1. BOOK NEWS

There will be news soon about more The Chicago Way events, but in the meantime, the event with the Old Town Triangle Association on Thursday the 30th still has space available; I’ll also have books to sign and sell, so come by (it’s free) and get an autographed one (admittedly, not free)! Go here to learn more and register.

2. LITTLE EDIE

At Chicago mag, John Kessler checks out Jenner Tomaska’s Petite Edith, starting at the bar:

There are so many delightful bites to snack on that you may never want to continue on to a full dinner. Cold peeled shrimp with burnt lemon Dijonnaise made me rethink my allegiance to cocktail sauce. Wonderful conserved mussels with olives and merguez on a brochette arrive with a scattering with crispy chickpeas. A leek tart turns out to be a gorgeous, flaky puff pastry propped against a frisée salad. I’d kill to have this for lunch.

Every dish is lovely to look at, though many are quite busy. Is it excess or bravura? That’s your call. I know diners go nuts for the pain au fromage, a kind of three-cheese goopfest baked into a split baguette and topped with pomegranate arils, herbs, and slashes of pomegranate molasses. But it gives me Ladies’ Home Journal vibes. The Edith salad with bitter greens, apples, and green beans is cold, bracing, and feathery-crisp but is marred by too many candied spiced walnuts. There were at least three dozen, enough to fuel a bridge party of Southern ladies through two rounds of cocktails before luncheon. The surf clams casino looks smashing — a six-inch shell glazed with golden breadcrumbs — but is extremely redolent of the promised peach and saffron.

3. THEY OFTEN CALL ME SEEDO’S

Everything I know about new lunches in the Loop, I learn from Nick Kindelsperger’s Nick in the Loop newsletter, and that’s how I heard of Seedo’s Levantine Bakery, a middle eastern coffee and sandwich shop which now has two locations. Apart from a mixup (they have two “sandweeches” with cold cuts, pasterma or pastrami, and turkey; I ordered the former but somehow got the latter) I enjoyed it on the fresh-baked manakeesh, or flatbread. Louisa Chu reviews it in the Trib:

“I pull from different parts of the Levantine world,” said founder Mutaz Abdullah, specifying Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. “And a lot from Palestine, because that’s where my grandfather was from.”

Seedo means grandfather or, more endearingly, grandpa, in the Palestinian Arabic dialect. His maternal grandfather, Juma Rashed, also owned bakeries in his home country, and later in Jordan when he was displaced by the 1948 Palestine war.

The bakery debuted with a stall at Sterling Food Hall in 2025 and opened a cafe near Madison and Wells in January, establishing two locations in the Loop within a year. Abdullah also co-founded Hot Chi, the Chicago-style Nashville fried chicken mini-chain, with his brother. They grew up in their father’s restaurant, the beloved Cedars of Lebanon in Hyde Park, now known simply as Cedars.

4. FELD MIRE

There isn’t anything wrong with Feld, I just had the urge to make a pun about the chef of Noah Sandoval’s new place (this guy). Anyway, if there’s a place right now that rewards Grimod’s month-by-month obsessive reviewing, it’s Feld, which changes its menu—and its products—week by week:

18 months in, Feld was firing on all cylinders and actualizing everything that the format, even in its darkest days, promised. Now that the concept is closing in on two years of operation, I can only ask: just how high is Potashnick’s ceiling? How much better can what is already one of the city’s best restaurants, being so committed to perpetual reinvention, still get?

The thing about such an ambitious process—whether meaningfully rooted in “relationships” or just passionate about sourcing—is that it builds and deepens with each season: with the fruits of preservation, the development of a canon, and the honing of a team (the chef included) that is young and talented. Further growth seems inevitable, yet managing the missteps that come with errant experimentation also forms part of the equation.

5. CREEPIES CRAWL

Titus Ruscitti went to everyone’s favorite, Creepies. Here’s a good example of the unusual things this place, typed as French meets midwestern, does:

Next up was a surprise gift from the kitchen in the form of a freekeh crepe with artichoke, spring onion, and fromage blanc. I had to look up what freekeh was and it’s a roasted grain made of young green durum wheat that originated in the ancient cuisines of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. The Freekeh crepe at Creepies is a textural masterpiece that crackles when cut into. I loved the mix of ingredients inside as this dish had a very distinct Parisian taste. It was pretty great. They seem to be using the crepe as a way to showcase seasonal flavors so I’ll be keeping my eye on what’s next.

