1. BOOK NEWS
First, if you want to read an actual physical magazine article about my book, Chicago mag’s issue with the first chapter (about Louis Szathmary) is on newsstands now, or in your mailbox if you subscribe.
I was guiltily on Car Con Carne with James Van Osdol. I say “guiltily” because I got to know James appearing on WGN Radio when he’d sub for whoever late at night to talk about my latest Thrillist list of Italian beef or whatever. Now I’m Mister Fancy Pants Fine Dining! We talked a bit about that parked outside Sun Wah; go here, or check your podcast app.
Then I was on WGN Radio’s morning show with Bob Sirott during their weekly food segment. Go here to hear it.
Next week, I’ll be on WGN TV at 9:40 am on Friday the 27th.
2. JUS PRIMAE NOCTIS
A 1965 movie called The War Lord, with Charlton Heston, has to do with the supposed pagan/Dark Ages custom (which historians apparently consider mostly fictional) by which a peasant girl getting married would have to give herself to the lord of the manor first. As a restaurant name, Warlord is starting to sound a little fitting, as the news about sexual harassment, which has been rumored for a couple of years (but publications could not get accusers on record), finally seems to be getting documented enough to be published. Block Club Chicago, finally breaking the story, nails it:
The star chef and co-owner of Warlord has, for years, abused women, shared nude photos of romantic partners without their consent and created a toxic work environment by berating staff at the acclaimed restaurant, multiple former employees and women said.
Warlord, 3198 N. Milwaukee Ave., opened in 2023 and took the local culinary scene by storm, with lines out the door and critics touting it as one of Chicago’s best restaurants. At the center was Trevor Fleming, one of its three co-owners and chefs, who worked at Warlord’s trademark hearth and appeared in writeups about the restaurant. But beneath that surface, Fleming was regularly engaging in sexual relationships with his employees; and he regularly berated staff in public, multiple former employees and ex-partners told Block Club Chicago.
…Now, Fleming’s co-owners, Emily Kraszyk and John Lupton, have “remove[d] him from the partnership,” the two said in a Wednesday statement to Block Club.
Belatedly, if you read the whole detailed story. Oh, and there’s news about another planned restaurant:
The news about Fleming comes as the team had planned a second restaurant concept, dubbed Lords, for 2803 W. Chicago Ave. in Humboldt Park. Its future is now in flux, though Fleming told Block Club Tuesday he plans to open a new restaurant regardless.
“It will be named Allegedly’s,” he said in an email, apparently poking fun at the allegations against him.
Meanwhile the Trib has a story on it too, chasing Fleming down at a hearing, and finding that the situation is as clear as mud:
One month after being charged with sharing sexually explicit images of a woman without her consent, chef and co-owner of Chicago restaurant Warlord says he is still attached to the business… Despite Fleming’s claim, Kraszyk and Lupton said they have removed him from Warlord.
3. FOODBALL BEEN BERRY BERRY GOOD TO ME
At Michael Nagrant’s The Hunger, he publishes a piece by Lisa Shames about the Reader’s Mike Sula’s Monday Night Foodball series, currently resident at Thattu, which gives aspiring chefs a place to pop up with their concepts. It’s one of the few things from COVID days that is still ongoing:
Since August 2021, Sula has been hosting Foodball, a Monday night food event spotlighting up-and-coming chefs, those with professional experience and — more often than not — those without. On March 2, Foodball celebrates its 200th event at its current location, Avondale’s Thattu. Not bad for a pop-up Sula initially thought would run for six weeks.
That’s where I found myself on a recent Monday night. While it was quiet at 5 p.m. when Foodball officially starts, it wouldn’t stay that way for long. Tonight’s kitchen guest was K-Tex BBQ from brothers Sam and Stephen Lee, who were serving their unique fusion of Texas-style smoked meats and Korean flavors. By 5:30 p.m., a line had formed for menu items like smoked brisket with fresh perilla leaf chimichurri, spareribs with a gochujang glaze and pulled pork topped with a Carolina-style jjangachi sauce. An hour-and-a-half later, K-Tex had sold out of the 70 or so portions they had prepared.
One interesting note: an upcoming Foodball will be with Won Kim of Kimski—which is where Thattu popped up during COVID on its way to a permanent opening. I do wonder, though, with the Reader switching to a monthly model, how that will affect the weekly events (I assume it will mostly maintain its online presence weekly, but I wonder what content that leaves for the monthly food section. We shall see!)
