Food: May 2009 Archives

Went to Goose Island Clybourn last night for the Swan Creek Farm Auction-ending celebration; the online auction brought in over $14,000. All of the monies raised from the various benefits wil go a long way toward helping Swan Creek's George Rasmussen get a new truck for deliveries.

• Today and Tomorrow: Better late than never on this item. These are the final two days to take advantage of the $5 "Burker" Week at David Burke's Primehouse. Primehouse's 40-day dry aged "Burker" is available during lunch for the wonderful price of $5.
• Saturday: With "Top Chef Masters" set to premiere in a couple weeks, "Top Chef: The Tour" hits Green City Market tomorrow with Season 4 also-ran and Izard BFF Antonia Lofaso and Radhika Desai, the former chef at Between Boutique and Café who's headed for New York. Lofaso and Desai will offer recipe tips, do demonstrations and say what an honor it was to be on "TC" from 10 a.m. - 2 p.m.
• Tuesday: Happy Birthday to Cyrano's Bistrot and Wine Bar, turning a prepubescent 13. Didier Durand is honoring the occasion with a beaujolais tasting featuring 13 producers of the varietal. the event is sponsored by House of Glunz, which will also take pre-orders on the wines featured for pickup after the event at House of Glunz. the event starts at 6 p.m., followed by a six-course dinner at 7. Cost is $69.95.

Just a reminder that the Swan Creek Farm Online Auction ends tonight. This is your last chance to bid on a dinner for 6 prepared by some of the city's best chefs in your own home. so if you want to pool your money with five of your pals and try to win a chance to have Stephanie Izard cook you dinner, don't dawdle; the high bid on Izard is currently at $1100.

Mike Gebert took a road trip to Iowa recently to film some behind-the-scenes footage at La Quercia in Norwalk, IA. La Quercia owners Herb and Kathy Eckhouse make some of the best dry-cured artisan salumi available, particularly prosciutto and guanciale. Jeffrey Steingarten called La Quercia's prosciutto "the best American or imported prosciutto [he's] ever tasted," while Bon Appetit once named La Quercia "Food Artisans of the Year."

Slaughtering chickens, Jesus Cheetos, and Pine Mouth. Check it.

Home-made, fresh pasta is certainly the best kind. Unfortunately, we don’t have a pasta machine, or a ton of spare time, so we usually settle for dried. While shopping for produce, we ran into Pasta Puttana (translation: Pasta Whore) at the indoor version of the Green City Market, back in April. Owner Jessica Volpe was standing behind her entirely empty table and, when we went up to beg for scraps, she had nothing left. It was only 11 AM and the market had only been open for a couple of hours - we probably should have known better. Clearly, we aren’t the only people who love her products.

If you're on one of the millions of people who suffer from food related allergies, you know how difficult eating out can be. Carnivale's Executive Chef Mark Mendez has paired up with Lisa Williams (check out her website which features allergen free recipes) to create a dinner at which you can dine worry-free.

Marcus is stomping around like a kid on pixie dust right now with the news that Chick-fil-A is in the planning stages to open some stores in the greater Chicago area. The first will be in Aurora's Westfield Fox Valley Shopping Center, with plans for others to come.

         

News that Nightwood (2119 S. Halsted, 312-526-3385) opened last night spread like widlfire throughout twitter feeds and other blogs almost as soon as Jason Hammel announced it on his Facebook page. Since it's only a bridge over the south fork of the Chicago River away from home, we decided to check it out.

         

Are rooftops the new patios? Between the C-View at the Affinia, the Vertigo Sky Lounge at the Dana, the Whiskey Sky at the W and the Terrace at the Conrad among others, hotel roofs are for more than just AC units and gravel these days.

         

It was around 5 p.m. Sunday when I and the other judges for Cochon 555 gathered around a series of tables set up in the middle of a cavernous ballroom in the Drake Hotel, like a scene straight out of "Top Chef." Any questions about how we were to judge the competition were answered by Cochon founder Brady Lowe. We were asked to judge the chefs on a scale of 1-5 based on three factors: presentation, flavor, and utilization of the whole pig. That last factor was important, since this was a snout-to-tail competition.

