We can't wait any longer for farmers markets. Luckily, we have this event to get us through the last few weeks. more ›

Sarah Grueneberg, a contestent on the current season of Top Chef, will face off against her mentor Tony Mantuano, a contestant from Top Chef Masters Season 2. more ›

Six chefs will compete to create the best Buche de Noel, and guests will vote on the winner. Plus food, drink and live music! more ›

Time doesn’t exist in the windowless auditorium of the Chicago Journeyman Plumbers’ Local Union 130 in the West Loop, but we’d wager we were two hours deep into our kid-in-a-candy-store tasting spree of the 172 wood-aged brews from 62 breweries in 22 states. We had tried a lot of beers already. more ›

Millennium Park was the meat lover's paradise Friday night - quite a distinction in a city that loves its beef. The kick-off event for Chicago Gourmet, the Hamburger Hop, saw chefs from all across the city competing to make the best burger. more ›

The Boka restaurant group has been hosting "Quickfire" cooking competitions for a couple of month, pitting different executive chefs from their all-star lineup against each other in Iron Chef/Reality Television type contests. It's great PR, but here's the important part for you - tickets are free. Really. Free. Considering how hard it is to get into Girl & the Goat, it's probably worth reading on. more ›

The National Restaurant Association is calling all bartenders, both amateur and professional, to enter its 2011 Star of the Bar competition, which will take place during the NRA's International Wine, Spirits & Beer Event at McCormick Place May 21 to 24. To enter, you must submit a two-minute video to YouTube in which you demonstrate making an inventive, original cocktail that includes at least one product made by Bacardi, the competition sponsor. Six semi-finalists will be chosen to showcase their drinks at the IWSB event, and the grand prize winner will walk off with 5,000 bucks. more ›

Chicago’s best bartenders gathered last night to showcase their best for 42Below’s Cocktail World Cup Competition, this year themed “Carnival of the Cocktail 2011”. Winners from the Chicago competition will go on to compete at nationals in New York City, where winners will form Team USA (a team with a winning past) and go on to compete in New Zealand for the international Cocktail World Cup competition. So how did our hometown boys and girls fare? more ›

On Tuesday night, I had the pleasure of participating in the finals of an amateur bartending contest hosted by the folks at Prairie Fire and the charity Share Our Strength. (How I got myself behind the bar at Prairie Fire is described here and here.) After two terribly enjoyable hours, the other finalist - a knowledgeable and talented mixer named Adam Murphy - out-earned me in tips (all of which were donated to Share Our Strength to combat childhood hunger) and thus was named the winner. He'll be demonstrating his winning original cocktail, the delicious White Winter Whiskey Sour, at the Green City Market this Wednesday. I urge everyone to go see him in action. more ›

Food trucks throughout Chicago have thousands of followers, and the number of fans on facebook are growing every day. Newspapers and magazines alike can’t stop raving about these new “foodie” destinations. And we are delighted with Chicago food trucks’ new food offerings. Is this a unanimous chorus of welcomes for food trucks? Not quite yet. more ›

No need to panic. Well, maybe for you. On a dare from our editor-in-chief, your humble cocktail reporter entered Prairie Fire's competition to guest-bartend at the restaurant. They asked amateur mixers to submit a recipe for an original cocktail on their Facebook page. The first round of the contest ends today; next, two finalists will be chosen for an evening of head-to-head bartending at Prairie Fire. The better-tipped competitor wins, with all the proceeds going to a very good cause: Share Our Strength, a charity combating childhood hunger. I've slung drinks in intimate company, but never to order. Gulp. more ›

Readers know there are a handful of cocktail enthusiasts here on the Chicagoist staff. But how would Rob, Anthony and Roger stand against other like-minded drinkers? For that matter, how would you? more ›

Remember last month when the Chicago transit Authority, beaming at the results of the North/Clybourn station renovation, said that they would open up naming rights to anything they owned to the highest bidder? more ›

Billy Elliot fans who love food will be in heaven during the month of September. Two different events that combine up-close views of the cast of the hit musical and culinary exploits should get your collective boy-ballet loving mouths watering. more ›

Baconfest Chicago may have been postponed until April, but the VIP bacon cookoff at the Publican slated for October 24 is still a lock. In fact, tickets went on sale at noon. more ›

