I received this e-mail the other week from an LGS reader:
Sarah,
Can you give us your thoughts on a good New Year’s Eve party this year? We are all single, professional women, different ethnicities, and in our 30s. All suggestions are welcome. Thanks!
That’s a question I’m plagued by every year—along with just about everyone I know. “I’ve never had an amazing New Year’s Eve here,” one friend said to me recently. “How sad is that?”…
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…
The West Loop’s gorgeous Sepia is a good restaurant that could someday be a great one; Café 103’s tiny BYO charms the taste buds off its Beverly neighbors
Forget long road trips stuck in the car with squabbling siblings (although we had some of that, too): My 10-day trip to Italy completely redefined “family vacation.” We spent a chunk of the trip holed up in a Tuscan villa, but we were officially there for my uncle’s wedding, which took place in Rome at the magnificent Borghese Castle . Who knows? The next wedding I attend could be my own…
PLUS: A few spots to get your own trick-or-treat on
The Orbit Room presents a sleeker take on the corner-tavern theme.
Logan Square embraces its inner old man without falling asleep on its barstool
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…
One street. Two goals: making it from Evanston to downtown before dark, and trying as many places on Clark Street as humanly possible.
We scoured the city for the top offerings on Chicago’s world-class restaurant scene. From appetizer through dessert, from über haute pineapple rum soup to down-home juicy fried chicken, here’s your road map to the 124 yummiest dishes around.
C Food
Little by little, it seems every culinary star has begun setting his sights on Chicago. The latest is Marcus Samuelsson, the highly celebrated chef at New York’s Aquavit and Riingo, who announced his intention to open C House, a casual seafood restaurant in Streeterville’s Affinia Hotel (formerly the Fitzpatrick; 166 E. Superior St.), in March. “Chicago is an unbelievable food town,” says Samuelsson, 36. “And I want to be part of that.” C House’s menu will be full of crowd pleasers such as whole snapper for two, wild salmon, a lobster club sandwich, and a salmon burger—Samuelsson calls it “simplistic food built on great ingredients,” which may be a generic sound bite, but when a chef this talented says it, we take note. Look for an open kitchen in the dining room’s center to focus on small dishes, and rooftop seating to follow next summer…
