Results tagged “blackbird”

Have an aspiring kid chef (ages 9 - 13) at home? Get him or her to Kendall College this Sunday for the ConAgra Foods and Share Our Strength Healthy Kids Cook-Off. In this Iron-Chef style cooking competition, kids will compete to create both a healthy and tasty meal or snack with a limited list of ingredients. The event is aimed at education children about nutritional information as well as to raise awareness of childhood hunger in America.

The James Beard foundation announced their annual awards semifinalists this morning. Jean Joho and Paul Kahan are nominated for Outstanding Chef, with Joho's Everest getting a nod for Outstanding Restaurant. L2O is up for Best New Restaurant, while a staggering 11 area chefs are bidding for the title of Best Chef: Great Lakes. Included on that list are avec's Koren Grieveson, Avenue's Curtis Duffy, Suzy Crofton, and Paul Virant of Vie. Full list (in PDF format) is available here.

        

Last night we attended the sold out mulefoot pig dinner at Blackbird sponsored by the Chicago Reader. Reader food critic Mike Sula has been chronicling the progress Dee Dee since he persuaded the paper to buy her last year, bringing attention to this rare endangered breed of swine in the process.

After nearly two years, the Reader is ready to serve up some of that mulefoot pig it adopted to some hungry folks. And they're doing it in style, with a six-course dinner starting 6 p.m. October 19 at Blackbird to benefit Slow Food Chicago.

There are a couple of really interesting beer dinners of note in the coming weeks that could wind up being hard reservations, if you're the type to wait until the last minute to get reservations.

There are a thousand reasons why summer dining in Chicago is so fantastic. One of the best being fresh, locally grown ingredients and it doesn't get any fresher than when chefs grow their own ingredients in restaurant or home gardens. An increasing number of chefs are doing so including some of our faves: Rick Bayless of Frontera Grill, Paul Kahan of Blackbird, George Djurovic of August Grocery, (just to name a few.)

• Starting off this week with a bit of a review. We slugged back our share of Original Schlitz Friday night at Green Mill. Guess what? It isn't that bad. Actually, as far as clean lagers go, we prefer it over Pabst Blue Ribbon (coincidentally, Pabst brews both). At $4 a bottle, it's also priced perfectly (PBR on draft at Green Mill runs $4.50).
• Louis Glunz Beer Company has formed the "Glunz Beer Culinary Council." This Justice League of culinary greatness includes Paul Kahan, Mindy Segal, Richard Camarota of Custom House, MIke Roper and Ben Sheagren of Hopleaf, Cooper's - A Neighborhood Eatery owner Craig Foss, Siebel Institute of technology faculty member Randy Mosher, author Lucy Saunders, and chariman Jim Javenkoski. Not coincidentally, the restaurants represented also carry Unibroue beers.
• Mike Nagrant waxes on about "green market dorks" in this week's New City

Foodandwine.com just announced their "Go To List 2008," where they list their top ten restaurant cities in the world, ten up and coming restaurant cities, and 300 dining destinations around the world. It should come as no surprise that our broad-shouldered city ranked #8. That's behind Tokyo, Paris and New York, but ahead of Stockholm and Vancouver. Credit where credit is due, Vancouver still has better skiing and gentlemens clubs.