There’s been an earthshaking development in the current schedule for Monday Night Foodball, the Reader’s weekly chef pop up series. Barbecue Life Coach Gary Wiviott has canceled his November 22 stand at the Kedzie Inn in order to, as they say, “spend more time with family.” Something like that. We’ll have him back next year […]
Category: Food & Drink
Posted inFood & Drink
For beer, FOBAB
It’s exhilarating just to anticipate the annual Festival of Wood and Barrel-Aged Beer (FOBAB). I don’t know if it is the prospect of being surrounded by so many high ABV (alcohol by volume) beers that brings this out in me or the fact that there was only a virtual version last year. The sheer thought […]
Posted inRestaurant Review
The Malaysian family recipes at HD Cuisine are worth a journey
There’s one table and one small booth inside HD Cuisine, a tiny Malaysian restaurant in a suburban Wheeling strip mall. Altogether there’s enough space to seat 11 people. If the weather’s nice and your timing is right, you can enjoy your nasi lemak, beef rendang, or Penang Hokkien mee at one of two tables set […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Pink Salt’s northern Thai food sweeps Monday Night Foodball
Palita Sriratana moved to a building with a nice bright balcony last year. By summer she’d filled it with pots that sprouted cilantro, holy basil, and morning glories all of which found their way onto the vibrant Thai menus she continued to pop up and cater around the city ever since exiting her brick-and-mortar stand […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Ramen_Lord teams up with Maa Maa Dei at Monday Night Foodball
Mike Satinover’s doors of perception were blown wide open some ten years ago when the 21-year old study abroad undergrad was sent to a famous noodle shop in Sapporo, Japan, for a bowl of miso ramen: “What arrived was ethereal. A scalding hot bowl of rich, intense miso and pork soup, with punches of garlic […]
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Get you some good gumbo from Bumbu Roux at Monday Night Foodball
The pandemic was no match for Bumbu Roux, Chris Reed’s melodious Indonesian-Creole food combo. He and his mom Priscilla-Jane were approaching the one-year mark at Politan Row, serving up blackened catfish, and red beans and rice, alongside beef rendang, and chicken bakar, when COVID came to town. The food hall shut down and never reopened, but […]
Posted inFood & Drink
The Reader’s first food critic was a diabetic undergrad with an appetite for the undiscovered
T he Reader has covered food and restaurants in Chicago throughout its half-century existence, though not nearly as consistently or comprehensively as music, film, drama, or most of the other arts—certainly not every week when I came on as a starving editorial assistant way back in ’95. Back then there was a very occasional visual […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Limón y Sal launches pozole season at Monday Night Foodball
The nights are getting colder. Your body, sensing the darkness ahead, craves warmth, reassurance, fat. It’s finally pozole season. But for Javier Garcia it’s never not pozole season. He grew up in Guadalajara, eating bowls of the thick, sticky, hominy, and pork stewy-soup (stoup?) for every event, birthday, and celebration. His mom’s pozole ruined him […]
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Get down with Don Pablo’s big Chilean empanadas at Monday Night Foodball
Pablo Soto has delivered empanadas to me on two different occasions. Each time these plus-sized, Chilean-style pockets of pleasure have tasted as if they were pulled directly out of the oven or fryer and delivered straight into my greedy gob. I don’t know what sorcery Soto uses to maintain the extraordinary flaky freshness of his […]
Posted inFood & Drink
The return of the roti at Cafe Trinidad
In 2016, Darryl Hicks shuttered the city’s first and only Trinidadian restaurant, Cafe Trinidad. It was a serious responsibility to stand as the sole representative of a Caribbean cuisine that synthesizes centuries of contributions from African, Indian, Indigenous, Creole, Syrian, Lebanese, Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese cooks. And it wasn’t an easy decision to close. But […]
Posted inFood & Drink
It’s Ethan Lim’s Khmerican bar food vs. your wolfish hunger at Monday Night Foodball
Earlier this summer I sat down to one of the most exclusive tables in town. No, not Alinea. Not Ever. Nor was it The Crib, (RIP). It was an eight-course blowout at Hermosa, Ethan Lim’s tiny sandwich shop by day, six-seat “Family Meal” prix fixe by night. Lim’s ongoing nocturnal pop-up—during which he buries his […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Kiosk Balkan Street Food ghosts the old ways of cooking
Nemanja Milunovic became a chef because he didn’t like his mother’s cooking. “I just wanted to be better,” he says. “Growing up, her food was not that good. She was working all the time. She cared, but not really. She was always cooking fast. She didn’t have passion.” Operating out of an Avondale ghost kitchen, […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Check the menu for Pizza and Donuts at Monday Night Foodball
Tuesday, I was still dreaming of Funeral Potatoes’s pimento cheese hash brown-stuffed jalapeño poppers from Monday Night Foodball, when I was summoned back to the Kedzie Inn’s kitchen for a secret pizza and donut conclave. Not many know this, but Miguel Hernandez, one of the Kedzie’s regular chefs, is a 15-year veteran of Marie’s Pizza, […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Please line up for Funeral Potatoes at Monday Night Foodball
Last week, Eve Studnicka, with an assist from her Funeral Potatoes partner Alexis Thomas, took part in an amazing pop-up with Borneol, Texas butcher (and former Chicagoan) Kriss Abigail. Abigail had arrived in town with an axis deer carcass harvested in the Hill Country, which she broke down at Saint Emeric in front of 30 […]
Posted inFood & Drink Feature
Autumn is about to drop a cornucopia of local food books
While my comprehensive four-volume opus on freeganism was derailed by the pandemic, it seems like it was a particularly productive period for a whole bunch of local food writers who have books coming out this fall. I’m excited about all of them. Instantly Mediterranean: Vibrant, Satisfying Recipes for Your Instant Pot, Electric Pressure Cooker, and […]