You have to be fast to eat the seekh kabob at Helmand. “If it gets cold it’s going to be like rubber,” says Wahid Tanha, the owner and chef of this new Afghan restaurant in Albany Park. No matter what else comes to the table, “the first thing you have to do is eat it […]
Category: Food & Drink
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Better Boy reveals an easygoing, fine-dining future at the next Monday Night Foodball
Better Boy works hard. Better Boy thrives anywhere it grows. Better Boy is meaty and juicy. Better Boy explodes with flavor. No, I’m not talking about Solanum lycopersicum, everybody’s favorite brawny, bloodred, beefsteak tomato. I’m talking about Adam McFarland and Tom Rogers, the chef duo that grew out of a fertile landscape of esteemed fine-dining […]
Posted inMonday Night Foodball
Cross the barbecue bridge from Texas to Korea with Knox Ave Barbecue at the next Monday Night Foodball
Joe Yim was a math teacher and football coach before he ran away to study central-Texas barbecue on hallowed ground. He has lessons to offer: “Watching five smokers with 100 briskets [is] like running a classroom,” he says. “You gotta put each one in the right place and know what their needs are.” Over two […]
Posted inMonday Night Foodball
Stop by Pink Salt and Maa Maa Dei’s Bangkok rice and curry shop at the next Monday Night Foodball
You’re tired. You’re hungry. You’ve spent all day staring at the walls of your cubicle. All you want is a home-cooked meal, but the last thing you need right now is to haul up your granite mortar and pound out your own green curry paste from scratch. You don’t care about the inevitable side-eyes on […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Meat Moot smokes low and slow, and its cleaver-flipping ‘butchers’ steal the show
Fedora’d men in butchers aprons hoist hunks of wobbling flesh aloft like sacrificial offerings. Stationed before a bank of smokers—meat vaults loaded with parchment-and-tinfoil-swaddled briskets, beef ribs, and lamb shoulders—they slowly tug glistening bones from steaming muscle, smiling as it collapses. The meat smacks against wooden cutting boards, quivering under downpours of salt and spice […]
Posted inMonday Night Foodball
It’s all Indigenous (except for the fry bread) with Ketapanen Kitchen at the next Monday Night Foodball
There are more than 34,000 Native Americans living in Chicago according to the 2020 census—and that’s probably an undercount. So who’s cooking at all the weddings, funerals, feasts, ceremonies, and powwows? That would be Jessica Walks First, the omnipresent chef behind Ketapanen Kitchen. Walks First was born on the Menominee Indian Reservation in northeastern Wisconsin, […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Meet the rising bread queen of Chicago
In the video for the song “Agege Bread,” the late comedian Sir Kay Kamoru plays a naif—a rural, Igbo visitor to the UK who, when confronted with a full English breakfast (bacon, sausages, eggs, beans, tomatoes, etc.), embarks on a madcap quest across London in search of the soft, squishy brioche-like staple bread of Nigeria. […]
Posted inFood & Drink
M is for Mariano’s
Despite the popularity of the wine bar in Mariano’s locations across the city, nobody knows who Nob is or how the grocery store bar got its name. Regulars call it the M bar, for Mariano’s. And at the M bar, neighbors love to hang out and grab a drink—or three.
Posted inMonday Night Foodball
Everything’s gonna Be Irie at the next Monday Night Foodball
Tameisha Brown couldn’t sleep one night, so she rose from bed and started sketching out ideas for her future restaurant: dishes, decor, uniforms, potential locations, and names. That was in eighth grade in Waukegan, where her family settled just a few years earlier after emigrating from Jamaica. Brown’s 38 now, and all those ideas have […]
Posted inFilm
Chicago gets its first Alamo Drafthouse
The vibes are immaculate, joked one of my friends as we walked into the new Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Wrigleyville, which opened a few weeks ago.
Posted inMonday Night Foodball
Taco Sublime’s vampiros will drain your hunger at the next Monday Night Foodball
Vampiros infiltrated the transient community during the pandemic. No, not bloodthirsty ghouls, but Khaled Simon’s riff on the alluring griddled Sinaloense taco with melted cheese—not atop—but between the filling and tortilla (also, known as volcanes). Simon flips his tortillas onto the plancha cheese-side-down, achieving a caramelized lattice of queso Chihuahua that drains hunger the way […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Boozy tiki drinks, Cantonese cuisine, and Elvis Live!
The parking lot is full, illuminated by a fading yellow sign adorned with a tiki drink and a palm tree. Unassumingly tucked away in North Riverside, just west of Chicago, Chef Shangri-La is preparing for a lively night—not uncommon for the suburban mainstay. The entire restaurant is bustling, packed with families that fill the festively […]
Posted inMonday Night Foodball
Come eat rice and curry (and more) with Thattu at the next Monday Night Foodball
When Margaret Pak and her husband Vinod Kalathil visit his hometown in northern Kerala, his mom summons the couple to lunch with the expression “Chorum kariyum kazhikkam,” or “Let’s eat rice and curry,” even if there’s no curry on the table. “It’s funny,” says Kalathil, “so many people say, ‘Oh, we don’t use the word […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Watch the Cambodian Bear forage Indian fruit pies this winter
There’s no restaurant opening in 2023 more desperately anticipated than Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto’s transformation of his brother’s venerable but grotty River North beef joint into a fine dining destina—uhhh, wait. No. I’m thinking of season two of The Bear, the fictionalized heart-attack-on-a-plate that might be the most harrowing depiction of life on the line ever […]
Posted inMonday Night Foodball
Shaker Barbeque smokes out the next Monday Night Foodball
Mike Shaker’s sausages snap like firecrackers. His brisket melts away like smoked milk chocolate on your tongue. His mac and cheese is a warm, creamy security blanket in the cold, terrifying night. Put them together on one plate and you’ve assembled the formidable, low and slow powers of Shaker Barbeque, headlining the next Monday Night […]