Welcome back, food lovers. This week on Top Chef Masters, we have: Chef Douglas Rodriguez, Chef Mark Peel, Chef Anita Lo or Chef John Besh. We've got James Beard winners, a Michelin star recipient, and multiple Best New Chef namings. Another impressive bunch. Oh boy, we're impressed and bored already. more ›

Maybe this week a chef will stick a toilet brush in some pasta and everyone will declare it a brilliant new method of stirring. Let's see who is battling it out today: Graham Elliot Bowles from Chicago (we accidentally typed bowels at first - whoops).We dig his Chicago pin on his hat. Suzanne Tracht from Los Angeles enters the kitchen next. Oooo, it's Wylie Dufresne! How is anyone going to beat him when he has +20 hit points and +15 magic potion? Annie Lennox walks in! Oh, no, wait, that's Elizabeth Falkner. She sounds impressive with her James Beard award. more ›

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. more ›

Youth boxing phenom Tracy Rollins was billed to lose in the program - and surprised a lot of the crowd by unanimously winning his bout Friday at St. Andrew's Gym (Addison & Paulina, 8p.m.). The youngster, who at 16 was facing veteran boxer Ramon Valenzuela in his first-ever senior Chicago Golden Gloves championship (he's the five-time junior national champion), felt confident before the fight - and the look on his face after said he felt vindicated. more ›

There are finals all over the city tonight - or in least two contests we're aware of: stripping and boxing. Both have male-dominated audiences, but the latter is probably a little more socially acceptable -- and something your significant other is inclined to let you go out and see. 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 ›

As Chuck kindly pointed out, I competed in Texas de Brazil and Meals on Wheels Chicago's Inaugural Caipirinha contest (and actually won!). My goal was to take what makes a caipirinha awesome and crank up those flavors - hence sugar infused with lime oils from the zest and the addition of the lime juice from those zested limes. Having turned in my drink recipe and instructions a week before the contest, I felt a little..err,..boring when I saw the fantastic ingredients (ginger, cilantro, blood orange juice, strawberries...) in front of the other contestants' stations and realized it was too late to improvise or change directions. After watching me bite my lip worriedly, Chuck reassured me to stick with my game plan and that simplicity was a good thing. So, without further ado, here is the L-Stop Caipirinha recipe: more ›

Tonight we'll find out if Stephanie Izard wins the title of "Top Chef" in part 2 of the season finale. more ›

Just received notice from the folks behind that June 15 plate-to-plate competition between Stephanie Izard and Nick LaCasse at the Drawing Room at Le Passage. more ›

Who’s your daddy? Gary Iriza, Mr. Palm Springs Leather 2008, is your daddy, sir. Iriza took the leather sash at the XXX International Mr. Leather (IML) Competition Sunday night. (The XXX stands for 30th anniversary, people.) IML is a beauty pageant of sorts, celebrating masculinity and a lifestyle of leather. IML has its roots in the Mr. Gold Coast contest, held in the historic Gold Coast Leather Bar. It expanded to a larger venue in 1979, and with the larger venue came the expanded “international” title. more ›

Stolpman is in Europe for the next two weeks (lucky), so I'll be handling the recap duties until she gets back. Fear not, dear readers, for those of you who'll miss her as much as I do right now, I have two words for you. more ›

We wrote in last week's power rankings that one of the things that keeps us coming back to Top Chef Chicago week after week is to finally see when Lisa will leave. That seemed imminent last week, after she landed in the bottom three in both the quickfire and elimination challenges. more ›

We love American Idol, but not because we like hearing offbeat covers of Top 40 classics. If nothing else, when the audition episodes start airing in mid-January, we suddenly see the light at the end of the winter tunnel, knowing that by the time the confetti is falling around the next media-generated pop star, it will be summer! more ›

Anytime an event is held every few years instead of annually, it takes on some added importance (we're thinking, for example, presidential elections, the Olympics and the World Cup). In the culinary world, this event is the Coupe De Monde De Boulangerie, a bread-baking contest that takes place every three years in Paris. This year, it's part of the Europain exhibition, held March 29–April 2. more ›

Movie attendance is down 10% this year. Bad word of mouth when it comes to this year's mainstream releases perhaps? Moviemaking competitions are a great way to put our money where our mouths are, and here are some worth shooting for: more ›