1. BABY IT’S LISTICLED OUTSIDE

Well, it’s a light week for food news, I could have taken another holiday week off. But we’ll see what we can turn up. At least I can point to a new place to eat.

Michael Nagrant offers his best dishes from 2025, and doesn’t mind naming multiple bites from the same restaurant, so four come from Creepies, like the cheese-stuffed gougeres:

If I had to choose one dish to end my time on this mortal coil, it might be Creepies’ gougeres rife with drippy brie and licked with local honey. Savory, salty and sweet, we ordered a second batch immediately after killing the first.

Ari Bendersky did a best things I’ve eaten list in June, so here’s one for the second half of the year. With so little reviewing acreage devoted to new tasting menus not named Feld, I was glad to see his account of Class Act:

The menu changes a few times a year, but you can expect riffs on themes. Our dinner was based on Growing Up, recalling dishes from throughout Mlodinow’s youth in Los Angeles. We had blackened seafood, “scrimps,” soup that was “not Campbell’s,” super fancy quesadillas topped with caviar and shaved black truffles, elevated tacos, and more. Whatever you think these dishes are, think again. Make it luxe, make it fragrant and expressive, make it layered and sexy.

The Tribune’s (remaining?) food writers list 25 top things they ate; I went looking past the expected Pizz’amicis and that Mexican Everything bagel they went gaga for a few weeks ago, and looked for things I’d never heard of, like the “paratha smash burger” at some place called Cafe Bethak in Lombard or the pink honey pie at a pop-up called Blame Butter (there’s a lot of popups on this list, oddly).

Maggie Hennessy and Ximena N. Beltran Quan Xu have a 16 best eats of ’25 at WBEZ, beginning with a throat-clearing slam on the dining scene:

One wouldn’t call Chicago’s latest spate of new restaurants thrilling. Opulent? Sure. Nostalgic, meat-centric and conceptually risk-averse? Remarkably.

Every week of 2025 seemed to deliver a splashy new steakhouse or sleek sushi spot, bistro, pizza joint or trattoria. Some proffered uncommon delights, including an omakase’s chocolate, honey and sobacha dessert bordering on mystical; a pizza tavern’s giardiniera dip so creamy good we didn’t bother sharing; and neobistro gnocchi that tasted like a smothered Croque Madame.

2. MIRRA MIRRA, BURNING BRIGHT

Louisa Chu reviews Mirra, Lilac Tiger and Sarima, all spots from chef-owner Zubair Mohajir. Mirra gets the best review, at 3.5 stars:

“India meets Mexico in a crossroads cuisine,” said [chef Rishi] Kumar. “Both cultures cook from a cultural standpoint, be it religion, or where they were growing things before creating a cuisine.”

Mirra, the restaurant, opened in August 2024 and began creating its own culture and cuisine.

The impeccable crispy taco with pristine bay scallops in a feathery roti shell may be the restaurant’s most emblematic dish.

“We take fenugreek roti and punch it out and make mini crispy taco shells,” said Kumar. “And raw scallops, chopped, marinated with nopales pico de gallo and a touch of dehydrated lemongrass powder.”

They’re finished with a piped coconut fluid gel and Mexican green curry emulsion.

“No visit to Mirra is complete without eating a crispy taco,” said the chef. He eats one every day for quality control.

3. CABO SANS FREEZING

As I write this it is cold as… insert obscene description here, so I am happy to see Titus Ruscitti’s round up of where to go in Cabo San Lucas:

For as much as I love Mexico I never had much interest in visiting Cabo San Lucas but friends come before food so I made my way there to celebrate the marriage of an old friend last March. With Cabo being a big time resort city it’s more-so known for its beaches, water based activities and nightlife than it is for its food. But it’s still Mexico and it’s also in Baja which has an incredible food culture thus there’s still good food to be found for those willing to leave the resorts. Here’s where to find it.

4. AN AFGHAN FOR YOUR STOMACH

That was Steve Dolinsky’s description of deep dish pizza, regarding its nap-inducing powers. If there’s anything I didn’t eat much when I worked in the Loop, it was any form of thick pizza—not unless I wanted to be asleep for the rest of the day. (By that standard, the best place to set yourself up for a long snooze was Ricobene’s—they not only had thick pizza but breaded steak sandwiches. ZZZZZ…) Anyway, the Labriola folks have a pan pizza joint in the Loop named, simply, The Pizza Joint, and that’s the subject of Nick Kindelsperger’s latest Nick in the Loop:

The mini sausage deep dish at The Pizza Joint is a study in contrasts. Gaze at the center, and you’ll spot juicy nuggets of fennel-studded sausage set in a pool of molten cheese. Pick up a slice, and the mozzarella, which is easily ½-inch thick, displays the kind of lengthy cheese pull that makes Tiktokers salivate.

It’s a primer on Chicago pizza in the form of a review.

5. CRABBY PATTIES

At Sandwich Tribunal, a discussion of how a style of beef sandwich tends to turn up a lot across cultures begins with a discussion of carcinization:

The term was originally coined in 1917 by a biologist named Lancelot Alexander Borradaile to describe what he called “the many attempts of Nature to evolve a crab.” Carcinization is a type of convergent evolution, where similar forms or features develop in multiple branches of the evolutionary tree, like how birds, bats, and bugs all have wings though their last common ancestor was a 600 million year old worm.

