1. BREAKING NEWS FROM 2007

All the interesting Chicago food news this week comes from places that were hot hot hot—two decades ago:

• Great Lake Pizza is back! The idiosyncratic Andersonville pizza place, which was a sensation for its artisanal Neapolitan-style pizza (named the best in America by Alan Richman in GQ) from 2008-2013, but also notable for its pernickety policies that could make a it a hard place to go with the kids and get a table without somehow offending owners Nick Lessins and Lydia Esparza (God forbid one kid should need to use the bathroom, you’d best find a quiet alley at that point), has reopened after a dozen years, minus the “pizza” in the name—it’s now kind of an upscale shop selling house-baked bread, Italian goods and, oh yes, pizza. Multiple stories on it in remaining food media, as fascinated as ever with it—here’s Crain’s, here’s the Trib, and here’s Block Club. But maybe the truest picture to show that the new Great Lake is the old Great Lake came from Michael Nagrant’s Instagram:

Can confirm the idiosyncrasy. Visited yesterday, they told me they weren’t doing pizza, maybe tomorrow. I showed up today [Friday]. They’re not doing them until 3 pm. People can run their business however they want, but there is in my opinion a breakdown of the human relationship here. Great Lake feels like a social experiment. I don’t mind jumping through hoops, but I do need to know what the hoops are and when they are available to be jumped through.

Admittedly, they didn’t announce they were open yet, the media did, so if they’re not ready to make pizza yet (what was the aging process for the dough, 72 hours?), they just aren’t. But given the hype, this is one of those places that you should go to with a backup in mind.

• Birrieria Zaragoza, much-loved as perhaps the best Mexican restaurant on the South Side, had a fire at its original location on south Pulaski. No idiosyncrasy, this is just a bummer. There is a GoFundMe which as of Saturday afternoon, had raised nearly the full $30,000 they were asking for:

For nearly 18 years, my family has poured everything into this restaurant. They’ve rarely taken a paycheck, instead choosing to invest back into the team, the food, and the community. Birrieria Zaragoza has proudly supported charitable events, disaster relief efforts, and immigration reform because giving back is part of who we are.

• The Violet Hour is closing for good. The word had been that it was closed (since May) due to issues in the old building, and with the owners and their landlord unable to reach an agreement to fix them, the cocktail bar which brought the new mixology to Chicago c. 2007 has decided to call it a night.

My book of Chicago restaurant history (which is absolutely coming out… someday) has a nice chunk on the Violet Hour’s history, mostly with mixologist Toby Maloney and co-owner Terry Alexander explaining what made it so different from other bars in Chicago:

TERRY ALEXANDER: I think it was the start of cocktails in Chicago. I mean, no one was doing what Toby was doing. It was all who could make the biggest Belvedere or Grey Goose Martini. Blue cheese stuffed olives. There was cranberry and Ketel. I swear to God, any place you went in had the same exact back bar.

TOBY MALONEY: I knew it was going to be a fight [with customers]. I opened up with no cranberry juice and no olives, in 2007. The first five minutes of the interaction was just the staff saying no, we don’t have that, no, we don’t have that. But I knew that Terry and Peter [Garfield, partner] and Donnie [Madia] would have my back. We had little 5-1/2 ounce coupes, here in the land of 16 ounce baby bassinets down at Morton’s for your martinis. It was so different from everything else, we had people lose their goddamn minds. The confirmed Jack and Coke drinkers, the Bud Light drinkers, they fucking hated us with the passion of a thousand suns.

2. START SPREADING THE NEWS

The New York Times updates its where-to-eat-in-Chicago guide, led by ex-Trib writer and Poochie and Pang costar Kevin Pang. It’s mostly places you know (Daisies, Dear Margaret) and, hopefully, love, but the odd one out turns out to be a Hawaiian restaurant in, of all places, Highwood on the North Shore:

New to our 2025 Chicago list, and the restaurant I’m most excited to shout from the mountaintops is Da Local Boy Cafe, a one-year-old Hawaiian restaurant in Highwood. If I could sum up my criteria for a great restaurant into one pithy aphorism, it would be “expectations exceeded.” My first bite here was a pork belly marinated in calamansi juice and ponzu, chargrilled and served with rice and macaroni salad. Whatever the gastronomic equivalent of a double take is, I did it.

