Today is National Piña Colada Day. Naturally it makes sense to focus on the Colada for this installment of "Properly Sauced." Originally, the piña colada was nothing more than ripe pineapple juice, either strained (colada) or unstrained (sin colar). Visitors to Pilsen's Fiesta del Sol sample it in this version annually. According to Wikipedia, the earliest known reference to the piña colada as a rum-based cocktail was in a Travel magazine article about Cuba from......

Tonight we'll find out if Stephanie Izard wins the title of "Top Chef" in part 2 of the season finale. Filmed in Puerto Rico last month, Izard pits her skills against progressive cuisine acolyte/fauxhawk wearing Atlantan Richard Blais and the mopey, attitude-filled Lisa Fernandes of New York. Lisa won no one over last week when, after the shocking elimination of Antonia Lofaso, she looked at her peers and said, "I know you're disappointed to see......

All across the land this weekend there'll be grills firing up; hamburgers, hot dogs and veggie patties will be duly seared, oversmeared with condiments and consumed. But at Facets, another kind of feast is on display. The ingredients? A desert island. Reality TV. And hungry contestants. American Cannibal, which starts a week-long run at Facets today, wickedly skewers our society’s hunger for celebrity (pun intended). Two young writers, desperate to get into showbiz, corner a......

Chicagoist would like to open our day by wishing a very Happy Birthday to the woman who makes getting out of bed seem worth it: Ana Belaval, the Around Town feature reporter for WGN Morning News. Though we used to tune in to WGN for the comic stylings of Paul Konrad, we now find ourselves counting down the minutes until they dispense with all the fires, bombings and indictments in the first hour and get......

Chicagoist needs a tropical vacation, and bad. It's been so dank the last few days that the only way to combat our sniffles is to spend several days under the warm, delicious sun, drinking margaritas, and playing Marco Polo. Drunk Marco Polo. Just kidding, water safety is really important. Too bad we're not part of the Illinois legislature's Latino caucus, cause if we were, we'd be freshly back from a vacation to Puerto Rico, paid......

Fly through O'Hare recently? It's miserable. Even worse when there's a major storm system somewhere in the US. Recognizing the problem, Transporation Secretary Norm Mineta called airlines, the Federal Aviation Administration and others together to set a cap on the number of flights going in and out of O'Hare every day. The voluntary cap, announced yesterday, of no more than 86 flights per hour reduces the number of flights by about 60 a day. The......