Results tagged “thai”

In today’s soup, we move onto an entirely different set of flavors. Rather than onions, celery, crushed red pepper or sausage, this soup has some new ingredients: curry paste, coriander seeds, coconut milk, ginger. The end result is a creamy broth that, depending on your taste, can be as spicy or as savory as you like. Play with the optional ingredients, try something new, or substitute something familiar - this is a very versatile soup and a good introduction to some basic Thai spices. We bought all of our ingredients at a normal grocery store - the “Thai Kitchen” brand is usually reliable.

We’re always looking for interesting chicken recipes, but we find most are either incredibly bland or mouth-numbingly dry. We prefer whole roast or rotisserie chickens, but often boneless skinless chicken breasts are the only convenient option on a weekday night. This is an easy dish with a nice Thai twist and you can finish it in less than thirty minutes. It’s also got a nice spicy, citrus flavor for a summer dinner out on the balcony.

Drinking wine can be an experience to savor and that experience is heightened when paired with some great cheeses. BIN 36 offers a nice atmosphere to do both these things. Chicagoist dined at the downtown location and not only enjoyed wine and cheese, but indulged in some of Executive Chef John Caputo’s cooking.

In just a few short weeks, will hit the airwaves and we're counting down the days to the March 12 season premiere. In addition to placing the city's restaurant scene at the forefront of the series and the backdrop for the competition, there are three chefs with local ties competing for the title of "Top Chef."

The New York Times Magazine ran an interesting interview yesterday with Frontera Grill's Rick Bayless, with accompanying photos taken at his Bucktown home. Bayless cops to not cooking Mexican at home, which makes sense since he's around it five days a week at Frontera and Topobolampo. Bayless also grows a substantial amount of the produce for Frontera - about $25,000 worth - in his backyard, which is in line with his localvore sensibilities.

After months of spying and accounts of shooting around town, Bravo finally announced the contestants for the next season of "Top Chef" today (you can read the release here). While the lineup of chefs vying to impress Padma and company are largely from the coasts, three of the contestants have Chicago ties:

GrubHub users concerned about how your Thai food delivery impacts the environment needn't fear. Last week the online restaurant delivery service began purchasing carbon credits to offset the environmental costs involved with delivering to customers here and in San Francisco.

Like many Chicagoans, we cried a little in 2006 when the Berghoff restaurant closed its doors after 108 years in the loop. While the Berghoff was never known for its “gourmet” cuisine, it did serve up hearty portions of German cooking and nostalgia for old Chicago. We were delighted to see that part of the Berghoff legacy would carry on “17/West at the Berghoff.”

After cooking our Thanksgiving dinner from scratch while holding our toddler, we’d like to never see the inside of a kitchen again. Thankfully, Chicago is rife with take-out deliciousness. Our new favorite is Ta Tong, a local Thai and sushi dive in Lakeview. Most Chicago neighborhoods have one: a hole-in-the-wall place that serves up some awesome Asian food. Ta Tong makes one of the best Pad Kee Mao ($6.95) dishes we’ve eaten in Chicago. We...

When we first began writing this post we considered giving it another title: "Get on your hands and knees and crawl". We decided against this title because the actual subject of the post wouldn't be immediately clear, and the event we speak of deserves perfect understanding. If you like sweets, the Andersonville neighborhood or the Swedish American Museum, then the Andersonville Dessert Crawl is right up your alley. For $20 (in advance) or $30...

For all of our talk about the great food in the city, Chicagoist has been known to slack a little from time to time. For example, it probably isn't the best use of our money or daily caloric intake to chow down on the Thai lunch special from down the street a couple of times a week. But we do anyway. And we know a lot of parents probably operate similarly; they know a Lunchable...

There was very little else for Londonist to be concerned with when the threat of a Tube strike became a very unpleasant reality. The inconvenience was extreme: there aren't many alternatives to the Tube in London despite the best efforts of the Londonist team to get everyone from A to B. Brighter news came in the form of the first ever female Yeoman Warder, or Beefeater as the position is more commonly known, and...

Oh, how we wished we would have spent more time at the Bongo Room before we had our baby. This trendy Wicker Park eatery, famous for its sugary brunch specials, lives up to the hype. Taking a child to eat there, however, requires some savings and a bit of strategy. First, the food is as rumored: tasty, sweet dishes make up a good portion of the menu. We tried their chocolate French toast ($10.75, pictured),...

Chicagoist needs your help. This weekend, we were getting ready to go out for some delicious Chinese food on the north side when we had a realization; we have no idea where to go out for Chinese food when dining north of Chinatown. In the past we've sung the praises of Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese and so on, but when it came to finding a Chinese restaurant to head to on a Friday night, we...

For 25 years, Thai 55 in Hyde Park has been serving up quick Thai food for Hyde Park residents and U of C students. But did you know that there's a smaller restaurant on 31st Street in Bridgeport, just west of Canal, with the same exact menu? The full name for Bangkok Thai 55 is "Bangkok Thai 55 Authentic Thai Cuisine, Formerly Thai 55 in Hyde Park Since 1982 to 2004." It isn't as long or obsequious as a Fiona Apple album title, but still a mouthful. The confusing restaurant name, which smacks of sibling rivalry if not false advertising, is one of many problems we have with Bangkok Thai 55. Another problem is the door buzzer, which we don't think is necessary for this particular stretch of 31st Street. This isn't some bar where drunken cops hide out for the length of their shifts. It's a Thai restaurant. Still, we were let in with little delay and no interaction outside of placing our order, which consisted of one egg roll ($1.50) and one drunken noodle with chicken entree ($7.50). As we sat in the empty and tiny dining area, we realized that every time we passed Bangkok Thai 55, the dining area was empty.

With the exception of Arun's, going out for Thai food in Chicago is pretty predictable. Most places are mom-and-pop, family-owned joints that serve a standard (and usually delicious) selection of Pad Thai and other noodles, curries of various types, and deep-fried appetizers. Delicious? Yes. Innovative? Not so much. Despite these perceived shortcomings, Chicagoist loves eating Thai food nonetheless. Which is why we were intrigued to read about the opening of Sura Thai Bistro on the Chicago MenuPages blog.

The writing was on the wall or, to be more precise, the windows. And, as often is the case in these scenarios, we weren’t happy about it. Perhaps that’s why we didn’t notice at first. Instead, we happily sauntered into Onu, a small Asian market in Boystown, like we have many times before (call us kooky, but ethnic markets make us happy, especially ones in our own hood). When we asked the clerk if she...

"Ska Month" continues here at Chicagoist with another selection from the Ska Brewery in Durango, Colo. This week, we're looking at the last of their "robust reincarnations" series, Nefarious Ten Pin Imperial Porter. Nefarious is a Baltic-style porter that weighs in at a hearty 8 percent alcohol by volume. Like our previous two Ska selections, we purchased this as a 22-ounce bomber at Lush Wine & Spirits' University Village location. It poured a deep brown,...

Dharma Garden Thai Cuisine is a restaurant full of contradictions. And we mean that in a good way. One side of this Albany Park eatery is flanked by a long bar, although the restaurant is BYOB. Dharma prides itself on using healthful ingredients and cooking processes — the menu informed us “dharma ragsar” means “natural healing” in Thai — but 10 out of the 20 apps are deep fried. To be fair, a majority of...

Some wine grapes are grown in yields so small that they're either largely ignored by vintners or replaced by more popular varietals. Such seemed to be the case with viognier (vee-on-yay). As recently as 1965 this grape, whose existence can be traced back to Roman times, saw growth in only eight hectares of farmland in France's northern Rhône region, where viognier is the single permitted grape varietal of the Condrieu and Château-Grillet appellations. French vineyards slowly began to increase the acreage they committed to viognier, from 20 hectares in 1986 to 108 hectares in 2000. That's still far short of the 200 hectares allowed under law.

Tribune food critic Phil Vettel enlisted the help of some fellow Trib staffers last week in another of those "What if?" columns; this time Vettel managed not to mistake two separate chefs with the same surname as brothers on a lost weekend in Vegas. The mission of the article was to test the newly enacted "cork-and-carry" law, an amendment to the State Liquor Control Act that allows restaurants to let customers leave with unfinished bottles of wine, permitted that the wine was a part of their dinner, placed in a sealable plastic bag, and with a dated receipt attached.

Frequent viewers of "Check Please" will know what we're about to describe. One of the guests will describe the wine he may have paired with his meal, and the camera will do a quick cut to Alpana Singh, who has her head turned to the guest, listening intently. That look turns to an enthusiastic, knowing gleam if the guest chose an Alsatian riesling. It's one of those rare occasions where Singh lets her guard...

