1. THE SANTA MASA CLAUSE

Michael Nagrant went to Santa Masa Tamaleria with his son:

My son hasn’t had any fresh tamales and tacos made from small-batch non-GMO masa sourced from Mexico as it is at Santa Masa. Which is to say my son has less of a frame of reference for some of their offerings. He is being guided solely by flavor and texture and still loves it. He likes to remind me now once a week since we visited, “Why don’t you take me to places like Santa Masa all the time?”

Well, I just took my (quite a bit older) son to Omarcito and got much the same reaction,  so they should do that next. Anyway, he liked the thing at the end of the menu that I said was my favorite:

If you can’t choose one, go for the “Santo”, a taco answer to Diner Grill’s Slinger, a gutbuster loaded with all the meats including the chorizo, the adobado, and silky barbacoa, the whole thing laced with a crispy cheese crust like a stoner’s dream.

2. TALE OF JOHNS

Louisa Chu writes a review of Johns Food and Wine, so of course there’s a lot about its business model (the no-servers, QR-code ordering thing), which it may have been a tactical error to allow to overshadow the food, which I quite liked. Anyway let’s look for the food, which starts in paragraph 10:

The gorgeous fried fish sandwich is one of the few items that’s remained on the menu by popular demand for good reason, even though the golden panko breaded branzino, piled high with a crisp caper and celery root slaw, breaks a restaurant rule with its kimchi ketchup. That rule says big-brand ketchup is always better than making your own, because we have flavor expectations.

Except at John’s.

They are, in fact, making their own ketchup, but they’re not making any kimchi at all.

Well, honestly that seems to have gone off on a tangent I am not particularly interested in—and to be honest it hardly matters, since the sandwich is weekends only. Read on:

The cherry glazed ribeye is their highest priced food item, and surprisingly high, compared with the rest of the neighborhood restaurant menu. But the 16-ounce, bone-in, cowgirl cut steak is just part of the story on an impressive plate that begs to be shown off and shared with the table. The lacquered ribeye, topped with a tangle of charred garlic scapes, scattered with gemstones rendered in lardo, rests on a fragrant allium jus. She is the moment. So thoroughly modern, but a bite with all those lovely elements reimagines a bordelaise. The traditional French wine sauce is still offered at steakhouses around the city, including Swift & Sons, where Rogers once worked.

I’m a bit baffled by “lardo-rendered gemstones”—that’s a metaphor, right? Right?—but we’re starting to get to what seems the crux of the nub:

We do know it’s tomato and corn season, though. The so-called market salad is really more of a peak pairing with jewel-toned heirloom tomatoes and ripe stone fruit, studded with walnuts, and a radiant gazpacho. The lovely house-made ricotta gnocchi bask in a corn and saffron puree with sautéed Sungold cherry tomatoes, pickled garlic and toasted croutons. The luminous summer tomato salad with whole peeled Sungolds and fat blackberries in ice-cold yuzu buttermilk could serve as a dessert.

Okay, that sounds pretty damned good, even for someone like me who is hardly tomato-deficient this time of year.

3. PARIS ETIQUETTE

Steve Dolinsky went to Bar Parisette:

It’s hard enough running an affordable restaurant in the city, but Bar Parisette in Logan Square is trying to appeal to the neighborhood with a combination of textbook bistro cooking and down-to-earth prices.

“I also think the approach that we take here is pretty different from other French restaurants that have opened or even that have been operating in Chicago for many years,” said Matthew Sussman, the Owner of Bar Parisette.

4. SCHRICEY BALLS

I keep meaning to try Amici, a place specializing in arancini (which apparently got a boost from some influencer recently), after I read about it at Titus Ruscitti’s blog. Now he takes to the pages of Chicago mag to get it some wider attention:

Try the Masalacino, filled with chicken tikka masala; the Birriacino, packed with beef birria; or the Jambacino, a recent addition made with sausage, shrimp, and seasoned rice that’s a fried version of spicy jambalaya. This global tour is fun, but my favorite is the original: the classic Italian arancino. Delivered hot from the fryer, it has a crisp golden exterior and a center filled with rich meat sauce, gooey melted mozzarella, and peas. It’s served with marinara sauce on the side for dipping every bite.

5. CHALK AND CHEESE

Dennis Lee recommends the chopped cheese, which is not exactly chopped nor cheese, at Bitter Pops:

If it sounds like a cheeseburger sub using the same soft and chewy French Turano rolls we commonly use here for Italian beef, well, that’s pretty much what Bitter Pops’ chopped cheese sandwich is. Don’t expect anything too fancy. But even though chopped cheeses are popular in New York City, they don’t seem to be much of a thing anywhere else, including Chicago, so to me, this is a fun treat.

6. NOT THAT CRACK

I’ve heard of Pookie Crack Cakes, and especially that it has a line out the door of its location on 47th street every morning, though the addictiveness is not where the name comes from—it refers to the fact that the bundt cakes crack as they cool, the easier to get the glaze to soak in:

If you get to Pookie Crack Cakes early enough, you’ll find a case full of small loaf cakes at the store’s entrance. There are at least eight flavors to choose from daily, including her signature, butter pecan praline, the cake that she says started it all. “That was the only flavor that I made for four years, from 2014 to 2018,” she reflects. She created an original recipe for the bundt cake but continues to use her great-grandmother’s glaze recipe to top it off. Along with the butter pecan praline, she also makes red velvet, strawberry lemonade, Chocolate Oreo Dream, caramel, key lime, and lemon cakes.

