Quite possibly the most unassuming of Chicago’s 2011 Bib Gourmand restaurants also touts one of the zestiest, most vibrant menus. Taste of Peru, in Rogers Park, has been a Chicago favorite and Peruvian staple for nearly half a decade. Taste of Peru has a distinctly Peruvian menu with fresh seafood and meat entrees, and is well worth the trip to the far north side. more ›

We already knew we liked the sandwiches at Frances’ in Lincoln Park. While in search of a good breakfast place on a recent Saturday, we stopped in to see what they had to offer in the way of eggs and tasty breakfast meats. Touting itself as the “oldest deli in Lincoln Park,” Frances’ serves up breakfast, lunch, and dinner to the hungry people roaming Clark Street. more ›

Luther North stays open, kidneys get swapped and more in a special good news edition. more ›

We chronicled our Saturday night earlier this week, and we need remind no one that it was colder than a witch's tit in a brass bra all day long. more ›

First we learned about Spoon's free show at Schubas this Friday, scheduled conveniently after Sonic Youth clears the stage at Pitchfork. Tickets are ambiguously hard to obtain, as they're only being given away via drawing from Schubas, Reckless Records or from WXRT. We were annoyed when we heard this, as we don't like jumping through hoops to get into a show. Call us old, but if we can't just obtain tickets through traditional means, we're likely to not attend the show. But we're a little disappointed we presumably won't be attending the Spoon show. We live for shows in small venues, which ensure you won't be crammed together like Blue Line riders at 8 a.m. and can get that up-close, more intimate experience necessary to really see a band play its instruments. more ›

The White Sox signed infielder Eduardo Perez to a minor-league contract on Monday. Awesome because all he does is strike out or hit home runs. Who's puncturing the tires of a couple dozen school buses in the suburbs? Although the police maintain that officers acted appropriately in the shooting death of Cornelius Ware, a 20-year-old paraplegic, the city has agreed to pay his family $5.2 million. John H. Bryan and Richard Gray, who helped... more ›

We love stories of people donning an outfit and going into the world undercover. Remember when Tyra put on a fat suit? Maybe Tyra should put on a “normal person” suit and see what that’s like? Just an idea. Piggybacking off of John Howard Griffin and more recently, Barbara Ehrenreich, former Los Angeles Times columnist, Norah Vincent, left her job and went undercover as a man for a year and a half. For her book,... more ›

Tribune food critic Phil Vettel enlisted the help of some fellow Trib staffers last week in another of those "What if?" columns; this time Vettel managed not to mistake two separate chefs with the same surname as brothers on a lost weekend in Vegas. The mission of the article was to test the newly enacted "cork-and-carry" law, an amendment to the State Liquor Control Act that allows restaurants to let customers leave with unfinished bottles of wine, permitted that the wine was a part of their dinner, placed in a sealable plastic bag, and with a dated receipt attached. more ›

In keeping with Chicago Artists' Month we are going to hit up some more good looking shows today. It is also about the time for everyone to get in the Halloween spirit. No better way than watching 24 hours of horror films. more ›

Finding sushi that is both inexpensive and edible is a difficult task. We’ve tried the cheap stuff. We’ve tried the good stuff. But finding them together had always been a challenge -- until we dropped by Matsuya. on 3469 N. Clark St. more ›

If you missed the global sports extravaganza that was the Gay Games this summer (see, we've already *had* an Olympics, people!), you can still get in on a part of the action. To wrap things up and to clean out the closet, the organizers are having a mega garage sale. What might you find at this garage sale, you ask? "Items available for sale will include country and state banners used in the Opening and... more ›

All year we’ve been hearing the hype and the promises. This week, two Chicago cultural institutions invite the public to see the results of their high profile face lifts. The venue once known as the Chicago Historical Society regularly provided modest, helpful insights into local and regional history. Now it’s been renovated and renamed the Chicago History Museum, sporting 16,000 shiny new square feet for robust programming, heeding Burnham’s command to “Make no small plans.”... more ›

Chicago electronics company Motorola just received the okay from the Feds to produce and sell the RAZR's successor, the K1, a.k.a The Canary. more ›

We remember our first “real kiss”. It was a bajillion years ago, on a hot, sticky, summer night. We were at Great America, exhilarated after one last, wet ride on Logger's Run. We remember an unmemorable boy sticking a dry and bumpy tongue into our virgin mouth. We were disappointingly shocked, wondering out loud to our tittering friends, “wait, this is supposed to feel good?” more ›

This is part of a Devil Wears Prada promotion, and we feel slightly moronic for clicking on all the ads to get to it ... but those are the kinds of things we do to get to the good stuff for you! Today between the hours of 2pm and 4pm, right about that time your lunch is wearing off and you're feeling like you need a little burst of energy, a little caffeine, a coffee, perhaps (!), head over to one of the locations below for a free coffee. more ›

