Results tagged “reviews”

It’s not often that we give a positive review to a restaurant that started flooding during our meal. Heck, it’s not often that we EXPERIENCE a flood during our meal - though the urge to pair up and make like Noah’s animals gave our date a certain sense of urgency. But Paramount Room is an exception. An upscale pub from the group behind the popular Roscoe Village spots Kitsch’n and Volo Restaurant Wine Bar, Paramount Room is a dark, atmospheric dive that, in another time, would’ve been filled with smoke and gangsters.

While in DC the previous weekend we decided to dive deep into the beer menu at the Brickskeller. Our favorite selections from our visit belonged to Green Flash Brewing in Vista, CA, particularly their hop Head Red Ale and West Coast IPA. We were back in town in time for all the "OMG! BIG STAR IS OPEN!!" twittering going on. We went to Big Star last week and made sure not to use any tasty adjectives that would draw the ire of the Twitterati.

Craft breweries may receive (deserved) recognition for the inventiveness they're using to raise the profile of beer in the marketplace. It's wise to remember that today's brewers are merely dusting off techniques that date back generations, to those first groups of friars who discovered that fermenting malt made for a nice loophole to their fasting. The brewing history of the De Landtsheer family starts in the 1600s, but Emmanuel "Manu" De Landtsheer's Malheur (French for "misfortune") listed his first beer for public consumption only 12 years ago. The Malheur brews we'd shank a man with a sharpened toothbrush handle for are the ones brewed in the "methode champenoise" style.

Our biggest issue with pumpkin beers is an imbalance between the flavor of pumpkin and spice, usually favoring the latter. Ideally a pumpkin ale should bring to mind memories of good pumpkin pie. You know, with the graham cracker crust and all, some gingerbread or some cloves balanced delicately with the flavor of pumpkin. In short, If you're going to make a spiced ale, make a spiced ale. we want to taste pumpkins in our pumpkin beers. Southern Tier gets it right with Pumking, one of Karl's favorite beers this time of year. Pumking will blow your mind, you'll ask for ice cream for an a la mode.

One of our more versatile wine rack staples is Sofia Mini Blanc de Blancs 187ml cans. The beauty of these little beauties is it allows you to dole out the right amount of bubbly without worrying that you will be left with a half empty bottle that may go flat.

         

"Have you ever been to one of our family dinners?" Rob Levitt of mado asked us Monday night at the LTHForum GNR awards dinner. Allowing that we hadn't, Levitt's eyes lit up. "They're fun and, with this one, you're gonna be in for a real treat."

       

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.

Pop-open the bubbly - It’s Wednesday! The holiday season is upon us and in typical true-blooded American fashion we begin the season of over-indulgence - more food, more booze, larger waistlines. We also take the opportunity to pick up an extra bottle of something special - maybe a nice bottle of bubbly.

Our nose was assaulted by the scent of apples and spices from the moment we opened a bottle of Two Brothers Avalon. It was the olfactory equivalent to hearing Christmas carols in October, but much more pleasing. Avalon is another in Two Brothers' "Artisan Bottling" series — Bonfire Dunkle Weiss is part of that series. get past the nose of this beer and you'll immediately pick up a pretty serious hop flavor to Avalon. Most beers or ales brewed with apple cider or must err on the side of malt. Since there is a fair amount of spices in Avalon, the hops work to complement that aspect of the taste profile.

   

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.

This being the harvest season, we'll be dedicating the next three weeks selections to brews that reflect in-season fruits or flavors. One of those flavors that we live for this time of year is honey crisp apple. Anthony even showed readers how to incorporate honey crisps into a cocktail. Honey Crisps also make a damn good cider.

From the time the monks of St. Francis of Paula brewed the first doppelbocks in Bavaria, it's been a custom for breweries to end the names of their "liquid bread" in "-ator." Abita named their Helles Doppelbock, Andygator, a "creature of the swamp." Unlike many doppelbocks, Andygator is brewed to have a dry finish and emphasize a balance between hops, a pleasant light citrus flavor and bready yeasts. It pairs well with hearty sandwiches, like a blue cheese-crusted burger we made last week at home. Andygator should also pair well with anything cajun-related, blackened and fried. It's also a wonderful departure from the everyday Abita releases.

In which we take a quick look at a few recent musical releases.

We were at otom last week checking out some of the offerings of new executive chef Thomas Elliot Bowman, who's slowly but surely transformed the menu from the moto light of his predecessor Daryl Nash to the more traditional bistro fare originally envisioned for the restaurant. otom has a $25 Tuesday tasting menu that is the very definition of value. For an extra $15 you can add wine pairings or you can pair one beer with the menu for $6.

• 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]

It was Labor Day Weekend and we just finished watching "Inglourious Basterds" downtown. Nowhere to go and nothing to do we wandered around and found ourselves at Jake Melnick's (41 E. Superior, 312-266-0400, jakemelnicks.com). Within minutes we were wolfing down their burger of the month and begging not to be served the Budweiser they give away for free with the burger. The bartender went out of the way to comp us a Surly Bender. She poured us a Surly Furious, instead.

   

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'$."

Not all weizens are alike. A Berliner weisse is a sour take on the popular German style. The late Michael Jackson (beer historian, not the entertainer) traced the origins of the style back to the 16th century Hamburg. A brewer named Cord Broihan copied the style and brought it north. Berliner weisses are known for their extreme tartness and low alcohol content. The sourness is caused by bottle fermentation or by adding lactobacillus yeast bacteria. By the 19th century there were over 700 breweries in northern Germany specifically brewing Berliner weisse. Now, only a few breweries remain; 2 of those are in Berlin proper. The term "Berliner weisse" is protected in Germany. to combat the sourness, Berliner weisses are often served with raspberry syrup or woodruff.

         

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.

We admit that sometimes we tend to fall into ruts here with the "BotW" installments. We find ourselves visiting the same styles and same places. No excuses, really. Now that we upgraded our cell phone from the universal remote we used to carry to a smart phone, we can also take photos on the go again.

We had a scheduled softball with WBEZ called because of rain on successive Fridays. A shame, really: we were looking forward to hearing Carl Kasel do the play-by-play while we made Justin Kaufmann cry and slid with high spikes into "Sound Opinions" producer Jason Saldhana. Digressing, with the first game called we retreated to some shelter underneath a bridge like the blogger trolls we are and commenced to drinking. Which would have been the end result of the game, win or win by slaughter rule.

Decided to cook with beer Sunday and whipped up some amazing buckwheat pancakes using a cup of Lost Abbey Inferno ale. Damned if they weren't some of the fluffiest we've had in a long time. the beer was good, too.

Although we didn't recognize it at the time, our formative years learning about beer started in the southeast Asia nearly 20 years ago with brands like Tiger, Chang, Bintang, Anchor (not the San Francisco brewery), Kingfisher and Singha. We heard that Lion stout was making its way to Chicago and it brought back old memories. Getting our hands on the stout was like saying hello to an old friend. Say hello to Guinness? Screw that and marketing slogans. Say hello to Lion Stout!

       

No sooner had the server placed the dish on our table yesterday than we were looking for said server to return the dish to the kitchen. By then he was "in the weeds." After a couple minutes we finally got the attention of one of the hostesses, who summoned a front-of-house manager to the table. "What's wrong with the dish?" she asked. Our friend simply pointed to the undercooked chicken on the plate.

The adjective to describe Sunday was "epic." There was a lot of eating involved with going to Fiesta del Sol; there were two trips alone Sunday. In between was a visit to LUSH Wine & Spirits University Village location for their free Sunday wine tasting (2-5 p.m. every Sunday). After we ran through the wine selections, a palate cleanser was needed and another customer cleaned them out of Gumballhead. Scouring the cooler we came upon some organic beers. Our history with organic brews is not a good one, but we're anything if not an equal-opportunity drinker and one bad experience won't deter us.

  

A couple weeks back Rob and I attended a tasting of Rosangel, a new infused tequila from the makers of Gran Centenario, at Nacional 27. Rosangel takes Gran Centenario's reposado tequila — aged for 60 days in port barrels — and then is infused using hibiscus flowers. The result is a pinkish-colored tequila with the faintest sweetness imparted to it from the flower petals.

• 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]

It's common knowledge that the four basic ingredients in brewing beer are malted grain, hops, yeast and water. Most breweries tend to stick to variations of a grain: e.g. barley; wheat; rice if you're Anheuser-Busch or Miller. Belgium's Bosteels Brewery utilizes a 310-year-old recipe for Tripel Karmeliet using wheat, barley and oats in the brewing. The result is a smooth and sweet Belgian Golden ale that can appeal to both serious beer drinkers and folks looking for something cool to drink on a humid day (rare as they've been this summer).

We've mentioned before that local brewing is entering something of a golden age. With both Half Acre and Metropolitan planting roots with breweries, Josh Deth finishing up construction on Revolution Brewing and bringing on Jim Cibak as his brewer, there's no shortage of good local beers.