The Best Eats of 2011
By Anthony Todd in Food on Dec 30, 2011 9:30PM
It's that time of year - every newspaper, magazine, TV show and blog is doing "best of" segments faster than we can absorb them. Yet somehow, we never get tired of re-living the year, over and over again. Food is more fun to recap than news or sports, because most of the restaurants are still open - you can head in on January 2nd and the dishes will still be there!
Our favorite eats this year have been all over the map. We'd never tasted smoked shrimp, made truffles or helped harvest sweet potatoes until 2011. Farmer's markets introduced us to new favorites like Russian Fire garlic, purple heirloom carrots and pattypan squash. The Butcher & Larder's opening alone is worth an entire year's worth of attention, as Rob Levitt and company work to push Chicago towards a more sustainable meaty future.
We'll definitely be revisiting some great restaurants we ate at in 2011. It's true that Next blew everyone away, but less famous newcomers like Bar Toma, Fishbar, iNG, Maude's Liquor Bar, GT Fish & Oyster, Lao Hunan, Telegraph and Vera will become standbys on our list for 2012 and beyond.
We don't claim to be the sole experts on all things culinary. Chicago's foodies have made list after list about 2011 - here are some of the best.
- Eater Chicago is running a series that asks some of Chicago's most influential food writers about 2011. Topics include most surprising meal, restaurants you broke up with and best dining neighborhoods.
- Nick Kindelsperger cataloged his "best bites" of 2011 at Serious Eats Chicago - and when Nick says something is worth eating, we pay attention.
- Time Out Chicago has posted their best food porn of 2011. We do some pretty photography here at Chicagoist, but Time Out has the money, the skills and the glossy paper to do it right.
- Robyn Nisi and Andrew Huff at Gapers wrote about their favorite eats of 2011 - it's amazing how many of theirs line up with ours. Great minds, we guess.