Results tagged “josegarces”

Chuck asked that each of the food and drink staffers offer readers recommendations of places to visit during Chicago Restaurant Week, which kicks off today. Here are my picks:

      

We love tapas and (since this author lives in the South Loop) we love to see good restaurants opening in the neighborhood. So, it’s possible that we were predisposed to like Mercat a la Planxa before we walked through the door. Chef Jose Garces' tapas outpost made Esquire's list of Best New Restaurants last year. On the other hand, Time Out Chicago's David Tamarkin decried Mercat's supposed "lack of soul," and there have been a fair share of mediocre reviews on Yelp, so we were interested to see how the place would stack up.

• Mercat a la Planxa's Jose Garces flays Bobby Flay on Iron Chef [Philly City Paper]
• Applebee's "owns riblets." Wonderful; another reason not to go. [NYT]
• Joanna MIller delves into a vegetarian nicoise salad. [My Vegetable Blog]

Just added to the list of participants for September's Chicago Gourmet event are Koren Grieveson of avec, Jose Garces of Mercat a la Planxa, the Hearty Boys duo of Dan Smith and Steve McDonagh, Takashi's Takashi Yagihashi, Christophe David of NoMI and Terrance Brennan of the soon-to-open Chicago location of his Artisanal Bistro and Wine Bar.

We know that Chicago is a restaurant hot spot. While out-of-town writers particularly tend to maintain the clichés (earned, mind you) of Chicago being a steak and potatoes, deep dish pizza town, out-of-town chefs know the real score.