Results tagged “thepublican”

Paul Kahan's beer and tacos joint in the old Pontiac Café space now has a name. Big Star is set to open in the next month or so. Big Star is largely influenced by Depression-era Bakersfield, California. that means there's gonna be a lot of Dust Bowl country music, Merle Haggard and Buck Owens being spun by Danny's Tavern and Reckless Records.

On Sunday, October 18, the chefs of Blackbird, avec and The Publican along with Pamela Fitzpatrick of Fox & Obel are hosting a five-course benefit dinner supporting James Beard Foundation. Chefs of the night will be Becky Broeske, Koren Grieveson, Brian Huston, Paul Kahan and Mike Sheerin. Pairings will feature Champagne Henriot, Napa Valley’s Blackbird Vineyards, Goose Island Beer Company and Three Floyds Brewing Co. If you must only choose one big dining event of the fall, this might be it. Hors d’oeuvres include: oysters, smoked black cod, and crispy pork rinds paired with champagne. The five course menu includes:

Baconfest Chicago may have been postponed until April, but the VIP bacon cookoff at the Publican slated for October 24 is still a lock. In fact, tickets went on sale at noon.

Thursday night some of Chicago's best chefs will be preparing dishes for Toque, an event to benefit Children's Oncology Services, Inc. The benefit takes place at Harold Washington Library Center (400 S. State Street) and will includes cocktails and a degustation menu as well as both a silent and live auction. Tickets are $250 each. Bill Kurtis, founder of Tallgass Beef Company, will be the Master of Ceremonies and the Chef Coordinator for the event is Michael Kornick of MK, one of our favorites. Featured Chefs include:

          

Last night's beer dinner at the Publican was the culmination of six months of planning and discussions between Paul Kahan and New Holland Brewing Company. After all the brewing, the emails and phone calls, getting to know each other and travel between Chicago and Holland, it came down to the beer and the food, as it should have been. The proof, as the adage goes, would be in the pudding.

One of the agenda items left on the table when Paul Kahan and his entourage returned to Chicago from New Holland Brewing was finding a name for the biere de garde they brewed for their August 23 beer dinner at the Publican. Kahan and New Holland's Fred Bueltmann were riffing on mutual jazz musicians they were fans of, before the New Holland Knickerbocker gin and Zeppelin whisky took the riffing to a very dark-but-funny place.

(Today we wrap up our week-long series following chef Paul Kahan as he brewed beer at New Holland Brewing and planned a menu for an August 23 beer dinner at the Publican. If you haven't already, you can go back and read part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4)

Many local beer drinkers owe their first experience with New Holland Brewing to Larry Bell. It was in October 2006 when Bell decided to pull his beers out of Illinois as a protest of the Illinois Beer Industry Fair Dealing Act. October in Illinois is premium weather for hoppy ales such as Bell’s Two-Hearted ale and Bell’s decision (which was equal parts protest, fit of pique, and masterstroke of marketing) left bars, restaurants and liquor stores throughout the city scrambling for a replacement.

      

(This is Part 3 in our week-long series following the evolution of a beer dinner at the Publican, from conception to the actual dinner. IF you haven't already, read Part 1 and Part 2.)

              

(This is the second in a series following the evolution of a beer dinner at the Publican, from conception to reality. Read Part 1 here.)

      

“Cooking with beer is a little new for me.” To hear a chef say such a thing would be surprise enough. That the chef admitting this was Paul Kahan made me take even more notice.

Our Town's better restaurants are constantly adding new dishes to their menus and we found ourselves at Publican staring at some dishes that we hadn't seen before. Saturday night was a good one to fix an organ meat jones and we had a choice between duck heart and beef tongue. We opted for the latter and were faced with an epiphany.

The annual James Beard Award winners were announced over two nights in New York. Despite some strong showings from local chefs, media and restaurateurs, the ceremonies turned into a case of "It was an honor just being nominated."

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.

