This weekend is one of the high water marks for the local restaurant industry, led by the third annual Chicago Gourmet in Millennium Park. more ›

Since we know that Chicagoans take their beer seriously and, well, why the hell not argue about it a little more, All About Beer has released an article about the 150 best places to drink a beer. A half-dozen or so Chicago joints show up on the rundown and since it sparked a bit of argument around the Chicagoist offices, we thought we'd open the floor to the Peanut Gallery and get your take as well. more ›

On this week's entry to the Chicagoist Podcast Series, 4 solid days of conversation and conventions about the country's craft brewing culture wasn't enough for us. The Craft Brewers Conference came to town form the 7th-10th of April, and some of us are still in recovery and detox mode. more ›

Last year, two Brothers Brewing invested in seven fresh French oak fermentation tanks, or "foudres," to do some barrel aging. Foudres, which are much larger than standard barrels, are widely used in the Rhône Valley for winemaking. Two Brothers decided they would revisit the practice of using these for oak aging. more ›

Thanks to the recent heat wave, we've actually been making it out to bars lately. Otherwise, we would just sit at home and drink pants-less in front of the TV. Either way, we're hungover the next day. Thankfully, Neo-Futurists' Sean Benjamin and Steve Mosqueda of the Drinking & Writing Brewery Radio Show may have found the perfect remedy. Every Saturday at 4 p.m. until the end of January, they'll be performing Drinking & Writing Volume III: How to Cure A Hangover in Andersonville at Hopleaf Bar. more ›

We were running around on New Year's Eve stocking up on champagne and snacks when we stopped by LUSH Wine & Spirits University Village location (yeah, we know...) looking for something we haven't had before. And we found it, nestled among the trippels, Imperial IPAs, sour ales and other extreme beers. the label read, "brewed with sweet potatoes and black pepper." more ›

Get this beer while you can. Van Twee is the long-awaited collaboration between De Proef and Bell's breweries. MAde by De Proef's Dirk Naudts and Bell's John Mallet, Van Twee is a porter-dubbel hybrid, with Michigan sour cherry juice and brettanomyces in the secondary fermentation. more ›

Craft breweries may receive (deserved) recognition for the inventiveness they're using to raise the profile of beer in the marketplace. It's wise to remember that today's brewers are merely dusting off techniques that date back generations, to those first groups of friars who discovered that fermenting malt made for a nice loophole to their fasting. The brewing history of the De Landtsheer family starts in the 1600s, but Emmanuel "Manu" De Landtsheer's Malheur (French for "misfortune") listed his first beer for public consumption only 12 years ago. The Malheur brews we'd shank a man with a sharpened toothbrush handle for are the ones brewed in the "methode champenoise" style. more ›

30 On Thursday is a part of an effort to raise money for a remount of Beer, the Neo-Futurist original "brewmastering puppet-jamming rock musical," at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver. 30 On Thursday combines some of the company's best Too Much Light plays from the last 20 years - we're big TML fans, so we're pretty sure it's going to be awesome. As an added bonus, for an extra $5 you can hit up a post-show beer tasting at Hopleaf. more ›

Things are tough all over, even for folks in the restaurant industry. An uncertain short-term future and a still-frozen credit market is forcing lenders and restaurateurs to make tough decisions. Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises is among a handful of restaurant companies profiled in the Wall Street Journal today on the state of the industry. LEYE has eliminated some positions, slowed hiring mangers for some of their 75 properties and is rotating other managers to multiple restaurants to cover those openings. Bartenders and waitstaff are also taking home less in tips as customers begin to budget their nights out. more ›

• Be careful on the two-wheelers, especially if you're a chef. Phil Vettel took time out from covering his Bizarro-world Chicago Gourmet to report that both Laurent Gras of L2O and Café Matou's Charlie Socher were in recent accidents. Gras, a bicycling enthusiast, was hopsitalized for a week and is now back in the kitchen. Socher wiped out his motorcycle (hopefully he wore a leather jacket for a controlled slide); chef Polo Heredia is filling in while he recovers. [The Stew]
• Meanwhile, Tribune wine critic Bill Daley writes about a new wine advocacy group called TAPAS (Tempranillo Advocates, Producers and Amigos Society) that promotes advocacy of American-grown tempranillo [Tribune]
• Is Hopleaf expanding? That's the rumor on the street, according to David Tamarkin at TOC (via). Next door neighbor and longtime Andersonville trattoria La Donna is moving just a bit north, to 6340 N. Clark, by mid-November, and Hopleaf is negotiating for the space. [TOC]

Taking a look at the reader's choice selections this go-round, it looks as though I roped myself into a style theme. Three of the four selections — including this week's — have been porters. By no means was this intentional; they were simply the selections that stood out the most. more ›

All About Beer magazine (via) listed their "top 125 places to have a beer before you die" (a nice arbitrary number, by the way). Five local taverns made the cut: Hopleaf (#24), Clark Street Ale House (#43), Map Room (#47), Goose Island (#84) and John Barleycorn, which makes the cut ten spots from the bottom at #115. more ›

• Starting off this week with a bit of a review. We slugged back our share of Original Schlitz Friday night at Green Mill. Guess what? It isn't that bad. Actually, as far as clean lagers go, we prefer it over Pabst Blue Ribbon (coincidentally, Pabst brews both). At $4 a bottle, it's also priced perfectly (PBR on draft at Green Mill runs $4.50).
• Louis Glunz Beer Company has formed the "Glunz Beer Culinary Council." This Justice League of culinary greatness includes Paul Kahan, Mindy Segal, Richard Camarota of Custom House, MIke Roper and Ben Sheagren of Hopleaf, Cooper's - A Neighborhood Eatery owner Craig Foss, Siebel Institute of technology faculty member Randy Mosher, author Lucy Saunders, and chariman Jim Javenkoski. Not coincidentally, the restaurants represented also carry Unibroue beers.
• Mike Nagrant waxes on about "green market dorks" in this week's New City

We're going to be doing a special Valentine's Day version of the Buffet next week. Until then, here are some events to tie you over. more ›

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. more ›