psyched up for their election night parties. Sandy Thorn Clark offers tips on graciously hosting what is sure to be a high-blood-pressure evening, with recipes like the Obama Family's Chili and McCain's Ribs with a Rub. No word on whether the recipes are janked from the Food Network.

[Photo: tons of Turkish Delight, via cutxpaste's Flickr]

• Happy pre-Halloween! The Trib is celebrating by eating its vegetables: Martian invasion kohlrabi soup, tropical eyeball milkshakes... the usual. The key here is that the food looks horrific, but tastes just fine. Here's an article we'd like to see: Food that looks completely normal, but tastes like ZOMBIE VAMPIRES.

• Janet Helm took one for the team and attended the American Dietetic Association's Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo. If your eyes glazed over reading that sentence, then you know what it was like for us to read the first paragraph of this article. It's not Janet's fault — that is the most boring-sounding conference in the history of McCormick Place.

• Okay, something we can get behind: Root beer. Zak Stambor explores the lore of the uniquely American soft drink and compare/contrasts a number of artisan brews: from the brand developed by Gale Gand to the in-house brews from Berghoff and Goose Island, the range of flavors and intensity is staggering. And we're craving a glass of the stuff right now.

[Photo: Kohlrabi (yeah, it totally looks alien actually) via lawrencefarmersmarket's Flickr]

The number of blog reviews that we face each week has grown. Like, hugely. Like, what used to be five to ten is now thirty to fifty, sometimes nearing a hundred, and even the edited version that we give to you every week is so long that people go out of their way to email us about how freaking annoying it is to slog through, and that makes us feel bad because seriously, people, we are just trying to do our job here.

So this week, we'll be experimenting with a daily roundup of the blog reviews that show up on our radar. This post will be the last of the previous-seven-days lists, so slog through it with a bittersweet smile on your face, humming some kind of end-of-an-era song (we are partial to Vitamin C's Graduation (Friends Forever)).

As always, if you know of a Chicago restaurant blog that you don't think we're reading, let us know. And if you write a blog that isn't necessarily food-related, but you review something anyway, let us know about that, too.

• Chuck Sudo of Chicagoist actually submits to the call of Risque Cafe's country-fried bacon. So far as we know, he has not died of a coronary. Yet.

• One of the millions of NBC5 Street Team bloggers treks out to Kanye's Fatburger out in Orland. We're inclined to discount this review because all parties involved ordered turkeyburgers. Which are not real burgers.

• It's all donuts and apple pie, all the time at Edwards Apple Orchard, near Rockford. Robyn Nisi at Drive Thru makes our mouths water at the thought.

• The indefatigable Matt B of Chicago Traveler hits up Skewerz. Yucca fries with banana ketchup, people.

• The Chicago Burger Project files a report on Hopleaf, despite not ordering or consuming any actual burgers. Scandal? Scandal!

• Mike Nagrant visits Real Tenochtitlan on Serious Eats' dime, uses gnawed-at bones as a vehicle for sopping up the mole. It's that good.

• Hungry Mag presents the newly-opened Steve's Deli in bullet form: YES The corned beef is cut against the grain, NO it will never replace Manny's.

• Bridget and Tammy of Chicago Bites go canine at Hot Doug's, where the duck fat fries entirely fail to make up for the ridonk line.

• Chicago Gluttons calls us out on our totally failed attempts at predicting an opening date for The Publican, but their review more than makes up for it: "Neat, loud as hell, elegant at times, moderate bling, and def all business." Pictures are droolworthy.

• Battle of the under-the-radar burgers: Mike Gebert goes to Western Springs for the off-menu, Friday-night-only burger at Vie, while KingT reveals that his favorite meat-on-a-bun comes courtesy That's-A-Burger, down South Shore way.

• And last but most certainly not least, Chuck Sudo was at last night's Mulefoot dinner, and his pictures do a whole hell of a lot of talking.

[Photo: Head cheese ravioli from the Blackfoot dinner, via Chicagoist]

Not too much today from those crazy kids at TOC. They must be working overtime on their much-ballyhooed Sex Issue (have you taken the sex survey yet? You get bonus points if your most memorable sexual experience involves food. You get double bonus points if you send David Tamarkin a picture directly.) (We made that last part up).

• Bianca Jarvis wins the award for Best Headline Pun 2008 with "Umami Dearest," a breakdown of authentic Japanese food — you know, the stuff that leaves California rolls and spicy tuna lying in the dust. Most of the restaurants on her list are in the 'burbs, but Lincoln Park's Itto Sushi gets the nod for best raw fish, while Sunshine Cafe on Clark St. serves up delicious homestyle Japanese without a sushi roll in sight. Other highlights include shabu-shabu at Chiyo and dessert at Mitsuwa market, which for the record is this blog's absolute all-time favorite grocery store.

• On the restaurant review front, everyone's gone Caribbean Crazy! David Tamarkin starts us off with a hike up to Evanston, where he finds a sultry atmosphere and fiery jerk chicken at Jamaica Jamaica (1512 Sherman Ave, Evanston, 847 328 1000). Martha Bayne checks in at the new Cafe con Leche, whose Cuban-centric menu branches out into Mexican and other pan-Latin flavors — dinner goes okay, but brunch is less than stellar. And to wrap things up, it's a report from Heather Shouse, fresh off her cubano sandwich countdown, sampling the menu at 90 Miles Cuban Cafe: guava-cream-cheese pastelitos, bracing espresso, pressed sandwiches, and hearty stewed dinners like ropa vieja all combine to create an entirely authentic Cuban culinary experience.

