Food & Drink

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

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

Posted by today at 04.47 PM

R. Franklins Original Recipe Malort
  • Courtesy of Letherbee Distillers
  • R. Franklin's Original Recipe Malort
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. And, of course, it's been a Key Ingredient challenge—originally for Michael Carlson, and more recently at our Key Ingredient Cook-Off.

Mostly, though, people have been talking about Jeppson's Malort, originally made in Chicago by Swedish immigrant Carl Jeppson and now manufactured in Florida but sold only in Chicago (and soon Wisconsin). Since New Year's, though, Letherbee Distillers has been making a Malort for the Violet Hour that, until now, has been available only at the bar. R. Franklin's Original Recipe Malort, named for Violet Hour beverage director Robbie Haynes (his middle name is Franklin), who developed the recipe in collaboration with Letherbee distiller Brent Engel, was released for retail sale this week.

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

Posted by today at 01.49 PM

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! The deadline is midnight tonight, so start filling out your ballots if you haven't already. At our Best of Chicago ballot you can vote on Best Underground Art Space, Best Place for a New El Stop, and Best Place to Get Married. At any point you can stop, save your ballot from your phone or computer, and sign back in later wherever you left off. We figure that with 264 categories—from Best Suburb to Best Sex Shop—you might need to make several trips (and perhaps rethink certain choices if, say, you encounter a taco even more transcendent than the one you thought couldn't be topped). But make sure to do all your thinking and rethinking soon, before the polls close.

There's one category you won't find on the ballot. Like last year, we're asking you to vote for Chicago's Best Chicagoan to Follow on Twitter . . . on Twitter. Tweet your suggestions using the hashtag #boctwitterer. The deadline for that category is the same as the ballot, so tweet away!

Apropos of nothing, here's a 14-year-old girl owning Eddie Van Halen's solo on "Eruption."

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Monday, May 20, 2013

The House of the Rising Sun burger at Portage Park's Leadbelly

Posted by on 05.20.13 at 04:58 PM

The House of the Rising Sun
The song "House of the Rising Sun," recorded by lots of people including Leadbelly, whose name was appropriated by the owners of a new northwest-side burger joint, is the tragic lament of a man whose life has been brought to ruin by the whorehouse of the title. The House of the Rising Sun burger is a thick slab of beef and smoked pork belly ground together and topped with bacon, cheddar cheese, Bloody Mary sauce (it tastes like ketchup), and a fried egg. Breakfast food . . . rising sun . . . get it?

The restaurant's blues-bar theme is, frankly, a little silly, particularly since the place looks way too new and clean to be in any way authentic. This is, by the way, absolutely fine with the clientele, who, at least based on a sample observed last Saturday night, appears to be comprised of Portage Park residents in their mid-30s who just want a place where they can take their toddlers and still get a decent meal and, therefore, have sacrificed their need for authenticity for clean floors.

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Beer and Metal does Chicago Craft Beer Week this Thursday

Posted by on 05.20.13 at 02:00 PM

Kvelertak will not be performing at this event.
  • ALEXI FRONT (WWW.ALEXIFRONT.COM)
  • Kvelertak will not be performing at this event.
Sorry to add to the crowding on the Chicago Craft Beer Week schedule—there are hundreds upon hundreds of events there already—but the Reader and Binny's are partnering up for something called "Beer & Music" on Thursday, May 23. Specifically, beer manager Adam Vavrick of the Lincoln Park store has invited me to join him in conducting an experiment in synesthesia and intoxication—we'll each be pairing four beers with favorite songs from our record collections.

You may have noticed that in my Beer and Metal column I frequently resort to execrable puns and other forms of wordplay in order to segue between whatever beer I'm discussing and whatever metal I feel like posting. (Last week, for instance, I reviewed three Ballast Point beers, and because they're all named after seagoing fish, I included a couple of song streams from German band the Ocean.) Fear not, though—I won't be relying on that kind of connection here. I don't want to give away the specifics, but I'm at least attempting to find beers that taste like certain songs sound. If that makes any sense.

