Sarah Grueneberg, a contestent on the current season of Top Chef, will face off against her mentor Tony Mantuano, a contestant from Top Chef Masters Season 2. more ›

Tony Mantuano's new casual Italian restaurant opens today and is sure to be a hit. more ›

Learn about our hometown contestants, the show's new features and more - and be sure to watch tonight! more ›

Six Chicago chefs are going to be in the first round of Top Chef Season 9, and Amanda Rockman's funnel cake led to her removal from Top Chef: Just Desserts. more ›

Today's listings include a saison festival at the Fountainhead, variety at the Hungry Brain and a Spiaggia farm dinner. more ›

It's not been a good couple of weeks for Chicago restaurants. 8 days after Kith and Kin closed unexpectedly, another shocker - Bistro 110, the Michigan Avenue French mainstay, is shutting down on August 4th. According to Chicago Magazine, Tony Mantuano, the Italian food impresario behind Spiaggia and Terzo Piano, will be revamping the property into an Italian bar, with "good espresso, homemade pastries, gelato to go, a mozzarella bar" and small plates. more ›

The Greater Chicago Food Depository does some of the most important work there is - making sure our fellow Chicagoans are well fed. Since this mission lines up with our own (though on a somewhat different level), we whole-heartedly support their efforts. They also happen to throw some of the best benefit dinners in the business. On May 15, the Food Depository will be hosting its 15th Annual Girl Food Dinner at West Town Tavern. The 5-course meal, cooked entirely by female chefs, will blow your socks off, and the $150 ticket price goes right to the food depository. more ›

Last week, i was at Terzo Piano looking at cocktails, and I decided to stay for lunch. I don't usually think of art museums as pizza destinations, but when the crew behind Spiaggia is involved, I guess I should have higher expectations for their Italian specialities. This pizza (or pizzetta) blew me away. Normally made with home-made chorizo, last week's version was made with short ribs. Either way, the combination of roasted fennel, onions, meat and cheshire cheese made for the perfect lunch dish. The pizzetta ($16) is easily enough to feed two people. Go for it. more ›

If you ever wanted to see your paycheck dematerialize into a dazzling cascade of delicious, paper-thin confetti, there's no better time to do so than during truffle season. Long a staple of luxurious Italian dining, the precious tartufo will soon end its brief yearly run of availability. We hear the kitchen staff at Spiaggia has decided to give it a fitting send-off by offering the diva of all fungi as a topper on a Blackmore wagyu ribeye steak, reputedly one of the best pieces of meat Earth has to offer. more ›

Reservations are still available for tomorrow night's "A Tasteful Pursuit" dinner at Spiaggia. The proceeds for the dinner will benefit Share Our Strength. Host chef Tony Mantuano is welcoming Paul Kahan, Takashi Yagihashi and Philadelphia chef Marc Vetri to join him, Spiaggia Executive chef Sarah Grueneberg and Terzo Piano pastry chef Megan Neubeck for a multi-course dinner to help fund Share Our Strength's efforts to fight childhood hunger in America. (Full Disclosure: I'm a longtime supporter of Share Our Strength and sit on the planning committee for its annual "Taste of the Nation" event.) more ›

Share Our Strength just had a rousing success with its Taste of the Nation event at the Aragon Ballroom, but the non-profit's efforts to help rid America of childhood hunger by 2015 haven't ended. Their Great American Dine Out is currently ongoing — for participating restaurants, click here —and they've enlisted an All-Pro team of chefs for their "A Tasteful Pursuit" dinner series, which lands at Spiaggia November 17. more ›

Spiaggia (aka President and Mrs. Obama's favorite restaurant) gets the food pr0n treatment over at Menupages Grub Street Chicago today with a series of Stolpman-level photos from Carolina Bolado. The photo essay is also running to commemorate chef Sarah Grueneberg's one-year anniversary as Tony Mantuano's chef de cuisine. [Grub Street Chi] more ›

Spiaggia'sTony Mantuano is living a charmed life. The James Beard Award-winning chef is opening Terzo Piano in the Art Institute's new Renzo Piano-designed modern wing next month, Spiaggia is celebrating its Silver anniversary, his Wine Bar Food cookbook is one whose recipes Anthony's been more than willing to share, and Spiaggia is a recipient of the Obama effect. Not that Mantuano needed any help there. more ›

This pasta is amazing. Absolutely amazing. It’s not our recipe, so we can say that without sounding like a self-promoter. It’s from Wine Bar Food, by Tony and Cathy Mantuano (of Spiaggia) and it’s filled with some unlikely combinations (Anthony's visited recipes from Wine Bar Food for a "Simple Cooking" post before; please check out his take on the Mantuano's faux gras — Sudo.). Oranges? Raw tomatoes? Clams? more ›

When we were planning our election night get-together, we decided to try out some new recipes. Rather than making the same old hummus dip (maybe with a new spice, to make it seem trendier), we were looking for something with the same universal appeal, but with a radically different flavor. On the other hand, we wanted it to stay meat-free for any vegetarian guests. more ›

With a lineup filled with food seminars, cooking demonstrations, wine classes and a beautifully equipped Viking Culinary Stage at the Pritzker Pavilion, you would think that Chicago Gourmet would’ve been a Mecca for home cooks looking to jazz up their dishes. Think again. While some of the seminars were informative (most notably Greg Hall on beer and cheese and Paul Bartolotta on seafood), others were thinly veiled promos for books, products or restaurants. more ›

Foodandwine.com just announced their "Go To List 2008," where they list their top ten restaurant cities in the world, ten up and coming restaurant cities, and 300 dining destinations around the world. It should come as no surprise that our broad-shouldered city ranked #8. That's behind Tokyo, Paris and New York, but ahead of Stockholm and Vancouver. Credit where credit is due, Vancouver still has better skiing and gentlemens clubs. more ›