1. BREAKING PLATES
Steve Dolinsky’s last week as NBC5’s Food Guy is also the week that Plate magazine, a magazine for restaurant chefs which many Chicago food writers have freelanced for (including myself), shut down (according to a LinkedIn post by editor Liz Grossman):
Very sad to share the news that Plate magazine folded last week. I was lucky enough to work there for nearly 18 years, serving as managing editor and editor-in-chief. I’m so grateful for all the amazing colleagues who turned into friends, not to mention the talented writers, editors, photographers, designers, stylists, illustrators, and publicists I’ve had the honor of working with and learning from over the years. I feel honored to have gotten to cover a resilient industry I love for so long and had the chance to tell so many inspiring chef and industry pro stories. I couldn’t be prouder of the work our small but mighty teams have done and the awards we’ve picked up along the way. I am still figuring out my next steps but for now, thank you to everyone who supported and read Plate for so many years. I really appreciate getting to be a part of something so special for so long, and I look forward to the next chapter.
The result is, among many other things, a pretty thin week for Buzz List, but we’ll try to make the best of it…
2. GO GET ‘EM, TIGER
So, Steve Dolinsky’s last Food Guy report is about a hot new Korean place, Mister Tiger:
The food at Mister Tiger – on a busy corner in West Town that’s been home to several restaurants over the years – is prepared with great care. They’re recipes Min Lee has been writing down the last year or so, after lots of tastings with her mom.
“I grew up with my grandma, because both of my parents were working very hard after they moved to the States. And back then I didn’t realize, but after I became a mom myself, I realized how much love goes into making food for your family,” said Min Lee, the Chef-Owner. “Korean food is not just food that fills my tummy, but it’s an expression of love so I wanted to share that with the city.”
3. THE THAI EATERY IN RED
“If local food journalism has gone the way of the bullet-riddled corpse of John Dillinger, who tells your story?” Michael Nagrant asks, more vividly than the question usually gets asked. It’s by way of introducing us to a South Loop Thai restaurant, Siam Thai Eatery, which he says has been playing the influencer game:
Can you blame a restaurant for being a magnet for iPhone gimbals and mini-ring lights while you dig into your massaman curry?
No, but for those of us who have learned to shut off the phone flash while taking tableside photos of our food, it does kind of kill the aesthetic and experience to be bombarded by what feels like ABC7’s studio team live broadcasting from the next table.
4. WE WERE GIANTS
Amy Cavanaugh talks to Jason Vincent about something Giant started doing post-COVID to get things rolling again:
“We were declining in sales, I wasn’t checking the food, the screws were coming loose,” he says. That changed this February, when the team started kicking around the idea of a test kitchen. On a rotating basis each night, the restaurant now adds four dishes, priced a bit lower, to its regular menu to showcase new things being tried out. “When I was growing up as a cook, I landed in a lot of places where I got to be creative,” Vincent says. He wants to encourage the same kind of inventiveness: “We’re using scraps and ingredients we already have in interesting ways.”
5. ST. ELSKEWHERE
Grimod has been to Elske a bunch—so he goes back to judge if it’s really as good as he thinks it is. (I have no such questions; it is one of my standard stops at the high-ish end, “ish” because it’s a couple of steps below the price point of the poshest spots.) In any case, he describes its appeal well:
Elske’s cuisine… has nowhere to hide. The team’s work—creative and boundary-pushing as it is—is confined to the plate. Their effort is channeled only toward expressions of texture and flavor, and the resulting dishes retain a basic level of satisfaction no matter how adventurous or intriguing some may be.
…It’s the rare restaurant that has grown with me and seemingly gotten better and better without ever straying from its philosophy.
6. LAO DER MILK
I have not yet been to Lao Der, the first full Lao restaurant in the city. But Titus Ruscitti describes thoroughly why I should:
Considering that there’s a nice sized Lao population in the Midwest it’s rather surprising that Lao Der is the city’s first true Lao restaurant. We have had pop-ups and ghost kitchens but not a brick and mortar such as this. There’s a good number of Lao restaurants in Wisconsin and Minnesota but there’s not a ton of them in Illinois. In fact there’s only one in the immediate Chicagoland area out in Burbank but Spicy Thai Lao only has a few Lao dishes from a non-pork eating chef. So before Lao Der opened you basically had to drive all the way out to Elgin to get Lao food in the form of ‘Sai Kok’ or ‘Laab Moo Lao’. It took a minute but the “Lao Food Movement” has reached the city proper. The “Lao Food Movement” was popularized by Seng Luangrath, the chef and co-owner of Washington D.C’s Thip Khao, she’s considered to be the “Godmother of Laotian Cuisine in America” as she was a pioneer in showcasing the flavors of Laos in the U.S. I still remember the first time I had Lao food as a college kid in Madison and then again at Thip Khao in D.C. I’ve been a big fan since then, so this is pretty exciting getting a Lao restaurant, and LAO SAUSAGE, so close to home.
