Results tagged “blogs”

• Who is the chef behind the blog Butcher's Grip? Don't look at us to out him/her, especially since, for followers of snout-to-tail, it's isn't as though the chef is completely anonymous. [via Grub Street Chicago]
• Late night secret congee menus at Me Dee Café in Ravenswood. [The Food Chain]
• Delightful Pastries' second location is now open in Old town. [Drive-Thru]

• Sky Full of Bacon's Mike Gebert offers up his Rules for Dining (inspired by/apologies to Michael Pollan) [SFoB]
• Chicago Eats TV launched this week, promising "hot and fresh videos about some of the most unique places around." So far their curioaity has taken them to Yak-Zies, Jake Melnick's, McGee's Tavern, Cans and Redhots and Fries. Way to take the road less traveled. [Chicagoeatstv.com]
• Bleeding Heart Bakery starts a bread co-op this Saturday with Polenta Asiago Roasted Garlic Bread. Orders must be received no later than 7 p.m. every Friday (order by calling 773-327-6934 or via e-mail) and will be ready for pickup 1 p.m. Sundays. And it's only $5 a loaf. [Inbox]

• food 52's Tournament of Cookbooks features Grub Street Chi's Helen Rosner choosing between Eugenia Bone's "Well-Preserved" and "Babycakes" from Erin McKenna. [food 52]
• Lula Café is turning into a zombified version of Hot Doug's for Halloween. We don't know what jumped the shark here. [TOC]
• A new website, Beer Menus, is working to list the beer menus of Our Town's best watering holes. [Beer Menus Chicago]

Want a chance for a free dinner for two Sunday? then e-mail Lockwood chef Phillip Foss here. He'll be giving away a civet of wild hare for two. What's a civet of wild hare? In this instance it's a hearty french stew with a base of red wine, herbs and sometimes thickened with blood. we wouldn't put it past Foss to try that, either. He'll pick the winner tomorrow at 4 p.m. [The Pickled Tongue]

Sad news food writing wise on two fronts today. First comes news that the venerable Gourmet magazine will be shutting down operations as part of a cost-cutting move spurred by a decline in ad revenues by parent company Conde Nast. A Gourmet byline is a holy grail among food writers and, under the editorial leadership of Ruth Riechl, some of the magazine's content was simply poetic. The loss of Gourmet's print concern leaves a void. A Conde Nast memo indicates that Gourmet's tv programming, book publishing, and recipes on epicurious.com will remain unchanged.

• It's apple season. Here's a recipe for apple pear crisp .[Stresscake]
• Chicago's Downtown Farmstand is giving away free apples from Seedling to mark its one-year anniversary. [Inbox]
• Mindy Segal bows out of the Elysian Hotel project to focus on Hot Chocolate. [The Stew]

• Protestors from the company who helped build out Rick Bayless's XOCO set up shop outside the white-hot torta shop yesterday. [Grub Street Chi]
• Monica Eng reports that Sprout at 1417 W, Fullerton, is set to open October 3 as an all-organic restaurant. Get this: entrees are topping out at $120. Maybe owner Satko Ibrahimovic should check out Crust to get an idea of fair pricing for organic food. [The Stew]
• More non-Yelp reviews of Nana are coming in. This one is a positive review from David Hammond. [Reader]

• Vocalo was at the Chef's Collaborative Summit this week and filed interviews with Judith Schad of Capriole Goat Cheese, the Signature Room's Patrick Sheerin and Cleetus Friedman of City Provisions. [Vocalo 1, 2, 3]
• Soup and Bread: The Cookbook is on its way in December. [Soup and Bread]
• Over at Drive-Thru, Whitney Merritt's ongoing interview series of food bloggers focuses on Marathon Val [Drive-Thru]

I am a chef who likes to cook more than proliferate and manage restaurants. That’s why Frontera Grill, Topolobampo and, now, Xoco are all together. I can slide from one kitchen to another, tasting and training and coaching and cooking. Cooking is why I became a chef, and I never want to get too far from it.

