Results tagged “diningout”

Gourmet and Cookie Magazines are teaming up for Kids' Restaurant Week. Things kick off Saturday morning at Green City Market with cooking demonstrations from George Bumbaris of Prairie Grass Café, Rick Bayless and the Spatulatta girls, Olivia and Isabella Gerasole. Throughout the week, families may dine at participating restaurants from 5:30-6:30 p.m. Children ages 11 and under pay their age for dinner; all others pay $20.08.

Love for the Hopleaf is easy to generate, despite it being one of those Yogi Berra joints - so crowded, no one goes there. This is especially true in this post-smoking ban era, now that people can actually (gasp) eat in the front section without getting choked out by massive clouds of carcinogens. It's been years since we started going to Hopleaf for Kwak and mussels, but only recently discovered the massive amounts of awesome that constitutes an order of CB&J.

This time of year is usually a slow period for restaurants, what with the cold weather and all. Add to that some scary uncertainty on the job front and people are eating in with more frequency.

Baby-on-Board is a few weeks away from its one year anniversary at Chicagoist. Many months ago, we first set the criteria for a baby-friendly restaurant as one that boasted “clean high chairs, a place to stow your car seat, attentive service, and food good enough“. While all that is still true, dining out with our toddler has morphed our dining experiences into something resembling a cross between a Joey Chestnut exhibition and a clown bit. We took this opportunity to look back at the restaurants we’ve reviewed to add a couple of tidbits that may interest the toddler-toting parent.

Chicagoist has been known to wax philosophic when it comes to websites that make dining out and ordering in easier. We've written about two of our favorites, MenuPages and GrubHub, here and here, respectively. There's a new kid in town, and her name is FoodieBytes. We can already feel MenuPages and GrubHub shaking in their internet boots.

On a recent Monday night, Chicagoist stopped in to Piccolo, the new panini-bruschette-gelato restaurant on 859 N. Damen. The place was empty, save for the two people working behind the counter. And while we can't hold it against them — Mondays aren't known for being a big dining out night — it set the tone for a meal that was most frequently commented on with, "huh?" Which isn't to say that Piccolo is bad, because...

Via Chicago Foodies, we found out about USA Dine Out, a new program sponsored by San Pellegrino. Here is the deal; a select bunch of Chicago restaurants will be offering $25 and $35 fixed price lunches and dinner, respectively, in between August 19-23 and August 26–30. Every table gets a free bottle of water, and Pellegrino donates $1 to Share Out Strength. Now we all know $1 isn't a huge amount of money... but if...

To some people – more specifically the U.S. food safety police – sous vide are two very bad words. But the people at Cuisine Solutions, an international food manufacturing company with its U.S. headquarters in Alexandria, Va., that utilizes this style of cooking for the food it prepares for the first-class cabins of Air France and American Airlines, as well as large hotel chains, are working hard to change that perception, and at their recent...

We know our readers probably have their favorite Mexican place, possibly an undiscovered hole-in-the-wall with the best mole in the city. We’d love to hear about it. When it comes to dining out with our baby, however, one of the best Mexican restaurants in Chicago has got to be Uncle Julio’s Hacienda on North Avenue.

Your theme this week, in honor of Earth Day/Week/Month: "Being Green." This is the song that Kermit the Frog made famous, but Ray Charles did a knockout version of it, and our favorite take on the song has to be Van Morrison's version from 1973's Hard Nose the Highway. It's so good, we insist on this song being played while our casket's being lowered to the ground. Let's dive in, shall we? Moo Moo, I...

On Milwaukee Avenue, in the heart of Wicker Park, is Rodan -– a restaurant/lounge whose reputation far exceeds the actual experience. According to our server (who did a bang-up job taking care of the diners as the only one working) explained, the name Rodan comes from a 1950s Godzilla movie. Rodan was a winged monster who was both a friend and enemy to Godzilla. These opposites were present in the restaurant Rodan as well....

Houstonist reports on cross-dressing thieves and undressing educators this week. A Peeping Tom defends himself with a papaya and an outraged onlooker asks Ken Lay, "TATER TOTS OR FRIES?" Also, FEMA wants it's money back. LAist are a bug bunch of geeks. They're Star Trek geeks, David Duchovny geeks and Frank Gehry geeks. During their Cochella preview their readers reveal themselves to be Depeche Mode geeks. Seattlest saw their basketball team preparing to leave for...

The lovely folks running the Chicago Tribune's Good Eating section have come out with their Top 12 of 2005 product list. Chicagoist is happy to see that not only high-end products such as Epicurean Butter get a mention but also practical items such as the Ziploc Twist 'N Loc. Seriously, those Ziploc things rule the school. We could live a million lifetimes without cinnamon-raisin infused butter but we'll be damned if we'll ever again deal with a butternut squash soup nighmare in the bottom of our lunch bags.

Today the Trib features an interesting piece on how the proposed smoking ban could impact the success of the city's hookah bars, restaurants and cafes. While we knew mainstream bars and restaurants would be impacted, we're slapping our foreheads for forgetting the hookahs.

we like helping out a good cause, which is why we're excited about tonight's Dining Out For Life.

Zagat's released it's 19th annual Chicago restaurant guide today, covering over 1,000 restaurants in Chicago and the surrounding area, including 70 in Milwaukee. Zagat's guide uses a 30 point scale to rate food, decor and service also shows the estimated cost for a meal. It comes as no surprise that restaurants like The Ritz, Charlie Trotters, and Tru were rated tops as far as food, service, popularity, and decor. But what we found even more interesting than how our restaurants were ranked, were other statistics on the spending habits and preferences of Chicagoland diners: