Ad Categories: Dining & Drinking

A Tale of Two Pizzas
La Madia (59 W. Grand Ave.; 312-329-0400), a long-awaited contemporary pizzeria, opened on October 17th; four days later and three blocks away, Pizzeria Via Stato (620 N. State St.; 312-337-6634) fired up its new Wood Stone oven and baked its first Roman-style pizza. So how do these two River North competitors stack up? La Madia’s crust has great personality—tender chewy, an eense of salt, and lots of soul. Via Stato’s is no slouch, however, with its lighter-than-air blistered collar and crackery texture. Topping for topping, La Madia’s artichokes were light on flavor but the…

Window Treatment
“The South Side is hurting for restaurants,” says Dan McGee, a Chicago native who has worked in kitchens from Peru to Switzerland (and Charlie Trotter’s in between). So McGee repurposed his former Whittingham’s Gourmet Market as a 44-seat American restaurant called Dan McGee (330 W. Lincoln Hwy., Frankfort; 815-469-7750). The polished room is by Tom Nahabedian (who designed Naha for his cousin Carrie Nahabedian), and McGee’s menu has some interesting twists, like grilled halibut served on Asiago mashed potatoes with mushroom-shrimp compote. And that window that looks into the kitchen? “I wanted to see what was going on in the dining room, but the kitchen is so bright and the dining room is dark—I’m looking at…