[Sashimi platter at Itto Sushi via taekwonweirdo's Flickr]

Another week, another lack of an online Phil Vettel review. It's a rare day that we pick up the paper paper, preferring instead to never leave the warm embrace of our monitor and ergo-chair, so we've actually got no clue if there's a center-ring Tribune restaurant review that's accessible to anyone less lazy than we are, or if this is like last week, when Vettel's review didn't go online until approximately ten billion P.M., and so we didn't get to levy our magisterial judgment until the next day.

Nevertheless, there is plenty to be had. Have we mentioned that we're in a recession period of economic downturn? Oh, yeah, maybe like four or nineteen thousand times. The team behind the Tribune's dining section has teamed up to reconcile your plummeting net worth with your desire to be well-fed, and rattles off a number of ways to get high-end carryout under $30. For this, we applaud them.

• Monica Eng takes her $30 for carryout and spends it on octopus and stracci at Cafe Spiaggia. See how the name of the restaurant right there is a link to the MenuPages listing for the restaurant? PEOPLE: MONICA ENG HAS BEEN TO THAT WEBPAGE. That's right, there's a nice little MP:C shoutout in her article. Click fast, while the glitter of her visit lingers on the URL.

• We're still basking in the glow from the M.Eng mention, so we are not even the tidgiest bit irked by the fact that her $30-and-under venture is the only one to merit its own unique page on the Trib's site. The rest of the crew are grouped up around a photogallery with an intro by Trine Tsouderos, and while Eng is #1 (in our hearts, too), the others are also solid: 2) Vettel at Carlucci in Downer's Grove; 3) Eng again, at Old Town Brasserie for some salad, pate, and pickles; 4) Tsouderos at Scoozi with two types of pasta; 5) Chris Borrelli downs whole wheat pasta with duck at Sepia; 6) Tsouderos orders the ludicrous (but delicious!) duck and foie gras flan at Shikago ; 7) Borelli's in Winnetka, at Restaurant Michael, for Australian Lamb two ways. Basically this entire conceit is a giant MenuPages promotion, because the entire purpose of the restaurant we write for is to enable you to do precisely what these intrepid reporters are doing. We feel very fulfilled, right about now.

• And a couple more under-$30 ideas: Chris Borelli gives a shout out to Real Tenochtitlan, and Trine Tsouderos has love in her heart for the black pepper garlic beef tenderloin at Double Li.

• A real review! Ms. Eng, again, on the Cheap Eats beat, this time heading to Skokie for some hard-hitting southeast Asian at Tub Tim Thai (4927 Oakton St., Skokie, 847 675 8424). The restaurant clocks in at a highly respectable 3 forks, based on the combined strengths of their American-Thai mainstays (green papaya salad, fried calamari with sweet chili sauce) and less predictable offerings (like meang kum, which involves chapoo leaves, peanuts, dried shrimp, toasted coconut, ginger, lime and shallot).

• Et enfin, Chris Borrelli files a book report on the Edible Series, from U of C press, each of whose three volumes follows the history and lore of an iconic food: pizza, hamburger, and pancake. The books are tied in academic research into the history of each dish, but read like sizzling memoir — Borrelli really seems to like them. Also, fun fact, he owns a cat. (Adding that one to the Borrelli file...)

[Photo: this bacon/peach/blue cheese flatbread from Sepia can be yours, at home! via Tammy Green, all rights reserved]

• A few weeks ago, in their series on the vineyard-friendly 45th parallel, the Tribune told the story of Russian wine: steely-faced nation imports French vineyard experts to turn around their grape and wine output, French experts seem skeptical at first but are impressed by hardworking people, happy ending seems likely. Given that, and with no offense to the no-doubt fine citizens of The People's Republic, today's piece on Chinese wine reads like a little bit of a retread, though we admit that Chinese wine piques our curiosity. Unsurprisingly, it's very hard to find Chinese wine in Chicago, but one brand is available, and Bill Daley breaks it down.

• While we might have been less-than-dazzled by his Chinese wine story, we're completely riding the Bill Daley train when it comes to soup: DIY tortellini and spinach, with some easy tweaks like adding an egg for creaminess. Full disclosure: We are a bit biased in our support of soup, as we've made it for the past two nights (bean and bacon; corn chowder), though neither evening involved Bill Daley in any direct capacity.

• Knock knock. Who's there? Bill Daley. Bill Daley who? Bill Daley wrote yet another article in today's food section, and also we have developed motor memory for typing his name! There's a wine group that's sprung up to taste, promote, and appreciate local wines — DrinkLocalWine.Com.

• Some exciting developments on the grocery store front, brought to us by Susan Taylor: the all-green Jewel on North Desplaines, the Downtown Farmstand, and the Green City Market's winter adjournment to the Peggy Notebaert Nature Center.

