Today in food news, The Bedford launches their brunch menu on Sunday, Dose Market hosts food and fashion vendors and The Southern's food truck opens a storefront. more ›

During next weekend's Milwaukee Avenue Arts Festival, the shared-use event space and sometimes dining destination Logan Square Kitchen will be taken over by Gypsy, a pop-up restaurant whose menu will riff on the flavors of street food from all over the world. Chefs Oliver Poilevey and Scott Jambrosek, of La Sardine and Le Bouchon, are behind Gypsy, which follows in the footsteps of Bill Kim (Urban Belly, Belly Shack) and Jason Hammel's (Lula Café, Nightwood) street-food-inspired LSK pop-up that fed last year's fest. more ›

The Chicago food community has shown its committment to charitable causes over and over again, and we've already mentioned a few things being done to help disaster-ravaged Japan. This event, however, is in a class by itself. Some of the best chefs in Chicago, including Jimmy Bannos, Paul Kahan, Tony Mantuano, Mindy Segal, Sarah Stegner, Paul Virant, Bill Kim, and of course, Takashi Yagihashi, are coming together at Takashi on April 18th to create a special 6-course dinner. All the proceeds will go the Red Cross. more ›

Outstanding in the Field, which produces a series of touring farm dinners across the country (check out our 2009 review of their dinner at Kinnikinnick Farm with Stephanie Izard and Ryan Poli, for an example) announced their 2011 farm dinner schedule over the weekend. more ›

Eater Chicago reached out to Bill Kim after hearing reports that someone was crank calling restaurants as the Urban Belly/Belly Shack owner, then getting straight-up "ooophh, nasty- you kiss your mother with that mouth" with the folks at the other end of the phone. more ›

Last night, the Girl and the Goat's Stephanie Izard joined an all-star team of Chicago chefs to host a "Friends of the James Beard Foundation" dinner. The Beard Foundation, American's foremost nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting fine American food, holds dinners around the country to support its operations, and the proceeds of last night's dinner will be used for culinary school scholarships. more ›

The Belly Dog has undergone some changes since it was first introduced. more ›

The toughest restaurant to get a reservation in town these days is Girl & the Goat. Which is why an upcoming Friends of the James Beard House dinner on November 2 at 6:30 p.m. may be an ideal chance to get a table. more ›

Food trucks are not the only culinary trend making its push from New York and LA. This weekend only Bill Kim of Belly Shack and Urban Belly and Jason Hammel of Nightwood and Lula Café (in partnership with Intelligentsia) will be let loose in the Logan Square Kitchen space to create their version of a "pop-up" restaurant (a temporary eating place set up in the site of another business). more ›

The rallying cry of "We want food trucks!" has gone up almost simultaneously around the city, starting when ChicagoFoodTrucks.com went live on March 28th. Since then, plenty of ink has been spilled about why we can't eat Korean tacos like LA does, what it'd take to get some legal falafel carts around town, and how great it would be to have guys like Bill Kim and Graham Elliot Bowles show up outside the Double Door or the Whistler at midnight. more ›

Mindy Segal celebrated five years of Hot Chocolate last night with a $150 per person dinner to benefit Share Our Strength's Taste of the Nation event this August. This year Segal wanted to feature the chefs who helped influence her on her way to becoming one of the best pastry chefs in the country. The lineup she put together resembled a chef's Dream Team. Rick Bayless and Brian Enyart, Paul Kahan, Michael Kornick and Erick Williams, Paul Virant, Bill Kim, Nick Lessins of Great Lake and Benjamin Caulfield of Three Floyds Brewpub joined Segal and her new executive chef Aric Miech in producing a tightly orchestrated seven-course meal paired with beers from some of Segal's favorite breweries. more ›

Although it happened in February, Hot Chocolate's fourth anniversary dinner still stood as my favorite overall dining experience last year. It was a seven-course marathon that increased in intensity and flavor with every dish, paired with some heavy duty beers and a music soundtrack that ranged from early Black Sabbath to pre-"Black Album" Metallica to the Twilight Singers. The proceeds from the dinner went to Share Our Strength, the DC-based non-profit dedicated to eliminating hunger in America by 2015. Quite simply, I was exhausted at the end of the meal. more ›

If you watch television you're sure to run across the archetype of the "cool dad:" the father who stumbles into middle age futilely trying to relate or stay relevant to his kids by adopting their slang and diving head first into their hobbies only to come across as the bumbling buffoon they fear becoming most. Usually you find the "cool dad" in drug awareness commercials, but actor Ty Burrell plays the role perfectly in the role of Phil Dunphy on the ABC comedy "Modern Family." Then there's the other "cool dad," who really was cool back in the day. He smoked, drank, trolled for some strange on the weekends, probably met his wife at some boozy last call at Green Mill one Sunday morning, settled down, had kids and now allows himself a chuckle or three whenever his teenage kids act out, thinking "Yeah, I remember my first beer." more ›

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. more ›

From Chicago Mag's Dish: Urban Belly owner/chef Bill Kim has signed a lease to open Belly Shack, an Asian and Latin-inspired BYOB counter service restaurant at 1912 N. Western. Think Kim's Urban Belly, but focusing on sandwiches and salads without the "Really? That much for dumplings?" price tag. Kim told Dish that he plans on having menu items at Belly Shack top out at $10. more ›

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. more ›

One of the boldest moves made by a local chef in the past year was Bill Kim's move from the white tablecloths of Le Lan to the more comfortable and low-key atmosphere of Urban Belly. Kim's kim chi, pork belly and rice cake stew that he made for Hot Chocolate's fourth anniversary dinner is one of the best dishes i've eaten so far in this short year. more ›

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. more ›

Hosting ad-hoc soup kitchens have been all the rage this winter. From 1-4 p.m. Sunday at Custom House (500 S. Dearborn, 312-523-0020) the big boys get in on the act. more ›

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). more ›

A few days after Le Lan chef Bill Kim announced he was leaving Le Lan (749 N. Clark) to focus on his new Urban Belly in Bucktown and Soul in Clarendon Hills, his chef de cuisine Chad Starling was named as the new executive chef of the River North eatery. more ›

Grill out and eat out, folks, while the weather allows. We're gearing up for Mexican Independence day by eating some pollo asados. Mmmmm. More fun ahead so get those calendars out. more ›

From Crain's comes word that Le Lan Executive chef Bill Kim is leaving behind the river North French-Vietnamese outpost to open a noodle shop/casual eatery in Logan Square. more ›