Food & Drink: Bleader, Chicago Reader

Suddenly, it's summer: More alfresco drinking and dining

Kate Schmidt — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 16:12:00 -0500

Back in May, when we pulled together alfresco picks for our Summer Guide, we weren't expecting another month of gray skies, flash floods, and temperatures chilly enough to make you curse the weather guesser. But look—quick!…

DryHop may not need a good review, but they're getting one

Philip Montoro — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 14:00:00 -0500

When DryHop brewpub threw a preopening party on Saturday, June 8, it sold 300 growler fills and 300 tasting flights to an estimated 400 guests in just two hours. When I visited on Saturday, June 15, two days after DryHop formally opened, I showed up around 3 PM, hoping to squeak in between the lunch and dinner crowds—but there was no "between."…

How to eat radishes

Mike Sula — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 12:37:00 -0500

Radishes are some of the first things to pop out of the ground every spring, and they grow so fast and plentifully it's not uncommon for me to feel besieged by them. If I limited myself to eating the peppery little bastards raw I'd be able to breathe fire.…

Charlie Trotter sued for selling allegedly bunco burgundy and other food news bites

Mike Sula — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 10:52:00 -0500

• Charlie Trotter is getting sued for selling an allegedly counterfeit $46,200 magnum of 1945 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, according to Reuters.

• Over at From Belly to Bacon, Mark makes lamb ham, the third in a series of alterna-hams.…

Somm: When a niche becomes a trap

Ben Sachs — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 17:00:00 -0500

I'm convinced that a great movie can be made on any subject, no matter how arcane, provided that its makers find something of greater significance in the material or else employ cinematic form to transform that subject into something interesting. One of Vincente Minnelli's best films, The Cobweb (1955), centers on a debate over who gets to design the curtains of a posh sanitarium's common room.…

Wrestling with the monster burgers at Squared Circle

Mike Sula — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 16:19:00 -0500

There comes a time in every professional athlete's life when she begins to realize she can only take so many moonsaults and Mongolian chops, and she must start looking at the future. For Lisa Marie Varon, who wrestles professionally under the name "Tara" and has been known to torment vanquished opponents with a living tarantula, that means parlaying a still popular career into a Jake Lamotta-style front-of-the-house gig at Squared Circle, the wrestling-themed pizza and burger bar she owns with her husband.…

Best of the worst: Flavored whiskeys

Julia Thiel — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 15:43:47 -0500

This isn't exactly a roundup of flavored whiskeys, mostly because the idea of flavored whiskey sounds terrible to me so I'm not exactly inclined to go out and spend money on them. (I did taste some Evan Williams honey whiskey a couple years ago and remember it being unbearably sweet.)…

At last! The cronut (or "croughnut") comes to Chicago!

Aimee Levitt — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 09:27:00 -0500

It's been only a month since Dominque Ansel started selling cronuts. Only a month since he started making a mere 200 per day, since New Yorkers started lining up outside Ansel's SoHo bakery at the butt-crack of dawn in order to get a shot at purchasing their allotment of three precious pastries apiece, since the cronut became the talk of the pastry world beyond New York, since disappointed would-be cronut buyers started flipping off Ansel's baristas, since several apparently-thriving cronut delivery services opened for business on Craigslist, operating, in some cases, at an 800 percent markup.…

Brinjal moju, innala: Sri Lanka in a jar

Mike Sula — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 17:00:00 -0500

Let's say you recently arrived in Chicago from Sri Lanka. You're here for school, or work, or just to get the hell away from whatever unspeakable horrors warring parties have inflicted on your homeland.…

American Muscle returns to the Local Option

Philip Montoro — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 14:00:00 -0500

Maybe for you double IPAs are to craft beer what Chuck Norris jokes are to the Internet—weird macho nonsense that was only halfway entertaining to begin with and has definitely overstayed its welcome. ("There used to be a street named after Chuck Norris, but it was changed because nobody crosses Chuck Norris and lives," for instance.…

How to grow pawpaws, and other food news bites

Mike Sula — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 13:21:00 -0500

• The Local Beet on the pawpaw.

• Here's part two of WBEZ's analysis of the disparity between the number of north- and south-side sidewalk cafes.…

Slightly authentic and very excessive Mexican fare at Autentico 5 de Mayo

Julia Thiel — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 12:37:00 -0500

A 24-hour Lakeview diner with white tablecloths, chandeliers, a jukebox, and a couple flat-screen TVs, Autentico 5 de Mayo seems to have a slight identity crisis. Maybe that explains why the spacious Tex-Mex restaurant was almost entirely empty on a recent visit—or maybe it was the fact that we went at 6 PM on a Sunday.…

Last longer in bed with La Palapa's "Mattress Breaker"

Mike Sula — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 16:39:00 -0500

Mariscos joints—where huge quantities of occasionally less-than-pristine seafood accommodate not just budgetary deficits, but libidinal ones—abound around town. And it's fairly easy to spot the ones worth your time.…

