Alpana Singh announces name and address of new wine bar, while Philip Foss and Shin Thompson will host an anti-restaurant week dinner. more ›

Chicago wine lovers shed a few tears this morning as Lettuce Entertain You Wine and Sprits Director Alpana Singh announced her departure from the company. more ›

Check! Please creator and executive producer David Manilow recently finished a nearly month-long twitter experiment where he listed his favorite restaurants in town, in alphabetical order. While Manilow's restaurant recommendation theme isn't as expansive as Michael Nagrant tweeting his top 500 bites in five years of food writing, it's still a pretty impressive list and also gives a little peek behind the curtain of the producer's culinary proclivities, since Check! Please is a show where the guests recommend their favorite restaurants. more ›

Last week, we told you about an old "lost" episode of WTTW's Check, Please which featured a young state Senator and law professor from Hyde Park named Barack Obama talking about Dixie Kitchen. Now, we have our first glimpse of what that episode will look like thanks to the following clip which has leaked. Don't forget to check out the full episode on January 16 at 8:00 p.m. [via Menu Pages] more ›

Fans of "Check, Please!" know that WTTW often runs repeats of previous episodes, helping to propagate the "'Check, Please! Effect'" and make household names, for a brief time, of folks named Fred Solomon and Manase Latu. more ›

Attention, Chicagoist readers who live in Florida: Check, Please! is launching in the Sunshine State next week. (There's already a Bay Area version, too. And it's exactly like the Chicago version, clumsy puns and all.) And locally, the show's producers say they're looking to use the fancy schmancy website to expand to other cities. more ›

Check, Please! just launched an interactive video-based website today where visitors may send in restaurant recommendations and audition for the show. The site also contains over 300 reviews from the show's run, the one-minute segments that began running on NBC 5 on Tuesdays and Fridays (NBC 5 is a partner in the site). Now you can look up recent reviews in case you missed a recent review or just want to view a truncated... more ›

Here’s what we missed while we were watching loud, fast planes and asthmatic midgets: Bailiwick Rep is working to expand their audience with Hogwash, a family friendly improv show, playing Saturday afternoons through November 17, and a special “Naked Night” performance of Barenaked Lads September 7 where performers and audience alike will bare it all. And it’s for a good cause. (link is NSFW, more or less) As foundation work commences for the Chicago Spire,... more ›

Between fake terrorist alerts and scandals big and small, this just might be the best Best of the -ists ever. We're exhausted just thinking about it. First up, SFist, who saw their little 'ole site be the center of what was a nice little scandal (even getting their editor on TV) only to find their scandal dwarfed by the even bigger scandal caused by their Mayor boffing one of his aides' wife. We're not... more ›

Fans of "Check Please" missed one doozy of an episode last weekend, one that perfectly encapsulated the appeal and genius of the show. The episode, which reviewed Lincoln Park raw food hot spot Karyn's Fresh Corner, Lincolnwood steakhouse Myron & Phil's, and Chicagoist 2006 favorite Haro, was spurred to must-see status by the staunch opinions and sharp tongues of retired lawyer Fred Solomon (pictured, left) and model Manase Latu (right). The stage was set... more ›

Frequent viewers of "Check Please" will know what we're about to describe. One of the guests will describe the wine he may have paired with his meal, and the camera will do a quick cut to Alpana Singh, who has her head turned to the guest, listening intently. That look turns to an enthusiastic, knowing gleam if the guest chose an Alsatian riesling. It's one of those rare occasions where Singh lets her guard... more ›

New Year's Eve is always a huge night for dinners out. For diners and foodies, it's a chance to don some clean togs and expect nothing less than being pampered and fed like Romans. For restaurateurs, it's the motivation of profit, and the pride in preparing a good spread. And, if you're the type of person who waited until the last moment to make dinner reservations, well, throw some of that money our way, would... more ›

Oprah urges each and every one of her viewers to “live your best life.” And whether she’s making like an angel or giving out free cars, she often helps to facilitate that in any way she can. But we’re pretty sure she’s not happy about people using her Oprahness to scam people out of money via e-mail phishing schemes. Illinois’ own angel Attorney General Lisa Madigan says not to fall for it. In other less... more ›

You know Alpana Singh from the show "Check Please!" and from constantly being reminded that at the age of 26 she was the youngest woman to be inducted into the Court of Master Sommeliers. But did you know she also just wrote a book, "Alpana Pours: About Being a Woman, Loving Wine, and Having Great Relationships"? We're told that the main focus of the book is wine, of course, but it's also "peppered with off-the-cuff... more ›

For those of you who've wanted to visit Chinatown this weekend might be just the time. The Year of the Dog is upon us and that means that the annual Chinese New Year Parade strolls up Wentworth with its Chinese dragons, marching bands, and politicians glad-handing the parade watchers (we're placing even money on whether Jim Oberweis shows up trying to buy potential votes with milk). There's plenty of places to catch a quick bite... more ›

If it seems that Chicagoist has been writing a lot lately about wine there's a reason besides we'e drinking a lot of it. Governor Blago has declared September as the first Illinois Wine Month. The number of wineries in the state has grown in the past eight years from twelve to sixty, producing an estimated 500,000 gallons a year. Grape acreage especially has expanded from 140 acres to over 1,000 acres in that same... more ›