Whenever there was a wedding or baptism to celebrate in San Luis de la Loma, Ana Mellin made the relleno de puerco. In the tiny town just up the coast from Acapulco, she and her cousins roasted banana leaf-swaddled, whole hogs for funerals too. The celebratory pig, stuffed with pineapple, plantains, tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, and […]
Category: Food & Drink
Posted inRestaurant Review
Roel Estanilla makes a very presentable pig
A lion’s purr revving to a roar. The sound of a crack racing across the bald face of a mountain. Thunder ripping across the sky. All arresting sounds for sure, but the phenomenon of Roel Estanilla breaking into the crispy, copper skin of a roasted cochinillo lechón could drown them all out. That sound is […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Nemanja and Marko Milunovic launch season two of Monday Night Foodball
Last September Nemanja Milunovic was on a roll. The former fine-dining chef’s pandemic-born Avondale ghost kitchen Kiosk Balkan Street Food had struggled for its first six months, until a positive review in the Tribune blew his business up. Each day he was selling out of the extraordinarily pillowy (and labor intensive) somun that he built […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Here’s season two of Monday Night Foodball
Monday Night Foodball has been on a holiday hiatus for more than a month, and I’m soooooo bored. I can’t spend another Monday night pacing the empty, echoing void of the Kedzie Inn, balancing imaginary plates of curried lamb ddukboki, Cambodian fried chicken sandwiches, and pimento cheese hash brown jalapeno poppers, plaintively calling out your […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Moonwalker Cafe is the scratch kitchen every neighborhood deserves
When Arlene Luna moved back to Chicago in December 2020 she discovered that all of her old classmates from the now-defunct Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago had left the life. “Everyone that I knew from back then is no longer in the business,” she says. “I came back and started looking up a few […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Drinks with drama, cocktails for comedy
There was a time when concessions at Chicago live theaters were pretty basic: water, soda, candy, coffee, tea, and maybe some beer in a can or wine in a box (depending on whether or not the venue had a liquor license). But as theater bars have expanded their range of legal booze options (or in […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Trini Zaddy and Alteconomy conjure Afro Caribbean-Korean food for Monday Night Foodball
Sometime last summer Jennifer Kim told me she was keenly interested in collaborating with Nariba Shepherd for a proposed Monday Night Foodball, the Reader’s ongoing weekly guest chef pop-up series at the Kedzie Inn in Irving Park. Kim, of course, is the ex-Passerotto chef who emerged amid the pandemic as the driving force behind Alteconomy, […]
Posted inFood & Drink Feature
The flood that birthed Love Cork Screw wines
Chrishon Lampley says she was a terrible writer when she started the blog Love Cork Screw in 2013: the Love section was about being a single woman who formerly owned an art bar, Cork had Lampley’s varietal wine selections, and Screw was her take on current pop culture. The year before, the highly successful art […]
Posted inFood & Drink Feature
Overgrown Orchard makes the best wine in Gary, Indiana
Stan Wash, dwarfed by towering metal shelves stocked with faucets and toilet seats, raises a small glass of butterscotch-colored liquid to his lips, takes a taste, and gasps. “WHOO! Oh my goodness! UGH! That’s so tannic!” We’re standing in a cavernous plumbing warehouse in Gary, Indiana, where Wash and a partner, Zach Getzelman, press, age, […]
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Dill Pickle and Mercato: A partnership based on shared values
This holiday season, Dill Pickle will partner with Mercato for delivery, making it easier than ever to equitably shop for food from home—while helping others along the way.
Posted inFood & Drink
Social and sober
The “sober curious”—individuals who abstain from drinking to explore the positive effects of sobriety—have a new enclave in Andersonville. Eli Tea Bar, an alcohol-free social space, offers options for those rethinking their relationship with alcohol, including more than 100 loose leaf teas and special in-house blends, bubble tea, and kombucha on tap. Bar owner Elias […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Catch the new issue of the Chicago Foodcultura Clarion
There’s a tasty surprise in 3,000 copies of the Reader this week. It’s the fourth and final issue of the Chicago Foodcultura Clarion, the zine by Spanish food artist Antoni Miralda, University of Chicago anthropologist Stephan Palmié, and their marauding horde of ravenous, sugar-crazed foodlums. This issue features Palmie’s fascinating history on Reese Finer Foods, the erstwhile […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Hold the Banana Phone for Monday Night Foodball
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 […]
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 […]