Here's what we've been wasting our time reading this week. You should, too:

• Growing Home, Inc., which in our humble opinion does the Lord's Work with its organically certified urban farms in Englewood, is facing a $100,000 funding gap. If you've ever had their greens or other produce, please give what you can. [Inbox]
• The Green Chicago Restaurant Co-op launched a "Guaranteed Green" initiative that will help diners find and support the restaurants that "that take significant steps toward protecting the environment." on hand for the launch were Rick Bayless, Ina Pinkney, and Helen Cameron of Uncommon Ground, which also received the Co-op's first honors. [Inbox, again]
• "Are the Peaches Any Good?" Next time, ask a stupid question. [Fruit Slinger]

• Sam's South Loop and Aigre Doux weren't the only notable closings this week. Joining them in the restaurant/retail graveyard are Mama Desta's Red Sea (the city's oldest Ethiopian restaurant) and Doggy's S.S. Soul Eatery. [Food Chain]
• Chicago Diner is guilty of making tired Sarah Palin jokes. Local blogger is guilty of overreacting to Chicago Diner's tired Sarah Palin jokes. [Grub Street Chi]
• I passed along some of the guanciale I made to Seth Zurer of Baconfest Chicago and Sky Full of Bacon's Mike Gebert. Here's Gebert's verdict. [Sky Full of Bacon]

• Behold the outfit Graham Elliot Bowles wore while guest bartending at Pops for champagne Monday. He talks about it briefly in an interview. [W magazine]
• A nonbinding "green food resolution" proposed by Alderman Margaret Laurino includes boilerplate from Food Sanctuary, one of the proponents of the now-overturned foie gras ban. [Martha Bayne, Food Chain]
• Minnie's in Lincoln Park is gone. [TOC]

• North Shore Distillery's Sonja Kassebaum writes a loving profile of graham elliot beverage manager/head mixologist Lynn House (pictured). [Thinking of Drinking]
• Baconfest news: the Publican is hosting the VIP Pro cookoff the day before the fest. [Baconfestchicago.com]
• Mike Sula cheers the return of kaiseki master Seijero Matsumoto. [Food Chain]

Update your bookmarks: Menupages Chicago (and all the MP blogs) was re-branded this morning as Grub Street Chicago in a very beautiful redesign. The (re)launch allows parent company New York magazine to extend the Grub Street brand into other cities through corporate synergy while losing none of the knack for hard news, aggregation and criticism that made the MP blogs must-reads. MP Chicago editor Helen Rosner is still at the conn, still obsessing over Grant Achatz, and still keeping tabs for a Pat Bruno slip-up.

• Did you know you could eat slugs? Yes. They're excellent in tomato sauce.
• This is just for Spook: Check out those spicy Korean soups.
• If you're on Hell's Kitchen and you don't know how to make Beef Wellington, you're a donkey.

The Tribune's new blog network, ChicagoNow, has launched in Beta form. So far, there are over 30 blogs on the site with many more to come. We're reserving judgment on the self-described "Huffington Post meets Facebook" until it's up and running at full speed. Besides hosting the RedEye and several offshoots of that publication (Show Patrol and The Kyles Files), they've also incorporated other blogs such as Metromix and the already-Trib-owned Len and Bob blog to cover the Cubs TV booth team. Most notable of the pre-existing non-Trib blogs that have so far been added are CTA Tattler and Mike Doyle, of Chicago Carless, who is heading up Chicagosphere, a look at the Chicago blog scene.

SXSW is more than just music. Granted, Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot [Ed. note: and, ahem, Lizz Kannenberg] are probably having the time of their lives traipsing across the 1,800 odd bands scattered amongst Austin, Texas, but you’ll have just as much fun reading NPR’s All Songs Considered twitter feeds, right?

• In the wake of an article calling hamburgers "the Hummers of food," Helen Rosner lists local restaurants that source the beef for their burgers from local farms. Why Paul Kahan isn't getting his lamb from Mint Creek Farm, only he knows. [MP Chicago]
• Speaking of localvore issues, check out the expanded version of the Local Beet.[The Local Beet]
• The fine folks at Drive-Thru have been very busy this week. Chris Brunn and Cinnamon Cooper offer a couple vegan-friendly recipes; Cooper infuses vodka with her namesake spice; and Robyn Nisi made the mistake of replacing real lemon juice for her lemon ricotta cookies with ReaLemon. [Drive-Thru]