Looking toward Belgium yet again for inspiration this week. A few months back our predecessor as food and drink editor went to the Publican and Twittered about the best beer she ever had. Erin Twittered a lot about that beer, it sounded like the highlight of her dinner.

        

Alright, maybe we did tweet some of it ourselves, but bunch at the Publican lived up to the short-notice hype yesterday. Today we're pleased to present photos of some of the dishes on the menu, captured in their fresh-from-the-kitchen glory by none other than Rachelle "Chicagoist Prime" Bowden.

Either this is a genius move or a case of Twitter going meta, but the Publican started serving brunch today and both Paul Kahan and his publicist Ellen Malloy have been twittering the entire service. This has only served to make us more hungry as out 1 p.m. brunch time nears.

              

Last night Mindy Segal brought together some of the best chefs in the city to celebrate Hot Chocolate's fourth anniversary with a $100 per person dinner to benefit Share Our Strength, a non-profit that works with local food banks, restaurants and community groups to combat hunger at home. Segal is the chair of Share Our Strength's "Taste of the Nation" event, scheduled for August 13 at Ravenswood Billboard Factory (Full disclosure: this Chicagoist staffer is also on the event committee).

Break out your party hats, on Monday, February 23, Hot Chocolate is celebrating its 4th birthday by hosting a ridiculous five course dinner complete with appropriately paired craft beers. Even better, ticket sales will benefit Share Our Strength, a national non-profit working to end childhood hunger.

We can certainly be accused of overhyping the Publican in recent weeks, but this dinner they're having tomorrow evening bears a mention if only for the beer company whose brews they're featuring.

         

2008 was already shaping up locally as a banner year for new restaurant openings. L2O was recently named the best new restaurant in America by Esquire, with Takashi and Mercat a la Planxa also making the list. Bill Kim left Le Lan to focus on Urban Belly; Graham Elliot Bowles responded to criticism of his eponymous River North outpost by slowly tweaking things until he got it right. Ryan Poli came back to town with Perennial. Superstar chefs such as Marcus Samuelsson and Terrance Brennan targeted Chicago for restaurant locales. And we're still waiting for Lula Café's Pilsen location to open in a bit (with Jason Vincent at the helm).

We've spent more time than we care to admit in recent weeks at the Publican digging on swine, oysters and beer. For those who haven't read Jacy's "First Look," here's the link to tie you over while we finish our full review for Friday. With over 70 listings, the Publican's beer menu is extensive, but not expansive like Hopleaf or Map Room. One of the winning selections on their draft menu is a French cider that we highly recommend with at least three of their cheese selections.

        

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.

Arguably the most anticipated restaurant of the year, The Publican finally opened its doors before they were torn down by the hungry, excited masses. We were initially surprised there wasn't a wait, being 8:00 on a Saturday, until we saw the space. Eyeballing it, The Publican is about the size of three avecs and although we were seated immediately, the German-style beer hall was full of people at long wooden communal tables, small groups at pig pen-esque private booths, and others just sitting at the bar for a drink.

• Be careful on the two-wheelers, especially if you're a chef. Phil Vettel took time out from covering his Bizarro-world Chicago Gourmet to report that both Laurent Gras of L2O and Café Matou's Charlie Socher were in recent accidents. Gras, a bicycling enthusiast, was hopsitalized for a week and is now back in the kitchen. Socher wiped out his motorcycle (hopefully he wore a leather jacket for a controlled slide); chef Polo Heredia is filling in while he recovers. [The Stew]
• Meanwhile, Tribune wine critic Bill Daley writes about a new wine advocacy group called TAPAS (Tempranillo Advocates, Producers and Amigos Society) that promotes advocacy of American-grown tempranillo [Tribune]
• Is Hopleaf expanding? That's the rumor on the street, according to David Tamarkin at TOC (via). Next door neighbor and longtime Andersonville trattoria La Donna is moving just a bit north, to 6340 N. Clark, by mid-November, and Hopleaf is negotiating for the space. [TOC]

Leading off with some localvore challenge items while taking inventory of the fridge and pantry for what we need to buy: