Sure signs of summer: fluff pieces from newspapers analyzing the dietary habits of our Presidential candidates. This one in the Wall Street Journal (via the Bright One) takes a look at the restaurants both Senators Barack Obama and John McCain frequent and discover what those restaurants say about them and their families. The Cliff's Notes? Obama is a cosmopolitan husband and father living in a city known for its world-class dining; McCain is some doddering......

We know that Chicago is a restaurant hot spot. While out-of-town writers particularly tend to maintain the clichés (earned, mind you) of Chicago being a steak and potatoes, deep dish pizza town, out-of-town chefs know the real score. The cover story to yesterday's Sun-Times food section was about the flood of celebrity chefs opening restaurants here in the upcoming months. Laurent Gras is opening L2O, Jose Garces' Mercat a la Planxa is one of the......

There's a fantastic wine store in the West Loop called Just Grapes with employees who know so much about wine, you'll go as much for the education as you will for a great pour. The wines are arranged by their flavor profile and line the walls of this beautifully designed store. This excellent wine shop has a private room in which we attended their most recent food and wine pairing seminar last night and were......

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......