4. BUMBLES BOUNCE
Burl means a certain actor-singer of the 1950s and 1960s to me (“Mendacity!”) but now it’s also a restaurant in Evanston. Anthony Todd has more:
Burl is taking an approach that used to be common but has become somewhat less fashionable in recent years — a return to local, farm-focused food. The veggie side of the menu right now features carrots, beets, cabbage, and sweet potato, though don’t let that dissuade you, as the dishes, like beets with chocolate, quinoa, and apples or cabbage served with two kinds of mole and “crispy bits” all sound delicious. “It’s the honest way to cook,” says Carlin. “When you eat in a restaurant, I think that when you sit down you should know where in the world you are and what time of year it is. If you sit down at Burl right now, you think it’s winter in the Midwest.”
5. PROVISIONAL REPORT
Grimod takes another look at Cellar Door Provisions:
Cellar Door Provisions is special. Really, it’s an anomaly: a place one can enjoy a simple burger and a glass of natural wine or, if the mood strikes, engage with a kind of cookery that ranks among the city’s boldest. Like Elske, the eatery forms a friendly entry point to Chicago gastronomy that can get quite deep and quite serious rather quickly.
In fact, despite its à la carte model, I would place CDP in a peer group that includes Feld and Smyth. Yes, when one strips away all the finery that distinguishes a one- or three-Michelin-starred meal, the restaurant offers an affordable pathway toward an appreciation of the esoteric, hyperseasonal fare that unites these kitchens. But it’s actually wrong to imply a progression—a neat escalation of complexity and quality in accordance with Bibendum’s honors—from one concept to the next to another. In fact, CDP’s greatest virtue is that it collapses the Guide’s self-serving narrative and affirms that the stratifications of “fine dining” are not as firm as they might seem.
6. LIMA ALONE
Titus Ruscitti says that the only thing that interested him about going to Peru was the food scene in Lima. He also says that was a mistake:
Honestly I never had much interest in visiting Peru outside of going to Lima to eat, which is partly why it took me so long to get there. Most people go to Lima because they have to stop there before they go to Macchu Picchu or elsewhere. I was the opposite in that I wanted to go to Lima but didn’t have much interest in going to Cusco or elsewhere, that was a mistake. More on my mistake at the end of this post but for now I’m going to show and tell you why the people that use Lima as just a stop over are also making a mistake.
So for now a guide to what he ate in Lima, but more will be coming, it sounds like. Titus also has a piece in Chicago mag, well-timed to Lent: the best fish sandwiches in town. I was going to be shocked if the one at Omarcito’s wasn’t on there, and it’s the first one he mentions:
This offering at Omar Cadena’s Latin food stand is a crunch lover’s dream. He tucks crispy cornmeal-coated catfish doused in garlicky green sauce and a bright Ecuadorian salsa criolla made with onions, tomatoes, and cilantro between sweet golden fried plantains. This tangy sandwich raises the bar on what both fish sandwiches and jibaritos can be
7. SLIPPIN’ JIMMY
I know the last time I ate at Max’s, an old school hot dog spot in the Loop—a decade ago, my younger son and I went to see John Williams conducting his own music for things like Star Wars and Superman, and that was his choice for dinner. Well, Max’s is gone, replaced by Jimmy’s Gyros & Grill, as Nick Kindelsperger tells us:
You can’t go wrong with the Chicago-style hot dog. The snappy, all-beef hot dog is served on a pillow-soft bun — so miraculously squishy and warm you almost feel guilty taking a bite. It may lack poppyseeds, but that’s never been an issue for me. Plus, all the other Chicago-style toppings are accounted for, including a much-needed heavy shake of celery salt.
8. CARIBE
If you want Caribbean food in Chicago, you have to poke around distant neighborhoods north or south. But here’s a piece by WTTW’s Daniel Hautzinger about Spice by CMB, an Afro-Caribbean restaurant in Avondale which is gearing up for dinner:
Spice by CMB’s space at 2853 N. Kedzie Ave. has served as the base for Bonner’s CMB Catering since 2023 and has offered brunch on the weekend for a year, but the restaurant officially began dinner service this week. (Weekend brunch will continue.) Its menu reflects Bonner’s exploration of African-influenced dishes across the globe, from Ethiopia (berbere spiced roast chicken) to Guyana (braised short rib pepperpot) to the Carolinas (broken rice), following a transatlantic line that reflects the history of African slavery.
