Wow Bao's new truck launches tomorrow. more ›

Lao You Ju, the newest member of Tony Hu's restaurant empire, looks like a late-night fantasy of a 1980's business power restaurant. Red leather, curving lines, chandeliers and a gold accent wall covered with projecting sculpture. A bar which lovingly spotlights each bottle of Patron Silver completes the image, which is sort of fun despite how over the top it is. The food is solid, but the drinks and service, sadly, aren't quite up to the flashy standards of the decor. more ›

Just because an vegetable came from the good, green earth does not mean that it has been prepared in a manner that is either delicious or good for you. Deep frying, over-salting, boiling, and a myriad of other cooking methods can rob vegetables of their crispness, color, and nutritional value. We've all eaten at cheap Chinese restaurants where over-stir-frying and heavy sauces turn veggie dishes into bland, mushy messes. The cooks at Dragonfly Mandarin, however, have managed to beat the norm, serving up vegetarian dishes that retain their fresh taste and the crunch that Mother Nature intended. more ›

There are more places to eat on 18th Street besides carnitas shops and taquerias. Honky Tonk BBQ and Mundial have their fans and there are more than enough pizza joints and hot dog stands for the lunch pail crowd to feel sated during the week. more ›

href="http://londonist.com/2008/02/air_bound.php"> remove one man from Gatwick.

While Thursday was the Chinese New Year, today was the annual Chinese New Year parade. With the temperature near zero and wind chill making it feel like 20-below, the crowd was very light. Nevertheless, the Year of the Rat, known by its formal name Wu Zi, year 4705, has begun. In ancient times, the rat was welcomed as a protector and bringer of material prosperity. According to Wikipedia, the rat is “associated with aggression, wealth, charm, and order, yet also associated with death, war, the occult, pestilence, and atrocities.” more ›

Attention sword enthusiasts: Don't exercise with your samurai gear at playgrounds. You may "alarm" school officials. more ›

There were some firecrackers a-poppin' last night: today is the first day of the first Lunar Month. So that means it's beginning of the Chinese New Year Festival, which started at midnight and traditionally lasts until February 15. Also known as the Lunar New Year, festivities are meant to celebrate and welcome the Year of the Rat. more ›

Pack an umbrella, bring your galoshes, and dress in layers. It's been that kind of week. Here are some events to brave any extreme in weather. more ›

Image credit: Nature abhors a vacuum more ›

Some events in the next seven days to consider saving your freshly shoveled parking space with a few chairs. more ›

For a sizable chunk of the US population, Christmas is a time for... wondering when it's going to be the 26th. Jews have the stereotypical routine of Chinese food and a movie (Chicagoist has deemed Charlie Wilson's War the family-friendly-but-still-interesting-enough-not-to-bore-dad-who-likes-foreign-films movie of the season), but what to do for the rest of the day? more ›

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Today, in honor of our favorite Christmas movie, A Christmas Story we've compiled a list of restaurants offering Christmas Eve dinner. You know, in case the Bumpases dogs ruin your family feast and you have to scramble the troops over some duck at a Chinese restaurant. more ›

Many of the parents we’ve talked to told us that they will go “China-free” this Christmas, refusing to purchase toys constructed in China. This, in large part, is due to the massive number of Chinese-made recalled toys this year (like those beads that turn into GHB when ingested). Toxic toys and poor oversight is a company issue and not necessarily a country-specific one, but patronizing local small businesses, regardless of impetus, should be applauded. For the next couple of weeks, we’ll be posting about some of our favorite places to buy kid gifts this season. more ›

So yesterday in our "One Bottle of Wine" post we alluded to some gnocchi we had Saturday night. We felt the need for something to really stick to our ribs with the sleet and frozen rain falling all night, but we didn't want to go through the process of actually making these popular Italian dumplings from scratch. Lucky for us, the produce store by our house (Egg Store, 3008 S. Halsted, 773-284-8704) often carries pre-made... more ›

Fun Fun Fun Fest 2007 Recap from Super!Alright! on Vimeo. Austinist attended a town hall meeting about proposed noise ordinances that could undermine the city's future as the Live Music Capital of the World, and lamented the possible loss of Texas's only feminist bookstore. Throughout the week, they interviewed a bunch of indie fashion designers and D-I-Y websites—Etsy, Ornamental Things, 31 Corn Lane, and Aorta Designs—for the upcoming Stitch Fashion Show. They also did... more ›