      

We saw a lot of familiar faces at this year’s All-Candy Expo, which took place at McCormick place last Tuesday-Thursday. While we saw lots of cool products that made our mouths water, the most striking thing about Candy Expo always seems to be the sheer number of unspeakable horrors that make it onto the market. For each and every one of these products, whole teams of people had to agree that it was a good idea - an image that makes us scratch our heads in wonder. We’ll be profiling some of the better candies (especially local ones) over the coming weeks and months. At the opposite end of the spectrum, unmediated by PR gloss and returning for a second year , come the WORST products of 2009.

                

We paid a visit to one sixtyblue (1400 W. Randolph) to see some of the new menu items by Chef Michael McDonald. Chef McDonald has worked under Jean Joho at Everest as chef de cuisine and most recently as executive chef at C (the Charlie Trotter restaurant in Los Cabos, Mexico) and executive chef of Restaurant Charlie, Trotter's seafood restaurant in Las Vegas. one sixtyblue offers $5 wood-fired pizzas on Friday evenings. You can stay informed of their specials via their Facebook page.

A couple weeks back a post ran about Cochon 555, the snout-to-tail pork competition Sunday at the Drake Hotel featuring Graham Elliot Bowles, Stephen Dunne, Chris Pandel, Patrick Sheerin and Sam Burman. Each of them is tasked with breaking down and preparing a heritage breed pig for eating. Since then your humble food and drink editor was invited to be one of the judges for the event. I have no earthly clue what I bring to the table that chefs Koren Grieveson, Rick Gresch, Seth Siegel-Gardner and Doug Sohn don't, but it should be a fascinating time.

       

The new Whole Foods in Lincoln Park opened yesterday and it's huge. Really huge. Third largest in the world, in fact, behind a London store and the flagship Austin, Texas branch. 75,000 square feet of organic goodness. Even Mayor Daley was on hand to check out the new store and, we assume, buy some granola bars. We didn't get a chance to swing by and check it out but rest assured, we will soon. Luckily, readers Steve Koo and JoeM500 stopped by and took some pics.

It’s 80 degrees outside and we’re in the midst of Reisling Week 2009- a week-long celebration of America’s favorite white wine (but only if it’s sweet) which extends through this Sunday. We kid. We know some of you prefer the drier and flintier French varietals and now here’s your opportunity to sip and compare the styles of different German, Austrian, and Alsatian rieslings.

Opening tonight in Old Town is Eivissa (1531 N. Wells, 312-654-9500), a pinxtos and tapas bar from chef Dudley Nieto. Nieto is best known for his stints at Adobo Grill, Xel-Ha and Zapatista but the number of kitchens he's logged time at rival Geno Bahena for sheer wanderlust.

Daniel "Fruit Slinger" Shumski writes one of our favorite blogs, which is as seasonal as the orchard and farmers markets he works. For this season, Shumski is looking to move to a better server and acquire a very good camera for farmers market pr0n, so he's set up a pledge page for folks to help him out. Hey, if it's good enough for public television, public radio and even some magazines, why not the Fruit Slinger?

Snakes in a freezer, the origins of sriracha, your face on a potato, and...worms in love. Get it all right here in your Quick Bites.

We’re not ashamed to admit it - we love broccoli. To be honest, it’s probably our favorite vegetable, barely ahead of that other childhood favorite, Brussels Sprouts. Are we crazy? Vegan? Chlorophyll Deficient? No - we simply believe that, properly prepared, these are some of the tastiest veggies around.

Chicago Community Ventures recently awarded City Provisions Catering and Eventsand Irv & Shelly's Fresh Picks as part of its Sustain Illinois competition. Irv & Shelly's, as readers know, delivers local organic and seasonal produce, meats, dairy and breads to its subscribers and is one of the more popular CSA programs in the area.

For many food writers, the mere mention of the name John Mariani is enough to raise hackles and raise voices in protest. The "food and travel correspondent" for Esquire makes for an easy target with his byline at Esquire, Wine Spectator and Bloomberg News, ostentatious prose and numerous accusations of questionable ethics, including one instance relayed by moto's Homaru Cantu that's now become legend.

As Italian beef sandwiches go, there are at least 10 we would recommend before heading to Al's #1 Italian Beef; none when it's summer. The last thing you want is to have all that meat and wet dough sitting in your gut like a stone when the temperature reaches 80.

