Results tagged “restaurant”

    

Hadn't had the chance to visit Uncommon Ground's Edgewater location (1401 W. Devon, 773-465-9801) since it opened last year. With an old friend visiting from Colorado over the weekend, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to see how the place is doing. Judging from the bustle in the dining room Saturday night the answer was "quite well." This was "slow food" without the pretense, served masterfully with a well-trained, informed and opinionated waitstaff. The bar is also an underrated gem, although the flashing blue light of the police camera outside may trick some into thinking there's a perpetual special running.

     

Found this waiting on my doorstep last night. It's the long-awaited Alinea book. And wouldn't you know, it's a monolith. I was literally afraid to touch it for fear that I might have a mindsplosion.

Fried chicken is one of those dishes that we eat about twice a year; usually one of those times is disappointing. It’s a dish that’s very easy to get wrong and even the best examples of the frying art sometimes weigh you down like a lead overcoat. Happily, there is fresh hope for the fried chicken lovers of Chicago who are willing to try something a little different.

There's no shortage of good Persian or Lebanese food in Albany park. Kedzie Avenue has Noon O' Kabob and the amazing Semiramis. Near the intersection of Kedzie and Lawrence sits Al-Khaymeih. This spacious restaurant offers the best of both dining worlds. Customers are treated to familiar Lebanese dishes served promptly by very attentive waiters who cleared out empty plates as soon as they saw them, kept the pita and hummous coming and uncorked our bottles of wine as we pulled them out (Al-Khaymeih is BYOB).

We had the pleasure of eating that plate of spätzle (sometimes spelled as spaetzle) you see to the left while in Switzerland recently, alongside a nice pork cutlet. So what is spätzle?

This weekend, we visited the monument to fashionable pretension that is RL, the Ralph Lauren restaurant. The first time we dined there, about a year ago for lunch, our level of suspicion was high – can a fashion designer really create a restaurant concept worth bothering with? Surprisingly, the answer is yes. RL, despite a few flaws, is a competent restaurant and, more than that, showcases many dishes that the rest of the food world cast aside 40 years ago.

You'll find tripe on the menu at Italian, Greek, Asian, and Mexican restaurants, along with others. So what exactly is this commonly used ingredient?

Sometimes it pays to look up and have a camera on you. We ate breakfast yesterday at this greasy spoons called MiLady Soul Food on 55th and Halsted (short review: do avoid unless you're just looking for some grease to fight back the hair of the dog). On the way out we noticed the marquee. Even today, MiLady is still known to many locals as Le Meck's. Le Meck's, back in the day, was a steakhouse that one person said had "lots of Edwardianesque () atmosphere, high prices and crummy food." Reminds us of some of the steakhouses that used to populate the Loop around Gallery 37.

More fascinated by Kelis' milkshake than Daniel Plainview's? Is the only Oscar you'll watch living in a garbage can? Then this Sunday probably means nothing to you. You're burnt out on the "glitz" and "glamor" of the night, not to mention the drama surrounding that writers strike.

We love to read and write, and not just our own posts here on the World Wide Webs. We’ve been working on our first novel for years. It’s a love story involving time-traveling unicorns and so far we have about 850 pages of it written, but we don’t know when we’ll get it published (fingers crossed!). As such, we have a soft spot in our heart for local writers who have been a tad more successful. Luckily we live in a city that gives us a chance to here these talented scribes read!

New York magazine got their hands on a copy of this year's James Beard award ballots (check it out for yourself here) and as usual, our city's restaurants are well-represented.

The foggy mist that hung over Chicago Monday night seemed a perfect backdrop to a mystical experience with local psychic Patrick O’Brien at RoSal’s Restaurant in Little Italy. O'Brien visits RoSal’s twice a month to hold mini psychic readings for the pasta-loving crowd. Even those of us intrigued by psychics are often put off by the dozens of 900 number-type, big fat fakers out there. But there’s hope. Anyone seeking a more worthwhile experience than one can find with the $5 street festival psychics (you know, one yes-or-no tarot card question, the generic “you’ll live a long life” palm readings) should give O'Brien a try. He has a reputation for accuracy, plus we've been told he helps the Chicago PD solve crimes. Nice.