7. MUNSTER A-GO-GO

It’s still summer, so there’s every reason you can use Titus Ruscitti’s latest guide to things to eat in Northwest Indiana. He had me at Faulds Oven in this one:

Seeing as how Northwest Indiana is basically an extension of Chicago there’s alot of Pizza History in these parts. State Line Pizza is a mini chain with a few locations including the original in Hammond. It gets its name from its location on State Line Avenue separating Illinois and Indiana… State Line uses an old Fauld’s Oven which was a popular line of pizza ovens made in Chicago back in the day. Even though the company is no longer in service there’s still quite a few spots that rock an old Fauld’s oven. I met Bob, the pizzamaker, who’s been here for more than 30 years and he showed me a couple of bullet holes in the oven from an attempted robbery more than 30 years ago. I can usually tell if I’m going to like a tavern style pizza just by looking at it and I thought the pizza here looked good in a few of the pictures I saw. It looked thin and crisp and quite delicious and despite online reviews being a mixed bag I thought it was a pretty solid pizza. The sausage was flavorful, sauce not sweet and it had some of the crunchiest crust I can remember. Since 1957.

8. GATEWAY FOODS

When I interviewed David Hammond about his book on Chicago foods with Monica Eng, I asked him if any other midwestern burg had a comparable scene of locally prominent foods.  He thought not, but at NewCity he gives St. Louis a chance to make its case. Here’s fried ravioli:

Fried ravioli are likely to be meat-filled, though there’s no strict recipe here, and the ravioli squares are usually sprinkled with Parmesan and served with marinara sauce for dipping. As with so many city-original foods, the creation story behind this local favorite is uncertain, with several bars and restaurants claiming to be the place where it all began. Biting into a fried rav, you’re likely to flash upon Chicago’s own pizza puffs, which are just a larger version of the fried ravioli. It’s good drinking food.

9. IF IT’S GOOD, IT’S UNO MILAGRO

The Infatuation goes to 3 Little Pigs, which started as a takeout popup but now has a permanent-ish spot in Bridgeport:

Now, you order via kiosk at their permanent home in Bridgeport, which means you can get their char siu, pork fried rice, orange chicken, and lemon pepper fried chicken whenever you want. We recommend going after 5pm, when the incredible hot pot beef sandwich is available (it’s only on the dinner menu).

The Infatuation suddenly also has a bunch of classic taco joint reviews—I’m sure there’s a whole piece of the nine best places to get a taco or something like that. Anyway, many of them Fooditor readers will know, because they read this half a dozen years ago. But if you didn’t, you’ll want to know about Taqueria el Milagro, Gordillas, and others.

10. FEED THE FOMO

Artist Tony Fitzpatrick always seems like one of the cool guys; Lisa Shames reports on his weekly gathering of cool folks at Peanut Park Trattoria:

For the past two years, Fitzpatrick has been holding a weekly roundtable of sorts with a rotating group of old and new friends who break bread — and pizza and meatballs and house-made pastas — with him at the neighborhood Italian restaurant.

“This is a way for us post-COVID to check in with each other and make sure everybody is OK,” said Fitzpatrick, a Ukrainian Village resident. “We talk about politics and sports. We tell filthy jokes. It’s a place where you can sit around the table and there aren’t any word cops.”

11. RUN TO THE JEWELS

At WTTW, Daniel Hautzinger dives deep into the history of Chicago grocery stores.

Also at WTTW, Maggie Hennessy writes about 9/10ths-of-a-century-old Simon’s Tavern:

It feels like a brawny hug, like being embraced by the city’s whole egalitarian history, which sweeps me up the moment I enter joints like Rossi’s, Old Town Ale House, L&L Tavern, Skylark, and Simon’s Tavern. It smells like the familiar musk of stale beer mixed with bygone tobacco smoke smudged into the patinaed ceiling. It might squeak or stick a little, like a worn barstool or a decades-old mahogany bar. It sounds like a bartender who’s fluent in friendly banter but don’t take no s–t, and a well-stocked jukebox. You may even feel the presence of ghosts here, of union organizers, politicians, journalists, and immigrants; of marginalized and hard-up Chicagoans who’ve darkened this door and pounded its worn floors long before you, seeking community and a cold one to shake off a long day.

12. LAOCOÖN

Lahmacun is invariably referred to as Turkish pizza, but Sandwich Tribunal deals with that right at the start:

Lahmacun is a type of flatbread popular in Turkey, in Armenia, in Bulgaria, and many former Ottoman states. It is sometimes referred to as Turkish pizza–but I’m not sure that is an accurate analogy. As my Turkish friend Deniz put it to me recently:

“Lahmacun needs to be really thin. I think calling it Turkish pizza sets a weird expectation on the thickness. It’s not so much a flatbread or a pizza–it’s thin like filo pastry and should crack when you roll it.”

13. LISTEN UP

Joiners talks to Norman Fenton about Mexican tasting menu Cariño.

At Bon Appetit, a video about Indienne’s chef de partie, and the work that goes into the only Indian restaurant in Chicago with a Michelin star.

Pete Wells has a piece about why being a food critic today sucks (he just gave his gig at the NYT up), but you might find it more interesting to hear him talk about it at Food & Wine’s Tinfoil Swans podcast.