Restaurant News: Kuma's Too Opening Soon, Time Out Slams Boarding House

By Anthony Todd in Food on Feb 7, 2013 4:00PM

- Back in December, Kuma's Corner announced they were opening a second location of their popular Metal hamburger joint in Lincoln Park. They took over the space that formerly held The Counter, an upscale burger place that didn't make it. Start lining up today - Kuma's Too opens on February 13th at 666 W. Diversey Pkwy. Eater reports that the menu is exactly the same as the original Kuma's. If you feel like crowding yourself into the opening (and being a bit of a social media social climber), @kumastoo said yesterday on Twitter that if you retweeted a particular update, you might be allowed to attend the opening. Good luck with that.

- In an amazing turnaround (or a perfect example of the conflicts between the exuberant pre-opening feature coverage of a restaurant and the reviews of that same restaurant post-opening) Julia Kramer of Time Out Chicago slammed The Boarding House in its first major review. You may remember the Time Out cover story/lovefest that the owner, Alpana Singh, enjoyed in the days leading up to the opening. Well, now it's time for business. Kramer doesn't like the fancy chandelier ("I was surprised how chintzy it looked close up") and the food? Well, she doesn't mince words. "[W]orst of all, his food is not very good." "His" refers to Chef Christian Gosselin, whose food she calls "heavy, greasy and salty." The Boarding House got two stars out of five. We haven't dined there yet as a customer, so we'll refrain from giving an opinion. We'll see if the rest of the critics in town come to the same conclusion.

- 312 Dining Diva reported that Tortoise Club, which we featured a few months ago, unexpectedly closed this past weekend due to some sort of water damage. We got an update yesterday from the restaurant - a pipe burst and they had to close to do some repairs. Tortoise Club is back open for business and ready to go.