When you break it down, Paella is all about the ingredients -- the rice must be bomba or Valencia rice, the pan must be steel and you must use those expensive threads of Saffron that gives the dish its gorgeous gold color and its unique but inviting aroma. To learn more about this quintessential Spanish dish, we visited Cafe Ba Ba Reeba for a Paella cooking class that gave us a few great tips and a great meal. BaBaReeba has been serving up tapas in Chicago for 25 years, and this class was a perfect example of why they've been so successful. more ›

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. more ›