Results tagged “dining”

Anthony was impressed by the food at the Drawing Room when he visited a couple months back and we've always loved the cocktails of Charles Joly and Tim Lacey. Now the Drawing Room and the LUNGevity Foundation have teamed up to raise funds for lung cancer research.

          

Monday night we attended LTHForum's fifth annual Great Neighborhood Restaurants Awards dinner at Marie's Pizza and Liquors in the wunnerful Mayfair neighborhood, itself a previous winner of a GNR. 13 restaurants, 1 bar and 4 bakeries were added to LTH's already expansive list of GNR recipients; you can download their pocket guide here.

More people are moving south to Pilsen and Bridgeport in search of cheap housing and rents, and that's led to a slow but steady increase in dining options for our part of town; we'll have a review of Nana Friday. 18th Street in Pilsen has even seen some diversity with the recent openings of Ristorante al Teatro and Ciao Amore, and Honky Tonk BBQ before that.

We've been looking forward to seeing Nana (3267 S. Halsted St., 312 929 2486), an organic breakfast/brunch spot in Bridgeport by Omar and Christian Solis, whose father Jose owns nearby Tacos Erendira, open for months. Chicago Brunch Blog reports that they're finally taking the paper off the windows and are slated to open 6 a.m. Monday with a menu including buckwheat pancakes with banana and mulled hemp seeds, liege (a leavened batter with beads of pearl sugar that burst and caramelize in the waffle iron) and the "Nanadict:" a pupusa topped with crumbled chorizo, poached eggs and poblano sauce. Coupled with the packed houses at HAN 202 nightly and Nightwood, my backyard could be on the cusp of destination dining. [via Grub Street Chicago]

His Elective Majesty and the Illinois Restaurant Association trotted out some of the city's best chefs and sommeliers yesterday to announce the second annual Chicago Gourmet festival, taking place September 26-27. Reader reporter Julia Thiel noted that the IRA is looking to atone for last year's inaugural edition, which was heavy on the wine and spirits. And that's an understatement.

Travel & Leisure magazine announced their list of 50 Best New American Restaurants. Stop us if these four local entries to the list sound familiar; L2O, the Publican, Perennial and Urban Belly. L2O and the Publican also made the "Hot Tables" list at Conde Nast Traveler.

The economy may still suck, but it's been a banner year for restaurants, bars and their PR firms. At least from a marketing perspective. They've been able to smoothly segue from offering "economic stimulus" packages to "tax day relief" specials. To be fair, some of the offers are pretty damn good. Following is a list of some of the better deals around tomorrow for you to dole out what cash you didn't send to the IRS.

Rogers Park is one of the city's most ethnically diverse neighborhoods; organizing an "Alphabet of Nations" tour of its restaurants seems eminently feasible. From 4-8 p.m. Sunday, that's exactly what's going to happen.

One of the big happenings fine dining fans were looking toward was the opening of Charlie Trotter's planned restaurant in the Elysian Hotel downtown. Trotter said at the time of the announcement of his deal with the Elysian in 2006, "We're very choosy about who we get into bed with, to put it bluntly."

Here's something to consider for that person in your life who lives to dine out but is a pain in the ass to shop for. à la card Chicago is an update on the clichéd and tacky coupon book. It's a deck of cards offering $10 off the tab at 52 of the area's best restaurants. Looking through the deck we saw a slew of restaurants we love, such as Mundial Cocina Mestiza, Hot Doug's, Mana Food Bar, Le Lan, Naha, Lula Café, MK, Manny's, Mado, Kitsch'n.

• Chicagoist hasn't been the only one covering the event. Here are some other reviews of Chicago Gourmet.
• I don't know what festival Phil Vettel attended, but it sounded really fucking good. Mr. "One fork per plate" found no "shortage of richness"; at one point, Stolpman and I had to go to America's Dog to grab a bite.
• Apparently, Vettel didn't bother to share that same spoil of riches with fellow Stew correspondent Chris Borrelli. I don't mind a lot of wine at a gourmet food festival, either. But the ratio of wine tents to food tents was ridiculous.

          

We attended the soft opening for Graham Elliot, the new River North "bistronomic restaurant" from former Avenues chef Graham Elliot Bowles at 217 W. Huron, last month and were sufficiently impressed by what we sampled to put it on our list of restaurants to return, keeping in mind that soft openings are generally where a new restaurant does its best to maintain initial appearances

There have been a lot of things said on this site about Taste of Chicago over the years. There are over 750,000 people who head downtown every year to sun, frolic and get their fill of giant turkey legs and corn on sticks. 'Course, that isn't all Taste of Chicago has to offer; even with Chicago Gourmet set to launch in September, Taste is still the food event for the everyman.

One could make the argument that a zoo, by nature, is already organic. But this weekend, the Lincoln Park Zoo is implementing one step in a five-year plan to reduce the attraction’s impact on the environment when they open the Cafe at Wild Things. The cafe will only feature organic, sustainable, locally produced snacks. Even the utensils will be made of biodegradable cornstarch-based plastics.

From Crain's comes word that Le Lan Executive chef Bill Kim is leaving behind the river North French-Vietnamese outpost to open a noodle shop/casual eatery in Logan Square.