Amid all the recent turnover at Sepia a few months back, seeing mixologist Peter Vestinos leave to become the on-staff cocktail guy at Wirtz Beverage Group (formerly known as Judge & Dolph) probably hit us harder than seeing chef Kendal Duque leave. Vestinos's tenure at Sepia was an unqualified success and his cocktails received raves from diners and critics alike.

          

This past weekend, Chicagoist visited the trade show of the National Restaurant Association and its sister convention, the International Wine, Beer and Spirits Event. Despite the downturn in the economy, the convention was still hopping, filled with new products, new packaging, extravagant pavilions and thousands of companies hoping to sell the “next big thing” in food service. You’ll be seeing products and companies that we met up with at NRA featured over the next several months but for now, here are a few notes from a first-time attendee.

             

The food and drink staff here are huge fans of Schwa. Part of the reason is the space is so small that the attention diners receive is very personal. It's standard at Schwa to have chef Michael Carlson bringing the dishes to you and responding to your approval of the food with a simple reply: "Word." As a BYOB place, we've also been able to pair a few wines listing at under $10 with the meal.

The merger of Anheuser-Busch and InBev last year made Boston Beer Company the largest American-owned brewery (if you already knew that, give yourself a Mighty Marvel No-Prize). Not the biggest fan of Sam Adams brews here, for a variety of reasons unrelated to this post. Now that this review has been qualified, let's get on to this week's selection.

For those of us whose weekend won't revolve around NRA Show 2009, here are some events for you to consider:

          

As promised, we got up very very early to hit the Daley Plaza Farmer's Market as soon as it opened on Thursday morning. In future entries, we'll be visiting a varieties of farmer's markets around the city, but for the first day of the season, we returned to our old standby.

The annual National Restaurant Association trade show, beginning tomorrow at McCormick Place, serves two primary purposes. It's a showcase for new products tailored for the restaurant and food service industries. From point-of-sale systems and cookware to beverage dispensers and entertainment systems, NRA Show 2009 is one of the best places to find customers for the latest hot thing.

Bistro 110 (110 E. Pearson, 312-266-3110) is hosting a Two Brothers beer tasting from 6-8;30 p.m. this evening. They'll be pouring Domaine Dupage, Dog Days Dortmunder Lager, Ebel's Weiss and Cane & Ebel. Light noshes including quiche lorraine, steamed mussels, cheese and charcuterie stations, frites, smoked pork loin and sauerkraut, and Bistro 110 house pizzas. Both Jim and Jason Ebel from Two Brothers will be on hand to lead the tasting. Cost is $25.

It's American Craft Beer Week and the men behind the Drinking and Writing empire (Steve Mosqueda, Sean Benjamin and Pete Crowley) have planned a unique event to celebrate. Ten homebrewers have been given the basic ingredients to brew their own beer. The brewers are also tasked with pairing it with food either they or others make for them. Then the beer and food will be paired with an artist, writer, musician or dancer, who will interpret the pairing in a slam-style talent competition.

State Rep. Sara Feigenholtz is looking to boost the state alcohol tax by five cents a drink. According to WGN Radio:

What's up in food? Let's take a look at some things that caught our eye:

        

The South Loop, especially the area south of Roosevelt, is not exactly filled with brunch spots. Most weekends, we make the trek up to Hot Chocolate or the Bongo Room - both excellent options, but they’re usually packed. In our desperate search for another option, we turned (sadly) to Google - and it led us to Little Branch Café. Hidden away in the Museum Park complex, not visible from the street, Little Branch Café is an absolute gem of a restaurant, designed with style and care.

Michael Pollan, one of our favorite advocates of healthy, ethical eating, will be appearing at the Harold Washington Library Monday, May 18th at 6:00. Pollan, the author of The Omnivores Dilemma and, more recently, In Defense of Food, will be engaging in a "dynamic conversation" with Chicago journalist Bill Kurtis. With his mantra of "Eat Food, Not too Much, Mostly Plants," Pollan is trying to start a nation-wide dialogue about the best ways to eat - and you can be a part of it. Admission is free, but we're sure this will be a popular event, so arrive a little early. The presentation is part of the "Chicago Matters/Beyond Burnham" series of events.

