COME TO THE PARTY!
You’re invited to the launch party for The Chicago Way, at LouLou by Lula, their event space at 3057 W. Logan Blvd. It’s Tuesday, February 3 at 6 pm for meet and greet and canapés, and then at 7 pm we’ll have a Q&A between me and the legendary Steve Dolinsky. Books will be for sale courtesy of City Lit Books, and I’ll be signing any and all copies guests have. Thanks to Jason Hammel and LouLou for hosting us, and see you there!
And the book got its first local press—of a sort. Crain’s Ally Marotti did a piece on the effect on Michelin’s credibility as they expand, often paid to play, to different cities and called me for comment, which I provided—and she kindly credited me as “longtime Chicago food journalist and author of the upcoming book ‘The Chicago Way: An Oral History of Chicago Dining.'” More like that to come…
1. THIS MONTH IS RESTAURANT WEEK
It feels like Restaurant Week, once it happens, never ends. Anthony Todd, an old hand at scouting out what’s worth it, tells all at Chicago mag:
It’s almost Restaurant Week, which means that reservations are filling up at some of Chicago’s most popular restaurants. Held January 23 through February 8, the event features $30 lunch menus and $45 or $60 dinner menus. As regular readers know, I’ve often been skeptical of Restaurant Week; restaurants are often overcrowded, the menu options are limited, and the supposed savings don’t always materialize. However, if you know what to look for, there are bargains to be found. Here are four picks.
2. SUCK IT UP
Three shorter reviews at the Tribune. Lauryn Azu on Buttercup, an all-day cafe in the South Loop:
From its dayside menu of pastries from Naperville’s Sparrow Coffee, I was most impressed with the ham and cheese croissant ($9). Catalpa Grove ham and Gruyere cheese are enclosed by layers of crispy flaky dough and garlic, onion, and Maldon flaky salt top a delightful cheese crust. Definitely get it warmed up, and come early before they sell out.
Then to Kanin for longanisa spam musubi, by Kayla Samoy:
It’s the perfect balance of sweet and savory, reminding me of breakfasts with family around steaming platters of longsilog, a popular Filipino breakfast of longanisa, sinangag (fried rice) and itlog (fried egg).
Finally, Sujan Sarkar’s Nadu, by Zareen Syed:
The real sleeper surprise was the paneer ghotala, which we had a la carte. It was a true “you had to be there” bite — difficult to capture in words how buttery, cheesy, warm, spoonable, spreadable, magical it was. But this is what the menu says: “Crumbled paneer cooked with tomato, onion and young garlic. Layered with creamy Amul cheese, served alongside buttery ladi pav.” Amul cheese is the Indian version of American cheese, with the same devilishly delicious melting capabilities.
3. 99 44/100% PURA
I saw the name Dixie Pura—a new African-American restaurant meets Asian restaurant, in Bronzeville—a week or so ago. Now here’s a Reader piece on it and the woman behind it, Chloe Gould:
She opened DixiePura Kitchen at 325 E. Pershing on October 18. There, Gould combines southern ingredients with Asian flavors to create what she defines as “American southern–southeast Asian” cuisine. She calls herself a “food translator” because her style is influenced by her south-side upbringing, family ties to Mississippi, and time teaching collegiate culinary classes in Singapore. Gould serves salmon croquettes, southern curry chicken satay, and pan-fried dijon miso catfish, among other items.
Becoming an award-winning chef and opening a restaurant required grit; Gould has battled mental health challenges, family loss, and kidney disease over the last decade.
4. THIRD SPACE WORLD
Mona Tong at Mona’s Tongue has an end of year best-of list devoted to cafes and the things served in them, along with sketches of things she had. It was a good year for what she calls “fusion croissants” in particular:
From Filipino longanisa croissants to Mexican mole croissants, I don’t know what to call these creations other than “fusion” croissants, made by pastry chefs of color melding flavors from their culture with the traditional French pastry. They’ve been all the rage in 2025, with new hyped up bakeries/cafés like Del Sur and Daeji Dough Co. opening to long lines and quick sell outs. I ate and enjoyed many them in 2025 (which are highlighted below), but at the same time, it makes me think about the politics of trendy, “fusion” food.
