The team behind fine-dining gems Alinea and Next have finally opened a restaurant a little more on the casual side. It’s quite a bit louder than its siblings, but the format is a lot more conducive to sharing.
I’ve always been a fan of Bill Kim’s soft serve at Belly Shack: the coconut water-infused vanilla, the unique flavors (Vietnamese caramel, huckleberry), but at his newest Urban Belly outpost in Wicker Park, he builds on that momentum, creating two new flavors that blew me away (and have me coming back for more). This is … Continued
Pizza is practically religion in Chicago, and there’s a lot more than just deep dish or tavern-style. Robert’s Pizza Company is a new pizza place in the city that has been years in the making by a man with a simple goal: to create the perfect slice.
In their annual Travel issue, the Tribune asked me where I love to eat/stay/shop in Montreal, one of my favorite North American cities. Click here to read the story.
With the Fourth of July weekend upon us, you might be in the mood for some ice cream. A husband-and-wife team have recreated a classic soda fountain near Humboldt Park, where they not only serve shakes and floats, but some interesting pie as well.
Up until recently, Chicago’s top chefs wouldn’t dare put tomatoes on their menus until August, when they could source them locally. But a new business west of the city is now growing tomatoes under glass, hydroponically. They’re using Dutch technology to grow tomatoes indoors.
Longtime Chicago chef Jimmy Bannos has watched plenty of his employees move through the ranks of his decades-old Cajun eatery, Heaven on Seven, into places all their own. But a series of “Family Tree” dinners is welcoming some of them back to their roots. In the case of his first guest chef, Cleetus Friedman, the … Continued
The #1 restaurant in the world is in Modena, Italy. That is, if you believe in the validity of lists. The World’s 50 Best Restaurants held its annual awards ceremony in New York City Monday night, at Cipriani Wall Street, the first time it has taken place outside of London since the awards began 14 … Continued
I was featured in this Sunday Chicago Tribune profile by the great Rick Kogan for his “Sidewalks” column.
2017 is shaping up to be an ambitious year for my culinary tours. We kick things off in February with an action-packed (and food and wine-filled) tour of South Africa. Once again, I’m working with Earthbound Expeditions, which does an excellent job of accommodating special requests (I have many, when it comes to providing a unique … Continued
In case you haven’t noticed, every Friday in May, I’ve been featuring a different Asian country for Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month. We’ve covered Thailand, Japan and China so far, and today, we’re off to Malaysia. Chicago has plenty of Asian restaurants – mostly Korean, Thai, Chinese and Vietnamese, but only one focusing on the … Continued