Authentic flavor and low prices make Bun Mi’s bahn mi’s our sandwich of choice for this weekend. more ›

Last night, five of Chicago's best chefs got together to show what creative things could be done with whole heritage pigs. There was blood, organ meats, bacon and enough pork fat to submerge a Volkswagen. more ›

The new sausage and charcuterie program from Chef Scott Walton, featuring local and sustainable meat, will rock your summer grilling. more ›

The new butcher shop from Publican/Blackbird/Avec chef/owner Paul Kahan is definitely worth a visit. more ›

Tickets for the very popular event will sell out immediately - be ready to jump on them. more ›

Chef Lee Ann Whippen rolled out a new brunch menu at Chicago Q, including Eggs Benedict with smoked chicken, brisket hash, and a smoked bacon sausage breakfast sandwich topped with eggs. more ›

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

Are you nuts for nuts? Just to clarify for our readers with gutter minds, we’re talking about almonds, pecans, pistachios, hazelnuts… the whole gamut. For dinner this week, try this crunchy, toasted nut topping, shown here with pecans. more ›

DMK Burger Bar has created a new burger for the Chicago Bears that might make us venture into the place during the insanely-packed game days. Or at least, fantasize about it. The "Pigskin" burger is made with root beer-braised pork, a grass-fed beef burger, aged organic Wisconsin cheddar, pickles and onions. Oh, and "love," according to DMK. more ›

Where do you get your jibaritos? WTF is a jibarito? Where is the bread? What is the filling? Why do you ask so many questions? We recently visited Cocina De Galarza (named Cocina Boricua on their sign) at Fullerton and Western to give their jibarito a try. more ›

Under a decaying wooden sign, bright yellow letters on a window front call out to passing pedestrians proclaiming “homemade Polish food.” Andrzej Grill is a true hole-in-the-wall “find,”. This tiny space serves big bold dishes of popular Polish items alongside some lesser known homemade Polish favorites. more ›

According to the USDA, pork no longer has to be cooked until it's dry and dead. The previous guidelines, which called for pork to be blasted until it was 160 degrees, white and dry (ok, the last two are our personal descriptors) have been revised, and the Tribune reports that 145 degrees is the new accepted temperature. As chefs have been saying for years, pink pork is safe to eat. This won't change our personal habits (we already cook pork pink) but at least maybe we'll be able to use the built-in alarm on our meat thermometer, which is rigged to conform to USDA guidelines. more ›

Stephanie Izard is wrapping up a trip to New York to attend the Beard Awards. Before she left, she posted this interesting blog entry about an limited seating pork tasting she's putting together for Memorial Day weekend. more ›

If you make something with pork and pineapple and call all your friends up and invite them over for dinner for "porky-pine" and they show up and you are not, in fact, cooking a porcupine, they are going to be hella pissed. They will not think you are cute for your clever play on words. We know this from experience. We've been trying to get people to think we are cute for years. The best you can do is to set the hot pork on the table and quickly back away. 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've ever wondered what it takes to run a city government that just balanced a $600 million budget deficit, check out the full list of city departments and ask yourself what can be consolidated. more ›

In a few short months, John Manion has transformed the menu at Branch 27 to better match their beer list, making the West Town restaurant one of the better relaunches of the winter, even as the chefs begin to question the ongoing embrace of all things pork. Tonight at 7:30 p.m. Manion has crafted a four-course menu featuring pork from Slagel Family Farm and beer pairings from Chimay to kick off Branch 27's monthly beer dinner series. more ›

The Magalitsa pig, also known as the "curly haired hog," is a breed of pig that originated from Hungary and the Balkans known for its thick wooly coat. The meat from a Mangalitsa pig is also rich in fat and is reputed to have a flavor and texture similar to Wagyu beef. In gourmet circles Mangalitsas have eclipsed mulefoots as the new trendy pork. more ›

What a difference a week makes. And a lot of salt, pepper, sugar and thyme. The pork jowl has been cured (compare the shot above to how it looked before curing last week) and looks like it's well on its way to becoming rich, savory bacon. more ›

Our love of bacon has come to its logical endgame: we're making our own. more ›

It was around 5 p.m. Sunday when I and the other judges for Cochon 555 gathered around a series of tables set up in the middle of a cavernous ballroom in the Drake Hotel, like a scene straight out of "Top Chef." Any questions about how we were to judge the competition were answered by Cochon founder Brady Lowe. We were asked to judge the chefs on a scale of 1-5 based on three factors: presentation, flavor, and utilization of the whole pig. That last factor was important, since this was a snout-to-tail competition. more ›

A couple weeks back a post ran about Cochon 555, the snout-to-tail pork competition Sunday at the Drake Hotel featuring Graham Elliot Bowles, Stephen Dunne, Chris Pandel, Patrick Sheerin and Sam Burman. Each of them is tasked with breaking down and preparing a heritage breed pig for eating. Since then your humble food and drink editor was invited to be one of the judges for the event. I have no earthly clue what I bring to the table that chefs Koren Grieveson, Rick Gresch, Seth Siegel-Gardner and Doug Sohn don't, but it should be a fascinating time. more ›

In the gray days of March, when the produce at the store is looking its most tired and our spirits really need an infusion of chlorophyll, we start to crave farmer’s markets. Fresh vegetables, flowers, being outside, and getting as much produce as we can eat for whatever cash happens to be in our wallets; farmer’s markets help revive us after the long, hard winter. Daley Plaza (our usual haunt) doesn’t open for another month and a half, so that’s clearly out. Luckily, Green City Market has come to the rescue. more ›

As Karl and I discussed in yesterday's podcast, if you're going out to dine at one of the participating Chicago Restaurant Week establishments and want a cocktail or two, expect your tab to increase really quick. more ›

2008 was already shaping up locally as a banner year for new restaurant openings. L2O was recently named the best new restaurant in America by Esquire, with Takashi and Mercat a la Planxa also making the list. Bill Kim left Le Lan to focus on Urban Belly; Graham Elliot Bowles responded to criticism of his eponymous River North outpost by slowly tweaking things until he got it right. Ryan Poli came back to town with Perennial. Superstar chefs such as Marcus Samuelsson and Terrance Brennan targeted Chicago for restaurant locales. And we're still waiting for Lula Café's Pilsen location to open in a bit (with Jason Vincent at the helm). more ›

This has been making the rounds at other blogs, but we still wanted to share it with you. Mike Gebert at Sky Full of Bacon followed around localvore hero Rob Gardner as Gardner acquired a pig's head from the Oak Park Farmer's Market, then took it to Mado, where chef/co-owner Rob Levitt promptly made testa (aka "head cheese") out of it. This video is not for vegans or the queasy, nor should it be. more ›

Stopping by the Heartland Meats booth was a given while at Green City Market last weekend. The surprise came at another meat purveyor. Based in downstate Fairbury (just south of Kankakee), Tom and Amy Ifft of Twin Oaks Meats raise hormone-free pork. Additionally, the feed used to fatten their pigs contains no animal by-products or antibiotics. more ›

We recently dined at Lettuce Entertain You's flagship Chinese restaurant Ben Pao after hearing that Bruce Cost (whose former restaurant once employed Ming Tsai as chef) had been engaged to revamp the menu to add his Asian culinary expertise. While the result was a change to 75% of the menu, do not fear, loyal Ben Pao diners. The ever popular sesame chicken is still on the menu, unchanged. Changes to the menu concentrated on achieving more authentic flavors and incorporating fresh ingredients, including local vegetables and even noodles from Chicago's own Chinatown. more ›