3. DOORS OF PERCEPTION

Is there a great restaurant that goes overlooked in this town? I think the idea is almost a contradiction in terms—if someone calls attention to an unknown place, nearly all that’s left of food media will be right there to check it out. A couple of years ago departed Chicagoan Julia Kramer, ex-of Time Out Chicago, suggested Cellar Door Provisions fit the bill, and now Michael Nagrant argues more of the same:

One of the reasons Cellar Door isn’t quite yet the matinee idol of eateries is that it has been in constant evolutionary flux, starting as a café/bakery, dabbling as a pre-fixe pop up and wine bar, and finally, as of last year, settling in as an a la carte dinner-serving restaurant.

The constant thread across these changes has been the guiding spirit of owner Ethan Pikas. I don’t know everything about that spirit intimately, but what I’ve experienced for so long is the Cellar Door team’s dedication to menu evolution, local purveyors, pristine ingredients, grandma-core technique, and, this is the differentiator that makes it better than its imitator, a keenly sharp aesthetic.

4. SUM-SUM-SUMMERTIME KYOTEN TIME!

Grimod at Understanding Hospitality says why summer is the time to go to Kyoten:

Summer sees [chef Otto} Phan increasingly incorporate produce from purveyors at the Green City Market, a move that notably expands the palette of textures and flavors he is able to utilize while also connecting his menu (so predominantly tied to ingredients from Japan) more closely with Midwestern terroir.

For a chef who is so well-traveled and so passionate about dining as a (rather opinionated) consumer in his own right, playing with the fruits and vegetables of the season offers a chance to transcend the traditional limitations of his chosen genre. It allows Kyōten to enter a wider conversation regarding sourcing, quality, and the way things should taste—here in the concept’s own backyard—that is typically the domain of friends and peers whose work is defined less strictly by raw fish.

5. NEIGHBORHOOD PILAF

For a million years there was a hot dog place that also had some middle eastern food on Irving, near St. Ben’s, so in my neighborhood—I would pass it going biking from my house. But I probably had not been there since the early 2000s. I ran across a mention of a full-fledged middle eastern/Persian restaurant in my neighborhood and quickly figured out it must be in the same space—maybe even the same owners, finally ditching the hot dogs and pizza puffs. Don’t know if that’s the case or not, but Titus Ruscitti went to the new place, Alfarsi Restaurant, and it definitely sounds like an upgrade from what I remember: 

Even though it’s only been open for a couple months Alfarsi no longer has that new car smell. Instead it smells like a backyard barbecue thanks to a slightly open air kitchen where all sorts of different kebabs are grilled. It’s a very casual operation that starts with walking up to the register where you’ll place your order before taking a seat. There’s two dining rooms with one of them being ideal for large groups (a must for Persian restaurants)…Persian cuisine stands out from other Middle Eastern cuisines due to its focus on fresh herbs, balanced sweet and sour flavors, and prominent use of saffron and aromatic spices. Unlike other Middle Eastern dishes that share similar spices, Persian cuisine uniquely emphasizes saffron blended with herbs like parsley, cilantro, mint, and dill. But it’s important to note that Persian home cooking and restaurant food, while sharing core dishes and techniques, often differ. Persian restaurants are typically centered around a grill where kababs reign supreme. So if you’ve been to Noon O Kabab or Kabobi you can expect a similar setup at Alfarsi.