Patio drinking: Parson's Chicken & Fish, Big Star, and Scofflaw

Julia Thiel — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 15:52:00 -0500

It's been a rough spring for outdoor drinking—cool weather and torrential rains don't make for ideal patio-sitting conditions. But now that it's almost summer, the weather is starting to cooperate a little better, and the forecast for the next week looks almost perfect (except for that chance of rain).…

One more Nepalese restaurant in the South Loop and we can start calling it Little Kathmandu

Mike Sula — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 15:42:00 -0500

I can't fathom the logic the folks behind the South Loop's Chicago Curry House employed in opening another Nepalese restaurant less than half a mile south—especially since the mother ship Curry Hut got its start in faraway Highwood, Lake County. OK, Nepal House has a much more trafficked location, but I can think of a dozen other neighborhoods that could use, and would support, a reliable source for momo, gundruk ko takari, or goat chhoela.…

El Jefe is the boss at Art of Chicken

Aimee Levitt — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 14:36:00 -0500

Civilization may have been awesome for a lot of things, but no cooking technique has yet improved upon roasting meat over fire. Your meat can come from the supermarket, pale and colorless, injected with water to make it look plumper.…

Off Color's hibiscus gose: One of the 50 or so beers at Northdown's amazing Lions, Tigers & Beers

Philip Montoro — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 14:00:00 -0500

On Wed 6/5 Northdown Cafe & Taproom hosts its second yearly Lions, Tigers & Beers benefit for a nonprofit no-kill big-cat rescue center in Sandstone, Minnesota, called the Wildcat Sanctuary. It provides spacious habitats for its animals—not just lions and tigers but also cougars, jaguars, lynxes, bobcats, caracals, servals, and more—but don't get any ideas about visiting, because it's not open to the public.…

Bacteria in your food, and other food news bites

Mike Sula — Fri, 31 May 2013 16:41:28 -0500

• Enjoy your pork chop. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria has invaded the food chain, reports Monica Eng.…

Smoke the accessories at Rub's Backcountry Smokehouse

Mike Sula — Fri, 31 May 2013 15:33:00 -0500

Rub's Backcountry Smokehouse is the second coming of Jared Leonard's West Rogers Park barbecue joint Rub BBQ Company, the former day trader having moved his operation around the corner from Lunt to the remote backcountry of Western Avenue in early March. A lot can be said for Leonard's learning curve.…

Not two peas in a pod: Deschutes Inversion IPA and Class of '88 Porter

Julia Thiel — Wed, 29 May 2013 15:49:30 -0500

I recently got a sample bottle of the Deschutes/Great Lakes collaboration Class of '88 Imperial Smoked Porter, and when I decided to try it alongside the Deschutes Inversion IPA, I expected the porter to be the more interesting of the two. And it's excellent—more on that later—but it was the IPA that really impressed me. The label says, "Paradise is stumbling upon our whole flower hop room and inhaling.…

The best new summer jam about ice cream

Leor Galil — Wed, 29 May 2013 10:22:00 -0500

The recent spate of inclement weather has been dreary, and even that feels like an understatement; yesterday's mix of grey rainfall and thick, muggy humidity created an environment that made me want to stay inside for as long as possible, which is hardly the kind of thing I should be thinking with June around the corner. But at least I can turn to music to gear myself up for the kind of summertime activities romanticized by anyone who has ever blown off their responsibilities to relax and enjoy the scenery.…

Grub Street Chicago killed and other food news bites

Mike Sula — Fri, 24 May 2013 13:07:11 -0500

• New York based-food blog Grub Street shut down all of its regional satellites including Grub Street Chicago.

• The bourbon shortage is bad, says Buffalo Trace, via Chuck Cowdery.…

More barbecue for the dudes: Sweet Baby Ray's comes to Wrigleyville

Stefanie Wright — Thu, 23 May 2013 13:08:18 -0500

"In the 70s and early 80s, Wrigleyville was a shithole. As much of a shithole as anywhere else, anyway," my companion told me as we headed out to Sweet Baby Ray's Smokehouse, the new city outpost of the suburban chain.…

"How did we get here?"—Robbie Haynes and Brent Engel on their R. Franklin Malort

Julia Thiel — Wed, 22 May 2013 16:47:00 -0500

Malort has been a thing in Chicago for a while now—about 75 years, to be exact—but suddenly everyone's talking about it. In just the last few months a Second City short attempted to answer the question of where Malort really comes from, NPR's blog the Salt published a detailed look at how the wormwood-infused spirit made its way from Sweden to Chicago during Prohibition, and Serious Eats went on a Malort crawl in Wicker Park.…

What are you waiting for? Today's the last day to vote for Best of Chicago!

Tal Rosenberg — Wed, 22 May 2013 13:49:00 -0500

Last time, we told you that "May 22 will be here sooner than you think." Well—it's here: the last day voting is open in our annual Best of Chicago poll!…