The shop will open with a full lineup of breads and packaged goods - the meats come later. more ›

Today in restaurant news: A chef shakeup at Graham Elliot and Publican Quality Meats is opening soon. more ›

Travel and Leisure Magazine gave the West Loop restaurant some love in the January issue. more ›

Each month Mercadito offers Tacos for Strength, a tasty promotion that features a special taco created by a guest chef. more ›

If you care about cooking on food trucks, you can lend your voice to Let Them Cook. more ›

During the Chipotle Cultivate Festival, we sat down with two culinary stars who support sustainable eating. more ›

Chipotle does a bang-up job crafting our barbacoa lunch burritos, so it was no surprise when we learned the sustainable food-focused chain was mixing up an equally appetizing festival for this Saturday in Lincoln Park. more ›

If you haven't bought a copy of the Chicago Homegrown Cookbook, head to Green City Market this Wednesday, where author Heather Lalley will be signing copies. If you have already bought one, go anyway and meet Heather and swap recipes. The book, which includes recipes from many of our favorite chefs including Rick Bayless, Paul Kahan, Mindy Segal and Rob Levitt, is a beautiful testament to our vibrant local food community. What better place to get a copy than at Green City Market? more ›

In case you missed it, the Garfield Park Conservatory was completely trashed by last month's hailstorm - most of the glass panels were broken, shards destroyed hundreds of plants and the conservatory, one of the nation's most glorious, is partially closed for renovation. Oh, and did we mention that there's no money? Well, Paul Kahan's restaurants are pitching in to help. This Sunday, from 12-4 at Big Star, all of the Blackbird group of restaurants will be hosting a sidewalk sale, selling all of their used (and undamaged) dishware, furniture and kitchen supplies. more ›

If you're a fan of Paul Kahan or The Publican, you'll want to grab tickets for this dinner right away. Farm dinners are wonderful, but when you add up the transportation, booze, food and tours they often top $200/person, a price tag we can rarely justify. This event, which pairs Slagel Family Farm with one of Chicago's favorite restaurants, is only $95/person. What does that include? more ›

- Jessica Volpe, owner of Chicagoist fav Pasta Puttana, has opened a retail shop in Noble Square. The spot opened last Friday, and we haven't had a chance to visit yet - but you'd better believe we'll be stopping in soon for some pasta-making lessons! The shop will carry filled and sheet pastas (filled pastas can't be found at her farmer's market stand) and according to Eater, on opening day she was carrying roasted beet pasta and ramp pasta. Yum. 1407 W. Grand Avenue. more ›

312 Dining Diva tipped us off to this one. Paul Kahan, of Blackbird, managed to get through airport security with a LOT of knives. He tweeted: "Flew outa ohare today. Forgot I had four huge chefs knives in carry on bag. Got patted down for wallet. Knives went through." Thank goodness for the TSA keeping our skies so safe. Maybe if he'd been carrying a 4-ounce bottle of olive oil, they would've gotten him. more ›

- Bridge House Tavern, the new bar/restaurant in the old Flatwater space, officially opened yesterday. The restaurant has been soft-open for a few weeks. We'll withhold a full review until they've had a few more weeks to ferment, but here's our capsule review from a visit a couple weeks back. Bacon milkshake? Thumbs up. Beautiful riverfront space? Thumbs up? Entire drink menu? Thumbs way down. more ›

The Chicago food community has shown its committment to charitable causes over and over again, and we've already mentioned a few things being done to help disaster-ravaged Japan. This event, however, is in a class by itself. Some of the best chefs in Chicago, including Jimmy Bannos, Paul Kahan, Tony Mantuano, Mindy Segal, Sarah Stegner, Paul Virant, Bill Kim, and of course, Takashi Yagihashi, are coming together at Takashi on April 18th to create a special 6-course dinner. All the proceeds will go the Red Cross. more ›

The James Beard Foundation just announced their awards finalists at the top of the hour and Chicago's chefs and food cognoscenti have a couple of surprises among what is a fairly predictable list. more ›

Less than 1% of the pork produced in the United States is sustainably raised. As more and more of us begin to care about sustainable meat production, that number becomes scarier and scarier - but what can be done? Last weekend, during the Family Farmed Expo, I attended a workshop that I wish the entire city of Chicago could have seen. Paul Kahan (Publican), Rob Levitt (Butcher and Larder), Bartlett Durand (Black Earth Meats) and Herb Eckhouse (La Quercia ) told us how they - carnivores all - help to make our meat production system more sustainable, and offered tips to consumers who care. more ›

If you haven't already bought a copy of Blood, Bones and Butter: The Inadvertant Education of a Reluctant Chef, now is the time. The memoir, by Chef Gabrielle Hamilton, was called "the best chef memoir ever" by Anthony Bourdain, who knows a thing or two about writing memoirs. Plus, next weekend, you can buy the book, meet the author and eat some of the food, all at the same time. The Publican's Paul Kahan is recreating some of the dishes from the book in a 3-course meal on Sunday, March 27th, and Hamilton will be on hand to meet, greet and sign. Just the day before, The Publican is hosting a food drive. Want a heck of a weekend? Do both. more ›

