You’ve seen the Windy. It’s that many-masted vessel docked at Navy Pier that looks like a playground for fanny-pack wearing families from Iowa hoping to live out their Pirates of the Caribbean fantasies.
Or at least that’s what I was thinking yesterday as my sister Liv and I prepared to venture aboard a skyline cocktail cruise on the Red Witch, a smaller boat operated by the same company…
Taking the Cake
Two big hitters in Chicago’s pastry world announced moves recently…
Last night my glancing interest in all things Paris Hilton (I know, so 2003) landed me at the new River North nightclub Board Room, located in the old RiNo space. Paris was in no way expected, but two costars from her show The World According to Paris on Oxygen—“L.A.’s hottest party girl” Allison Melnick and July 1999 Playmate of the Month Jennifer Rovero—were listed as hosts for the Svedka vodka–sponsored party…
Don’t let that unassuming wood-paneled façade fool you: Tzar Ultra Lounge is no local dive. The new River North nightclub bears a red-carpeted entrance, a list of 150 vodkas, a vodka vault reserved for big spenders, and a staff of modelesque bartenders mixing (you guessed it) vodka cocktails…
My guard was up last night from the moment I drove onto a particular block of River North, where the nightclubs Crescendo, Y, Sound-Bar, and now Tzar Ultra Lounge are all clustered. Parking my car around the corner on Franklin Street, I spotted a trio of teetering, sequined young women who had just alighted from an early model Rav4 bearing a suburban dealership logo and who nervously clutched pink Victoria’s Secret shopping bags as they read the instructions on the meter box…
Chicago’s most-buzzed-about restaurants this month
The Red Lion, an English pub that poured pints in Lincoln Park for 27 years, has been open in its new Lincoln Square location since January, but due to a paperwork snafu, owners Joe and Susan Heinen have been waiting on their liquor license for what feels like a bloody long time…
And on the ninth day, the brewers rested. Beer makers and drinkers alike gathered at Revolution Brewing on Friday, the final day of Chicago Craft Beer Week 2011, for a sold-out bash fittingly dubbed the Beer Fistival, featuring guest pours from area breweries, music from the Four Star Brass Band, and a new beer from Revolution dubbed Red Scare…
DEAD RECKONING: Seventy-six years after his death, Auguste Escoffier—the father of modern French cuisine—passes judgment on the menu he inspired at Next.
On the heels of the hotelier Ian Schrager’s announcement this week that the Ambassador East Hotel, once a celebrity playground, now will be called Public, we learned that the owners of Webster’s Wine Bar and The Bluebird have chosen a name for their soon-to-open Logan Square spot, further feeding this postrecession Everyman trend: Smith…
