Author Archives: Sondra Rosenberg

Jacques Barbier’s Le Mikado has occupied the southeast corner of Goethe and Dearborn for the past two years. Barbier, whose La Boheme brought French provincial cuisine to Winnetka’s Laundry Mall (in a converted laundry), changed his style of cooking when he came to the Gold Coast. Chef Daniel Kelch, whose mother is Japanese, was put […]

In Brooklyn’s halcyon days, when Coney Island was America’s answer to Karlsbad and Marienbad, the high point of many of my summer evenings was a bone-racking, brain-numbing ride on the Cyclone followed by a Nathan’s hot dog with all the trimmings. Once safely back on terra firma, of course–to reverse the order was to court […]

If you have had your fill of exposed pipes and bare brick, take heart. Rust Belt Cafe is yet another converted factory, but with a difference. Though construction lights dangle from black ceilings and tables are blackened, pebbled slabs of poured concrete covered with polyurethane, what in other restaurants seems coy or cute here becomes […]

Perhaps in the age of microchips and instant everything, we need a new frisson with every meal. Or maybe in the narcissistic 80s, the age of anxiety, we yearn for the good old days when we sat in high chairs and Mommy beguiled us into opening our mouths for the choo-choo. Something has to account […]

Of the making of Italian restaurants there seems to be no end. For the past few years in Chicago the trend among new establishments has been upscale–haute cuisine at prices that challenge, if not menace, the bank balance. The mom-and-pop eatery on whose lasagna, ravioli, and spaghetti with meatballs many of us cut our culinary […]

Clark Street between Belmont Avenue and Wrigley Field is distinguished by a motley assortment of ethnic eateries. You’ll find Japanese, Mexican, Thai, Chinese, Korean, Ethiopian, and Philippine restaurants along that stretch. American food tends to be limited to hot dogs and hamburgers with one interesting exception–Joel’s Theatre Cafe. For the past four years the Organic […]

Though the name conjures up tinkling teacups and Nancy Reagan types meeting for lunch, Society Cafe is a serious restaurant. It offers an ambitious menu in a gracious, civilized setting. A superb sound system played Bach, on the evening we were there, at just the right volume–low enough for conversation, loud enough to take up […]

Proust had his madeleine, and we have Elysee, a new French restaurant on North State Street. About halfway through my first meal there I was suddenly transported back to the Paris I had first visited 20 years earlier. My husband and I were just out of school and felt recklessly extravagant in the possession of […]

Evanston has a new haven of Italian haute cuisine, named after one of Verdi’s most moving arias, “Va, pensiero, sull’ali dorate” (“Go, my thought, on golden wings”) from Nabucco. The opera recounts how the Hebrews, prisoners in Babylon, helped restore Nebuchadnezzar to the throne and then returned to their homeland. A chorus of captives on […]

Rio’s Casa Iberia, in Albany Park, bills itself as “the only Portuguese and Brazilian restaurant in Chicago.” Such a claim invites not only the usual question–how good is the food?–but also the question of how well it represents Portuguese and Brazilian cuisine. The answer to the first question is easy. Certain gastronomic principles apply universally–quality […]

Can a Gold Coast watering hole cum supper club whose decibel level stops just short of painful produce food worthy of serious attention? For Yvette, the answer is a resounding yes. For a long time Yvette remained in the shadow of owner Bob Djahanguiri’s other two establishments, Toulouse and Turbot. Drinking, not dining, was the […]