I always like when owners dine at their own restaurant. It makes me feel like I’m not being poisoned. And indeed, on opening night, of L20, the new Laurent Gras seafood super restaurant, Rich Melman, grandaddy of Lettuce Entertain You, and his son RJ (clad in suitcoat, jeans and canvas Vans style shoes) and a couple others held court at a table in the center of the room.

Bottom line, even on opening night, with a few jitters, this is Chicago’s best new restaurant since the opening of Alinea. It’s now really just a question of where L20 falls in the spectrum of fine dining, aka relative to Tru, Alinea, NoMI style dining in Chicago. L20 might be what you get if you crossed Alinea, Tru, French Laundry, and Masa. It’s going to take me a few days to process this one in full detail, and you’ll be able to read about it next week in Newcity. In the meantime, a couple of thoughts:

1) L20 is true Michelin 3 star style dining.

2) I was skeptical that a multitude of seafood courses would prove nuanced to hold my interest. L20, like Green Zebra which redefined what it means to eat vegetarian, is a paradigm shift in terms of seafood focused dining.

3) After all these years of dining in converted homes, it feels really different to kick back in a wide open, high ceilinged room. Oddly, the wide open space feels more intimate.

4) Pork Belly has almost become a ubiquitous cliche. That being said, the version at L20 (pictured below) marinated in sake and coated with duck fat is the best version in the city. The skin was a true cracklin’ in the hard core chicharron tradition. If they bagged the crispy skin by itself, you’d have yourself a four star Super Bowl snack.

5) Lamb tartar with Ebi Shrimp, pickled peach and tarragon - pretty and pretty damn tasty.

6) I’ll take this study of key lime (pictured below) which features jalapeno topped fruit, caramel, and various tropical fruits and textures including frozen coconut foam cylinders and rum soaked pineapple and shaved pineapple over the most decadent chocolate confection anyday.

7) From house baked creamy pan au lait to pefect mini-baguettes to salty anchovy stuffed buttery croissant puffs, there is no better bread service in the city.

You can find a PDF of the opening night menu here.

Here’s a complete photo-slideshow of my entire meal.

Do you like burritos?

1- Spike thinks Dale’s arrogance is going to haunt him? Yeah, Hung Huynh really sucked it up last season.

2- Bringing salad sexy back…I smell a new Saturday Night Live short featuring Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg.

3- How embarrassing, Spike wore that same hat last episode.

4- Yeah, Andrew, because Police cadets are gonna totally dig on raw food. Last I checked, Ricobenes and Billy Goat were filled with cops, Karyn’s Raw, not so much.

5- Based upon the massive trash talking the producers are playing up, I’m thinking Andrew’s going home.

6- Colicchio looked at Stephanie like, “How cute, mushroom leek soup.”

7- What’s with Richard’s headband? Is he putting on a mud mask after this interview?

8- Oh, damn, Spike just smacked down Colicchio…never good to talk trash at a judge.

9- I’m guessing that no one messed with Lisa’s burner or the producers would have whipped that footage out.

10- Andrew. He gone. Back to the meth lab in Appalachia.

Foie Gras ban overturned.

A full photo slideshow of the Original Rainbow Cone

Most people are familiar with the Taylor Street Twosome, but how many know about the Beverly-Bi? The Taylor Street Twosome is the tradition of sucking down a nutmeg-spiced Italian beef, with your knuckles slathered in gravy and flecked with stray giardiniera, at the original Al’s, followed by a saunter across the street for an icy sweet-plastic-spoon dip into a wax-lined paper cup of Mario’s Italian Lemonade.

The Beverly-Bi isn’t quite so easy, as you need a bit of willpower and have to walk about seven blocks to complete it, but it’s no less venerable than the Taylor Street Twosome. But, unless you come from a long line of far Southwest Siders, it’s probably not as well known. More »

Don’t mess with me or I’ll cut you.

1. Spike is depressed that his kiwi brofriend Mark is gone.
2. Can you image being the intern that needs to put all those fork and spoon decals on those knives?
3. With all those hats, Spike must be dating a milliner
4. Dale asks the question I’ve been wondering for weeks: Why is Nikki still here?
5. Stephanie whips mayo like a high priced dominatrix and wins the quickfire challenge. From now on we’ll refer to her as “The Forearm”.
6. Seriously, I don’t care how big a Top Chef groupie you are. You don’t let Top Chef cater your wedding.
7. Andrew and his “culinary boner” proves he’s probably on crystal meth, since he’s all tweaked out about staying up all night.
8. The bride doesn’t want classic catering menu items for her wedding, but she loves “well seasoned steak with mushrooms and blue cheese.”
9. Dole fresh asparagus…mmm, nothing says wedding food like factory farmed produce
10. Nikki doesn’t know how to cook her own recipes, awesome
11. Pre-peeled garlic, sweet, the show has now become Top Second Class Caterer
12. Colicchio talks trash about the groom’s cake, calling it a “battleship”. I like.
13. Well it’s good to know that the co-owner of Galleria Marchetti actually gets married at Galleria Marchetti. I wonder if his new wife is cool with him pimping out their wedding on behalf of the family business?
14. I’ve come to love Dale. He better not go home.
15. Nikki. She gone. Finally.

I spent some time in Three Oaks, Michigan a few weeks ago checking out the hydroponic heirloom tomatoes of McWethy farm for the Sun Times. Forget spring grocery store tomatoes. Todd McWethy’s tomatoes are better than anything available at this time of year locally. They’re even almost as good as late August traditionally grown tomatoes. Take a look at this photo slideshow of the farm.

Saying that the 77-year-old red-sauce joint Tufano’s Vernon Park Tap has seen a lot is like saying Magellan took a short boat trip. When the tap opened in 1931, Halsted was paved with brick and Taylor Street was the port of entry for Italian immigrants. Italian beef may have been drenched in gravy and sandwiched between two pieces of Gonnella bread, but only in those immigrants’ kitchens, as Al’s Italian Beef didn’t open until 1938. More »

Grant Achatz of Alinea gets the New Yorker treatment. For me, the most interesting part of this piece has nothing to do with the culinary stories. Rather, it’s the idea that in society we tend to treat authority figures, doctors in this case, with undue reverence and infallibility. If Achatz had listened to the surgeons who suggested cutting out his tongue in response to his cancer was the only realistic treatment, this story may have ended much differently. Instead, Achatz found an alternative treatment that, for now and hopefully forever, saved his tongue, and a chance at salvaging his taste.

This really illustrated the crux of what I’ve learned from working as a contributor to the Alinea cookbook with Achatz, his partner Nick Kokonas, and the whole team at Alinea: there is an incredible importance in being disciplined to challenge what’s been done before. It’s what separates Alinea from so many. And though it sounds like a simple formula, it’s really hard to do.

Chris Borrelli had a good article in the Chicago Tribune last week about tips and how they get disbursed. I think the article made some great points, especially about what I consider an exploitative behavior of some restaurants which charge a percentage of the waiter’s tip to cover credit card processing fees, as if it’s the waiter’s fault the restaurant accepts plastic.

Assuming the restaurant doesn’t pay a flat processing fee to the credit card company, I might buy into the idea of sharing a percentage of the cost of a tip on an exceedingly large gratuity, since the restaurant would have to pay a greater processing fee without receiving any portion of the tip. Of course, I’d more likely accept that premise if restaurants started treating their waiters as real business partners and paid them full minimum wage.

One aspect that wasn’t covered in the article which I think bears some attention is the long simmering tension between the front of the house (i.e. the service staff) and the back of the house (the cooks and dishwashers etc), particularly in high end restaurants, which is often exacerbated by the tip system. More »

I stopped in at Artropolis, Chicago’s mega modern art fair at the Merchandise Mart last weekend. I documented as many food related pictures I could find. Interestingly enough, even though food is rising in prominence on our country, it seems the current generation of artists hasn’t really escaped the Claes Oldenburg/Andy Warhol aesthetic of depicting it. Enjoy this photo slideshow.

This just in: I will no longer be terrorizing Chicago’s Whole Foods’ Staff Any Longer

1 - Uncle Ben’s Rice quickfire challenge – Next week: Spam Throwdown

2 - I can’t figure out who’s bitchier in the quickfire judging, Art Smith or Padma

3 - Spike’s Mark Twain meets Marc Jacobs porkpie is totally hobo couture

4 - Richard, abusive to the fishmonger as usual

5 - 10 dollar budget at Whole Paycheck should cover one organic lime for each contestant

6- Dale buys sausage, making it three weeks in a row that no one heeded Paul Kahan’s lesson to make your own sausage

7 -Child labor, sweet.

8 -Nikki cooking Brussels sprouts for a kid friendly dinner. I’ve seen this movie before and it doesn’t end well. (I stand corrected.)

9 -Colicchio seems concerned that OSHA might bust Top Chef for child endangerment

10 - There’s a commercial for Step It Up and Dance on Bravo, and it’s really scary how much the host Elizabeth Berkley sounds like Padma, like they’re cloned from the same super-spokesmodel planet.

11 - Oh, god, Richard wants to make babies…if there’s a case for state mandated sterilization, I think this is it.

12 - Antonia, we…loved…your…whole wheat noodles…robot Padma’s batteries are running low.

13 - Marc. He gone. God the indignity, he’s drinking Michelob to drown his sorrow.

14 - Next week: the dumbest people on earth get talked in to letting Top Chef cater their wedding.