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1. NOTHING COULD BE FINA TAKE TWO
I mentioned last week that the Trib had a piece on Breakfast Queen Ina Pinkney—but for whatever reason I couldn’t access it. Well, here it is, and here’s a bit of it (that’s not in my book):
Q: What was your last restaurant’s full name?
A: “Ina’s. My grandfather always said you can trust a business when they put their own name on the door!” Pinkney said. “Ina’s was exactly the place that was between a hotel dining room and a diner.”
It was casual, but with fine dining-inspired service, and every table set with a different pair of collectible salt and pepper shakers.
“When I got there, there was nothing,” she said about the neighborhood. “Way across on the other side of the highway was Blackbird, Marché, Vivo
and Graziano’s.” Pinkney bought her restaurant’s building a couple of years later.
2. MARTINI EXPLOSION
Last fall, Anthony Todd attended something called Martini Expo in New York, organized by cocktail writer Robert Simonson; now it’s coming to Chicago:
Simonson and Expo co-founder Mary Kate Murray came up with the idea of a martini-based event, but they weren’t sure how it would work out.
“Mary Kate and I are journalists, and journalists are not normally the people who stage cocktail conventions; it’s a different skill set.” But their effort was a hit, filled with educational seminars, cocktail tastings, and vendors. “We invited all of the people that we know from the industry and have known for 20 years who we know are smart and would have something to say about the martini.”
It was supposed to be a one-time-only event, but it was so popular — and attendees kept asking about next year — that they decided to repeat it. Simonson relocated to Milwaukee late last year, and Chicago seemed like a logical choice for the second iteration.
3. BAGELD
The Hunger features guest writer Micheline Maynard on the subject of private equity bagels, specifically New York’s H&H Bagels, now on Fulton Market:
I shopped at one of the original stores in New York City when I was a student at Columbia University in the 1990s. It sat on the corner of 79th and Broadway, a quick walk from Zabar’s, another NYC institution. This is the shop you see in You’ve Got Mail that gets flour delivered every night.
Despite its iconic status, H&H went through a rocky time. My H&H (there was another in Hell’s Kitchen, home to their manufacturing plant) closed in 2011, much to the disappointment of Upper West Side residents. Three years later, the name was acquired by Wall Street financier Jay Rushin, who began to craft a growth strategy.
Physical shops appeared in NYC first – there are five now – and then Rushin and company began to build H&H back into a recognizable name. That included airport stores and frozen bagels, which I spotted to my surprise in a Plum Market store in Ann Arbor during the pandemic.
Speaking of high finance bagels, Monica Eng has a piece on the reaction to them here.
4. DOORED
Grimod wound up writing about Cellar Door Provisions again, because an attempt to go to Smyth again fell apart—as he says, “Eating here, even if it meant venturing out of the fashionable neighborhoods I frequent, was a sure thing.” Sure thing or not, I wish he’d have explored something completely new to him, which he hasn’t done since visiting Dimmi Dimmi in October, no offense to CDP which I admire quite a bit. But there are advantages to being a repeat customer, as he notes:
Today, the concept remains just prickly enough to be a cult favorite—yet the cult, despite cultivating fanatics for more than a decade, seems eager to bring new members into the fold. By my count, this is visit number nine in a period of about 20 months. That’s not a crazy figure, but it’s enough to signal a serious appreciation of the cuisine. It’s also enough to secure the kind of favorable table (in a somewhat isolated corner) and unprompted advice (regarding portion sizing or new, particularly delicious offerings) that cement a happy, healthy, longstanding consumer relationship.
Admittedly, these are cornerstones of hospitality one would come to expect at places that are even more casual or comparably less ambitious. Yes, if your favorite Chicago steakhouse doesn’t lavish you with little courtesies, you should probably take your business to one of a dozen other options.
However, perhaps because CDP is so singularly chef-driven and misunderstood and even eagerly critiqued (all of which seem to form a running theme for many of my favorite concepts), joining the cognoscenti here carries particular weight. It means playing a small part in the kitchen’s process of perpetual (sharply philosophical) growth: standing in the culinary breach—receptive to all that’s weird and experimental—in support of a shared dream that has yielded few conventional rewards.
5. LIFE IN THE BIG CITO
Nick Kindelsperger on a place that’s lasted long enough to be a venerable Loop spot: the Cuban sandwich spot Cafecito:
Though it has six locations now, Cafecito definitely doesn’t feel like a corporate restaurant chain. Each one feels like a real neighborhood spot, which also means that food takes time. Not a long time — but a reasonable amount of time for someone to construct a sandwich, place it in a press, and wait until it’s properly toasted.
That helps to explain why Cafecito’s Cubano is nearly perfect.
6. MEAT IN THE BLOOD
Seeing that Daniel Hautzinger did a piece on Hofherr Meat Co. in Northfield, I was sure I’d been there until I saw the photo—turns out I was thinking of Zier’s in Wilmette (I’m friends on Facebook with the owners of both, and many other old school butcher shops). Anyway, here’s the story, and look what other butcher shop turns up in it:
Sean [Hofherr]’s great-great-grandfather started the original Hofherr Meat Co. in the late nineteenth century after he immigrated from Germany to Chicago; the business was sold after his great-grandfather’s untimely death at a young age. Sean and Arielle opened the new Hofherr Meat Co. at 300 Happ Rd. in Northfield in 2014 after Sean migrated from a career in finance to one in butchery.