• Tagines! They are delicious! Don't be scared of them! (Additional disclosure: We have a jar of lemons preserving in our fridge at this very moment. They need another week or two, we think.) (The recipe accompanying this article doesn't actually call for preserved lemons, but they are such an iconic tagine-related ingredient that we felt compelled to mention them.)

[Photo: A Chinese vineyard, via]

Hay solamente dos artículos nel Sun-Times que merecen ser debatido hoy. Por lo tanto, estamos utilizando el tiempo que asignado para escribir en lugar de traducir esta introducción en español. Los idiomas son divertidos!

• A big pile of cookbooks landed on our desk today (our mail's been slow, and they've been building up). Not included among them was The Food Nanny Rescues Dinner: Easy Family Meals for Every Day of the Week, so thank freaking heaven that Jennifer Olivera of the Sun-Times has stepped in to review it so we don't have to. We understand that in our downturning economy this kind of Family Budgeting Can Be Fun! deal is all the rage, but seriously. The lone Amazon review for this has eighty-seven words, punctuated with TWENTY-SIX exclamation points. And one of the first results on Google for the book is a review from grandparents.com. That is all ye know on Earth about this book, and all ye need to know.

• Lisa Donovan digs up the scoop on the sweet-potato doughnuts at Powerhouse, which are the possibly deathwatched restaurant's signature dessert. Executive chef Jeff Mauro has no idea how many sweet potatoes he runs through in a week, but does know that the doughnuts are frequently sent out as a comp to diners whose entrees are running late. We admit that it's possible that these quotes were taken out of context or that Mauro misspoke, but wait — seriously? Mauro is admitting not only that he's not on top of his inventory, but also that the kitchen screws up so often that they have a go-to apology dish? Whoa.

[Photo: Powerhouse's donuts, via Serious Eats]

Our favorite bald foodmeister, Andrew Zimmern, recently had a nice little chat with the Tribune's Kevin Pang up on his site. While we know him as the Cheeseburger Bureau Chief, Zimmern ID's Pang as "one of the country’s rising stars in food journalism." Call it what you want, the guy is pretty spectacular: Hilarious, smart, and consistently a bright star in the (okay, we'll admit it) occasionally boring pages of the various Trib food sections.

Naturally plenty of restaurant names get dropped. The five new Chicago restaurants everyone should be aware of (graham elliot, Urban Belly, L.2O, The Publican, and Stephanie Izard's yet-unopened resto) are old hat to followers of the Chicago food scene (seriously, how did this blog even exist before we had those restaurants to obsess over?), but Pang gives us some gems when asked to name five restaurants that fly under the radar:

Takkatsu, in Arlington Heights. They do tonkatsu (Japanese fried pork cutlets) with Berkshire pork that's so marbled it's like biting into butter.

Uncle John BBQ on the city's South Side. Like other BBQ pits in the area, these guys smoke their meats using a technique I've seen in few other places outside Chicago: a four-sided, aquarium-style cooker with tempered glass. Every few minutes, they spray the hickory-wood fire beneath with a garden hose to get the sweet smoke stoking. Spend five minutes there and your clothes will smell like ribs for a week. Plus, they serve rib tips, a cut few people outside the Midwest are familiar with. It's the end piece of the spare rib (connected to the St. Louis cut). I find it more delicious than baby backs, because it's got more intramuscular fat, and there's always some cartilage and bone you've got to maneuver inside your mouth. It's a ton of fun to eat.

Sabas Vega in the Pilsen neighborhood. On weekends, they do cabecitas de chivo (steamed goat's head), which always sell out before noon. The consolation prize is the carnitas -- fatty, fork tender, wrapped with corn tortillas, pico de gallo and a squeeze of lime. Oh baby.

Kuma's Corner in the Avondale neighborhood. It's a metal bar, and their burgers are out of this world. I always go for the Kaijo, with bacon, crispy straw onions, bleu cheese and served on a pretzel bun.

Spring World in Chinatown. Most Chinese food Americans are familiar with is Cantonese-style, once removed for Western palates. Spring World serves Yunnan cuisine, a province in Southwest China that's a melting pot of ethnicities. The region is famous for its mushrooms and hams, with sour and spicy flavor profiles -- there's an appetizer I love called "Unusual Seasonings Chicken."

5 Questions with Kevin Pang [Zimmern]

[Photo: Pork belly at Spring World, via benderbending's Flickr]

• Oh cookbook roundups, we love you. You are our favorite kind of roundup. David Tamarkin makes good with a listing of some recipe receptacles that we can expect this fall. This autumn, in particular, is dominated by three really big deal books: Alinea, of course, as well as the behemothic The Complete Robuchon (which rounds up every published recipe from international superchef Joel Robuchon) and the uber-behemothic The Big Fat Duck Cookbook from UK chef Heston Blumenthal, which weighs about eight pounds and costs $250. And that's just getting started.

• Here's a real head-scratcher: Tamarkin goes to Naperville to check out new restaurant Sugartoad (2139 City Gate Lane, in the Hotel Arista, Naperville, 630 778 8723), which is helmed by celeb chef Jimmy Sneed. The food is inventive and of generally high quality, but something's a little off. Like the part where the chef goes home for the night before Tamarkin is done with his meal. Wha? We're as baffled as he was. Still, the restaurant's good elements pull through enough to land it 3 stars (of 6).