.] Now Jesse Jackson's candidate Larry Suffredin is under renewed scrutiny for his work as a corporate lobbyist.

Someone apparently reads the site: former Chicagoist staffer Lisa Shames attended Sunday's beer and charcuterie seminar at Custom House and e-mailed us to say that there were at least four people in attendance beside her who found out about the seminar via Chicagoist. We ran into at least that many people last night who said the same.

Do you crave comedy with a side of pancakes? If so, The Lincoln Lodge, located behind the Lincoln Restaurant in Northcenter, will get your carb-filled belly jiggling.

Last week we wrote about a beer and charcuterie dinner co-hosted by Custom House and Unibroue this Sunday for an all-inclusive $35. Since Spring Restaurant Group announced the dinner, it's become one of the hottest fixed-price dinners in town.

This time of year is usually a slow period for restaurants, what with the cold weather and all. Add to that some scary uncertainty on the job front and people are eating in with more frequency.

The jibarito is a cross-cultural gem with a very American story. It was invented in Chicago (circa 1993) at Humboldt Park’s Borinquen Restaurant, a tricked-out plantain sandwich inspired by Puerto Rican culture and named after its peasant class, then embraced across strata at local Cuban, Mexican, and South American joints.

In high school one of the constants of our Friday nights was a family-sized pizza delivered to the house from La Villa Restaurant and Banquets in Old Irving. We'd fight for a corner slice among our allotment, chase them down with a glass of pop, and head out the house for our other constant: vainly working on our game with every Catholic school girl we could meet.

Out of all of our celebrity chef crushes, Gordan Ramsay doesn't really crack the top three five ten. He just doesn't do it for us. There's something about the incessant swearing and love of horse meat that isn't attractive to Chicagoist. But he does do it for FOX viewers and restaurants that need a makeover on his Kitchen Nightmares show. We learned via Schadenfreude (and apparently there was an ad in the Reader as well)...

This week's listings kick off this evening at Merchandise Mart with "Chill: an International Wine & Culinary Event" sponsored by Luxehome and Wine Spectator. Proceeds from the event benefit the Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago. The event runs from 5 - 8 p.m. Chicago Professionals for Youth is committed to improving the lives of local underprivileged youth through literacy and mentoring programs, college preparation, job training and career skills assistance. Saturday they're hosting...

It's easy to forget that, with all the hype recently bestowed to the Violet Hour since it opened months ago (much of it warranted, we'll preface), that this city was already teeming with master mixologists before Toby Maloney blew back into town. Case in point, at the recent "Chicago Iron Bartender" competition, Sepia's Peter Vestinos beat out a packed field including Nacional 27's Adam Seger, Tim Lacey of Spring Restaurant Group, and Otom's James Macknyk...

The Tribune's Phil Vettel wrote on The Stew this morning about the just-released 2K8 AAA Restaurant and Hotel ratings. Chicago leads the way with more five-diamond rated restaurants than any other city. Furthermore, there are no surprises on the list, since it's identical to last year's awardees. Congratulations are in order to Alinea, Arun's, Avenues, Charlie Trotter's (his fourteenth straight year with a five-diamond rating), Everest, Seasons, and Tru for setting the standard in local...

For this week's exploration of the (hopefully not dirty or seedy) underbelly of Chicago's restaurant scene we thought we would look into a few of the establishments that LTHForum recently named as 2007's great neighborhood restaurants.

Being in the heart of the Flyover Zone, we can only live the Pinkberry phenomenon vicariously through the eyes and words of our partners-in-Ist while we wait for a Chicago location to open. When that happens, the company's founders should have some serious cash backing their play. Pinkberry's founders are expected to announce later today that they've raised $27.5 million in initial venture capital. Much of the financing was acquired by Maveron, a venture capital...