Talard Thai Asian Market (5353 N. Broadway) opened in fall 2019, and in summer 2020 it launched a cash-only hot bar in the back of the store. Like the similar hot bar at Immm Rice & Beyond, it approximates the cheap but reliable offerings of the classic Thai rice-curry shop, glorified in the West as […]
Tag: Vol. 51 No. 11
Issue of March 3, 2022
Best of Chicago 2021
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Best hot chocolate mix to sprinkle on everything
Sometimes you just need some hot chocolate, and sometimes that’s at 2 AM when all you’ve got is an expired Swiss Miss packet hidden in the depths of your pantry. What a sad state of affairs. Avoid that tragedy by always having hot chocolate mix by Katherine Anne Confections, proudly made in Logan Square. In […]
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Best tribute to my favorite team, from Van Lier to DeRozan
It’s an hour or so before game time, and I’m up in the nosebleed section, waiting for my beloved Bulls to start playing, and wondering what, oh what, to write about for the Best of Chicago issue. And all of a sudden it hits me—right there in front of my face. Up on the huge, […]
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Best Chicago venues for the COVID averse
For a few relatively blissful weeks in July 2021, Chicago’s COVID-19 infection rates dropped far enough that it was possible to believe that the worst of the pandemic was over. Then the Delta variant hit. The city didn’t lock down again, but Delta posed a dire threat to public health as well as to the […]
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Best reason to be glad to be back at the theater (no matter what’s onstage)
The audience Between Monday, March 16, 2020 and Saturday, July 10, 2021, I saw exactly zero live productions—probably the longest dry spell of theatergoing since my teens. In the 16 months between Theater Wit’s Teenage Dick and Theatre Above the Law’s Henchpeople, I saw loads of digital productions, caught up on a ton of television […]
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Best stand-alone tomato soup
Until now tomato soup served mostly as a kind of dip for grilled cheese. (RIP Bite Cafe and their grilled cheese, by the way. A moment of silence.) But that is not the case with Protein Bar & Kitchen’s tomato soup, which is a complete dish in its own right—not that it can’t be followed […]
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Best zine documenting a teen indie-rock scene
“Hallogallo” isn’t just the name of a song by 70s Krautrock band Neu!—it’s also a term that a group of Chicago teenagers have adopted to apply to almost anything associated with their DIY music and art community. That includes the zine Hallogallo, launched in early 2021, which has done terrific work documenting this scene. It’s […]
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Best unconventional horror drive-in screening
“Video Brain Blender” gave me an experience I couldn’t have replicated at home, and that’s exactly what I missed about going to the movies throughout the pandemic.
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Best Latin alternative music festival
Ruido Fest debuted in 2015 with a phenomenal lineup of Latin alternative music that’s been hard to match, with Café Tacvba, Molotov, Kinky, Ozomatli, Kali Uchis, the Nortec Collective, Chicano Batman, and dozens more. (The recent announcement of the Besame Mucho festival, scheduled for Dodger Stadium in December 2022, also sets a very high bar.) […]
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Best trajectory from ‘delightful child’ to survivalist soccer player
Sophie Thatcher Monica Vitti. Peter Ivers. Béatrice Dalle. Esoteric influences the impossibly cool Sophie Thatcher pays tribute to on her impossibly cool Instagram account, which all have me running for Wikipedia to keep up. After her breakout turn on Showtime’s Yellowjackets, this 21-year-old product of the Chicago theater scene has literally become her generation’s Juliette […]
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Best impromptu spiritual-jazz show to celebrate what turned out not to be the end of the pandemic
When the pandemic shut down live music, Chicago gallery Corbett vs. Dempsey began presenting great online gigs via Experimental Sound Studio’s Quarantine Concerts series. I remember the excitement I felt when the gallery made a last-minute, low-key announcement, mostly to friends and supporters, that the sixth of its Sequesterfest livestreaming events would also be open […]
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Best Chicago representation in a groundbreaking music documentary
When the world, or the country, wants you dead and forgotten, making unforgettable living music is a kind of defiance. Every performer in Summer of Soul knows that. But no one puts it over with more force than Chicago’s Mahalia.
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Best rapper (temporarily) banned from YouTube
Rapper, producer, DJ, and talk-show host GreenSllime has built a cult following with his muddy, sample-heavy production and crass rhymes. In the past few years he’s made incredible strides toward establishing his voice as a solo rapper, but he’s already been an unsung hero in the local scene for more than a decade, operating mostly […]
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Best public performance art series
Out of Site On your way home from work, you get off the train and there is a giant puppet show featuring a man fighting a puppet hydra in an empty parking lot. Or you meander into Wicker Park, the actual park, and encounter a human-sized box covered in floral wallpaper with the words “Look […]
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Best surprise success story kick-started by a Medium essay on emo
Eric Reyes writes clean, bittersweet rock songs whose hooks almost feel like a sugar rush. Under the name Snow Ellet, he renders the admittedly fine lines separating emo, indie rock, and pop punk entirely meaningless; his guitar frizz and yearning yelp belong to all of the above, and he can win over dyed-in-the-wool fans of […]