07/26/07

Panini and Gelato Galore

Bye-Bye Body Sushi
Set to open in three weeks, Ai Sushi Lounge (358 W. Ontario St.; 312-335-9888) is the third brain child of Agnes Yoshikawa and Eugene Chua, the brother-and-sister team who own Tsuki (1441 W. Fullerton Ave.; 773-883-8722) and Ringo (2507 N. Lincoln Ave.; 773-248-5788). Since Toyoji Hemmi, Tsuki's sushi whiz, will now split his time between Tsuki and Ai, we asked Rai Calma, Ai Sushi's general manager, whether we should expect a Tsuki knockoff. "Tsuki is more tapas style. The nigiri and sushi will be there, but this kitchen will focus on entrées, so people can course out a more traditional meal," said Calma. Here's hoping the place does better than the...

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07/19/07

Dish Flash-Hotshot chef Chicago bound

Q & A with Jose Garces

Chef Jose Garces is coming to Chicago. Who’s that? A James Beard–nominee you probably never heard of. After all, we don’t pay a bunch of attention to the Mid-Atlantic category. Maybe we should. Garces is a 35-year-old Chicago-born Kendall grad who owns two highly acclaimed restaurants in Philadelphia: Amada, an Andalusian tapas bar, and Tinto, a Basque-inspired wine bar. And he’s about to launch Chilango, a high-energy Mexican spot in Philly. That’s nice. But, even nicer, Garces plans to open Mercat early next year in the renovated Blackstone Hotel at 600 South Michigan Avenue. We had a few questions for the prodigal son...

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07/18/07

The Dish on Eight New Spots

The Early Returns Edition
With a spate of openings all around town, Dish couldn't resist taking the pulse of the newcomers. We tried everything from Turkish pizza to Mexican parillada-with decidedly mixed results. (In general, we give a place a bit of time to get up and running before visiting for the purpose of a review, so regard these comments accordingly.) Here are our first impressions of lots that's new:

At the tiny three-week-old aqua-splashed hole-in-the-wall Nazarlik (1650 W. Belmont Ave., 773-327-5800), we gobbled down our made-to-order lahmacun, a.k.a. Turkish pizza. It's a big, thin, irregularly shaped oval crust paved with spicy ground lamb. It's fun to tear off strips and roll them up like cigars,...

Posted at 05:26 PM in Dish | Permalink | Comments (2)

07/12/07

So Many Opening, So Little Time

Park Place
"Tavern at the Park (130 E. Randolph St.; 312-552-0070) is not a gastropub," says chef John Hogan; "it's a mainstream American tavern." The 300-seater overlooking Millennium Park, scheduled to open in early August, is the brainchild of Hogan and his partners at Keefer's (20 W. Kinzie St.; 312-467-9525), Glenn and Richard Keefer and Pete deCastro. Expect crowd pleasers such as rotisserie chicken, fresh fish, and pastas, not to mention everybody's new favorites-mini burgers and flatbread pizza. And remember, it's not a gastropub. Fine. We'll take two trends out of three.

But Who's Keeping Score?
The restaurant gods must have held a convention and declared July 12th as kickoff...

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07/06/07

Dish Flash-We Found Him

We can't speak for the rest of you, but when Del Toro closed suddenly on March 18th of this year, Dish started to fret about where our next Andrew Zimmerman meal would come from. Good news: The talented Bucktown chef has turned up as chef de cuisine at NoMI (Park Hyatt Chicago, 800 N. Michigan Ave.; 312-239-4030). Here's the skinny on his new gig:

D: Are you as surprised as we are that you landed at NoMI?
AZ: This is a job that I had never even thought about. It came from left field. I saw myself running another independent of some kind or another.

D: We know Christophe David is the executive chef at NoMI. What's your position and when did you start?
AZ: Two and a half weeks ago....

Posted at 03:47 PM in Dish | Permalink | Comments (10)