• Heather Shouse also headed for the 'burbs this week, trying out Soul (1 Walker Ave, Clarendon Hills, 630 920 1999). Three weeks ago, the Trib handed it three stars (of four), and Shouse is riding a similar train with 4 of 6. The restaurant loses points presumably on the aggressively weird decor: Captain America, a blinged-out Zeus, and American Gothic all make appearances on the restaurant's wall. Good thing the food makes up for it: Chef Karen Nicolas and her sous, Wendy Carreira, are qualified out the wazoo, and their straightforward-except-perfect southern-inflected American showcase their talents phenomenally.

• Want to eat some smoke? Heather Shouse delivers three options for that quintessentially autumnal flavor: smoked-up bourbon and a soupçon of cigar smoke are the star players in Nacional 27's Extra Smoky Manhattan; at Cru Café & Winebar your Kurobuta pork-belly dish is accompanied by smoked pears; and leave it to Schwa to smoke cobia (a firm fish) and cow's milk cheese, and serve it all up in a jumble of ingredients and flavors that, despite their complexity, work out blissfully.

[Photo: Short-rib pot pie (omg we are dying) at Soul, via LTHForum]

• There's no review from Vettel this week, so to flesh out today's Tribune roundup we'll dip into The Stew for Chris Borrelli's First Bite take (blah blah, not a real review) on The Bristol. It's only been open for a few weeks, and while Borrelli is a little underwhelmed by the decor ("the overall impression is, sort of, um, how do I put this… the overall impression is brown. No, beige.") the food is an explosive success. The quirky, varied menu runs almost entirely perpendicular to expectations: instead of a BLT, it's an ELT (that's for "eel"), breakfast radish with whipped goat butter, even the much-discussed monkey bread all turn the quickly-becoming-staid notion of a gastropub on its ear. It is also quite intriguing to us that Borrelli posted this to The Stew at 3am, and yet it is remarkably devoid of both typos and beer-induced declarations of his love for us.

• Besides her somewhat gut-churning piece this morning on the city's health inspectors, Monica Eng is also curious about salted caramel. Namely, where can she get the best version of it? She hits up Starbucks (for their salted-caramel hot chocolate, which we have not yet mentioned to MP:Boston editor Leila, but which we are 100% sure will cause her to make a loud noise at her desk), Hub 51 (for some intensely flavorful butterscotch pudding with salted caramel sauce), and Hot Chocolate (for the chocolate tart served with salted caramel ice cream and pretzels). All are hits. Because salted caramel is scientifically impossible to make un-delicious. We'll prove it if you promise us a Nobel.

• Trine Tsouderos pays a visit to old favorite Kuma's Corner for the Cheap Eats column, and the venerable temple of burgers and death metal rates high praise: 3 (out of 4) forks, bogged down by some inconsistent service. Tsouderos quite brilliantly brought along her 81-year-old father in law, because Kuma's serves family-friendly death metal burgers.

• Tsouderos is also on the what the heck do marathoners eat beat, rounding up her friends to consume super-gross-sounding liquid-jellies and bars in the name of journalistic inquiry. We think the fact that she used highly competitive athletes as her sounding boards skewed the trial, though, because those people are insane and therefore we do not trust their palates.*

*Excepting Laurent Gras of L.2O, who apparently cycles hundreds of miles a week.

[Photo: The Iron Maiden burger at Kuma's, via sgt fun's Flickr]

At the highly liberal liberal-arts college we attended, Columbus Day was marked by various student groups loudly protesting the racist/imperialist/revisionist/pick-your-own-ist implications of our Nation's embrace of the three-day weekend. In contrast, the Trib's Good Eating staff celebrates by devoting their entire section to paeans to the various now-indispensable foodstuffs that Columbus and his explorer cohorts were introduced to upon their "discovery" of the New World. We like the Tribune's version of celebration better.

• Bill Daley kicks things off with a brief history of the Columbian Exchange, a.k.a. the massive lines of trade between Europe and North America that began when a certain seafaring Italian landed in the Bahamas in 1492. Fun fact: The Columbian Exchange was the first item on our American History itinerary every single year of grade school, and each year we fell so far behind on the curriculum that we never made it past World War II, and as a result we did not know anything about the Vietnam War until we were in college. What's up, Illinois public schools!

• Emily Nunn takes us on the journey of the pecan, which began in the Texas region around the 1500s, and today resolves itself in each american eating half a pound of pecans a year. We personally cannot tell the difference between a pecan and a walnut, and Nunn contributes to us feeling bad about ourselves for that fact.

• A-maize-ing! It's all corn, all the time for Carol Mighton Haddix (contender for best name ever), who breaks down its five types (flint, flour, dent, sweet, and pop) as well as gives us a little glimpse into its Columbian history.

• Oh my goodness we love squash. And so does Joe Gray, who waxes poetic about the mega-nutritious, hard-as-rocks quasi-melons. While North American settlers relied on squash as a staple of their diets, it took until the 1800s for it to catch on in Europe. Tres unchic.

• Poor Renee Enna, forced to write about chocolate and get paid for it. Tragic, having to research the historic and religious origins of this popular supporting player in romantic comedies and chick-lit books and major resident of our own desk drawer. HER LIFE IS SO HARD.