Will 2011 be Bourbon's year? We sure hope so. Big Star, for one, is doing its part to make that happen with exciting recent and upcoming additions to its single-barrel Bourbon program. Paul Kahan hinted at the arrival of freshly acquired barrels on Twitter last week, so we caught up with Michael Rubel, beverage director of Big Star (and neighboring Violet Hour), to find out what we should be sipping on our next visit. Rubel has been building Big Star's stockpile of exclusive Bourbons, bottled from barrels he hand-picked in Kentucky, for more than a year. Six barrels' worth are already available, and the contents of two more will hit the shelves this week and (probably) next. more ›

Tribune "Cheap Eater" Kevin Pang reports that Paul Kahan, owner/operator of Blackbird, avec, the Publican, and Big Star, is getting on board with the butcher shop trend. Hot on the heels of the announcement of the Butcher and Larder and the September opening of City Provisions Deli, Kahan told Pang that they signed a lease today on the building across the street from the Publican and are planning to open a whole-animal butcher shop. The shop will have retail space, sell sandwiches and supply the meats for the Publican, and all of your favorites (including their amazing sausages and charcuterie) will be available for sale. We can't wait to get inside when it opens in 6-10 months! more ›

With the city's food media and assorted foochebaggery on pins and needles for next week's release of the Chicago Michelin Guide, the Tribune's "Chicago Live" series at the Chicago Theatre, produced in conjunction with the Second City, will focus on all things food in next week's installment. more ›

Restaurant Intelligence Agency reports that Avec is definitely re-opening tomorrow, and the restaurant's website confirms it. Regular service will begin at 3:30. Most of your favorite menu items will be there (thank goodness, they saved the chorizo-stuffed dates) but they have taken the opportunity of the closure to change up some of the menu offerings. We're excited to taste the home-made blood sausage (we love blood sausage) and to check out their new pastry options. more ›

Big Star is getting close to its first anniversary and they're ringing it in with beer, tacos, and music. Pretty much like any night there. more ›

As of this morning there are still a pair of tickets available for next Thursday's Sound Opinions "Eat to the Beat" dinner at Blackbird. Blackbird's Paul Kahan and Mindy Segal of Hot Chocolate will prepare a multi-course dinner from music selected by Sound Opinions hosts Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot. more ›

Chicago fared well in last night's chef and restaurant portion of the 2010 James Beard Awards. more ›

For four days the Sheraton Hotel and Towers downtown was overrun by a burly, bearded, tattooed mass of humanity. They had one other thing in common: they all had a deep love of beer. The annual Craft Brewers Conference and biennial World Beer Cup shone a spotlight on Chicago just as the local craft beer scene is growing by leaps and bounds. Breweries from 90 countries entered a record 3,330 beers in the World Beer Cup, in 90 style categories. Many of those beers, as well as rare vintages, were available for sampling at the conference and throughout the city. more ›

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Mindy Segal celebrated five years of Hot Chocolate last night with a $150 per person dinner to benefit Share Our Strength's Taste of the Nation event this August. This year Segal wanted to feature the chefs who helped influence her on her way to becoming one of the best pastry chefs in the country. The lineup she put together resembled a chef's Dream Team. Rick Bayless and Brian Enyart, Paul Kahan, Michael Kornick and Erick Williams, Paul Virant, Bill Kim, Nick Lessins of Great Lake and Benjamin Caulfield of Three Floyds Brewpub joined Segal and her new executive chef Aric Miech in producing a tightly orchestrated seven-course meal paired with beers from some of Segal's favorite breweries. more ›

Although it happened in February, Hot Chocolate's fourth anniversary dinner still stood as my favorite overall dining experience last year. It was a seven-course marathon that increased in intensity and flavor with every dish, paired with some heavy duty beers and a music soundtrack that ranged from early Black Sabbath to pre-"Black Album" Metallica to the Twilight Singers. The proceeds from the dinner went to Share Our Strength, the DC-based non-profit dedicated to eliminating hunger in America by 2015. Quite simply, I was exhausted at the end of the meal. more ›

What have Our Town's other culinary watchdogs been up to this week? more ›

If you watch television you're sure to run across the archetype of the "cool dad:" the father who stumbles into middle age futilely trying to relate or stay relevant to his kids by adopting their slang and diving head first into their hobbies only to come across as the bumbling buffoon they fear becoming most. Usually you find the "cool dad" in drug awareness commercials, but actor Ty Burrell plays the role perfectly in the role of Phil Dunphy on the ABC comedy "Modern Family." Then there's the other "cool dad," who really was cool back in the day. He smoked, drank, trolled for some strange on the weekends, probably met his wife at some boozy last call at Green Mill one Sunday morning, settled down, had kids and now allows himself a chuckle or three whenever his teenage kids act out, thinking "Yeah, I remember my first beer." more ›