          

Drinks Over Dearborn was transformed into a modern speakeasy last night, in honor of World Cocktail Week. All guests at the event had different passwords to gain entry to the boutique liquor shop. Owner Kyle McHugh set up a blackjack table, an absinthe room, a blues band in the main room and had bartenders mixing some very potent cocktails. Guests were given a gambling chip to use at the blackjack table. The top three winners won his or her choice of the liquors used to make the cocktails. Meanwhile, the backing band for Shirley King (B.B.'s daughter) played in McHugh's main room.

We recently received a sample of Mount Gay Extra Old, a fine aged rum from Barbados we'd never tried. On the rocks it's superb: a true sipping rum with hints of burnt sugar and spice, and a subtle floral scent. Actually it reminded us a lot of bourbon. That started us thinking ...

Not on the payroll at Goose Island Clybourn (yet!) but some spring cleaning of the hard drive unearthed this shot from our visit there a few weeks back. Wished it wasn't hidden, because this was going to be included in that post.

       

The best beer and wine dinners are collaborative efforts where chef and winemaker/brewmaster get to know each other and their creations intimately. Even so, the number of these dinners we've attended where every pairing worked perfectly can be counted on one hand.

         

The weather Saturday was more akin to late March than early May, but it didn't keep people from venturing to the southern tip of Lincoln Park for the first outdoor weekend of Green City Market. We loaded up on microgreens, Piedmontese beef tri-tip roasts from Heartland Meats and ground elk from Hawks Hill Elk Ranch, and ate a cheeseburger worthy of Kevin Pang's attention from the fine folks at Sunday Dinner.

   

Eusebio Garcia's creative meshing of Mexican and Mediterranean influences was one of many reasons that Pilsen's Mundial Cocina Mestiza developed a steady base of customers. Recently, he and wife Kate divorced, and each sold their shares of Mundial to third partner Mario Cota. Eusebio Garcia then struck out on his own in, of all places, Canaryville, with a gleaming new restaurant, bringing his killer salmon al carbón, langostinos and homemade corn tortillas with him to Amelia's (4559 S. Halsted, 773-538-8200).

For Memorial Day, The Chopping Block is hosting a BBQ Bash at their Lincoln Square location. The bash is an "open-house-style cooking class and party" on their patio with all the proceedes going to veterans via the Disabled Patriot Fund, a not-for-profit that helps Illinois veterans wounded in Iraq or Afganistan. Cook and dine on slow-smoked BBQ pork, balsamic-glazed skirt steak, beer can chicken, three bean salad, blueberry pie a la mode and sip on (free) lemonade and Goose Island Beer. The classparty is from 12-3pm, sponsored by Goose Island, Paulina Market and Kalamazoo Outdoor Gourmet and is $75 per person. Yes, more than your typical back yard party but it's for a good, local cause. So do it. With a smile and hungry stomach.

The big question with Graham Elliot's "Sexy Burger," besides recalculating your life expectancy with every bite, is what beer is bold enough to pair with it. Say hello to Mendocino Red Tail Ale, people. This amber ale, brewed with Caramel and Pale malts along with Cascade and Cluster hops, was up for the challenge.

        

Had so much fun doing some food pr0n with Rachelle Bowden at the Publican that we decided take an encore bow. "Chicagoist Prime" contacted Marcus and me the other day and asked if we wanted to run some photos of a dinner she was going to that night. You don't turn down good photos and you always find a way to accommodate the founding editor of this here site when necessary. "We've never done anything regarding May St. Market," Rachelle said. Sad to say that's true, as I've long been a fan of Alex Cheswick's cooking.

  

Yesterday's episode of "The Cheeseburger Show" ended with Kevin Pang challenging Graham Elliot Bowles to place his indelible stamp on the cheeseburger. The result was something that could easily have been the product of a three-year-old's imagination, if that toddler had the kitchen skills of Bowles.

Food & Wine magazine released its "Cocktails 2009" guide this week. Listed in the guide's contents are the top 100 bars in America. Chicago charted five bars on that list, which will only reinforce the belief of some that Our Town's moment in the culinary zeitgeist is over.