• Emily Nunn is back again, this time covering cranberries, and hey! It turns out they really do prevent UTIs!

• A sweet potato is not a potato. Nor is it a yam. Carol Mighton Haddix goes for Columbian Food Round Two on it, though, coining the root veggie a new name (just call it a "sweet," thanks) and noting that it has more fiber than a bowl of oatmeal.

• Oh god, tomatoes, we love them.So does Joe Gray, as he traces the history of tomatoes from South American up through Asia, Europe, and (mysteriously!) Africa, and back to the USA — where we apparently didn't really start eating them until the early 1900s, and even then it was only because the government told us to.

• Bill Daley's back, sketching out the story of the chili, which only bears the mega-confusing moniker "pepper" because Columbus was a big fat liar. Also, Daley makes a Mad Men reference! We love it when legitimate journalists like the same TV shows that we do.

• Emily Nunn's writeup of the (nonsweet) potato is illustrated by an extraordinarily beautiful photograph that we sort of want to hang in our living room. It also tells us of the potato's long, arduous climb up the food hierarchy, from being "mistrusted" to its current french-fry-borne ubiquity.

[Illustration of the Columbian Exchange via MrThompson.org]

We assure you, in fact, that our esteem for Nagrant's palate has little to nothing to do with the fact that he doesn't like the burgers at newcomer The Counter, and that in an entirely unrelated turn of events we have previously gone on record about our skepticism of the quality attainable by a burger restaurant that cannot even count their topping combinations correctly. In fact, he sums up our fundamental problem with Counter's menu much more succinctly than we did:

If I were writing my own burger manifesto, rule number one would be, “Burger joint menus should never make you feel like you’re taking a Cosmopolitan magazine ‘sexual experience’ quiz and leave you feeling inadequate.”

Burger Battle [Hungry Magazine]
The Counter [MenuPages]
The Counter [Official Site]
Epic Burger [MenuPages]
Epic Burger [Official Site]

[Photo: The fries at Counter passed Nagrant's muster. Via benyeh2's Flickr]

• Pizza "truly is an art" at Chicago Traveler's review of The Art of Pizza. And the same day he's at it again, with a writeup of Gold Coast Dogs: a solid place to get a solid dog.

• Lots of moonlighting this week on the topic of Urban Belly: Mike Nagrant is bylined at Serious Eats, while David Tamarkin writes up the dumpling joint for Gourmet.com (after filing on it already for his home base, TOC).

• The Dolinskter originally wanted to get his bulgogi on at San Soo Gap Gan, but instead goes to Chicago Kalbi, where the crowds are sparser and the food is Korean by way of Japan.

• It's dinner at Alinea for the poor, undernourished Brian at Chicago Foodies. He acknowledges that the high-concept menu isn't for everyone, but it certainly is for him.

• The food is bangin' and the cocktails are slammin' for brunch at Cuatro. Or at least, so sayeth the NBC5 Street Team.

• Does Matt B ever stop? Still another Chicago Traveler review, this time he's at Veerasway, which helps him ease his nervous way into the flavors of Indian cuisine.

• Matt Doyle of Drive Thru is a die-hard meatatarian, but he still swoons over Chicago Diner's "Radical Reuben": a masterful seitan-based recreation of the classic deli sandwich.

• Chicago Gluttons continues their reign of Photoshop terror in a review of Habana Libre, as Fidel Castro sagely implores Darwensi, "You best finish that f***ing oxtail."

• Flora Lazar's favorite roast chicken isn't actually chicken at all: It's galletto (cornish hen), and it's from Riccardo Trattoria.

• We're actually not sure how Brian at Chicago Foodies could eat so soon after his Alinea meal, but he's back on the beat, reviewing Cyrano's Bistrot, where he's pretty sure his server was using a fake name.

• ChiBBQ King weighs in on the dog wars, casting a vote for Oak Park's Tasty Dog (708 Lake St, Oak Park, 708 383 2645).

• Want to spend an entire day in Wicker Park? Let the Decider be your guide: lunch at Uncle Mike's Place, dinner at OTOM, drinks at Bottom Lounge, and we bet you'll never guess what meal you should eat at Breakfast Club.

• Mlle Epicurista has dinner at Lockwood, in the Palmer House: "Did I like it? Is the chef any good? Is it worth the price? Yes. Yes. And, yes." Yes.

• Last, but certainly not least, it's dinner at Aria for Steve and Lisa from Focus on Food. Consensus: the food is good, but it "lacks a certain inspiration," and we've got a hung jury when it comes to the decor.

[Photo: Radical reuben at Chicago Diner by Tammy Green. All rights reserved.]

• Mike Sula's at Urban Belly. Like those who've gone before, he swoons for the dumplings — again, the lamb-and-brandy combination gets a particularly euphoric shout-out. But the adulation stops at the dumpling line: the rice bowls are "greasy," the noodle dishes have some high notes (the pork belly ramen is singled out) but most "exhaust the palate." The widely-panned soba/scallops in blue crab broth is "an unmitigated disaster."