6. LAO DEER IN THE HEADLIGHTS

At WTTW, Daniel Hautzinger talks to the lifelong friends behind Chicago’s first Lao restaurant in a decade, Lao Der:

“We’re like brothers – but also friends!” says [Nuttawut “Frankie”] Waljorhar with the charming smile he frequently flashes while in his restaurants.

[Waljorhar and Jack Ekkaphanh] grew up together and went to the same school before Waljorhar came to Chicago and later opened the well-regarded neighborhood restaurant Eathai in Logan Square. But Waljorhar has also long wanted to open a Lao restaurant with Ekkaphanh. When his old friend followed him to Chicago a couple years ago, he had him put together a menu for a prospective restaurant. Waljorhar identified a small storefront at 3922 N. Elston Ave. in Irving Park, where he had worked when it was a Thai restaurant, and eventually negotiated a lease. Lao Der opened in April, more than a year – one could say a lifetime – in the making.

7. PIZZA IS A FESTIVAL

Steve Dolinsky’s Pizza City Festival got bad press in Chicago, but it did better, and seemed better-run, in Los Angeles and Nashville. Dolinsky hopes to put what he learned to work at the new Chicago version, in late August: 

So excited to announce we’re back. New venue, production company, ovens, format and price structure. Essentially a hard reset based on three years of experience and feedback, and lessons learned in L.A., Nashville and Chicago. 

See the dates, the restaurant lineup, and the prices at the fest’s site.

8. CYPRUS ONWARD

Wasn’t there a Cypriot restaurant near Greektown a decade or two ago? Beyond that, I can’t say I know anything about food in Cyprus, but Sandwich Tribunal finds a sandwich there:

I believe Triara initially came to my attention when a fan from Cyprus sent me some messages about their favorite Cypriot sandwiches on one of the social media channels a few years ago. I have lost track of those original messages, but I don’t think they were specifically about the sandwich called Triara. But since I was intrigued by the passion with which he described these sandwiches, I did some digging and found a Cypriot sandwich to put on the list and, well, here we are.

9. LISTEN UP

Speaking of Steve Dolinsky and pizza, at Pizza City USA he talks to Guillermo Paolisso, who opened Capriccio’s, a Roman-style pizzeria in Lincoln Square.

Supper With Sylvia talks to a couple of the better influencers: Jeremy Joyce of Black People Eats, and Pooja Naik of the vegetarian-focused ChicagoPescatarian.

At The Chef’s Cut, Joe Flamm and Adrienne Cheatham talk to Top Chef judge Kristen Kish. 

WHAT MIKE ATE

So I was in Montreal for one of my wife’s legal meetings most of last week; most of our dinners were planned for us, but we did take a friend to Liverpool House, which is the spin off a few doors down of Joe Beef, and always easier to get into. The menu is very similar—the first time we went, a decade ago, I recognized many of the dishes from the Joe Beef cookbook—and if not wildly innovative, it’s pretty solid for a meaty feast.

Beyond that, a few things we tried: Montreal bagels, thinner than New York style bagels, are fine but not anything I get incredibly excited about; they’re bagels. But we had perfectly fine ones at the best-looking closest place we could find near our hotel, Le Fabrique de Bagel. Also near our hotel was the Time Out Market, so we headed over to the mall it’s in; we got there and the signs were not very clear about where to find it, so when we saw a food court in the basement, we figured that must be it and had some adequate food. Only later did we figure out that that wasn’t it; that’s just the mall food court, and the Time Out Market, also a food court in the same mall, was a few floors up.

I did better later in the week looking for “Montreal smoked meat” (what we Amurrcans would call corned beef) at a place called Dunn’s, a local deli chain that doesn’t have the fame of Schwartz’s, say, but which I thought was as solid as any deli I’ve been to. And one day we walked over to Chinatown, which is only a couple of blocks long but was full of restaurants; we went to one called Sammi & Soupe Dumpling and were perfectly happy with an order of soup dumplings and one of pork and cabbage dumplings, lacily connected like the dumplings at Fat Rice used to be.