1. BIG TURNIP

Having been to Feld myself and finding it a promising restaurant on its way to achieving its vision, I figured Michael (“the worst meal I’ve experienced in nineteen years as a food writer”) would eventually go back—if he was allowed in!—and probably admire it. When he did, I immediately sent him a note saying that he had sold out to Big Hakurei Turnip. Anyway, here’s his second take on Feld, close to a year after the first:

The jig was up by course two. Potashnick arrived at the table with fresh ramps entombed like Han Solo in carbonite in a cracklin’ buckwheat cracker with a side of luxuriant beef fat-whipped green garlic toum dip and said warmly to my friend “Welcome!” and then side-glanced at me and said, “Welcome back.”

…The irony is he never needed to approach the table at all. The first time I visited Feld, I was struck with how Potashnick was so passionate in his intro of dishes, but his staff struggled to convey the stories with the same kind of gusto. I felt that Potashnick really needed to clone himself to make this style of service work.

Well, one of the outcomes of investing in his staff’s education so much is that he’s pretty much found a way to do that. Most of the team this spring is still the OG group from my early visit. Given today’s restaurant climate where most kitchens are a revolving door, this is a miracle.

One of the staffers Nathan almost felt like an actual clone of Potashnick with his tableside verve. Another Feld staffer, Micah talked shop about Champagne. Miguel, a guy who grew up in Cicero radiated warmth and knowledge and passion.

Over the years people always used to tell me the restaurants I didn’t love just needed more time, that they get better. I’ve rarely seen that. But Feld in May of 2025 was an entirely different experience.

I still don’t know who the four remaining reviewers (by Nagrant’s estimation) are, but it’s hard to think that anyone is more deeply and personally engaged with restaurants, and the chef’s journey in creating them. If restaurants matter to you, too, subscribe.

2. INTO THE CELLAR

Are there cult restaurants in Chicago? I don’t feel there are enough different viewpoints on food, at least among writers (as opposed to, say, influencers) that anything really good can long fly under the radar. There are things that get overlooked (Mark Mendez of Vera is doing very tasty stuff at Libertad in Skokie, but that answers right there why it’s unknown to many people in the city), but if I had to think of a place that was exceptional but overlooked by people who should know better, I’d have to go back several years to the late Arbor.

That’s kind of the viewpoint with which Grimod approaches Cellar Door Provisions, which I think many people would say is pretty good, without ever diving too deeply into it:

This was how I came to Cellar Door Provisions: a mature diner encountering a mature restaurant (now open for more than a decade) whose charms I had long resisted despite the recommendation of several palates I really respect. It was just another one of those beloved “local spots” (up at the very northern boundary of Logan Square) that fell well beyond my own neighborhood and whose seeming value proposition (accounting for convenience and familiarity) could not quite compete with another visit to—say—Elske. Yet the good thing about a place like Cellar Door is that it continued to grow and change in its own way during all these years, almost in parallel, just waiting to dovetail (as the best version of itself) when I, myself, was ready.

3. SUAVE DESI CAFE

Swadesi Cafe is an Indian-flavored coffee shop from Chef Sujan Sarkar (Indienne). Steve Dolinsky visits:

The circular, custard-filled croissants are a clue there’s something a bit out of the ordinary going on at Swadesi, a café and coffeeshop in the South Loop where the wide open space is filled with daylight, and coffee is just the beginning.

“I want to bring Indian chai drinking culture to America, so basically this a modern chai shop inspired by Indian coffeeshops,” said Sujan Sarkar, owner of Swadesi.

4, TACOS FOR VICTOR BUONO

A large man who fell into playing a campy version of The Maltese Falcon’s Sydney Greenstreet, Victor Buono played King Tut on the Batman TV series, a hanger-on to old stars in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, and a mutant in Beneath the Planet of the Apes, as well as appearing (to read his poetry!) on all the talk shows of the day. I had hopes that Taqueria Victor Bueno was some kind of tribute to his over-the-topness, but no such luck, as Titus Ruscitti explains in a roundup of steak taco specialists in Pilsen:

The Tacos de Arrachera at Taqueria Victor Bueno have a bit of a cult following as this spot has alot of history in Pilsen. Don Victor started out selling tacos on the street way back when before becoming a taquero at a long gone spot called La Unica. He’s since opened his own spot on Cermak where you can find his signature steak tacos. Ask for the pico de gallo and don’t sleep on the tacos de guisado which come served the same way, slathered with fluffy rice and extremely creamy beans.

5. INDIENNE PAINTBRUSH

At Chicago mag, John Kessler reviews Indienne:

Two years ago I liked it pretty well. The cocktail program played a bigger role but the drinks themselves were sweet and a little silly. The food was lovely to look at but unevenly executed and felt more decorous than soulful. This time, every dish was on point and a showcase for the kind of technique that few restaurants today attempt. If a laser-cut rhombus of layered truffled chicken mousse set dead center in a silky cheese sauce sounds good to you, then this is your special occasion restaurant.

But he’s not impressed by Sifr, Indienne ched Sujan Sarkar’s middle eastern restaurant Sifr: “TL;DR: Did not love.”