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Friday, May 17, 2013

Marcus Samuelsson's Yes, Chef—reviewed

Posted by on 05.17.13 at 05:08 PM

yes__chef.JPG
  • Random House
It seems inevitable that Marcus Samuelsson's memoir, Yes, Chef, will someday become required reading in cooking schools, if only for its emphasis on the necessity of humility and hard work in the kitchen.

"To get ahead in that culture," Samuelsson writes, "you have to completely give yourself up to the place. Your time, your ego, your relationships, your social life, they are all sacrificed." The best thing a young chef can do is to remain invisible.

Until, of course, he's ready to step into the spotlight. When he was 23, Samuelsson took over as the chef at Aquavit, a Swedish restaurant in New York. Less than six months later, Ruth Reichl, then the restaurant critic at the New York Times, awarded it three stars. Ten years later, in 2003, Samuelsson won a James Beard Award for best chef in New York City. Then he won Iron Chef. Then he was selected to cook President Obama's first state dinner. Then he opened Red Rooster, his signature restaurant in Harlem. Now he's the sort of celebrity chef people recognize on the street.

Earlier this month, Yes, Chef won Samuelsson his second Beard award, this one for writing and literature. It could be argued that anybody with a life story like Samuelsson's could write a kick-ass memoir. But give the guy some credit for doing more than just connecting the dots.

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Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Drinking on Soldier Field: The first American Beer Classic

Posted by on 05.15.13 at 04:53 PM

american_beer_classic_thumb.jpg
  • Julia Thiel
  • Plastic tasting glasses—there's no glass allowed on Soldier Field
It'd be easy to hate on the American Beer Classic for featuring Shock Top (an attempt by Anheuser-Busch to look like craft beer) and Blue Moon (same thing, from MillerCoors). But the organizers don't actually claim this is a craft beer event—though it does include a whole lot of craft brews. And that makes it easy to just skip over the less attractive options in favor of the many excellent ones.

This Saturday's first-ever Beer Classic, which took place over two sessions at Soldier Field, was as enormous as the venue demanded: there were more than 100 breweries, from small, local outfits to huge national ones like Sam Adams, plus a few cideries and one meadery. My one complaint about the otherwise well-organized event is that the program listed the breweries, but not the beers they were serving, which made strategizing difficult. Still, all the breweries had their offerings posted on signs on the tents, so it was pretty easy to see what they had.

One exception was Recital, a collaboration between Perennial Artisan Ales and Deschutes Brewery that Perennial was pouring out of growlers and hadn't advertised. Unfortunately, the citrusy, hoppy Belgian double IPA isn't available in Chicago, because it was one of my favorites of the festival—despite the fact that it smells oddly like durian. Argus Brewery's wild rice ale (yes, brewed with wild rice) was another winner that you probably won't be able to find; the brewers said they don't sell it but brought it along for fun. I was also really impressed by Milwaukee's Lakefront Brewery, which I don't think I've tried before: their Fixed Gear red ale, Rendezvous biere de garde, Fuel Cafe coffee stout, and Chad barleywine were all excellent. Below are a few other favorites.

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What to do for Chicago Craft Beer Week

Posted by on 05.15.13 at 11:30 AM

Not to be confused with American Craft Beer Week—which started Monday and is actually confined to a single week—Chicago Craft Beer Week begins Thursday and continues for a week and a half. There's just too much to cram into seven days, it seems. Really, there are enough events to fill a month or two. Just take a look at the schedule—it's completely overwhelming. Each day features dozens of events, ranging from discounts to special tappings to all-out festivals. Several promising-sounding events are below, though this list isn't at all comprehensive. Unless otherwise noted, events are a la carte (as in, you buy whatever beer you're interested in) and don't have a cover charge. Not listed are two of the best-sounding events—Beer Under Glass at the Garfield Park Conservatory and Half Acre's 5th Anniversary Party—because they're sold out. Most bars haven't yet specified what they'll have on tap.

Thu 5/16
Tap This! Drink Local III (6 PM, Fischman Liquors & Tavern, 4780 N. Milwaukee): It doesn't have quite the lineup of Beer Under Glass, but with 16 local breweries, it's not bad—and there'll also be live music and food trucks.

Founders tapping at Northdown Taproom (5 PM, 3244 N. Lincoln) The list of Founders beers here is relatively brief—Doom, Bolt Cutter, KBS, Old Curmudgeon, Breakfast Stout, Pale Ale—but I'd go out of my way for even one of the first three on that list (though they range from 10 to 15 percent ABV, so good luck trying all three of them).

