wood-burning oven,” Schwartz says. “It’s absolutely beautiful.” Pizzas and small plates will be on the menu, but Schwartz is reluctant to pigeonhole the restaurant, which shares a common performance/party space with a neighboring recording studio. And Wild Geese may sound like a random name for a pizzeria, but it comes from a poem of the same name by Mary Oliver: “Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting . . . ”

Out Lao’d
They say you should never open a restaurant in January, and Tony Hu didn’t. He opened two...

" /> wood-burning oven,” Schwartz says. “It’s absolutely beautiful.” Pizzas and small plates will be on the menu, but Schwartz is reluctant to pigeonhole the restaurant, which shares a common performance/party space with a neighboring recording studio. And Wild Geese may sound like a random name for a pizzeria, but it comes from a poem of the same name by Mary Oliver: “Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting . . . ”

Out Lao’d
They say you should never open a restaurant in January, and Tony Hu didn’t. He opened two...

" /> wood-burning oven,” Schwartz says. “It’s absolutely beautiful.” Pizzas and small plates will be on the menu, but Schwartz is reluctant to pigeonhole the restaurant, which shares a common performance/party space with a neighboring recording studio. And Wild Geese may sound like a random name for a pizzeria, but it comes from a poem of the same name by Mary Oliver: “Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting . . . ”

Out Lao’d
They say you should never open a restaurant in January, and Tony Hu didn’t. He opened two...

" />
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Penny Pollack
Geese is the Word
By Penny Pollack & Jeff Ruby with Sarah Desprat

Poetry in Motion
Steve Schwartz, the owner of Campagnola (815 Chicago Ave., Evanston; 847-475-6100), is almost set to open Wild Geese (1245 Chicago Ave., Evanston), an eclectic restaurant with a huge bar. . “We had a guy come from Vermont who built the wood-burning oven,” Schwartz says. “It’s absolutely beautiful.” Pizzas and small plates will be on the menu, but Schwartz is reluctant to pigeonhole the restaurant, which shares a common performance/party space with a neighboring recording studio. And Wild Geese may sound like a random name for a pizzeria, but it comes from a poem of the same name by Mary Oliver: “Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting . . . ”

Out Lao’d
They say you should never open a restaurant in January, and Tony Hu didn’t. He opened two...

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Techno Tapas, No Más Mas
By Penny Pollack & Jeff Ruby with Sarah Desprat

Way to Go, Grant
Dish adds its best wishes to the growing chorus of food critics and journalists sounding the happy news that, following numerous rounds of aggressive chemotherapy and radiation protocols, the life-threatening cancer faced by Grant Achatz (Alinea, 1723 N. Halsted St.; 312-867-0110) is in remission.

Eat the Macarena
According to John Borras, chef/owner of the three-month-old Macarena Tapas (618 S. Route 59, Naperville; 630-420-8995), Ferran Adrià, father of the techno-chef revolution, accepts exactly 48 participants from the more than 300,000 applications he receives for his annual culinary seminar in Barcelona. Borras was one of...

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Pizza Identity Crisis and Dancing Turkeys
By Penny Pollack & Jeff Ruby with Sarah Desprat

Greece Is the Word
Have a taste for revani? Loukoumades? Psaronefri? “You’ve never had Greek food like this, very individualized items,” says Toni Di Meola about the food at her two-week-old Mythos (2030-32 W. Montrose Ave.; 773-334-2000). She and Vicky Zervas—her sister and partner—were born and raised in Athens and they hand-squeeze every lemon and use herbs carried back from Greece by their mother. But the sisters are most proud of the deep fryer that they have never used. “It came with the property, but we pan fry or sauté everything in extra virgin olive oil,” says Di Meola. “We don’t want the smell of the grease.”

BTW: Revani is a semolina flour cake made with 16 eggs; loukoumades are puff balls sprinkled with cinnamon and drizzled with honey; and psaronefri is charcoal-broiled pork tenderloin served with...