He also went to a more modest Indian restaurant in Park Ridge, Thalaiva Indian Kitchen. The new one, around the corner from the original pan-Indian restaurant, focuses on Southern Indian cuisine:

It is a bold statement of identity and a total boss move. Diners (even South Asians, I suspect) will find many unfamiliar dishes listed alongside the pan-Indian standbys included for good measure. Some flavors will be novel and exciting, others comforting in their plainspoken homeyness. There are a lot of soups, sour ferments, and grains like millet. When you need to turn up the temperature, mop up hot-hot if simply spiced curries with the flakiest-ever parotta breads.

6. PIG TIMES TWO

Tony Mantuano is back and has a new gig. An original partner in The Purple Pig, he is opening a second location in Oak Brook:

The Bannos boys are long gone, but Mantuano, after several years down in Nashville, is back, consulting on the Michigan Avenue restaurant while working on the new location. “We signed the lease,” Mantuano says. “We’ll be opening hopefully by the end of the year. It’s really challenging now lining up the right designer, the right subcontractors—and ordering furniture, when tariffs raise the costs 15 to 20 percent.”

…Mantuano likes the space. “It’s 11,000 square feet,” he says, “so it’ll be a two-in-one, with the restaurant in back and a Purple Pig Market, you walk through, in front. The Market will have coffee, pastries, pizza by the slice, and gelato. There will be seating in the market, and an outdoor patio. It’s something that’s never been done in this area.”

That’s from a piece in Naperville magazine, by a name you might recognize: Phil Vettel.

7. BIBBEYE

“Why am I cutting lettuce like a steak?” asks the subhead on Maggie Hennessy’s piece at the NYTimes about why salads are so frickin’ huge right now. I read it the day after I… had to cut Bibb lettuce like a steak. I thought this willful giantism in plating died with the 80s,  but I guess it’s back, with salads at least.

8. NON CAPRESE

Ever heard of schiacciata? It’s a Tuscan form of focaccia, and according to Sandwich Tribunal the flatbread makes excellent sandwiches:

There are just a couple restaurants in Chicago selling schiacciata sandwiches and I recently tried one of them, Lizzano Focacceria & Spritzeria in River North. Some of Lizzano’s sandwiches come on focaccia and some on schiacciata, but they will serve a focaccia sandwich on schiacciata and vice versa if asked. We did not try the focaccia for comparison and instead opted to order the Roma, with Porchetta, lemon aioli, roasted red peppers, and arugula on sciacciata, and one of their more popular sandwiches, the Modena, with mortadella, pistachio cream, stracciatella, chopped walnuts, and arugula, customized with the schiacciata instead of its usual focaccia.

Of course, from there he goes to making his own.

9. LISTEN UP

For the second week running there’s a new podcast about Chicago food: it’s called Another Round (a name several podcasts have, so look for the graphic of chickens facing a microphone), and it’s from Mitch Gropman, who’s—well, I don’t know exactly how Reddit works, but he’s a, or the, moderator and most notable figure at r/chicagofood. In this inaugural episode, he has a conversation with Mike Sula (the Reader), Dennis Lee (The Party Cut) and Titus Ruscitti (Smokin’ Chokin’ and Chowing with the King). It’s a little awkward at first and I had some trouble keeping up with who’s who, mainly because Gropman sounds a lot like Michael Nagrant to me. But stick with it; they get into a groove and talk about a lot of things, from how to become a food writer (don’t, is the consensus) to online culture at Reddit (sometimes helpful, often mean).

Joiners talk to Greg Horan, who opened The Greggory in Barrington after a long career in many different restaurants.

WHAT MIKE ATE

Everybody’s eating at Sujan Sarkar’s restaurants this week—well, coincidentally I had booked a return visit to Indienne for our anniversary, so me too. If the thing at the moment is tasting menus built on an international cuisine, they often seem to be caught between reproducing a classic dish in somewhat fussier fashion, and losing some of the rustic charm of the inexpensive, mom and pop version without gaining that much in fine dining finesse, or doing something that comes off like French-ish fine dining with a few new seasonings mixed in.

I liked Indienne a lot when I ate there two years ago—one dish, with a kind of Mid-Century Modern look to how it was painted on the plate, especially stuck in the mind—but I wouldn’t say it didn’t fit the descriptions above. But two years later, it seems refined—more than any other restaurant of this type, I’d say, it seems to be successfully creating elegantly crafted dishes that are nevertheless rooted in Indian cooking, not just as seasonings but as dishes and approaches.

So the menu is full of Indian terms for dishes—yogurt chaat, a scallop with corn raab, lamb nihari—the last is at least something I’ve had on Devon, though there was a distinct difference between the hunk of meat in oily goo I had then and the deeply-flavored sauce that went with a couple of delicate cubes of lamb. I could articulate more about what I had if I knew more about Indian regional flavors, but I don’t. What I know is that every dish hit me with a flavor that was familiar but used in a way that was more artful than when I had had it before…and made me want to explore it further on my own. So I guess I need to go cookbook shopping now…

Other notes: very good service (the staff looks about half Indian, half not, but our main server was not); he was very helpful when I declined the pairings but still wanted a couple of well-chosen glasses along the way. I know Chef Sarkar after this piece but he was not present—I assume he was at his just-opened Nadu, in Lincoln Park. In any case, I think this is one of the most exciting restaurants of recent years, every dish make somewhat familiar flavors pop as something new… and snazzy.

Oh, and by the way, I liked Sifr fine when I went six months or so ago, doing high quality middle eastern food that at its best, reminded me of Galit. But it’s familiar flavors—where Indienne is something new and different.