6. IT’S A THUMPER

Michael Nagrant goes to Bar Bambi, from Katie Renshaw of Billy Sunday, GreenRiver, etc.:

The bar’s output spans from classics to experimentals. Everything I tried was delicious.

Classics are still riffs, like a take on the sazerac called The Secret Handshake which takes what is usually a rich anise-tinged elixir and brightens the whole thing up with a lilt of cherry vinegar punch. Cognac adds a golden roundness to the spiciness of rye, and the Nutella candy bar crisp on top is a killer post quaff treat. The garnish game at Bambi is strong.

…Renshaw’s “Context Clues” billed as a “dirty martini x highball” might be the closest to what I’m seeking yet. Gin and apple brandy spiked with celery brine and coriander, it’s a fizzy bubbly silky bodied martini with the right salty touch. I expect to kill many of these over the coming years.

7. AMANDE BE RECKONED WITH

Within a few hours on Monday, I had two people telling me about a dessert shop in Albany Park, Amande Dessert. One was my friend Michael Morowitz, and the other was Dennis Lee in The Party Cut, who heard about it from someone on Instagram:

The specialty dessert that my Instagram friend wanted me to try is Amande’s Basque cheesecake.

This is that style of crustless cheesecake that looks as if it’s spent 10 hours too long in the tanning bed. That burnished color and its simplicity might make it seem as if this style of cheesecake has very old roots, but the truth is, Basque cheesecakes were invented in San Sebastián in 1988 at a restaurant called La Viña.

I too spent some time chatting with the husband of the husband and wife team, Viktor and Valeriia, who are from Ukraine, and he walked me through everything—a row of plump macarons in various flavors, several flavors of Basque cheesecake (the creamy chocolate one is pretty glorious), and some other desserts like tres leche and panna cotta. The latter are his work but the star attractions are all hers. (Ironically, nothing is Ukrainian that I could see.) That’s what they make today, but they’re working on other things, and about to start offering coffee (they have a shiny new espresso machine, but when someone came in to order from it, Viktor had to admit they’re still learning how to operate it). Anyway, it’s an adorable little shop tucked into a row of storefronts on Kimball just north of Montrose, go there and have a macaron or a slice of Basque cake, and watch them grow.

8. YOU WILL SPEAK EASY

Kevin Pang finds a barbershop in Highland Park which has a Russian-themed speakeasy, Yana’s, in the back—all because of COVID:

The date: March 2020.

In the subsequent months, [owner Yana] Khernburg would be offering private haircuts to clients, many of whom were Eastern European and Russian. As a joke, Khernburg suggested they swig vodka while getting trimmed—it’s probably as effective as any sanitizer.

Soon, customers were bringing bottles of vodka to their haircuts, and leaving the bottles there as a thank-you to Khernburg. Before long, she had a stockpile of liquor.

9. DA LOCAL NORTH SHORE BOY

In other Kevin Pang news, he also just contributed an updated 25 best restaurants in Chicago list to the New York Times. Da Local Boy, Pang’s favorite Hawaiian place in north suburban Highwood, made the list, and you know what? It’s perfectly fine! I would go there again, if I found myself in Highwood!

Anyway, Lisa Shames has a piece on it for Block Club, including a new location in the Loop:

Traditionally served on roadside rotisseries in Hawaii, Da Local Boy’s huli huli chicken is made with boneless chicken thighs. Domingo keeps the skin on for texture, he said.

For mochiko chicken, sweet rice flour encases bite-sized poultry pieces creating a soft yet crunchy texture after frying. It’s tossed in a sweet and savory sauce and topped with a kicky wasabi aioli.

As a self-described “water man” who used to catch his own fish in Hawaii, Domingo is picky about the fish he uses for poke, including for Da Local Boy’s popular nachos, made with wonton chips, marinated tuna, avocado, cucumber, cilantro and furikake.

10. ADJUST THE GAGE

There’s a new Boka restaurant opening in the Cherry Circle Room space on Michigan Avenue—a long ways from what the strip along there used to be, when the fanciest dining was probably a Bennigan’s. The turnaround probably began with The Gage, and Nick Kindelsperger blows his Loop dining budget there:

The cheapest entrees are in the high $20s, and quickly leapfrog into the $40s and $50s, while the steaks reside comfortably in the $70s.

But after returning to The Gage twice in the past month, I now realize that while you’ll pay for the convenience, you also get something far more important. You get hospitality.

11. THE INFLATION

I was talking with a friend about how The Infatuation’s ratings all seemed to be in the 7s at one time, but now they’re all in the 8s—are we just in a golden age, or is it grade inflation? I know which I suspect, but it makes it hard to really judge things when almost everybody seems to be sure to get between 8.0 and 8.2.

I bring this up only because Nordic-Japanese Atsumeru got an 8.5:

Some restaurants scream their personality with a very distinct design, decor, and soundtrack. Atsumeru, on the other hand, is like the quiet person you meet at a party—the one whose charm doesn’t hit until you’ve really spent time with them. And you’ll be wanting to hang out with Atsumeru even more by dessert, when their signature milk and pine course shows up. It’s Atsumeru’s personality on full display: a singular dish from a true one-of-one spot.

That’s quite thoughtful for the usually straining-to-be-hip Infatuation.

12. AL-ITALIAN

A million years ago, on the LTHForum Western-a-thon, the last few stragglers arrived at the north end of Western and went into an Indian restaurant near Devon. (Not Khan BBQ, it was still further west on Devon, though it could have been the same space where Khan is now.) Anyway, next to it was Italian Express, a halal Italian restaurant; we briefly considered seeing what halal Italian was like but having eaten at 20 or 30 places that day, it seemed a bit much—I find these hybrid places for South Asian customers interesting as a cultural phenomenon (the Khan space was also a Muslim Chinese spot at one time) but honestly, I’ve never had food in one that I can recall that was genuinely good Chinese food, say, as opposed to good enough for its audience. But hey, they serve their audience; any family with teens in America is going to need a place to get pizza and pasta.

Anyway, Italian Express is still going, just celebrated its 40th anniversary, and the Trib’s Zareen Syed has a piece on its pioneering fusion cuisine:

[Jamila Ismail]’s late husband, Mohammed Ismail, bought the original Italian Express in 1986 in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood from a family known for making cacciatore, primavera and chicken Vesuvio.

…nothing was halal yet. In 1990, they officially started serving halal Italian American food.

​“When I think back to when we were just settling in America and now that we are open for 40 years, bohot kuch dil mein hai, bohot yaadein,” she said, mixing Urdu and English as many first-generation immigrants do. There is a lot in my heart, a lot of memories.​

The halal iteration of Italian Express is widely considered the first fast-food restaurant to use halal meat in all of Chicagoland, said Omar Ali, treasurer and founding board member of the Illinois Muslim Chamber of Commerce.

13. ALL IS ALL

For Eater, Lisa Shames (again!) talks to Larry Feldmeier and Noah Sandoval about All Well, the new all-day cafe thing in the West Loop opening this week:

16. GIMME SOME BREAD

The piece everybody’s talking about this week is a piece about who has the best free bread in a restaurant, by Caity Weaver in The Atlantic. Partly it’s about what it’s about, but it also seems a comment on the obsessive madness and excess of food writing, especially when it comes to something that seems trivial:

Here is the promise you and I must cling to across the thousands of words that follow: At some point within this text, I will reveal to you what—after 555 responses, 13,000 miles of travel, and months of monomaniacal research—I have determined to be the best free restaurant bread in America. I will not attempt to slither to the moral high ground, arguing that best is a meaningless measure, or insisting that all bread is dear in its own way. Even if you attempt to betray me—for instance, by merely scanning the text that follows for the phrase Here it is: the best free restaurant bread in America—I will uphold my end of the bargain.

To read the whole thing for free, go to this tweet by Weaver and follow its link.

17. LISTEN UP

The Dining Table talks to Kevin Pang about the latest version of his NY Times list.

Joiners talks to Sujan Sarkar of Indienne, Nadu, etc.

Chicago mag’s dining crew is working on an upcoming Best Restaurants (not Best New Restaurants) iwssue, and John Kessler and Amy Cavanaugh talk about places they’ve been back to for it at The Dish from Chicago Magazine.

The Chef’s Cut talks about Michelin spreading (thin?) across the country.

WHAT MIKE ATE

I feel like I’ve already talked a lot about what I’ve eaten, but here’s one more, the one in this week’s photo: Teranga, a Senegalese restaurant in Edgewater. I don’t know a lot about African food, let alone region by region, but I will say that one thing I immediately noticed—the spices were expertly bloomed. Somebody in the kitchen knows what they’re doing, and between that and a reference to working on the south side on the menu, I guessed that they came out of Yassa, a Senegalese restaurant in Hyde Park. We were chatting with the owner, and I asked about a connection to Yassa—and yes, he said, he had managed it for nine years. So, a nice place with interesting offerings (I had a drink based on baobab juice, certainly not something I’ve ever had before) and worth exploring further. Check it out!