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Monday, May 13, 2013

Ballast Point beers—including Yellowtail, Big Eye, and Sculpin—arrive in Chicago

Posted by on 05.13.13 at 02:35 PM

Yellowtail, Big Eye, Sculpin
  • Yellowtail, Big Eye, Sculpin
Venerable San Diego brewery Ballast Point, founded in 1996, began distributing its beers in Chicago last week. It names many of its beers after ocean fish (black marlin, dorado, sculpin) and generally sticks to a nautical theme even when fish aren't involved (Victory at Sea coffee-vanilla imperial porter, Navigator doppelbock). Ballast Point is in fact a peninsula near San Diego, upon which a lighthouse stood until 1960; it's just an automated light now.

If you've heard of only one Ballast Point beer, it's probably Sculpin, an IPA named after a family of small bottom-dwelling fish that sometimes bear venomous spines. At press time it was ranked number 43 in the world at Beer Advocate. Only 11 pale ales or IPAs were deemed better, and just three of those are readily available here.

I'd originally planned to write about Sculpin alone this week, but while visiting In Fine Spirits on Sunday, it occurred to me that the shop's "mixed six-pack" policy would allow me to affordably review three Ballast Point pales side by side: not just Sculpin but also the plain old Pale Ale (often called "Yellowtail Pale Ale") and the Big Eye IPA. As it turns out, though, the "Pale Ale" is in fact a Kölsch-style beer, information I feel should appear on the bottle somewhere.

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My favorite cake

Posted by on 05.13.13 at 02:03 PM

Buttermilk lemon (upside down) cake
I've requested the same simple birthday cake every year since I was teenager. It's a recipe from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for a buttermilk lemon cake that my mom clipped and slightly modified. It's nothing elaborate—just a dense yellow cake adorned with lemon glaze that soaks into the crumb over a few days, rendering the outer edges something weirdly akin to a crispy lemon fudge and leaving the interior core dense and moist but still cakelike.

It wasn't my birthday this weekend, but it was Mother's Day, and I had to contribute something to the Peterson Garden Project's bake sale (an organization you should support if you support growing your own food). So I (i.e., the missus) contributed a cake and a half to the sale, reserving half for our own selfish purposes. An interesting development occurred. We failed to turn the first cake right-side up after removing it from the pan and glazed it on the bottom, where the uneven surface allowed for deeper penetration of syrupy goodness. Compared to a proper right-side-up cake, there was no question that the first was superior.

Think this cake doesn't look so special? Consider the fact that we dropped it off at the bake sale on Friday, and all slices were gone by Sunday. Recipe after the jump:

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Friday, May 10, 2013

And the Key Ingredient Cook-Off winners are . . .

Posted by on 05.10.13 at 03:52 PM

Hoosier Mamas  chawanmushi with dried shrimp, porcini mushrooms, midwestern kimchi, and dried-shrimp kettle corn
  • A/S/L
  • Hoosier Mama's "chawanmushi" with dried shrimp, porcini mushrooms, midwestern kimchi, and dried-shrimp kettle corn

Last Friday night, 26 of Chicago's best chefs and scads of you nice, attractive people (see here) gathered at the Bridgeport Art Center for a little culinary symbiosis in the name of adventure. We called it the Key Ingredient Cook-Off. Basically, it was a live, interactive take on our popular (and award-winning) Key Ingredient series. We challenged chefs to come up with creative and delicious ways to prepare one of five predetermined ingredients: durian, dried shrimp, celery, millet, and Malort.

The resulting dishes were better than we ever could have imagined. The free cocktails and the music weren't bad either.

It wasn't easy (and I'm not just saying that), but a panel of Reader staffers conferred and selected a winning dish for each ingredient, as well as an overall winner who we really thought had outdone himself.

The prizes: A donation is being made in each of the chefs' names to the Healthy Schools Campaign. Also bragging rights.

Without further ado . . .

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Agenda Teaser

Performing Arts
Best Musical! Stage 773
February 06
Galleries & Museums
AfriCOBRA: Prologue South Side Community Art Center
May 10

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