• How to make bacon cups (H/T, McSkippy) [Merriment Design]
• Alpana Singh has some wine and dessert pairings for Valentine's Day. [WWAD]
• Also in time for Valentine's Day, Taste of Peru's sopa de viagra reminds us that we need to get up there and formally review our favorite Peruvian restaurant. [Sun-Times]

• With tomorrow's airing of the long-forgotten Barack Obama episode of Check, Please! in sight, Bridget Houlihan and Tammy Green visit Obama (and Chicagoist) favorite Dixie Kitchen and Bait Shop before the combination of following in the President-elect's footsteps and the "Check, Please! effect" make the Hyde Park restaurant the center of the local restaurant universe. [Chicago Bites]
• Chicago Gluttons jefe Darwensi calls The Meatloaf Bakery in Lincoln Park "the quintessential 'Goddammit, its 6:35pm and I have no idea what to get for dinner; I got three brats and a lazy, fat ass husband to feed' spot." He even gained access to the kitchen to see the "meatfuckery" up close. [Chicago Gluttons]
• Mike Nagrant gets up close and personal with Smoque's Barry Sorkin.[Hungry Mag]

With only four posts, Food on the Dole is a work in progress, but anyone who references Stanley Kubrick movies while discussing how he came to make an amazing looking roast beef sandwich is worth keeping tabs on.

Brrrr Brrrr I say it's cold in here/ There must be Mariotti in the blogosphere! It's true. The Mulleted One is returning and his writing will once again be available for public consumption over at Fanhouse, AOL's sports site. Finally, a place where Jay can whine about print media and get pissy about Telander. This should provide plenty of fun times and contradictions. Especially from the man recently awarded 2008's Most Erroneous Sports Column (Though, even we will give Jay some slack there; come on, did anyone outside of New York think the Giants had a chance?). [both via Deadspin]

• Martha Bayne reports that the Publican has reduced the prices of their beer menu (somewhat). Too bad those prices didn't go into effect when she was visiting the place for her review. [Food Chain, Marthabayne.com]
• Should we eat our little urban critters? I'm certainly down for squirrel, rabbit, and the occasional raccoon rummaging through garbage cans. [Little Green People blog, via]
• Sun-Times staffers look back at their favorite cookbooks, in time for the holidays. [Sun-Times]
• Bill Daley reports on a Manhattan bar serving wine in baby bottles (you'd expect Dion Antic to be jumping all over this) and spent coffee grounds as a source of biodiesel, while Phil Vettel laments about Copperblue, which is serving its final dinner service Saturday. [The Stew 1, 2, 3]
• Matt Kirouac had to sit through some pretty bad service at Andersonville's Antica Pizzeria in order to get to some pretty good pizza. [Hungry Mag]
• Gemma Petrie shares a recipe for Wild Rice and Mushroom Pie. [Pro Bono Baker]
• Josh at Chicago Foodies confuses Lao Shanghai for Lao Sze Chuan, regrets his error. [Chicago Foodies]
• Give thanks to the Lord of Fat Fuckery for, then "akido the shit out of" some crab legs at Glenn's Diner. that's how Steven Seagal would do it. [Chicago Gluttons]

  Continue reading "Quick Bites"

There's "food porn" (we prefer the term "culinary erotica") and then there's just straight-up smut. Laurent Gras' blog for L2O is possibly the best example of the former. One of the attractions of his and other chefs' blogs is that it pulls back the curtain to reveal that the Wizard is merely a man, albeit a very driven one. It's also been said that imitation is also the sincerest form of flattery.

The Green Chicago Restaurant Co-Operative announced a compost pilot plan to put to good use the scraps their member restaurants would otherwise throw away. A target date for launching the program is 12-18 months away. [The Stew]

Clearly, dear readers, you have impeccable taste in online media, but nonetheless every now and again you need a new distraction. To that end, we’ve rounded up a short stack of under-the-radar blogs to check out that are — in one way or another — about, for, or by Chicago and we think are worth your time. Isn't it fun to uncover hidden gems? Yeah, we don’t feel like working either.

Sun-Times Washington Bureau Chief Lynn Sweet reports that Robert Novak has announced his immediate retirement in the wake of his brain tumor diagnosis, which Novak says is "dire."

Check out LTHForum mainstay Michael "Mike G" Gebert's high-definition video podcasts from his wonderfully-named site, "Sky Full of Bacon."

A couple of localvore items of note to start: