1. BEARD WRAP-UP

So the James Beard Awards were almost a week ago, and if you care you doubtless know who the winners are, but just in case—Noah Sandoval of Oriole won Best Chef Great Lakes. And Kumiko, which is part of the same restaurant group, won Outstanding Bar.

UPDATE: After posting the above, I got a message from someone at Kumiko, as well as a friend very into these restaurants saying… there is no involvement of any Sandovals with Kumiko, and Kumiko is not part of the same restaurant group. Wait, you say, did I dream that Kumiko was a spinoff of Oriole? Did I dream that Chicago mag posted this, and that Eater posted a photo of Julia Momose with Noah and Cara Sandoval, calling the three of them “the Kumiko team”? Did I dream that Cara Sandoval welcomed me personally at Kumiko the first time I went?

I pointed all this out to the person from Kumiko who wrote me, and got the reply “Noah as an individual was one of the original investors, Noah is no longer an investor. Chicago Magazine was not wrong to word it in the way they did. To say that Kumiko is a part of the Oriole Restaurant Group would be incorrect.” “Original investors” seems to be selling him a bit short—certainly all that press from around the time of the opening suggests more of an active creative role—but you know what was never in the press so far as I can find? An announcement of Sandoval’s departure and Momose taking it over fully—check out this Eater piece from a few months ago, about Momose becoming the head chef, and see if you can find news about Noah Sandoval’s involvement in it ending. (You can’t, because there’s no mention of any Sandoval, though it does talk about one Mariya Moore without ever mentioning that she was known as Mariya Russell at the time that, say, she won a Beard award there under her then-married name—in case you wanted to look her up.) If you’re concerned about the press getting the details about you right, the first step is to… tell them to the press.

Anyway, to continue Beard news:

Lem’s Bar-B-Q, the venerable half-century old barbecue spot on 75th street, received an America’s Classics award. I have zero influence with anything to do with the Beards. But… a few years ago food writer Adrian Miller was trying to help the American Royal, which does the Barbecue Hall of Fame, get some diversity into that very white list, and he asked me who I would suggest from Chicago, and I said, easy, James Lemons, the last  of the three brothers who started Lem’s, who died in 2016. (If you go to the site’s page for Lemons, the first paragraph is pretty much verbatim from the entry I wrote for his nomination.) So some national notice for Lem’s, and… now they’re a Beard America’s Classic. Here’s the video on Lem’s from the show.

And speaking of Barbecue Hall of Famers… Meathead, named in 2021, the same year as James Lemons.

2. GARDEN OF DE-NINES

At Chicago mag, John Kessler reviews a hot new spot in Chinatown, Nine Garden:

Although we were one of only three tables seated in the restaurant, it had become clear that no amount of waving would bring a server, so my wife took it upon herself to go into the kitchen. She soon emerged with our waiter, who wasn’t bothered in the least. This sort of thing is par for the course at Nine Garden, yet I’ll keep coming back — the service may be slow, but the folks at this sleekly decorated spot in a new strip mall are friendly. And most important: The Shanghai-style food is consistently solid to great.

3. SOUTH ASIAN EXPLOSION

“South Asian food has absolutely exploded in Chicago over the last 5 years,” says Titus Ruscitti, and he talks about new spots on Devon:

I would venture to guess that one of every three or four openings in the Chicagoland area right now are South Asian in one form or the other. I would also venture to guess that two out of every three of these new South Asian restaurants are in the suburbs – both the Naperville and Schaumburg areas in particular. Interestingly enough Devon avenue or what some call “Little India” is only now starting to welcome all of these new spots to the block.

Speaking of Devon, two actors in the new play Dhaba on Devon Avenue, Arya Daire and Anish Jethmalanai, take WBEZ on a Devon tour:

Daire and Jethmalani head to Sukhadia’s for lunch. Just like their characters, the actors both relish South Asian food. At Sukhadia’s, Jethmalani encourages everyone to try one of his favorite dishes: dosa, a thin savory crepe filled with spicy potatoes.

Asked about her own go-to food, Daire offers something sweet. “Pistachio kulfi,” she said. “It’s a frozen dessert with pistachio and a cardamom spice. It tastes like home to me. My mom would keep them frozen in these silver cylinders. When I would go home for a visit, I would always check in the freezer to see if they were there.”

4. GET YOUR YAYA’S

Michael Nagrant goes to Cafe YaYa, from the team behind Galit, and zeroes in one of the things that wowed me—a labneh dip with chives:

Our server is funny, delivering a caramelized onion miso labneh dip by describing it as containing “an unnecessary amount of chives” (no such thing!). But this upper dining room at low capacity is dining Antarctica. It’s surgical theatre serious. Staff disappear for long stretches.

Foodwise YaYa is more casual than the Michelin-starred Galit but the eats do have a similar level of refinement, thoughtfulness, and execution.

The onion dip has the same velvet smoothness as Galit’s famous hummus and it’s capped with a glug of olive oil. Daisies’ homemade onion dip has been the gold standard for cheffed-up takes on boxed Lipton mix, but YaYa makes a serious run.

A strong sour and bitter complexity rounds out the top-level sweetness. After we cash the breadbasket, I scrape the bowl of dip clean with a tiny service spoon like I’m at a frozen yogurt kiosk going to town on free samples.

Not for the labneh alone (though it did inspire me to make a similar labneh dip for a get-together at my house), YaYa is one of my favorite openings of the year.

5. FEST OF FESTS

A burger fest, a vegetarian fest… Anthony Todd tells about four summer food fests that might be your thing.

WBEZ has a longer list of same.

6. GALE STORM

I went to Gale Street Inn once, years ago. A prime rib joint is not really my kind of restaurant, but I enjoyed its slice of old school dining, and also learned that there are some places where you do not need to order a second old-fashioned; one will do all you need. Anyway, the Jefferson Park spot is closing and its announcement sounds, well, weary and a bit ready to blame others:

With a sad but satisfied heart, we have closed our restaurant. Hiring and retaining quality staff has proven too tough for too long. We are tired of sucking, we have standards you know. But overworking our existing crew is not the answer. There are simply too many of you and not enough of us. Thank you to our current & past teams. Man what a run! Thank you to all of our guests for all of the years. To our vendors, thank you for delivering the goods, always. To the city of Chicago, we loved operating in the greatest food town on the planet. We will come up with a gift card plan and fill you in . There is no gracious way to close a retail business and we apologize for the inconveniences in advance.
We wish you all peace and love.

7. MOM AND DAD ARE FIGHTING

I’d like to see peace in our time between beloved local barbecue spot Smoque, and the Weber-Stephen company, makers of the ubqiuitous-in-Chicago Weber grill. But they’re fighting over Weber-Stephen’s attempt to trademark Smoque as part of the name of a new line of pellet smokers, Weber Smoque. The Sun-Times:

“We’ve spent the last 18 years building our brand — not just here in Chicago but also on a national level,” Barry Sorkin, co-owner of Smoque BBQ, said in a news release.

“It’s disappointing. We’ve always been fans of Weber and their products. We serve the same community of Chicago barbecue lovers — and to us, that shared connection means something. I would have hoped they’d show a little more respect for a local small business and a fellow Chicago BBQ brand.”

8. LETTUCE BEGIN

At NewCity, Cynthia Clampitt has a piece (which I’m quoted in) about how Lettuce Entertain You changed food culture in Chicago—and America—as it moves into the next generation under the Melman kids:

Talking with R.J., one can hear that the sense of fun as well as the creative spark have been passed along to the new generation. And it’s obvious that R.J. is a big fan of his dad. R.J. was hanging out in a restaurant kitchen by age six (the year his sister was born), was involved in the business by age fifteen or sixteen, and began cooking by seventeen. He pursued a degree in hotel and restaurant management, and in 2001, five days after graduating from college, he formally entered the family business as a sous chef. When he turned twenty-five, R.J. made the switch from cooking to management.

9. WINESOC

Natural wines are spawning new ways to talk about wine, Pete Ternes of Middlebrow tells Maggie Hennessy at Wine Enthusiast: 

The category’s growth has also come with a refreshing “dumbing down of winespeak,” as Ternes puts it. That often means saying “grape” instead of “varietal,” talking about the actual experience in the mouth (“prickly” or “puckering”) and deploying the oh-so-millennial tactic of placing it in an environment, à la fireside in an A-frame cabin in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Abstract or “hipster-speak” descriptors should be deployed with care, Ternes says: “just inside-baseball enough to get them to ask the server what the hell it means.”

10. REMEMBER FOOD TRUCKS?

It was 2012 or something, and food trucks were going to be the next thing, but they got blocked in various ways by people who thought taco trucks were going to hurt lunch businesses for steakhouses. Seems like another world, especially with COVID finding other ways to kill a lot of brick and mortar food business downtown in recent years, but there’s something to be said in taking a look back at such things, and so Eater, whose new design already looks like Obama-era Salon, takes us back to the days of Meatyballs and gastro wagons:

The law was riddled with problems for truck operators. Other than a few specified parking zones, trucks would not be permitted to park within 200 feet of any brick or mortar restaurant, including chains like 7-Eleven and Starbucks, severely handicapping where mobile business owners could set up. The city’s designated parking areas were also open to the public, not specifically held for trucks; if another car is parked in a designated spot (which is often the case), the food truck has no choice but to drive to the next location. Spots also had a two-hour limit for chefs, including prep and clean-up time, not leaving much time to serve customers. Steep fines awaited food truck operators in violation of the law, forcing many out of the game altogether.

There’s a spot for food trucks designated on Lincoln just north of Belmont, near my house, which I always laugh at, because no food truck has ever parked there, nor would one—there’s nothing nearby that has the population to make it worth a stop for a food truck.

11. LISTEN UP

Another new podcast: Joe Flamm, Top Chef winner and chef of Rose Mary and Il Carciofo, and another Top Chef alum, Adrienne Cheatham, a veteran of Marcus Samuelsson’s restaurants, who was runner-up to Flamm on Season 15 of Top Chef, have launched The Chef’s Cut. In the opening episode they talk about everything from Padma Lakshmi’s new show to chef horror stories.

Joiners talks to Mitch Gropman of Reddit’s r/chicagofood. The latter also just did an AMA (ask me anything) with the guys from Joiners.

The Dining Table talks with Won Kim (Kimski) about how the food scene in Bridgeport is changing.

Supper With Sylvia talks with influencers.

The Dish from Chicago Magazine talks summer patios and seasonal dining.