Dish Flash: Where the Cupcakes Are
Monday is the inaugural trip for Flirty Cupcakes, the mobile cupcake seller that managed to find a way to comply with Chicago’s strict food-truck laws. Here’s where the Flirty van plans to stop…
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Find Me An Apartment (and a bar): The Chaser Faces a Chicago Real Estate Quandary
It’s Friday, so I thought I’d take a break from frantically searching apartment listings on Craigslist to kick back and consider one very important real estate question: which bars could I stand living near? You see, the new owner of my longtime building on Mohawk Street has some pretty wild ideas about how much a certain writer…
Poagburger Poagburger Poagburger
Burgers in Bloom
Three weeks ago, we reported on a new, more upmarket second location of Poag Mahone’s planned for 195 North Dearborn Street. Dan Rosenthal, Poag’s owner, tells us a more downmarket Poag is in the works as well…
Dish Flash: Chicago's Priciest Burger?
When you buy a wagyu burger, you enter in a cycle of pampering. The cows legendarily get their massages and beer, and then you indulge yourself by spending a mint to buy the burger. A new menu item at The Bad Apple (4300 N. Lincoln Ave.; 773-360-8406) puts that cycle in a whole new gear…
Dish Flash: Come Fly with Them
When Grant Achatz and Nick Kokonas, business partners at Alinea (1723 N. Halsted St.; 312-867-0110), drop even a few crumbs of information about their future projects, people become like teenage girls around rock idols. (Case in point: Normally intelligent journalists thought Achatz and Kokonas were opening a bar called Boom.) Well, get ready for unbridled screaming. Achatz and Kokonas plan to open Next, a restaurant with a concept unlike any we’ve heard of before…
Weekend Photos: Blue Frog 22
From a tadpole comes a frog: Now open, from the mother-and-son owners of Blue Frog Bar & Grill (676 N. LaSalle St.; 312-943-8900), River North’s charmingly scruffy go-to karaoke dive, is Blue Frog 22 (22 E. Hubbard St.; 312-527-1200), a more polished and spacious second location stocked with board games, 14 flat-screen TVs, an expanded menu—and, yes, karaoke…
Dish Flash: In a Tizi
Adding to the string of good restaurants closing lately, Tizi Melloul (531 N. Wells St.; 312-670-4338) will shut its doors May 15th after 11 years of business. One of Tizi’s owners, Steven Ford, says it was sold to as-yet-undisclosed parties for another restaurant concept.
And They're Off!: Where to Watch the Kentucky Derby in Chicago
Yes, the Kentucky Derby still bills itself as "the fastest two minutes in sports," despite the fact that the not-so-recent invention of motorized vehicles left the poor ponies in the dust a good while ago. And with the Louisville forecast calling for an 80 percent chance of "strong storms" all day tomorrow, the bound-to-be-muddy 136th Kentucky Derby isn’t likely to break any land speed records…
Up on the ROOFtop, The Chaser Pauses
Last weekend, prior to dinner with friends at The Wit’s Cibo Matto, The Creative Director and I rode the elevator up to the 27th-floor bar Roof for one round of cocktails (a Manhattan and a vodka soda, to be exact). “That’ll be $23,” said the bartender, right before I picked my jaw up off the floor. Talk about sticker shock—that’s half the amount it takes to…
Do Tell, Donatella
Brik Layer
The well-loved West Rogers Park Italian spot La Cucina di Donatella closed in 2008, but the chef/owner, Donatella Majore, is back, this time with a partner, Paolo di Costanzo, for the upcoming Donatella Mediterranean Bistro (1512 Sherman Ave., Evanston; 847-328-7720), slated to open in May. The most popular dishes from La Cucina will…