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Hello, Purgatory; bye-bye, Bubala
By Penny Pollack & Jeff Ruby with Sarah Desprat

Hot off the Grill
“We just wanted to bring Korean food to Old Town, or downtown, because everything else is located up north,” says Okcha McDonald, a partner at three-week-old Red Top Grill (1507 N. Sedgwick St.; 312-981-1775). RTG is in the old Heat space and the former sushi bar is now decked with built-in gas grills for Korean barbecue. All the classics are on hand—bibim bap, bulgogi, galbi, chap chae—and plenty of kimchi. McDonald admits that parking around there is terrible but they are working on valet service and, for now, the place is BYO with no corkage. Not a bad tradeoff for stowing the car a few blocks away. 

One Down, Two to Go
As reported here last week, Meritage (2118 N. Damen Ave.; 773-235-6434) will close on January 1st. But even before the owner, Chris Peckat, turns the key for the last time, he plans to launch his next venture, Risqué Café (3419 N. Clark St.), an American smokehouse. While Drew Neimeyer (Peckat’s Meritage chef) bones up on ribs, duck wings, turkey legs, and pulled pork, Peckat keeps busy with the selection of 200 to 300 American craft beers to go with the ’cue. But that’s not all...

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E-mail soup, jerk chicken, Mazel Tov martinis
By Penny Pollack & Jeff Ruby with Sarah Desprat

Cyber Soup
Marcello Cancelli has managed dining rooms and wine lists at places such as Carlos’, North Pond Cafe, and Michael. Now, after years of running OPRs (Other People’s Restaurants), he’s ready to take a chance on his own. Sopa (752 Sheridan Rd., Highwood; 847-433-3434), Cancelli’s place for Mediterranean-influenced comfort food, will swing into action on December 4th. As for the name, “Sopa is Spanish or Portuguese for ‘soup,’” says Cancelli. So will there be soup on the menu? “Yes. One soup will actually be inspired by the customers. When someone tells us their favorite foods, we want to help people reminisce. We will try to get people participating in our e-mail list.” We think this means that if you e-mail Sopa about your favorite soup, some version of it could...

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Get Your Kicks on Roosevelt Road
By Penny Pollack & Jeff Ruby

Truck Stop Gourmet
Jason Paskewitz (J.P. Chicago, Wave), who has been planning River North’s Jackson Park Bar and Grill for ages—now slated for mid-January—is also launching The 621 Diner (621 E. Roosevelt Rd.; Lombard), an old-fashioned Route 66 diner, on December 10th. “Just for fun, we are opening before Jackson Park,” he says. “It’ll be breakfast all day, like truck-stop blue-plate specials: burgers and milk shakes and patty melts and cakes that are like 18 inches high in a round rotating glass display. Just good roadside food.” Paskewitz won’t do the cooking at the 125-seat spot, but will...

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Lemon Syllabub, Horses, and Bobby Flay
By Penny Pollack & Jeff Ruby

Into The Wilde
Next from Martin Cournane, the man behind The Kerryman (661 N. Clark St.; 312-335-8121), comes Wilde Bar & Restaurant (3130 N. Broadway; 773-244-0404). His 185-seat “upscale pub food” spot will open November 12th with Alan Katz (Blue Mesa, Cullen’s) as chef. “Alan adds that extra flair to those bar-food favorites [wings, meat loaf, fish and chips, et cetera],” says Cournane. He even serves lemon syllabub, an obscure, centuries-old English dessert that Cournane describes as “white wine, sugar, and lemon made into a syrup, mixed into whipped cream, and served in a glass with sugar biscuits.” Toss in the pub’s 12 draft beers, two fireplaces, and...

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Thin-Crust Pizza Has Its Day
By Penny Pollack & Jeff Ruby

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...Read more
Me and Danny McGee
By Penny Pollack & Jeff Ruby

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...

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Samuelsson, Kahan … and Walken?
By Penny Pollack & Jeff Ruby

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...

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