Bad news often begets more bad news and the last thing we need to hear is the possibility of another convention contemplating pulling up stakes to move to another city. Hot on the heels of the plastics convention moving to Orlando comes word that the National Restaurant Association may be looking at hosting its 2012 convention in another city. The NRA is already committed to having its spring show at McCormick Place in 2010 and 2011, but the old refrain that cost is an issue may force the NRA to look elsewhere.
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.
Gathering some of the best food-related tidbits on the web so you don't have to:
Baconfest Chicago proper won't be for another six months, but if Saturday's VIP pro cookoff is any indication organizers Seth Zurer, Michael Griggs and Andre Pluess might want to have some ambulances at the ready. Or at least some Lipitor. We won't get into another debate about how played out the bacon meme is; haters will hate, lovers will love. But there was a sense of fun among the crowd Saturday. As vocal as the pro- and anti-bacon folks can be, the overall vibe was lifted from Alfred E. Neumann: "What? Me Worry?" Few took themselves seriously at the cookoff and levity reigned. So did excess.
It was only a couple weeks ago that Big Star was announced as the name of the Paul Kahan taco joint in the old Pontiac Café space. Now there's a firm opening date: November 9.
Thanks largely to his win on "Top Chef Masters," Rick Bayless is riding an unprecedented wave of popularity that shows no signs of cresting soon. At present, Bayless is arguably the most recognizable chef on the planet, if not the United States, putting in 15-hour days between the kitchens of Topobolampo, Frontera Grill and XOCO. Anticipation for XOCO, Bayless's paean to Mexican street food, was already at a fever pitch before his winning "Top Chef Masters" turn with his usage of Twitter. While we were able to get in and out on XOCO's opening day — XOCO opened on the same day as the Oprahcalypse on Michigan Avenue — subsequent days haven't been so fortunate. Diners heading to Bayless's Frontera compound on Clark Street have been subjected to an average 2-hour wait time to any of the restaurants.
If there was a world without beer (perish the thought) and we had to drink wine all the time, we'd go with a good rioja all the time. Well, most of the time.
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.
Last week we attended a preview of the new menu items at Wiener and Still Champion (802 Dempster, Evanston, 847-869-0100). Many of the new additions are former off-menu items owner Gus Paschalis would serve to frequent customers; the country fried gyros were one such item. But nothing prepared us for the phallic monstrosity pictured above.
Chicago is overflowing with fantastic food, a majority of which is not conducive to maintaining a healthy weight or preventing cholesterol from clinging for dear life to the inside of our arteries. Contrary to the reputation of a dietitian, we cannot easily conjure the name of a single food that we would forbid from touching our lips. That said, eating a healthy diet is necessary to preventing disease, avoiding weight gain, and feeling happy and energetic. Here are a few strategies to help you navigate your way around Chicago’s equally glorious and treacherous culinary landscape.
Urban Belly's Bill Kim announced Friday (via twitter, where else?) that Belly Shack, his sandwich shop in the old Vella Café space underneath the Western/Armitage Blue Line station, will open tomorrow at noon. You've been warned.
We work during the day near downtown Evanston, so we've become familiar with the available lunch options. The suburb seems to be turning into a new center for good burgers using quality ingredients. Readers got a glimpse of Edzo's Burger Shop a couple weeks back; Ed Lakin and crew are now open for business. We've also extolled the virtues of Wiener and Still Champion in the past. Best known for a good hot dog and owner Gus Paschalis's willingness to deep fry anything once, WaSC also makes an amazing burger. There's another burger joint we've been enamored with recently that does its best to put out a good burger, if not rise to the level of Lakin and Paschalis.
You can always count on mado to go where few other restaurants will go in their quest to adhere to serving all things head-to-tail. Lately Rob Levitt's been on a mutton kick that will continue for the foreseeable future. Mutton — older, mature lamb &3151 is noted for its richness in flavor. Because it's a tough meat, however, mutton is best cooked long and slow.
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]
Continuing its year-long celebration of ten years in business, BIN 36 is serving $3 cheese flights throughout the month of October. The promotion also coincides with the rollout of BIN 36's new cheese menu.
Taxim, the Wicker Park restaurant that has received overwhelmingly positive reviews (in our opinion it's probably the best new restaurant to open this year) for its innovative take on Greek cuisine, is teaming up with one of Greece's best wineries to put together a dinner that, on paper, is going to blow diners away.
Re-opening tomorrow is Club Lago (331 W. Superior, 312-951-2849). The 60-year-old River North Italian mainstay has been closed since March after your standard "chimney from another building crumbles and destroys the kitchen" accident. Not content to simply rebuild the kitchen, owners GianCarlo and Guido Nardini did a whole overhaul of the restaurant.
Today we're going to run some more photos of Chicago Gourmet that we didn't run in our recap of the festival yesterday. It's a combination of chef shots, action shots from demos and seminars, and good ol' food pr0n. Enjoy and, if you have photos of the event on flickr, be sure to tag them with "chicagoist" so that they show up on the "Chicagoist Photos" pool..
A couple weeks back a friend purchased Chicago Gourmet tickets via the half-price special Groupon offered. She asked for advice to prepare for the festival. We told her to pack a lunch.
To say that Bridgeport is lacking a sports bar is an understatement (Jimbo's does not qualify). There's a handful of criteria to build a successful sports bar: lots of dark wood, lots of widescreen tvs for watching the game, food that won't make you sick, a bar and waitstaff oozing The Hotness and a music playlist that would be at home on Eric and Kathy in the morning. Rocky's aims to change all that. This sports bar is located on the northwest corner of 31st and Wells and named after one of the owner's dogs — not Balboa, Marciano, Graziano or Wirtz — in a space that was long known to Bridgeport residents as Punchinello's. That bar had a clientele of spiked hair, club gear, chin halos and machismo so thick that it earned the derogatory nickname "Punch-a-d@g0'$."
One of the high points of last year's Chicago Gourmet festival was listening to Carrie Nahabedian and legendary chef Norman Van Aken discuss, among other things, their time at the former Sinclair's in Lake Forest. Van Aken was the Executive Chef and his kitchen staff included Suzy Crofton, Charlie Trotter and Nahabedian. All would go on to bigger and brighter heights.
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.
Odds were solid that the bustle of a restaurant kitchen would be music to the ears of Christian and Omar. Their father Jose owns and operates Bridgeport mainstay Tacos Erendira and makes one of our favorite al pastor tacos in the city. Mother Maria is the sugar behind the spice of North Center's Café 28 as its longtime pastry chef. Now the sons enter the cutthroat world of restaurants with a concept that's downright bold in a neighborhood whose idea of brunch is eating a Polish sausage and fries from Maxwell Street Depot and drinking a Mickey's Big mouth on the hood of your car.
At least among our limited circle of friends, the Drawing Room is a restaurant masked by confusion. Despite their intense PR efforts over the past couple of years, some seemed unsure about what, exactly, the Drawing Room is. “Isn’t that just a nightclub?” “I have no idea where that place is, and I’ve walked past it a thousand times!” “Isn’t that, like, a hidden strip club?” Admittedly, the last one was a bit of a stretch. We had visited Le Colonial, their upstairs neighbor, at least 10 times without noticing the entrance and staircase leading down to the basement restaurant. We’re very glad that streak has finally been broken. The Drawing Room is a gem of a place; small and cozy, beautifully designed, offering interesting, well-priced food and amazing cocktails.
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