Writer Navneet Alang writes that part of esteemed Persian chef Samrin Nosrat’s success in white-centric food spaces comes from her ability to “make comprehensible to the mainstream the assumed difference of minorities and the places and cultures they come from…[which is] indicative of the way in which minorities must contort themselves to ever have any power: they have to manifest it in ways recognizable to those who hold it.” I see “fusion” croissants as an example of this theory: oftentimes, non-Western ingredients and flavors are only seen as cool or worth paying for when translated or “contorted” through Western tastes and branding (i.e. through the French croissant).
Or, maybe people today like a lot of things, like the texture of a croissant and the flavors of their own heritage, and felt like mixing it up with their own creativity. I think you can think too hard about that and who’s “allowed” to eat or make things. Anyway, it’s a good list of things to try.
5. A MOMENTARY LOSS OF MUSCULAR COORDINATION
The Infatuation’s review touts Momento Cantina as “some of the neighborhood’s best Mexican food.” Given that the neighorhood is the Loop, that’s kind of a tallest dwarf sort of situation. But anyway:
The highlight of Momento is their fluffy, freshly made corn tortillas. They’re the perfect foundation for tostadas supporting a mountain of tuna or tacos drizzled in red salsa, loaded with charred octopus or birria. We also like the warm blue disks when accompanying a whole fish topped with zarandeado sauce, plantains, and guacamole.
6. MOMOENTO
If you’re not eating tacos in the Loop, you should have momos, the Nepalese dumplings, at KTM Kitchen, says Nick Kindelsperger:
Start with the momos, the traditional dumplings of Nepal. Adorable little pockets of dough are stuffed with either a chicken or a vegetable mixture, and then sealed up precisely with a series of neat pleats.
You can get the momos simply steamed with a side of tomato sauce or bathed in a chili sauce. But I recommend getting them in a pool of phul, a lentil dish that, thanks to a bevy of aromatic spices, is part soup, part sauce.
7. LSMFT PIZZA
Go out in the countryside and you’ll find things like BLT pizza. Maybe it’s just being bored in a small place that makes people come up with stuff like this, who knows. Dennis Lee wants more after he had it in Plymouth, Wisconsin:
First of all, the base pizza at Dino’s is excellent. As in, any pizzeria in Chicago would be proud to serve this pizza. Though we Chicagoans proudly associate tavern-style with the city, it’s more of a wider regional Midwestern thing, as lots of mom-and-pops serve it in surrounding states too, including Wisconsin. But the real detail I’d like to point out here is the BLT topping. I’m not sure where the invisible border begins, but BLT pizzas are just not a thing in Chicago.
Up in Wisconsin, they’re pretty easy to find as a standard topping option, and though the idea of mayo on a hot pizza might sound off-putting, I’ll be the first person to tell you it’s actually glorious. There’s something about the combination of hot pizza, cold veggies, and rich mayo that just seems to work perfectly in the fleeting moment, and after being a skeptic from before I met Davida, I’m now a full-on believer.
8. OXHEART & BOATSWAIN
That was a parody name I came up with years ago for a Longman & Eagle type restaurant. Anyway, Michael Nagrant went to Ox Bow & Hearth right when I did, and compares it to Warlord, which never occurred to me, but there is that open fire:
It feels like a best effort, a personal and homey one, a Danish “hygge-serving” McMansion version of Warlord where [Alain] Uy and [John] Asbaty are doing it their way in between two roaring fireplaces, a literal one, and a custom-built kitchen oven, aka the hearth.
…If anything at OBH is exactly channeling of Warlord, beyond its thick juicy burger with beef-fat dipped wedge fries so crisp they likely tumble Colonel Sanders’ corpse in its current Louisville crypt out of jealousy, it’s the restaurant’s marquee, an oxblood neon beckoning like a strip club or a sketchy hotel.
9. VEG OUT
A bunch of vegetarian/vegan restaurants closed recently; maybe coincidence but the Trib looks to see if there’s a trend behind the closings:
[Chicago Diner owner Michael] Hornick said part of it was the lingering impact of COVID-19 on sales, which have tripled since the pandemic but customers are spending less overall, especially on things like alcohol. That and general economic woes, coupled with the logistical challenges of limited parking along Milwaukee Avenue’s protected bike lanes, made for a situation hard to bounce back from, he said, noting a guest who complained that it took him 25 minutes just to find parking to pick up a to-go order.
Okay, but why would that affect vegan restaurants in particular?
Part of why all-vegan restaurants are struggling is because plant-based food is everywhere now, offered Sam Toia, president of the Illinois Restaurant Association.