“As an African American chef, I didn’t want to get pigeonholed into just one genre of cuisine,” [Chef Mychael] Bonner says of his early years in the restaurant industry. His mother and grandmother both cooked professionally in Memphis and at an Italian restaurant in Indiana, and he himself spent much of his career in Italian restaurants. “I don’t want to be known [as] the chef that cooks great fried chicken [or] shrimp and grits. I also wanted to show that we have a lot more range than that.”
9. CAMBODIAN-CHINESE-AMERICAN
If you’ve been to Ethan Lim’s Hermosa, you probably have at least run across the fact that it’s just one outpost of a Cambodian-American restaurant family, including Googoo’s Table next door (run by Ethan’s sister). Kevin Pang meets the family and talks about their mini-empire:
The Lim family is ethnically Chinese, but settled in Cambodia in the early 20th century. The menus at Kim Long and sister restaurant Googoo’s Table, located at 4356 West Armitage Avenue, reflect the Lim’s heritage. You can find fan favorite Chinese-American classics here (orange chicken, Mongolian beef, egg rolls), but less well-known are the Cambodian dishes. You just have to know where to look.
Many of these Cambodian dishes are powered by an herbs paste called kroeung: galangal, lemongrass, lime leaves, among them. Fried in a sizzling wok with chicken (at Kim Long it’s deceptively titled “Spicy Chicken”), it’s a vegetable stir-fry with a spicy, sour, savory flavor, immediately identified with Southeast Asian flavors.
10. WHITHER FOOD HALLS?
Maggie Hennessy at WBEZ on what the future holds for food halls, in the wake of Time Out Market’s closing:
Despite the headwinds of hybrid work and the prevailingly less-than-cool image of the Loop, a few stronger currents still favor the concept. Office tenancy is creeping back up, and coworkers want compelling lunch options and perhaps some wallet-friendly social connections before heading home. Such spaces also remain incubators for promising concepts and are getting more savvy about marketing themselves to tourists, who appreciate local options close to the sights without the hassle of booking tables.
Success may look a little different now, and it’s up to the operators to lean in.
11. THAT GREAT STREET
At Crain’s, Ari Bendersky makes a case for Chicago Avenue being the most interesting dining street in town—again:
In 2019, we made the argument that Chicago Avenue — between Noble Street and California Avenue — is probably the best two-mile dining stretch in the city. You had mainstays like Cafe Central on the east end and Shokolad just west of Western Avenue, mingling alongside hot new restaurants like Bar Biscay and Funkenhausen. The street had a palpable energy that seemed like it would continue rising.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic shut everything down and many of those restaurants closed for good. Today, that vibrancy is back as more places including Brasero, Omakase Shoji and Michelin-starred Feld have opened, drawing even more diners to this West Town stretch.
12. EATER ALMOST EATEN ALL UP
Robert Moss does a mostly barbecue newsletter but has been a reviewer in Charleston. He has a piece this week on the latest news of Eater’s ongoing disappearance—shutting down Eater Carolinas and laying off Eater’s Southern editor, Etin Perkins. The names won’t mean much in Chicago, but I think it’s a perceptive piece about what’s happening in food media in 2026. A taste (but read the whole thing):
I used to chuckle each time Eater Charleston ran a short digest of one of my City Paper reviews not long after they published on Wednesdays. They didn’t use the slogan “we read this review so you don’t have to,” but they really should have.
I don’t mean this facetiously, either. Eater Carolinas served as a bridge between the era when I got started in food media and the era we are in today. The fact that it ran digests of restaurant reviews from other publications amused me at the time, but in retrospect it was harbinger of things to come, revealing the central truth about old-school restaurant reviews: very few people actually wanted to read the damned things.
Hey, I want you to read them! I’m not pointing to the reviewers who are left to discourage you from reading them, but to be part of a bigger conversation. I hope.
13. LISTEN UP
Joiners talks to Debbie Sharpe, who used to do catering for rock bands and then had Confusion in Wicker Park and now The Goddess and Grocer.
Dish from Chicago magazine talks about John Kessler’s review of Nadu. and to Titus Ruscitti about fish sandwiches.