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Jeff Ruby
Cheap Sandwiches!
By Penny Pollack & Jeff Ruby
BYO Alert
“I have no restaurant experience,” says Hector Peña, owner of Café Bella (3311 W. Fullerton Ave.; 773-292-5040), a brand-new Logan Square BYO. “I’m a real estate broker. My experience is McDonald’s, when I was 17 years old. My buddy is the chef, and I have always wanted him to open up his own place because his food is marvelous.” The buddy in question is Cesar Casas, a veteran of Ambria who most recently ran... Read more
Watershed Moment
By Penny Pollack & Jeff Ruby

Mr. Beef Lives!

Seems everyone in Chicago was already mourning the death of the famous Italian beef shack (666 N. Orleans St.; 312-337-8500) following a story in Crain’s Chicago Business last week that reported its owners owed a bank $650,000. “We refinanced and we’re not going anywhere,” says Chris Zucchero, the son of Mr. Beef’s owner, Joseph Zucchero. “But we’re touched by the outpouring of support we got from Chicagoans.” In other words... Read more
Loop Survival Kit
By Penny Pollack & Jeff Ruby
Sell the Sizzle
“I think I found a way to survive here,” says Alan Shikami, who has transformed Shikago (190 S. LaSalle St.; 312-781-7300) into the kind of “fun Japanese/Asian restaurant” he always wanted. In his new chef, James Okuno—Shikago’s former sous-chef and son of Kiyoshi Okuno from New York’s esteemed Sushi Yasuda—he’s finally found someone on the same page. Together, they’ve gone back to basics. “There was a place in Bangkok called the... Read more
Action Heroes
By Robert Loerzel & Jeff Ruby Illustrations by Michael Camarra
26 people who make films happen in Chicago—plus three newcomers making their mark Read more
Gastro Tourism
By Jeff Ruby
During my recent travels abroad, I was obsessed with the otherness of products in foreign supermarkets. While freely opening myself to new cultures everywhere else, I couldn’t shake my deep-seated Ugly American tendencies in grocery stores, and got so carried away taking pictures and snickering that a security guard in Hanoi escorted me and my camera out the door. Here, at long last, is my complete gallery of snapshots. Read more
Designer Plates
By Penny Pollack & Jeff Ruby
Turning the Other Chic
Fred's at Barneys, an American brasserie on the ninth floor of New York’s famed retailer, plans to open a Chicago version at 15 East Oak Street, inside the new Gold Coast outpost of Barneys in April. To put a local stamp on the restaurant, every employee will be from Chicago, save one: managing director Mark Strausman, the longtime chef of NYC’s Fred's at Barneys. Strausman’s new passion is pizza and breadmaking—”I’m really into yeast right now...

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Footsie Index Goes Chocolate
By Penny Pollack & Jeff Ruby
Excuse Me, Your Purse Is Melting

Edible shoes. Edible jewelry. Edible handbags. This is not the usual direction of a trained chocolatier. But Rieko Wada, a graduate of the French Pastry School, is about to unveil just such a line of chocolates. Wada, along with her daughter, Kasumi Wada, is launching their popular online chocolate store, Chocolatines, as a bricks-and-mortar... Read more
Dining Tidbits
By Joanne Trestrail, Jeff Ruby, Nathaniel Zimmer, and Justine Gregory
Steve's Deli, Mantou Noodle Bar, The Century Public House, and Sunda Read more