With Balena, the Boka Group comes late to pan-Italia—but it’s worth the wait by Mike Sula If I were the sort of good eats writer who thought about page views as much as I’m supposed to, I’d write a blog post with a headline like “Squid ink is the new bacon,” and then send the unpaid interns out to kitchens across the north side to take pictures of all the black good eats chefs are cooking these days. Here’s what [...]

A shining chef helps make up for the loss of a star mixologist at Bucktown’s Ada St. by Mike Sula I was neck deep in this review of Michael Kornick and David Morton’s new barstaurant when I heard that “spiritual adviser” Tim Lacey had left. I was going on about the recently shattered glass ceiling for bartenders: how ever since the Violet Hour opened in 2007 more and more barkeeps are given top billing above chefs, how the good eats [...]

Jared Van Camp’s Nellcote mingles the luxe and the low. by Mike Sula I’m glad Jared Van Camp and his partners in the Element Collective didn’t decide to take inspiration from 102 Edith Grove, the Chelsea three-flat shared by Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, and Keith Richards in 1963, the same year the Rolling Stones’ debut single was released. Reports say it was a festering dump where rampant expectoration, micturition, and canned soybean sausages were tolerated and encouraged.… [ Read more [...]

Kevin Hickey’s Allium is a playfully subversive replacement for Seasons by Mike Sula On the elevator ride to the seventh floor of the Four Seasons, there’s just enough time to react to the framed advertisement for Allium, the profound casualization of the hotel’s erstwhile Michelin-starred fine-dining restaurant: a close-up on a pair of pretty lips and set of straight white teeth about to chomp into a raw red onion. Allium is the genus to which onions and other perennial bulbous [...]

Two Italians at odds: Bar Ombra and Melman siblings’ RPM by Mike Sula Washed up in the wave of high-profile Italian openings (Bar Toma, Balena, even Nellcote) are two restaurants that couldn’t be more at odds: RPM and Bar Ombra. The next time I want to disappear I’m headed for the latter, the Venetian-style bar from Marty Fosse and Tim Rasmussen, a radical transformation of one-half of their once overextended farm-to-table concept Acre, which continues to operate alongside Ombra in [...]

The wood-fired small plates at Urban Union look better on paper by Mike Sula Currently there are at least 11 restaurants operating in the city that incorporate the word “urban” in their DBAs. It’s a cliche threatening to overtake “&” and “ultra” in the race to brand eating and drinking establishments with a fog of meaninglessness and search engine obscurity.… [ Read more ] [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Eric Aubriot and the third coming of their French-Vietnamese Pasteur by Mike Sula I woke up, culinarily speaking, for the second time in 1998. That was the year I gave up an ascetic if instructive seven years of vegetarianism and began eating across the city, high (Frontera Grill, Blackbird, Charlie Trotter’s) and low (Maxwell Street Market, Lem’s, and the cheap banh mi and fragrant pho of Argyle Street).… [ Read more ] [ Subscribe to the comments on this story [...]

Irving Park’s Bread & Wine brings the goods to a formerly dining-deprived enclave by Mike Sula “This is my body,” said Jesus, breaking the matzo and passing it around to the apostles before uncorking the Jerusalem red. “This is my blood.”… [ Read more ] [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

You can’t hear the music over the noise at Tavernita, Ryan Poli’s Spanish dream by Mike Sula I don’t intentionally listen to Serge Gainsbourg when I’m writing about a new French restaurant. And I don’t put Qawwali music on when I’m writing about Pakistani cabbie joints.… [ Read more ] [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

At Bridgeview’s Sheeba, The Aljahmi brothers turn out authentic Yemeni stews, roast meats, and tanoor-baked bread. by Mike Sula Culinary foams weren’t invented by El Bulli’s Ferran Adria, the groundbreaking Spanish chef most associated with the modernist cuisine movement. White bean foam, chocolate air, and granadilla clouds may have gobsmacked diners on the Costa Brava coast 18 years ago—and there are carrot, smoke, and potato foams on the menu at Next Restaurant’s El Bulli tribute.… [ Read more ] [ [...]