World Cocktail Week 2009 started yesterday, and what's shaping up to be the major local event in honor of this is "Speakeasy Over Dearborn." From 9 p.m. until midnight Monday, Kyle McHugh is turning his Drinks Over Dearborn boutique liquor store and salon (650 N. Dearborn, 312-337-9463) into a speakeasy, complete with password entry. If you don't know the password, you don't get in.

We've been kind of remiss with both "Quick Bites" and the "Friday Buffet" installments recently. We're hoping to rectify one of those today. Instead of the standard "QB" format, today we're listing some last-minute ideas to prevent Mom from reminding you that she brought you into this world and can also take you out of it.

If your homemade eggplant lasagna recipe tastes like garbage after several attempts at perfection, consider submitting it to Fix My Recipe, a website dedicated to taking less than stellar reader recipes from around the country and fixing them via short film. Chef Billy Parisi is the man behind the fixing and has assisted readers with his take on everything from chocolate butter cream, Asian seared duck breast, steak au poivre, and guacamole. Videos are all under five minutes long and unlike many online cooking videos, are not annoying and actually fun to watch. Recipes ideas for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, dessert, sauces, soups, and salads (whew) are also written out on the website for your convenience.

After spending Winter in the confines of the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, Green City Market spread its elbows today with its first day outdoor. To some, this is the first day of summer in Chicago.

The Negroni is one of our favorite pre-meal cocktails. Deeply colored, intensely flavored and stimulating to the appetite, the mixture of Campari and Gin has become a staple after-work drink in our house. We’ve always been an advocate for under-utilized liqueurs, and Campari definitely fits the bill. Moreover, we hope it will stimulate the curiosity of home bartenders, leading them to a whole new class of drink, the Italian “Amaro” or bitter liqueur.

For those of you needing last-minute plans for Cinco de Mayo, Los Moles (3140 N. Lincoln, 773-935-9620) is now open for business, and it's BYOB for now.

Taste TV, the food and fashion Web network that brought their Chocolate Salon to Symphony Center last autumn, has been organizing a series of judged snout-to-tail competitions across the country in recent months. "Cochon 555" pits five chefs against each other, each of them given their own heritage pig to break down and cook, paired with wines from five boutique wineries. Think "The Whole Hog Project," complete with the same mission of raising awareness about endangered breeds of swine, without the focus on one breed.

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."

George Rasmussen of Swan Creek Farms provides quality artisan meats to restaurants throughout the city. More recently, Rasmussen has been a beneficiary of spent brewers grain from Goose Island's Clybourn brewpub. One of the early hits of John Manion's still-evolving menu overhaul there is the sliders made from Swan Creek's "beer-fed" pork. While making local deliveries a week ago Rasmussen lost his truck, trailer, generator and a lot of food intended to customers to a fire.

  

We're certain this is on Pasquale's short list. Opening Wednesday in Pilsen is Ristorante Al Teatro, an Italian restaurant in the neighborhood's legendary Thalia Hall. Thalia Hall was built by Pilsen's original Bohemian settlers in 1892 and incorporated retail space in order to support the hall's theatrical programming.

                         

Mexican food, culture and wrestling drew more than 500 people to Pilsen's first ever Mole de Mayo celebration Saturday afternoon. The event, which featured bouts of Mexican wrestling (lucha libre), and a variety of mariachi and dance troupes, was centered around mole, a traditional Mexican sauce.

If you're looking for a beer to stimulate your appetite, saisons make a wonderful aperitif. The tartness imparted from Brettanomyce yeast prepares an eater for anything from barbecue to a multiple-course tasting menu. If sour is the new hoppy, then consumers should focus on diversity.

Andy Jenkins used to write about cheese for this site for about as long as it takes me to whip up a cappuccino in the morning. Jenkins has gone on to do wonderful things as the beer buyer at Marion Street Cheese Market in Oak Park. Jenkins’s love of beer is slightly less than his amour de fromage, and he understands that the two make for an amazing array of pairings, depending on the styles of each.

Cinco de Mayo is just around the bend so we'd like to introduce you to an old friend of ours, El Diablo. You may already know his foreign cousin, Suffering Bastard. El Diablo comes off as the quiet younger brother to his more popular sister Margarita, but he's no shrinking violet. He's at his best during the long, hot days and nights of summer. We guarantee that you'll want to invite him to your barbecues and picnics again and again.