• Early reviews of Duchamp noted an inconsistent kitchen, but Sula finds little to dislike besides some design decisions ("bar stools that resemble torture devices," and whatnot). The menu might rely a little heavily on Thomas Keller-esque quotation marks, but the "fish and chips" (fried skate with tartar sauce) holds up, as does the very of-the-moment dessert of mini chocolate cupcakes and mini ice cream sandwiches.

• Our favorite line from Reese Witherspoon career-highlight movie Sweet Home Alabama comes when she's back home in the titular state, is out for drinks with her old friends, and notices one has a curious accessory: "You have a baby!" she says. "...In a bar!" But per Reader critic Martha Bayne, that's more or less the scene at Old Oak Tap, where "every third patron seemed to be bouncing a baby between sips of Saison DuPont." The spruced-up bar menu (sriracha wings, crabmeat club sandwiches) aims high and lands middling, the beer list is eclectic but predictable. A solid turn on a predictable formula.

[photo: yet another Urban Belly photo, because neither Duchamp nor Old Oak Tavern is represented on Flickr. via]

• We can add some more information to our David Tamarkin file (what, you didn't think we had one?) as we learn that, as a child, his aspirations for the future included "something to do with street dancing and hosting a late-night talk show (at the same time, naturally)." This fact is actually relevant to his review of Tapas Las Ramblas, which is not so much his review as the review of Andrew, a 12-year-old aspiring restaurant critic who just got back from a trip to Spain. Mild jealousy of this preadolescent's travel itinerary aside, we can't fault his eerily jaded assessment: the food is good, not amazing, and it's perfect for “after you’ve had a drink and need a snack.”

• Widely beloved chef Mindy Segal, of widely beloved naked-lady-adorned restaurant Hot Chocolate sits in the Hot Seat, listing off her favorites. Kitchen gadget? Apple peeler. Inspiration? The city of Chicago. Restaurant? Urban Belly (already!).

• When it comes to sandwiches, we have to admit, we have never swooned over the Cubano. But that didn't stop Heather Shouse from counting down Chicago's top nine, from the mysteriously absent pickle on El Rinconcito Cubano's version, up through the mayo-heavy rendition at La Unica, all the way to the victor: newcomer Cafecito, whose "citrus-garlic-marinated, cumin-rubbed lechon asado" could plausibly make a convert of us yet.

Confidential to Tamarkin: When you list The Publican under "Just Opened," and then lede it with "If everything goes as planned, the new restaurant from the Blackbird team will open on Mon 6," you are LYING. Dirty dirty teasing lying. The only way you can make this up to us now is by doing some serious journalistically apologetic street dancing.

[photo: is this man David Tamarkin? via newfie bullet's Flickr]

Phil Vettel! We hope you got a bonus check this week because you have like nine billion bylines today. Or, okay, four, and two of them are really the same article, but still.

• Vettel #1: It was almost five months ago that Adam Peltz, our distinguished predecessor on this blog, reported on the opening of Marcus Samuelsson's C-House, noting that Vettel had gone for breakfast and written about it. And hey! Check this out! Today, at last, he finally files his real review. A lag that epic makes us raise a questioning eyebrow: As with many of the restaurants covered by multiple publications' reviewers, we notice here that Vettel's is far and away the most positive. And as with all those other restaurants, we're not sure if the tone has more to do with his sunny disposition, or with his tendency to file his reviews later than other media outlets, thus possibly giving the restaurant a chance to address weak spots pointed out by other critics. Or maybe everyone just knows exactly what Vettel looks like. But, if you'll pardon the pun, there's clearly something fishy going on: even Pat Bruno panned this place. But the restaurant is awarded 2 stars, with Phil's compliments to the chef: the only weak spot are some "not at their best" mussels, while nearly everything else merits a rave. Hmmm.

• Vettel #2: The dude went to Chicago Gourmet. His bulleted list of highs and lows: not enough chairs, shoddy music, unclear signage. Oh and all you people complaining there wasn't enough food? Phil thinks you're wrong — he managed to find plenty.

• Vettel #3: Sushi: Is it over? Phil gives us a list of 5 signs of the sushi apocalypse, including the use of chocolate sauce as a legitimate ingredient and a return to the fad of eating sushi off of naked people (they're already doing that in New York!).

• Vettel #4: Sushi: It's still awesome! Phil counterpoints himself with a roundup of Trib staffer's favorite rolls, including Chris Borelli's pick of the pickled mackerel roll at Katsu, a recommendation with which we heartily agree.

• Speaking of Chris Borrelli! He dons the Cheap Eats mantle to visit Duke's Alehouse and Kitchen in Crystal Lake (110 N. Main St., Crystal Lake, 815 356 9980). In a five-paragraph review, only the last (and shortest) two grafs deal with the food, and it's not all good: "gummy" polenta, underwhelming cupcake frosting, but "better" meatloaf. Chris falls for the pub's self-aware good humor and strong desire to rise above standard alehouse fare, awarding it two forks, which we'll read as an A for effort.

• Last but oh-so-certainly not least is Trine Tsouderos's listicle of three places to eat pork belly: the ramen at Urban Belly, the When Harry Met Sally (squid and pork belly together) at Korean Seoulfood Cafe, and the straight-up pork belly at Perennial. Of course in a perfect world the answer to the question "where can I score some awesome pork belly" would be "It is in all of us, my son." But this'll do for now.

