02/25/09

Cheap Sandwiches!

BYO Alert
“I have no restaurant experience,” says Hector Peña, owner of Café Bella (3311 W. Fullerton Ave.; 773-292-5040), a brand-new Logan Square BYO. “I’m a real estate broker. My experience is McDonald’s, when I was 17 years old. My buddy is the chef, and I have always wanted him to open up his own place because his food is marvelous.” The buddy in question is Cesar Casas, a veteran of Ambria who most recently ran...

Posted at 04:35 PM in Dish | Permalink | Comments (1)

02/18/09

Watershed Moment

Mr. Beef Lives!

Seems everyone in Chicago was already mourning the death of the famous Italian beef shack (666 N. Orleans St.; 312-337-8500) following a story in Crain’s Chicago Business last week that reported its owners owed a bank $650,000. “We refinanced and we’re not going anywhere,” says Chris Zucchero, the son of Mr. Beef’s owner, Joseph Zucchero. “But we’re touched by the outpouring of support we got from Chicagoans.” In other words...

Posted at 04:52 PM in Dish | Permalink | Comments (0)

02/11/09

Loop Survival Kit

Sell the Sizzle
“I think I found a way to survive here,” says Alan Shikami, who has transformed Shikago (190 S. LaSalle St.; 312-781-7300) into the kind of “fun Japanese/Asian restaurant” he always wanted. In his new chef, James Okuno—Shikago’s former sous-chef and son of Kiyoshi Okuno from New York’s esteemed Sushi Yasuda—he’s finally found someone on the same page. Together, they’ve gone back to basics. “There was a place in Bangkok called the...

Posted at 06:04 PM in Dish | Permalink | Comments (0)

02/04/09

Designer Plates

Turning the Other Chic
Fred's at Barneys, an American brasserie on the ninth floor of New York’s famed retailer, plans to open a Chicago version at 15 East Oak Street, inside the new Gold Coast outpost of Barneys in April. To put a local stamp on the restaurant, every employee will be from Chicago, save one: managing director Mark Strausman, the longtime chef of NYC’s Fred's at Barneys. Strausman’s new passion is pizza and breadmaking—”I’m really into yeast right now...

Posted at 04:04 PM in Dish | Permalink | Comments (3)