What could I say that would do justice to the last fifteen months of keeping this blog? Probably nothing that wouldn't be self-aggrandizing (my favorite posts) or partisan (my favorite Chicago food writers) or alienating (what food categories New York...
Summer is in full swing in the Chicago food mediasphere, with the Taste, hot dogs and pure, unadulterated fire dominating the headlines. • Top five Taste deals, including Original Rainbow Cone's Patriot Cone: blueberry, vanilla and strawberry, the bounty...
• Rich becoming organic farmers as peak oil survival strategy? [NYT] • Once more into the breach: E. Coli beef recall hits 20 states [DFP] • China: chocolate industry's last great frontier (until India) [Reuters] • As global apocalypse nears,...
Two weeks ago, we wrote a post on some findings from a day of processing menus, including Mothers-In-Law (tamales in buns with chili) on the North Side and Mexico City-style tortas at La Baguette on the South Side. All...
• Chicago chefs on what it means to cook "American" in 2008 [Sun-Times] • Grapes: provider of wine, raisins, and now, the hot new oil [Sun-Times] • East Rogers Park has arrived as a gentrihood via a wine shop...
• Sbux, overextended in crap real estate markets, to close 600 stores [Trib] • Soon-to-be-much-emailed list of 101 picnic ideas from Mark Bittman [NYT] • Criticized & embarrassed FDA adding a hundred labs to salmonella hunt [USAT] • Group: food...
In Jay Rayner's recently published The Man Who Ate The World, the Observer food critic's diary of a tour through the world's most notable (and particularly, most expensive) restaurants, the author recounts an incident where a Japan-based chef was...
Usually when reviewers declare a restaurant or a dish to be "the best" in Chicago or the world or in the history of space and time, they are talking out of their asses. Anyone with the breadth of experience...
• Wal-Mart going local on produce to save money [Reuters] • If A-B won't go quietly, InBev will go hostile [TO] • Did you know: mayonnaise is a mild preservative [NYT] • Drug mushrooms good for long-term mental health [AP]...
It's late Monday afternoon and the Taste Of Chicago is in its fourth day already! We thought we'd take a look at what's been written about it so far, and it seems like the lion's share of ink has...
• One of Chicago's more successful Peruvian restaurants, Ay Ay Picante impressed Bridget & Tammy enough to earn a 17/20 [Chicago Bites] • Most of the restaurants participating in Kid's Restaurant Week excreted out the same mac and cheese...
• As N. Korea normalizes, food aid flows freely [Reuters] • Global food export curbs hurt poorest people [UPI] • Energy efficient milk jugs confound consumers [NYT] • Artisanal bottled water won't survive peak oil [WaPo] • What if salmonella...
Reviews galore on this, the very last Friday of our employ. Oh yes, it's true; Independence Day will take on a myriad of meanings this year. (Don't worry! We're not abandoning our post for anything less lofty than post-graduate...
• Hezbollah-dominated Beirut eats at 'Buns and Guns' restaurant [AP] • New Yorkers discover edible comestibles at Disney World [NYT] • Anheuser-Busch, St. Louis not going quietly in the night [Trib] • Legendarily cheap Vegas casino food succumbs to reality...
The Reader's Best of Chicago 2008 issue came out today, and while we're going to address Omnivorous tomorrow as per usual, it's worth perusing while it's still hot and fresh. Structured not entirely unlike Time Out Chicago's Eat Out...
The very bestest time of the year is Taste of Chicago, which starts as soon as tomorrow! Phil Vettel reports that this year's Taste will be the biggest, healthiest and greenest one yet, although probably only by the smallest...
• S. Korea to accept U.S. beef again; future of gov't unsure [NYT] • Japanese/Chinese food row reenacted by Olympics team [Reuters] • Texas Gov. comes out hard against food-crop ethanol [SETR] • Mars/DoA/IBM to sequence, manipulate cacao genome [WaPo]...
• Quote of the day: "Every time a hearse went down the road, [we thought] 'there went another cherry customer,'" said Don Gregory. This pearl of morbidity is in reference to the fact that during the 1980s and 1990s,...
• Food stamps go out to Midwestern flooding victims [Reuters] • Cashew juice, now for sale, confounds the imagination [NYT] • Surge of deep-dish pizza to arrive in Iraq for July 4th [AP] • Monsanto profits soar on yield-bumping weed-killer...
The big news out of the Everglades today is that the State of Florida has purchased U.S. Sugar and its 187,000 acres of prime wetlands for $1.7 billion (are the workers seeing any of it? Of course not). This...