[Photo: The pork belly ramen at Urban Belly, via food_in_mouth's Flickr]

We wonder if the downturning economy has anything to do with the increasing number of wire-service articles showing up on the Sun-Times food page. Here are the whopping three bylined, non-AP/Scripps articles that the S-T gave us this week.

• Dave Hoekstra takes authors Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page out to lunch in honor of their new book, The Flavor Bible, a multidimensional enclopedic dictionary of culinary ideas and terms. Where do they go? To the Billy Goat Tavern, of course, for burgers.

• Lisa Donovan unwraps the fascinating story of the 6-foot-tall bronze sculpture of a boy in a fez looking into a bowl of coffee, located at the Julius Meinl coffeehouse on North Lincoln. She refrains from editorial commentary, and so — in a rare turn of events — will we.

• Have you ever wondered how an egg gets pasteurized? Entirely useless journalist Denise O'Neal goes to the 'burbs and finds out.

[A Billy Goat cheeseburger, via kaszeta's Flickr]

• Talk about mockery: Emily Nunn dives into the world of fake food — from imitation cockscomb in the 17th century to the fake-orange flavor in Tang to faux meat at Karyn's. While she comes up with no conclusive reasons for faking what we're making, there are enough food-related anecdotes here to fuel at least three months of dinner parties. (Our personal favorite example of mock food — or at least, food-related trickery — can be found here)

• Bill Daley takes us into the dark underbelly of TAPAS, a 78-member society dedicated to furthering the American opinion of tempranillo, the Spanish grape variety that dominates Rioja. This warm, bold, jammy grape is increasingly showing up domestically, but the jury's out on whether American production is worth it — after all, Spain does a bang-up job at a very attractive price point.

• Mr. Daley again, wrapping up Chicago Gourmet — from the wine side. Bill takes a glass-half-full approach to the infamous disparity between available food and available wine: With so much amazing wine on offer, it's a shame there wasn't food to match.

• Eat This, Not That, the picture-heavy sort-of-diet-book that came out a few years ago, sparked a media frenzy when it revealed the calorie bombs packed by most chain-restaurant menu items. Now the authors deliver a companion volume targeted at kids, and Joe Gray has the scoop.

• The Trib's section reorganization means that now JeanMarie Brownson will be contributing a biweekly column on cooking for families. This week: Guinness! That's right, the beer, a brilliant addition to beef stew. (We made a very similar stew to this one about a dozen times last winter, we can totally attest to its deliciousness.)

A jerk "burger" at Karyn's, via.

Like the flood of reader response that poured in after the article on Mr. Breakfast from a few weeks ago. Too bad so much of it was off the mark — folks fixated too much on brunch and anti-Yankee sentiment, not breakfast.

But the real meat this week is Phil Vettel's take on Piccolo Sogno, which he awards with a solid two stars. When TOC reviewed it a little over a month ago, they were more taken by the patio than the food — Vettel acknowledges the lure of the outdoor space, but also finds no savory dish worth complaining about (though the tomatoes in a seafood pasta dish clock in "dangerously close" to an overpowering level), though the desserts aren't spectacular.

[Photo of panzanella at Piccolo Sogno from Maes Studio]

Our favorite three stories from this week's crop:

• Emily Nunn runs down the traditions of Rosh Hashanah — the Jewish new year celebration. Like many Jewish holidays, it's very food-centric and very traditional (brisket, kugel, et al), and much of the food is symbolic. We already knew about honey for a sweet year and apples and round bread loaves for continuity, but now we know to eat fish for ... fertility? Hrm.

• We've always found the best accompaniment to a riotous bowl of gumbo is an alcoholic beverage, and Bill Daley suggests, specifically, that it should be wine. Weirdly enough, the dish works with such disparate varietals as Gewurtraminer (a sweet white) and Pinot Noir (a peppery deep red). We are calling up some flavor-memories right now and we agree: it totally works.

• Everything you ever wanted to know about making cheesecake, including a long list of alternatives to plain ol' Philadelphia. Among them, tantalizingly: goat cheese, quark, and mascarpone.

[Photo: Gumbo (among other things) from Dixie Kitchen (god we want a glass of wine), via rebeccachen1970's Flickr]

• The Decider takes on virtually every one of Chicago's non-Sonic drive-ins, including MP personal favorites Mic Duck's Superdawg. [The Decider]

• The ladies of Chicago Bites head to Avec (in company of fellow podcaster Scott from Dinner Voyeur). Tammy thinks it feels like a cafeteria, but the food (especially the meat) knocks them all out of the park. [Chicago Bites]

• Head out to Schaumburg for some Greek food at Greek Village Taverna, where the waiters look like Telly Savalas! [Best Of The Best Dining Chicago]

• The Dolinskter delivers a cubano roundup, including a "way out of whack" rendition at newcomer 90 Miles Cuban Cafe. [CHuffPo]

• Mister Gebert visits Mado, and the restaurant endears itself to him on impact: well-priced, delicious food, with smart flavor composition. They even make liver palatable! [Sky Full of Bacon]