“An all-vegan restaurant no longer holds the same necessity as it once did,” Toia said. “I think a lot of mainstream restaurants throughout Chicago have put vegan options on their menu, and that might have been what hurt some of the specialty vegan restaurants, because a lot of people could go anywhere now.”
10. FOIE AROUND AND FIND OUT
You see stories about anti-semitic attacks on Israeli-linked food businesses—like the Jewish bakery in New York whose staff unionized so they’d have legal union protections for their effort to pressure the business to renounce Israeli ties, or in London where it seems like Jewish businesses can’t avoid noisy, bordering on violent protesters. Chicago has been thankfully free of such odious politicization of Jewish businesses—but maybe not for long.
Reddit has a post about foie gras protesters targeting Galit, the Israeli-themed restaurant in Lincoln Park. Is that because it’s Jewish? Maybe not—they reportedly previously protested now-closed Les Nomades—but it is funny that with foie gras all over town (I just had it at Ox Bar, and could have had it at Le Mistral if I’d wanted), they pick a non-French restaurant to single out. As one commenter says:
Let’s just say it out loud: many many restaurants in Chicago serve Foie Gras. Everyone else gets a pass for serving it, but the Jewish AND Arab owned restaurant is targetted! Cmon.
Not a good look.
11. LISTEN UP
Joiners talks to James Sanders, of Sanders BBQ Supply.
The Dish from Chicago magazine talks about 2026 food trends.
There was news this week about Beverly Kim and Johnny Clark opening a restaurant in Evanston—but that’s not the hot new restaurant in Evanston that The Dining Table talks about; this one’s called Burl.
WHAT MIKE ATE
Stephen Gillanders had so much going on last year, I didn’t know where to start. There’s a new S.K.Y. and a new Valhalla? And a dessert place for pastry chef Tatum Sinclair? Well, the last is still pending, but S.K.Y. opened—in the former Ambria/L20/Intro space, where Gillanders’ Chicago career began. That space has a second space attached to it—I wrote about an earlier resident here—and now it’s a cocktail and wine bar called Le Mistral, under Gillanders’ sommelier, Jelena Prodan.
Compared to the handsome, cavernous L2o space, Le Mistral is snug, a little rough-edged (I joked to a friend that it had the feel of a pizza parlor’s basement), and comfy. There’s not a lot to say about the food specific to Le Mistral—you can order off the S.K.Y. menu, and that’s what we did. I recognized a lot of dishes that have been on the S.K.Y. menu since it first opened—the lobster ravioli, the hamachi sashimi with black sesame seeds, the fried chicken with habanero sauce—so I made a point of trying things that were new. I was intrigued by lumpia with tuna tartare—which seems impossible, since you have to fry the lumpia, but sure enough the shells were fried and then stuffed with the raw, seasoned tuna. Shrimp and crab summer rolls, with a nam pla dipping sauce; Thai grilled pork belly salad, with some rather tough chunks of pork belly meat, but a nice mix of crunchy fried vegetables and, again, nam pla vinaigrette; and the one thing we’d ordered in the past, stone bowl bibimbap, which you could order with foie gras, but we didn’t—some chunks of avocado in it gave it the lushness the foie would have provided. So, more in the way of Asian flavors and dishes than we’d had at S.K.Y. in the past, but a nice collection of Asian dishes lightly upscaled. Act II of S.K.Y.—the S.K.Y. complex, I guess you could call it, since this is a second bar/restaurant within the space—seems to be off to a good start.
Sarima Cafe is yet another restaurant from Zubair Mohajir of Coach House, Mirra, etc. etc., several of which were reviewed last week by the Tribune. I popped over there for breakfast this week, to the space in Wicker park which it shares with a burger chain called Salt Burger + Fries. Anyway, looking over the offerings they had a lot of doughnuts tinged with Asian flavors, so I ordered a pandan doughnut. I’ve had pandan a number of times, and I can’t say it particularly has a notable flavor, so it was sort of like ordering a doughnut with green-colored frosting—not that interesting. Too bad; but I also ordered a vegetable kathi roll, which rolled egg, cheese and some kale cooked in a vinegary pot likker. I really liked this—it had the satisfaction of a breakfast burrito without too much extraneous stuff (beans, rice, whatever) going on. So check it out; I’m glad I braved the parking situation in Wicker Park to try it out.