This should be an awesome weekend for our summer photo contest. There are so many great parades and celebrations and festivals going on. You've got Intonation, Gay Pride, Clark Street Fest, and Jeff Fest, to name the big ones. And don't forget Ravinia's always going on. We know you're already bringing your camera, so when you upload your photos to Flickr, don't forget to tag them "Chicagoist". By doing this, you'll enter yourself into competition for Best Fest Photo of the Week. There's no prize, per se, but we'll feature your photo on the site and you'll get the fame (or infamy) that comes with having our entire audience see your photo. Have fun with it! more ›

You know those days when your life adds up to nothing? When you scan your years, and you see nothing but incoherent days and inebriated nights? When your creative mind is as empty as a Pabst Blue Ribbon at 6:00 in the morning? Well, if you happen to be having one of those days today, you might want to stop reading. When we checked out the website for freelance writer Elaine Soloway, we became overwhelmed... more ›

After a two week hiatus, which probably lowered our cholesterol levels by at least eighty points, Chicagoist’s “South Side Cheap Eats” series returns with a visit to one hidden gem of a diner in Brighton Park, on the city’s Southwest Side. We stumbled upon the Golden Heart Snack Shop and Restaurant some weeks back, while taking photographs along Archer Avenue. With its malfunctioning neon marquee, it looked like the kind of place where ward business... more ›

A couple of our favorite political bloggers, Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos and Jerome Armstrong of MyDD, will be in Chicago tomorrow evening to discuss their new book, Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics. Crashing the Gate examines how political consultants are damaging the Democratic party by charging exorbitant rates to deliver substandard advice that alienates candidates from the voters, and how the internet is changing the political landscape by... more ›

The Chicago Tribune’s readers nominated “Chicago blues” as their fourteenth and final nominee for the 7 Wonders of Chicago. But Chicagoist is wondering if we’ll soon speak of the blues as an ancient wonder of the city instead of a living one. more ›

When Chicagoist heard that Moxie, the Wrigleyville restaurant previously noted more for its garage door facade and dark décor than its food, was re-opening, we shrugged. A friend of Chicagoist succintly worded it in an e-mail exchange last week, “Does Wrigleyville really need another tapas restaurant?” more ›

Some of Chicagoist’s fondest memories occurred in a diner setting. Right now just thinking of old standbys like the old Huddle House on North Avenue (now known as the Hollywood Grill), Ravenswood Restaurant, or Alexander’s on Clark Street conjure vivid memories of breakfast skillets, chili, home fries, salty coffee, and key lime pie. We’ve sometimes gone so far as to plot our bike rides so that we can stop at Walker Brothers’ Original Pancake House in Wilmette for the apple pancake, which is really one gigantic turnover that dares to be eaten in one sitting. more ›

Yesterday, around 400,000 Chicagoans and visitors gathered to watch the 36th annual Gay and Lesbian Pride Parade. Politicians, drag queens, go-go boys, dykes on bikes, and moms and dads of gay kids paraded up Halsted and down Broadway under the hot June sun. more ›

This past week Chicagoist has been envying friends who work in air-conditioned comfort. Yes, summer’s finally here and that means: festivals! Anyone who’s been paying attention knows that Blues Fest will take over Grant Park through Sunday. But if you’re looking for something a bit more low key this weekend, check these out: The Merit School of Music comes to Pilsen’s Harrison Park this Sunday to present the Alegre StringTacular. All semester this South Loop... more ›

You wouldn't know it by reading the papers, but it's likely that tomorrow a few thousand people will march downtown to Federal Plaza to protest the American military presence in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places. The march, organized primarily by the Chicago Coalition Against War and Racism has a number of starting points, Senn High School at 6:00 am for the "North Side Long March Against Empire", Michigan and Oak Streets at Noon for the... more ›

The Chicago Historical Society may be our fair city's longest standing museum, but its age doesn't mean it's using a walker or eating dinner at noon or anything. In stark contrast, the museum will celebrate its 150th birthday next year with a $22 million rehab that will leave its exterior shell intact, but will transform the existing exhibit halls and public spaces into a vibrant representation of "the city's collective memory." more ›

While we’re not sure the Generation X label exists anymore (aren’t we just called “adults” now?), Gen X godfather Douglas Coupland will probably never escape it. Call it his albatross, if you will: despite a prodigious and decidedly non-slacker output of fiction, nonfiction, sculpture, design, and theater, he will forever be associated with the disaffected burn-out demographic he helped identify with his debut novel way back in 1991. more ›

Chicagoist has been pouring over all of the local media sites trying to decide what we want to do this weekend to celebrate Halloween. There's so much going on. Last week we posted on some city-sponsored events and things going on at the big museums. This week we're trying to highlight other happenings around town. I'm sure we'll miss some, so feel free to add or make suggestions in the comments, but here are some things that looked interesting to us: more ›

Uptown, traditionally defined by Foster Avenue, Irving Park Road, Lake Michigan and Clark Street, has gone through a great deal of change over the past ten years. Once one of Chicago's seedier neighborhoods, it has long been primarily a home for tattoo parlors, dive bars, and single room occupancy hotels. But as Lincoln Park, Lakeview and then Andersonville and Rogers Park began to pick up, Uptown's proximity to the Red Line and Lake Michigan became irresistable to developers. more ›