Quick Bites
- More restaurant shutdowns by the city health department. Yesterday they shut down The Original Pancake House in Lincoln Park (2020 N. Lincoln Park West) for having cockroaches; Sky Chop Suey (8616 S. Kedzie) for cockroaches, food stored at unsafe temperatures, an overflowing dumpster and a really filthy employee bathroom; Thai Oscar (4638 N. Western) was shut down for having a leaky three compartment sink. those are the ones with a separate basin for washing, rinsing and sanitizing dishes.
- More on that big InBev/Anheuser Busch merger from earlier in the week. Now that InBev's buyout of A-B (for $70 a share) has been agreed to in principle — it's still needs approval from both companies — the speculation has begun as to what InBev has planned for A-B and its core brands. InBev is known for its emphasis on the bottom line and one possibility to generate the capital for the $50 purchase could be selling off A-B's stake in Modelo Corona. Both Distinguished Brands' "Street Talk" e-mail newsletter and Brew Blog indicate this could be a golden opportunity for MIllerCoors, which has been making its own headlines this week.
- Over at Drive-Thru, Andie Thomalla has a wonderful piece on how to sample cheese, inspired by a visit to the Provenance tent at the Logan Square Farmers Market. Some of those tips should come in handy for next week's Festival of Cheese at the Chicago Hilton.
- Catching up on RSS feeds the past week and the always astute Mike Nagrant weighs in on how some of our celebrity chefs ("the new rock stars") are starting to act like prima donnas. Nagrant cites David Chang's recent decision to ban photography at Momofuku and our own Charlie Trotter's many on-record contradictions as examples of executive chef misbehavior.
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