Posted inFood & Drink

Ørkenoy is deserted no more

There are some 38 uninhabited islands in Norway,* and three in Humboldt Park. Of course, there are the two in the Lagoon, but these days Ørkenoy—the two-year-old Nordic-inspired brewery, cocktail bar, and restaurant—is “deserted” in name only. (The word is a rough mash-up of two Norwegian words: ørken, for desert, and oy, for island.) But […]

Posted inMonday Night Foodball

It’s a night of fresh pastabilities with Gemma Foods at the next Monday Night Foodball

Nobody makes eating fresh pasta at home easier than Tony Quartaro. Since I wrote about him last summer, the former Formento’s chef installed his roving fresh pasta delivery service Gemma Foods into a permanent Grand Avenue brick-and-mortar. Now you can watch your farro mafaldine rolled out and cut in the window, take it home, and […]

Posted inFood & Drink

Chả Cá Nuggs takes a nose-to-tail fin approach to eating the invasive copi

The invasive fish formerly known as Asian carp was renamed “copi” earlier this summer by the Department of Natural Resources. Short for “copious,” the state hopes that a vaguely Mediterranean-sounding rebranding will entice consumers to eat more of the bony, obscenely prolific, freshwater filter feeders that have outcompeted native species for all that good Illinois […]

Posted inMonday Night Foodball

It’s chicken and waffle night at Monday Night Foodball

The chickens roam freely over the pastures at Avrom Farm in Ripon, Wisconsin. But you might have spotted them in the wild this season at the Green City or Wicker Park farmers’ markets, where they nest on warm buckwheat waffles battered with their own eggs.
This Wednesday they’re flocking to Irving Park for Monday Night Foodball, the Reader’s weekly pop-up chef series at the Kedzie Inn.

Kitchfix celebrates its tenth anniversary

Fall is a time of coming together and enjoying a bounty of good food, and this month Kitchfix’s tenth anniversary gives us a new reason to celebrate the season. Launched in Chicago in 2012, the company has spent the past decade servicing the city and its surrounding suburbs with delicious meals mindfully created and approved […]

Posted inMonday Night Foodball

Funeral Potatoes get light in the loafers at the Next Monday Night Foodball

Oranges were the only fruit aboard the Revenge. Even if Captain Stede Bonnet couldn’t taste them in the 40-orange cake he ordered—and even if the crew got scurvy—at least he caught Blackbeard’s eye. And with that the HBO comedy Our Flag Means Death cleansed the Florida orange of its residual 70s-era anti-LGBTQ+ rot, and repositioned […]