The moment Giles Corey Feldman, presiding judge of Crucible the Musible’s mock Salem witch trial, pulled out the washboard and rocked a rendition of Santana’s “Evil Ways” in his cotton ball wig, it was official: this was the goofiest play we’d seen all year. And for a Hallows Eve entertainment meant for ages 10 and up, that’s a good thing. Where the typical haunted house or hayride provides bloodless cheap thrills and little attempt at a story, this original piece of musical theater and gymnastic spectacle presented by Strange Tree Group and Aloft Aerial Dance serves up laughs and breathtaking aerial achievements. more ›

Chicago has a lot of newspaper columnists. We've been watching them ebb and flow for years. But the good ones, or at least the ones we like, have stuck around. Mary Schmich at the Trib is one of them. Her columns inform, provoke thought, remind us to wear sunscreen, and usually cause us at one point or another to laugh out loud. On the Brown line. During rush hour. And then everyone stares. more ›

As we posted earlier this summer there's quite a hidden history of tiki in the Chicagoland area that's been all but forgotten, which is why local author James Teitelbaum's research is so valuable. His book Tiki Road Trip chronicled his coast-to-coast quest for the best in tiki, both modern and vintage. It was so successful that earlier this year he published a new edition. This Thursday he'll be in town for a reading and... more ›

A few weeks ago, we came to you with a problem; we wanted to eat some delicious Chinese food, but didn't want to travel south of the Loop to find it. Based on your comments we decided to check out Friendship Chinese in Logan Square. The night we were planning on heading there was on the rainy and gross side of things, so we opted to order in. We ordered the vegetarian spring rolls... more ›

Londonist are starting to think their city is getting just a little bit too expensive, when even Christian Slater can't afford to go out there. And there's no escaping, as local singer Lily Allen discovered when she was barred entry to the US. The British mapping agency caused further bad karma, by blocking a 3-D representation of London in Google Earth. But the smiles returned to Londonist's faces as they interviewed Baroness von Reichardt,... more ›

Chicagoist needs your help. This weekend, we were getting ready to go out for some delicious Chinese food on the north side when we had a realization; we have no idea where to go out for Chinese food when dining north of Chinatown. In the past we've sung the praises of Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese and so on, but when it came to finding a Chinese restaurant to head to on a Friday night, we... more ›

Takeout Menu Ban? more ›

Would you like flies with that? more ›

According to an unnamed "top official," the Sun-Times reported yesterday that Wal-Mart is prepared to build as many as five South Side supercenters in six to twelve months, maybe sooner, but is also scouting sites in neighboring wards in case local aldermen resist. "We're making an active effort to speak with [the local] aldermen. We can't move forward without them. If it is proven in the near future they're not interested — maybe they don't... more ›

Movies in the summertime. Comic book heroes? Check. Cuddly computer animation? Check. Bloated running times? Check. MOTS? SOS? Double-check. With scads of movie franchises so stale yet so expensive they give McDonald's a bad name, it's no wonder that we'd rather catch up on our reading than check out what Hollywood has deigned to fob off on us this season. (We do confess to being excited about Ocean's Thirteen however; director Steven Soderbergh always keeps... more ›

Just in case you're picked for jury duty on this case, we want to remind you that it has been five years since R. Kelly was indicted for 21 counts of child pornography. We know by the time someone gets their shit together and pins him to a chair in a courtroom some people may have forgotten what it was all about in the first place, and even be inclined to think the whole thing was made up. more ›

If you take a walk down Erie just a few blocks west of the hustle-and-bustle (and slow-walking) of Michigan Avenue, you'll find yourself surrounded by grand, newly-rehabbed architecture of yesteryear — namely, the Cable House, Nickerson House, and the John B. Murphy Auditorium. What began as admiration by a young man named Richard Driehaus turned into a full-fledged labor of love. Driehaus noticed the old mansions years ago, when he would park on Erie to... more ›

The writing was on the wall or, to be more precise, the windows. And, as often is the case in these scenarios, we weren’t happy about it. Perhaps that’s why we didn’t notice at first. Instead, we happily sauntered into Onu, a small Asian market in Boystown, like we have many times before (call us kooky, but ethnic markets make us happy, especially ones in our own hood). When we asked the clerk if she... more ›