There's plenty going on this weekend in Chicago, like UFO symposiums, science fairs, and no shortage of places to eat. But if none of those things float your boat, maybe one of these events will.

To say that it isn't hard to stumble into a taqueria in Pilsen is an understatement. Focus on the Blue Island corridor, however. and the question becomes trying to avoid one. We took advantage of yesterday's thaw to walk around, enjoy the weather buy some pirated movies (you should see our copy of "Untraceable"). Then, after we worked up an appetite, we headed into the first taqueria we saw for a quick bite, which wound up being an old favorite.

During last week’s sleet storm we ducked into the South Loop Wine Cellar on the walk home from the Museum Campus. Half-frozen, soaked and more concerned with warming up than with finding a new shopping destination, we were pleasantly surprised by what we found inside. Warm, welcoming and filled with wine bins, exposed bricks and a beautiful Christmas tree, the store was the perfect place for us to stop. With all of the hype surrounding the opening of the South Loop location of Sam’s Wine and Spirits, some may have missed this much smaller, but much cozier, destination.

In high school one of the constants of our Friday nights was a family-sized pizza delivered to the house from La Villa Restaurant and Banquets in Old Irving. We'd fight for a corner slice among our allotment, chase them down with a glass of pop, and head out the house for our other constant: vainly working on our game with every Catholic school girl we could meet.

Chicagoist has been known to wax philosophic when it comes to websites that make dining out and ordering in easier. We've written about two of our favorites, MenuPages and GrubHub, here and here, respectively. There's a new kid in town, and her name is FoodieBytes. We can already feel MenuPages and GrubHub shaking in their internet boots.

If you plan on braving the idiocy that is New Year's Eve on the town, you have made your dinner reservations already, haven't you? After all, if you plan on going out on New Year's Eve and aren't heading to a friend's or a family party, you're already committed to spending money. Why not go all out, dress to the nines, and try out some place you normally wouldn't think of dining? Leave it to...

We would like to take a moment to thank this week's advertisers on Chicagoist. Dewars Repeal Day, because you shouldn't take the right to have a drink for granted. Sony Card, because you'll get a free MP3 player if you apply. Love is a Mix Tape, Rob Sheffield's book about women, music, and love. American Express' Urban Adventures-- for information about shopping, dining, and entertainment. Homes for Working Families-- working to make housing affordable in...

'Tis the season for free champagne tastings. Get started tonight at the Artisan Cellar (located on the first floor of the Merchandise Mart) with a sample of some rare bubblies from 4-6 p.m. Learn all about the history of smothered foods from author Wilbert Jones, the author of Smothered Southern Foods. Jones' lecture, "Smothered - Southern Style" is being held Saturday at the Chicago History Museum, sponsored by the Culinary Historians of Chicago. The lecture...

Dan Smith and Steve McDonagh, best known as local culinary mavens the Hearty Boys, have done it again. Not content with everything else they have going on (the catering and restaurant business and the burgeoning media career, for instance), McDonagh and Smith have created a fruitcake recipe that they say will change our perception on how we view this holiday monstrosity. Additionally, McDonagh reveals some of his family's fruitcake traditions in an accompanying article in...

Although the cover story to yesterday's Sun-Times said that diners shouldn't be alarmed, it's hard to not be after reading the sensationalized cover story which listed 21 restaurants whose ice had more bacteria than a toilet in the Sun-Times men's room. A note for downtown workers looking for lunch this afternoon: you may want to buy a bottled drink. The testing of ice cubes from 49 area restaurants found that the unlucky 21 tested for...

Hearts all across Chicago were broken last January when Zephyr closed its doors. We walked past its former space a few days ago and wouldn't you know, construction workers were busy building what looked to be another restaurant. Alas, it won't be Zephyr 2.0 but rather an Irish-style bar and restaurant (pictured), opening in March 2008 (to their best estimate). The workers didn't know what it was going to be called. New York Times writer...

Bridgeport's treated us well. As we've written numerous times both here and elsewhere, the neighborhood grew on us. When we first moved out south eight years ago we never would have thought that we'd have lived here as long as we have; we just thought of Bridgeport as a stop-gap to moving back to the north side. Now it seems like others are clued in to what we knew long ago: this neighborhood rocks....

We've been digging SceneUnseen's photos all week. Al fresco dining during a free Pritzker Pavilion show (a.k.a. stuffing your face while the Joffrey Ballet grooves) On any given weekend, there's always something new and worth seeing on a Chicago stage. Tried-and-true shows like Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind and Improvised Shakespeare, perfect for treating out of town guests to a laugh. Friendly, helpful people are running the tawniest art galleries. Free...

In our experience, most people who eat at Costello's Sandwich and Sides get the same thing every time. It's their Costello's Match. Former Chicagoist editors Scott Smith and Erin Shea love the Heartland and Smokin' Turk, respectively. Our boyfriend's favorite is the Italian Grinder. For us, our Costello's Match is the Turkey Focaccia. Generally speaking, the Turkey Focaccia is a basic turkey sandwich — turkey, provolone, lettuce, tomato, vinaigrette. But what makes this sandwich...