Jagshemash! Borat is a hit. It's getting rave reviews, grossing millions, and definitely the most quotable thing we've seen in ages. But Borat seems to have missed most of the -ist cities, and we were all wondering how the film would have been different if he'd made his way around the world on the -ist tour. In Shanghai, Borat would be observing Inane Learnings of Penis Photos for Make Benefit Glorious Flat World of...

If you are into no-holds-barred fighting, then you will likely be heading to the UIC Pavilion this Saturday night to check out IMMAC's ATTACK Mixed Martial Arts event.

When Chicagoist moved to the city, we immediately went on a tireless search for our beloved Thai dish, panang curry. Several take-out orders and many Thai iced teas later, we were still disappointed, only managing to find one that was not as terrible as the others, but still by no means “very good.”

This weekend we had the chance to check out a new film from Thailand that’s screening as part of the Chicago International Film Festival, Syndromes and a Century directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. It’s been garnering an awful lot of attention (Mr. Weerasethakul’s film Tropical Malady won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2004), and luckily we find ourselves in agreement that this is indeed a special film.

For years now, we’ve been saying that more Thai places need to embrace the Pez Dispenser as a key element of restaurant design. Someone finally listened.

This has been a rough week for your -ist pals, though you wouldn't know it from the great posts all over the network. Plagued with server problems, our tech team (led by the great Neil Epstein) toiled around the clock to solve the glitches as they arose. Seriously, we've said, typed, and thought the phrase "server problems" more in the past week than we have for the last 35 years combined. Why not say it a few more times, just for fun? For example, SFist is sure the San Francisco Chronicle wishes they could blame server problems for this error. But this San Francisco man that appeared on "The Daily Show" is, sadly, no glitch in the system. It's going to take more than server problems to get Torontoist into hot pants -- and if the short short post wasn't enough to cause us some server problems of our own, how about those eye gazing parties? It's enough to make them contemplate joining the EU. Our friends at Phillyist are having server problems in places where the sun don't shine, caused perhaps by the great Thai food they ate last week. Well, when you're having server problems of the stinky kind, perhaps it's for the best that you stick to phone sex. We thought about asking Gothamist if this building collapse had our server inside it (thus explaining the server problems, you see) , but then we found out the collapse was part of marriage gone wrong. New York's new lacrosse team needs a name, might we recommend "The Server Problems"? Screw lacrosse, we're playing bocce. Or maybe we'll forgo the sports all together and hit Movable Hype 9.0. But how will we get there when server, we mean, traffic problems go unchecked? Over at Miamist, they debate the benefits of server problem-free Starbucks, over local joints. They also look into crashes of a nonserver problem nature, and a court TV show shot on their beaches. It's no server problem when Austinist's local boys The Mercers get love from Esquire. MySpace is also no stranger to server problems but that's not what has Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott pissed at them. Greg, have a crack cookie. Seattlest found a great way around the server problems, as they took it live with their inaugural trivia night. Perhaps author and radio personality John Moe will be an answer at next week's competition? But if you drive there, better not piss off Keith Gormezano, or server problems like you never imagined might rain down on your poor little car. Bostonist would like to send some some server problems toward rejoicing gay marriage opponents. Sigh. Bostonist seems pretty good at bartering, so maybe they can trade some of those anti-marriage busybodies for some problem-free servers. How we regret the server problems in the language section of our brain that keep us from learning Portuguese! We'd love to read Sampaist, but will have to settle for the visual. This week we see "an advertisement from 1974 talking about the inauguration of the subway in São Paulo (also know as SP). The funny thing about this video is that it is totally nonsense. They mixed the subway with a carnival parade and a party inside the subway car." Our pals down south also posted this music
video released by the band Cansei de Ser Sexy. Scroll down for the English portion of this post. Houstonist refuses to butter up nemesis Ken Lay, who had his official send off to that server problem down below last week. (Jesus wept.) Shanghaiist causes us the enviable server problem of "too many awesome social options", as they rock our world with , and encourage us to fag hag it up. Then there's DJ Jazzy Jeff to see. Whatever we do in Shanghaii, we're bringing this guy. But not her.

When Chicagoist sees the ever-expanding restaurant options in the South Loop these days, we cannot help but be awestruck. Fans of haute cuisine or Zagat ratings can head to Custom House or Opera; budget-minded diners looking for something above average have Gioco and the Chicago Firehouse; habitues of cheap eats can head to Grace O'Malley's, Taste of Siam, Eleven City Diner, and Hackney's Printer's Row; the truly suicidal can grab a late night bite at the South Loop Club.