And from there…

I bring this up not because I am writing about a crab sandwich, but rather because the sandwich I am writing about has me thinking whether there is or can be a similar concept to convergent evolution in food history. The sandwich features a Brazilian style of braised shredded beef called Carne Louca or “Crazy beef” and once you see it, taste it… well you’ll understand. It’s just that Carne Louca looks and tastes an awful lot like Cuban ropa vieja.

Shredded beef–check. Tomato sauce–check. Sweet peppers, onions, garlic–check. Chopped green olives–check. They are not identical recipes straight down the line but in many respects, they are similar enough to be easily mistaken for each other. Somehow these nearly identical dishes evolved separately in a process I’ll call… carne-cization.

6. NEED A JOB?

Smyth is looking for a new chef. (Yeah, I know John Shields is a chef, but a few years ago they divided it between him and what I guess you’d elsewhere call a chef de cuisine or somethin’.) Anyway, coming fresh off a third Michelin star makes it a good time to write a totally kick-ass help wanted ad.

7. ARI GOLD

Besides his top 25 list linked above, Ari Bendersky sent me two pieces he’s done for Crain’s recently—one on Amy Morton’s Barn steakhouse opening a second location in Highland Park, and one on restaurants making their own wine.

8. LISTEN UP

Joiners talks to Bret Heiar, wine director at Avec River North.

Supper With Sylvia talks about Dry January.

IN MEMORIAM

Sad news at the start of the year about two veteran chefs passing.

First was Steven Chiappetti, most recently chef at the Albert in the Hotel EMC2. But his name goes back three quarters of a century in Chicago—his family owns one of the city’s oldest meat packers, Chiappetti Lamb and Veal, said to be the last slaughterhouse in the Stockyards area. He went to Kendall College and then worked for Fernand Gutierrez at the Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton. He had a number of prominent restaurants in the 80s and 90s, including Mango, Grapes, and Rhapsody in the CSO building, and was nominated for a James Beard award for Rising Star Chef in 1997. He worked at many places around the city, and was also a frequent chef guest on local and national TV shows; WGN TV paid him tribute and offered a clip here. He was 58.

I remember Rick Gresh hosting an event at David Burke’s Primehouse, where he was chef, giving us tastes of 30, 45 and 60-day aged steaks (my verdict: good, better, and like licking an iron bar). He was a familiar chef around town, at places like Green Dolphin Street, the Wyndham Hotel, Primehouse, and AceBounce and Flight Club, a chain of ping-pong and darts-focused bars for whom he served as director of U.S. culinary operations. His Facebook page was always good for seeing what he was working on at home in his workshop, from handmade cutting boards to a 1937 Oldsmobile hot rod. Like Steve Chiappetti, he was also a member of the U.S. team to the Bocuse d’Or. Here’s a video about him at WTTW; he was 50.

WHAT MIKE ATE

In 2013 I did a piece for the Reader on a chef named John Asbaty, who had an interesting background—among other things he was one of the cooks helping Grant Achatz do practice recipes, in Nick Kokonas’ kitchen, for an upcoming restaurant called Alinea. But at that time he was running the kitchen at a South Loop sandwich and Italian food shop called Panozzo’s. He also did an episode of Key Ingredient there. Panozzo’s, sadly, did not last long—a real shame, I liked it a lot—and I didn’t know what happened to Asbaty after that. Turns out he was the chef at that Hogsalt restaurant in a Restoration Hardware in the old 3 Arts Club for close to a decade. Now he and Alain Uy, who was also at the 3 Arts Cafe, have opened a restaurant called Ox Bar & Hearth, the name coming from the location having been the Golden Ox from 1921 to 2001.

Well, the handsomely adult interior betrays no sign of old school German gemütlichkeit inside, but I suspect those customers wouldn’t feel too out of place all the same. On this stupidly cold week, its mission—food off a flaming hearth (visible from the dining room)—is just what you needed, and like two other places I’ve recently liked a lot, Cafe Yaya and Creepies, this is high class comfort food—yes, there’s a steak and a burger (which we saw a lot of leaving the kitchen), which would seem to support the WBEZ piece about a tame food scene, but you didn’t have to go far to find more interesting things on the menu. Charred carrots in a harissa sauce; merguez sausage in green coriander yogurt; trumpet mushrooms in a maple vinaigrette; and a main of pork neck, which turned out to be not the little slices from a Thai restaurant but a thick hunk of pork shoulder charred on the hearth. For dessert we had a pavlova with scoops of raspberry sorbet and sage cream, which I picked because I guessed the chocolate chip cookies with a little crock of malted milk jam would be sent out anyway, and I was right. On January 2, an entirely satisfying meal; I’ll be curious to see what it’s like when it’s not 19 degrees out.

Disclosure: I had no idea if Asbaty would even remember me from 13 years ago, but it was quickly obvious that I was getting the VIP treatment—with some extras like the cookies comped, which I am having for lunch as I write this (the pork and the carrots, the cookies are long gone). For that reason I can’t really judge service  fairly, but it seemed genuinely and sincerely welcoming.