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 »

All I really know about Romania I learned from Nadia Comaneci, Dracula and those late-eighties/early-nineties commercials depicting squalid orphanages. And I might have kept on thinking that the country was populated exclusively by agile beauties, blood-sucking monsters and doleful children if my favorite burger spot, Kuma’s Corner, didn’t have a two-hour back-up last Friday. More »

“You know Jerry Springer? I’ve inhaled with him more than a few times,” says Ed, a displaced Cincinnati architect nursing a glass of red wine at the end of the bar. On my left, a barrel-chested buzz-cut man, another former Queen City native, a national guardsman about to be deployed to Afghanistan, reminisces about lazy afternoons watching Pete Rose and the Big Red Machine at Riverfront stadium. The transplanted faithful are out in force on the first Saturday night of Lincoln Square’s new Cincinnati-style chili parlor and lounge, Cinner’s. More »

Andersonville is hot. The strip of Clark north of Lawrence and its surrounding blocks are home to Chicago’s best beer bar, Hopleaf, Chicago’s best pastry shop, Pasticceria Natalina, and of course its most beloved if not quite best cinnamon roll at Ann Sather. In the last few months the strip has also seen the birth of La Cocina de Frida, Great Lake pizza, and now Big Jones, a spot for coastal southern cooking out to prove that the south is haute. More »

Panda Express better watch its back, because Take Me Out is about to steel its hoard of bamboo. While Take Me Out has a very limited menu built upon the famous chicken wings from Great Seas Chinese (3254 W. Lawrence), called “Little Hotties” here, everything they offer is spot on. More »

It’s not often you wait two and a half hours to eat for ten minutes. The persistent mass of humanity waiting patiently in the lobby on opening day at Rosscoe’s Chicken and Waffles made the weekend brunch crowds at Wishbone and Bongo Room look like fun. Based on crazy demand (the line rarely thinned out in the three hours we we’re at the restaurant), we’d venture, at least for today, that Rosscoe’s was probably hotter than Schwa or Alinea. More »

Rockstar Dogs, which finally opened this afternoon after a license delay, is the culinary version of a vodka ad or maybe more appropriately the Hard Rock Cafe. A lot of money got spent trying to inject personality in to what is otherwise a mediocre overpriced commodity. More »

Last year, Xni-Pec restaurant might have been the best thing to happen to Cicero since Betty Loren Maltese got locked up. Putting a regional Yucatecan restaurant in the same category as the incarceration of a multi-million-dollar embezzler might seem like hyperbole. But for most, the Yucatan is Cancun, which means most people’s conception of Yucatecan cuisine is Senor Frogs or Carlos ’n Charlies. Any restaurant that challenged such notions had to be exceptional. More »

It’s probably not a good sign when your restaurant’s banquettes look like they’re covered with spermatozoa. I know the interior designer for Takashi (1952 North Damen) thought the fabric pattern they chose, thousands of long, subtle, flaggelating lines punctuated by random ovals, seemed modern, harmless and organic, but unfortunately, it’s too organic. During my entire meal I had flashbacks of Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer” and eighth grade “PBS NOVA” health videos. More »

As the window on this Lakeview storefront says, “The Bird is the Word”. Though this mod storefront serves a wide spectrum of Americanized Korean favorites from Buddha bowls (aka BiBimBop) to Korean burritos (aka ssam) to deep fried fish, it’s the chicken that matters. More »

For years, I’ve been telling people Peter Billingsley, the actor who played Ralphie in the movie “A Christmas Story,” was now a porn star. By the time my family was doped up on rum balls and snoring through their third viewing of the movie, I’d whip out the porn nugget and invariably win friends and influence people. In this age of Google, since no one ever called me on it, I thought it must be true. More »

The tragedy of good interface design is that if a designer’s done his or her job, no one seems to notice. Sure there’s the occasional Apple product about which folks bomb Internet forums regarding “scroll wheels” and “flicks” like squalling schoolgirls pining for The Beatles on Ed Sullivan. But when’s the last time you got psyched over a computer mouse or a telephone? More »

Last week I did a few pieces for Newcity for their Italian Beef Issue, below you’ll find my individual write-ups on some favorite places.

Al’s #1 Italian Beef

Featuring more than thirteen herbs and spices, owner Chris Pacelli likes to joke that his beef has two more flavors than the Colonel’s secret recipe over at KFC. Whatever the other twelve are, one of them is most definitely nutmeg, making this the most distinctive beef in town. Add a thin giardiniera mix studded with paper-thin celery and red pepper and you’ve got a beef with personality that draws a sharp dividing line. Many detractors can’t stand the sweet aromatic they associate with Christmas cookies. Devotees on the other hand consider it the best beef in town. Love it or hate it, there’s nothing better than bellying up to the stainless-steel counters, unwrapping a beef, assuming the “Italian stance” (legs wide apart, elbows akimbo and gut sucked in to avoid dripping juice on your clean clothes) taking a bite and watching the summertime masses jockey like Merc traders for Italian lemonade across the street at Mario’s.

1079 West Taylor, (312)226-4017 More »

Not since Montecristo cigars and Che Guevara has a Cuban flavored export been more hyped (at least locally) than the Cubano sandwich at west Logan Square’s El Cubanito (2555 North Pulaski). Foodies on lthforum.com have racked up three pages of mostly adoring love letters to the sandwich, and The Reader, Chicagoist.com and a handful of others have also chimed in with confirming odes. More »

“Hardcore Korean” is not an Asian punk band. Rather, it’s the style of food that Dan Choi, the fervent owner of one-month-old Korean Seoulfood Café, hopes to bring to Chicago. Choi’s restaurant is in the middle of a food desert at the edges of the Loop, and so he doesn’t get much foot traffic. The Mexican spot that previously inhabited his space disappeared quicker than state tax dollars after a Patty Blagojevich real-estate deal, and so if he sees you peeking in the window, he’ll collar you on the sidewalk and sell his food with the verve of an old Maxwell Street peddler. More »

You can tell the authenticity of a Czech restaurant by the appearance of Kung Pao chicken on its menu. If you don’t believe that, the fact that the Bohemian restaurant Operetta (5653 West Fullerton), which seats about fifty but has only three English-language menus, might validate things. More »

Despite the fact that condos are popping up in the West Loop like sightings of Britney Spears’ nether-region, the number of great restaurants hasn’t followed suit. Since Jerry Kleiner’s prescient Daniel Boone-like maneuvering in the late nineties there’s been a slow dribble of similar establishments such as Blackbird, Moto, Follia and, now, Sepia. Of course, great doesn’t have to mean haute, but most of the ethnic spots in the area feel like Grecian theme parks. More »

I hate coffee houses. It’s true, they are a fascinating study in anthropology, what with Bugaboo stroller-toting moms standing shoulder to shoulder with patchouli-scented Birkenstock-clad granola girls and guys clutching soy lattes copping free air conditioning and laptop zombies milking a three-dollar cappuccino for eight hours of free power to get their Internet start-up off the ground. But in the end, that mix is a volatile powderkeg, where people flash you death stares if you think about sharing their power outlet or stealing the other half of that table for ten they commandeered for themselves and their silicon army of Apple products. More »

There are at least a thousand pizza parlors in Chicago, but only about ten spots that people constantly war over as the best. There’s the soft thin-crust of Pat’s (2679 North Lincoln—sausage laden of course) and Vito and Nick’s (8433 South Pulaski), the hard cracker thin-crust of Candlelite (7452 North Western—don’t miss the garlic fries either), the Sicilian style bakery pies of Pequod’s (2207 North Clybourn) and Burt’s Place (8541 North Ferris, Morton Grove), the only real deep-dish that’s not a gut bomb, Pizano’s (61 East Madison—butter crust preferred) and the Neapolitan blistered crusts of Spacca Napoli (1769 West Sunnyside). I’ll even throw in the organic-ingredient-topped dough of Crust (2056 West Division), the Chicago original Uno’s (29 East Ohio—too thick) and the New York/Neapolitan Hybrid Coalfire (1321 West Grand—too much soot on the bottom for my taste) into the mix. More »

The Gage’s idea of surf and turf, sea bream with braised oxtail

I’ve taken measure of the Gage and were it a thermometer, the reading is pretty lukewarm. It’s surprising because as a critic, I’ve been about as slow as the Jamaican bobsled team in filing a review on this somewhat new Michigan Avenue restaurant. It opened in April, and everyone from the fleet Time Out to the tortoise-like Phil Vettel has weighed in. Almost all the reviews were overwhelmingly positive. More »