• The Chicago Traveler (did anyone ever notice his logo is reminiscent of Chicagoist's?) gives a writeup of Lakeview's Shochu: cocktails made from the namesake liquor don't disappoint, and there's satisfying Asian-inflected bar food. [Chicago Traveler]

• Here's a breakfast after our own hearts: Brie, spinach, and mushroom, in a panini, at Star Lounge Cafe. [Chicagoist]

• Mister Nagrant weighs in on More Cupcakes. Not the idea of having a lot, but the cupcake bakery by that name. [Hungry Mag]

• A present-tense review of Barnaby's in Des Plaines, where they're known for pizza but do a mean baby back ribs as well. [NBC5 Street Team]

• ChiBBQKing has so many meat/gyro/pork/ribs reviews up this week that we think you should just click over there and read them yourself. [ChiBBQKing]

[photo: it's a bird! it's a plane! it's a superdawg! via yummyinthetummyblog's Flickr]

Sometimes it feels like all we read about anymore is wine and Urban Belly. Don't get us wrong — there are worse fates — but when you're sitting at your computer all day and visions of lamb-brandy dumplings and bottles of pinot are swimming in front of your eyes, it can be a little overwhelming.

The Sun-Times hands us two journalistic confections from Mister Pat Bruno:
• Welcome to the Sun-Times fall dining preview! Have you heard about this place opening up soon called The Publican? Also a slew of other upcomings (and recently-openeds) that have already been covered to death on the blogs and in the other publications: More Cupcakes, The Bristol, Jackson Park B&G, and that as-yet-unnamed new place in Pilsen from the folks behind Lula.

• Our favorite thing about Bruno's review of Urban Belly? The URL basename: after a string of standard-issue tracking numbers, it's "brunobelly19," which we're now considering making our new AIM screen name. But seriously, folks, Bruno — like everyone else — is raving over Urban Belly, his particular favorite being the fourteenth item on the nineteen-item menu, noodles stir-fried with eggplant. Yum.

And from OSBMS (for new readers, that'd be Our Secret Boyfriend Mike Sula, who might actually be downgraded soon to make way for Christopher Borrelli, but that's another post for another time), over in the Reader, we get an interview with Tyler Colman, author of the intriguingly-titled Wine Politics: How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters, and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink. It turns out that the forces at work in getting a sip of wine from the vine to your mouth are far broader than just growers, distributors, and pushy wine-store clerks. Colman is in town for various signings and readings, check out Sula's Q&A for dates and times.

[Photo: a raspberry-topped cupcake from More]

• Kim Severson of the New York Times offers up answers to burning reader questions such as "Is it possible to be a vegetarian in Alaska?" (A: sort of, as long as it's not a political thing), and "Have you ever killed a moose yourself?" (A: no, but her dad has), and "Is it true that Alaskans eat this disgusting-sounding dish that the MenuPages blogger summarizing this cannot bring herself to retype?" (A: Yes!) [New York Times]

• And she answers even more! [New York Times]

• Some fun facts about moose and moosemeat: the animal is vegan, if slaughtered correctly the meat can be kosher, and a delicious-sounding moose slider is made from mooseburgers, sourdough bread, cranberry ketchup, and sauteed smoked onions. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

• Mooseghetti is basically exactly what it sounds like. Also the real way you prep moose meat is, again, kind of gross. [NPR, via Serious Eats]

• It's illegal to buy moose in both the U.S. and Canada (the only way to get it is to kill it yourself), but one Chowhound poster suggests "tinned or bottled moose," and we can't tell if they're joking. [Chowhound Ontario]

[Photo: A moose in a parking lot, via arctic_photos' Flickr]

• Dear Christopher Borrelli: We love you. We really really do. We feel kind of embarrassed to be so overwhelmingly gushy about basically everything you write, but them's the breaks. We like your beat. Like today, when you're all screw those stupid ice cream mix-ins, and then reminisce about your childhood ice cream mentor, Steve Herrell (we went to college in Massachusetts! We love Herrell's!), and then point out how iCream got hoist by its own petard, and then compare "Marble Slab" and "Cold Stone" to graveyard imagery! Good gracious, mister, you make our Thursdays fun.

• Speaking of Mr. Borrelli, apparently reader response to his "Mr. Breakfast" article has been so great that the paper will be running a pile of breakfast suggestions in next week's edition.

• Phil Vettel has the dirt on former Spiaggia chef Missy Robbins, who's picking up for New York City, where she'll be helming the kitchen at Manhattan's A Voce. And by "dirt" we mean "everyone is really friendly and amicable and there is just no good gossip to be taken out here."

• This week's big review: Vettel is in the suburbs, at Haussmann Brasserie (305 N Happ Rd, Northfield, 847 446 1133). For those of you keeping score, the S-T's Bruno was there a month ago, and found the place too simultaneously elitist and predictable for his taste. Here, though, Vettel enjoys pretty much everything: the menu is a solid mix of French classics (onion soup, steak frites, a killer roast chicken) and nouvelle twists like roasted salmon with curried artichokes. For those of you who, like us, were totally confused by the review's headline, "Hoochie Koo" is apparently a song by Rick Derringer which, we assume, was playing while Vettel dined.

[Photo: charcuterie at Haussmann Brasserie, via David Hammond of LTHForum]