“He always did feel like it was in his blood,” says Arielle, even though the family was out of the meat business for two generations. Sean worked for a time at Keefer’s Steakhouse, then went into banking to get away from the trying hours of the restaurant business. “He hated sitting at a desk way more,” Arielle says, so he took up an apprenticeship and then a job at Zier’s Prime Meats & Poultry in Wilmette, learning under a butcher from Zakopane, Poland. That late mentor still watches over him from a framed photograph in the back prep area of Hofherr’s own shop.
7. FOIE GRAS WARS
I went to Cafe Ya-Ya some weeks back and while there, foie gras protesters assembled outside and could be heard screaming inside the restaurant (they were actually protesting the same owners’ Galit next door). What an amazing coincidence that out of all the restaurants serving duck liver, they just happened to settle on the Jewish-Israeli one! The Reader looks at the question, which to me is, would they GAF about ducks if there wasn’t an opportunity to protest Israel?
Rejected by Galit, confused for an anti-Israel protest by customers and passersby, and called “anti-Semitic” in a police report, the group has contended with a restaurant and customer base that have dug in their heels in favor of the controversial dish—and, at times, Israel. “
“I think [Galit customers] confuse the chant, ‘Foie Gras Free Policy,’ for ‘From the River to the Sea,” said one observer, who wished to remain anonymous. “The same goes for ‘You’ve got blood on your hands!’”
Where could anybody get that idea, do you suppose?
8. ANN THAT’S IT
Ann Sather’s is closing/moving, as you’ve likely heard, and XRT’s Terri Hemmert paid a nice tribute on Facebook:
I started eating at her restaurant in 1970, and eleven years later some young Irish guy purchased the restaurant and moved it into a funeral home. Lordy. But I was wrong. He knew what he was doing, and he kept the things that were great and added some of his own vision. His name is Tom Tunney. He knew a restaurant was not just a place to go if you don’t feel like cooking. He gave us a second home. He kept the elderly servers because they were part of the magic. it was like you were having dinner with your grandmother that you missed. They worked there until they physically couldn’t handle it. Then he took care of them till they went to the great dining room in the sky. And he brought in the next generation. Starting there in their twenties, and still working over forty years later.
Read it all.
9. HARBOR SEAL OF APPROVAL
Monica Eng talks about what to check out across the lake in southwestern Michigan’s Harbor Country.
10. FAULDS OVEN NEWS
(If you don’t know what the headline refers to, go look at this Fooditor piece.) I heard that a Faulds oven-using spot in DeKalb, Pizza Villa, will shortly appear on a web food show called America’s Best Restaurants Roadshow. A rare chance to see one in action. Not surewhen the episode will be posted, but here’s the YouTube channel in the meantime. (H/t: Matt Pasteris.)
11. ALL HAIL THE NEW FLEISCH
Not often that Sandwich Tribunal finds that one of his experiments is a bit of a dud. But North Dakota’s Fleischkuekle is like an Americanized version of a Ukrainian cheburek, and that’s not such a good thing:
Fleischkuekle is sort of a more American, more flyover-state version of that consisting of a pastry crust wrapped around a filling of beef and onions simply seasoned with salt and pepper. There might be some garlic as well, or even just garlic powder. Some recipes will add bread crumbs, or brown the beef to a crumbly texture before adding it to the pastry–but most recipes agree that this is just a solid hunk of meat and onions pressed into in a pie crust and fried up crisp and hot. My recipe here follows that pattern, using some chemical leavening to lighten the pastry but leaving the filling in a solid uncooked mass.
…the filling does turn out to be a little one-note, a pie-shaped puck tasting of beef and onion and not much else, the garlic lost, the salt and pepper simply enhancing the beef flavor. Pre-cooking the filling or adding those bread crumbs might have helped the texture, but the combination beef and onions is going to dominate without some other strong flavors to help balance the dish. Fleischkuekle are usually served with a side of ketchup and possibly a few hamburger-style pickle chips, and the sweet/sour of the ketchup (or the stronger sour crunch of the pickle) do act as a foil for the brick of beef and onion–but it’s not enough.
12. LISTEN UP
Joiners talks to Mindy Segal.
Dish with David (at Lumpen Radio) talks to Tony Priolo (Piccolo Sogno).
The Dish from Chicago magazine talks to Nick Kindelsperger about what to eat in the Loop.
How to Eat Like a Top Chef When You Travel is the topic at The Chef’s Cut.
13, EVENTS
Michael Muser, grand poobah of the Banchet Awards, has an event planned for the summer: Cluck’N Bubble, a fried chicken competition and champagne feast, between chefs from Jenner Tomaska (Esme, Petite Edith) to Art Smith, the Honey Butter Fried Chicken crew and Charmaine Ricketts of Uncle Remus. Go here to find out more and get tickets.
Dear Margaret has been closed since a fire in its Lincoln Avenue location, and is still looking for a new one. But in the meantime, it’s been doing pop-ups in collaboration with other noteworthy restaurants, and the next one will be at Ox Bar and Hearth on Thursday, July 16. Go here to find out more and make a reservation.