I had a few Lao dishes at Ryuu Asian Sushi BBQ & Thai in Logan Square when I went there with Keng Sisavath (Strange Foods Festival) some years ago, but I can’t say I know much, so I’m interested to learn more.
7. OMAR THE TASTE MAKER
Surely the Infatuation already had a capsule review for Omarcito’s, but they have a new one which goes item by item through the pan-Latin offerings there:
Fried Catfish Plate
We’re not sure what the global fish rankings are, but this plate puts catfish in the running to take the top spot. A crispy cornmeal crust surrounds the flaky, peppery fish, which gets an extra zestiness from the hefty scoop of Ecuadorian salsa criolla on top. Plus, it comes with some savory yellow rice and tostones on the side.
My standard order is the catfish sandwich, topped with that same salsa criolla. It’s one of the best bites in town.
8. RED HOT
Slate has a piece on an out-of-towner who was contemptuous of Chicago hot dogs—until…
But on a recent trip to the Windy City, I decided to give it a shot. I asked a trusted friend and local food writer for a recommendation, and, y’all, after that single meal (two dogs, naturally), I’m a convert. Not only do I now appreciate the Chicago dog; I’m ready to proclaim, in front of God and the whole internet, that there’s only one wiener worth devouring this summer—and that’s the one born, bred, and vegetally bedecked along the Magnificent Mile.
Hell if I know where you’d get a dog on Michigan Avenue—the Fluky’s in one of the vertical malls is long gone—but I suspected who the local food writer likely was: Dennis Lee of The Party Cut, etc., and a pro at playing the food world networking game. He confirmed it on social media.
9. I’LL HAVE AN OLD-FASHIONED
A fun story about the far south side’s Old Fashioned Donuts and its 86-year-old owner, Burritt Bulloch—and his granddaughter, in the Sun Times:
On a recent visit, [Leda]Edwards recorded a video of her grandfather doing what he does best and shared it on TikTok — where it went viral.
The video, which has had more than 1.5 million views, has inspired customers from all over to visit, Bulloch said.
“Your grandpa set the standard of donuts too high for me. No donuts compare to Old Fashioned,” Nakia Sunshine, another TikToker, wrote.
“The neighborhood isn’t what it used to be back when we opened, but I don’t worry about that because people are going to keep coming in for my doughnuts,” Bulloch said. “And because of my granddaughter, there’s been a lot of strange faces in here, a lot of people coming from all over.”
10. CONGRATS JONATHON
Chicago has a contender on Top Chef—Bailey Sullivan of Monteverde just made the final four of the current season—but another chef based here just won another Food Network game show, “24 in 24: Last Chef Standing.” Though the Trib article calling him a Chicago chef seems a little off to me—yes, Jonathon Sawyer of Kindling, has been a Chicago chef since he came here to run Adorn in the Four Seasons, but he made his name over many years in Cleveland, winning a Best Chef Great Lakes James Beard Award in 2015 at The Greenhouse Tavern, Noodlecat and Trentina. Anyway, he’s clearly an old hand at doing food TV—and post-win interviews:
“I don’t think there’s anything like this because it’s such a microcosm of our competitiveness,” Sawyer told the Tribune. “Other shows that are maybe as big, like ‘Tournament of Champions,’ where you have 32 chefs, they go on and they film for three-and-a-half weeks — almost like chef summer camp. But for (“Last Chef Standing”) next thing you know, you’re 12 hours in and you’re like, “OK I’ve never filmed TV for this long before where I’ve never not sat down.”
11. BEAM ME UP STOTTIE
Sandwich Tribunal talks about the very white-looking, but tempting, Stottie Cake:
In much of England they’re called bread cakes, these large flat round loaves of bread, though regional names exist too–oven-bottom cakes, scufflers, or in the area around Newcastle, stottie cakes.
These bread cakes–chewy, somewhat dense, generally on the larger side–have traditionally been a working person’s food. Cut open, buttered, filled with jam or cheese or potted meat spread, they provide an abundance of calories in a relatively compact package. In the northeast of England, traditionally the jobs those workers were doing might be at the shipyards in Newcastle, building the vessels to be launched into the North Sea; or at the salt works in South Shields, sweating the days away over pans of brine; or in the coal mines, digging the energy out of the earth to power the industry around them. A stottie filled with ham and pease pudding was the cocktail of hydrocarbons and carbohydrates needed to fuel a day’s labors.
12. LISTEN UP
Joiners talks to Marcos Ascencio (Mariscos San Pedro, Taqueria Chingon).
Supper With Sylvia talks to a Chicago couple who specialize in really nice ice for your cocktails.