1. BANCHET UPDATE
Well, you’ve surely seen the complete list of Banchet Award nominees, after I could only post a partial list last week. (Daniel Hautzinger always does a nice thorough job, so of the many places you could see the list, go check out his at WTTW.) In general the nominations, including the new pizza category which attendees at the awards show on January 26 will get to vote on live, got a lot of attention. Interestingly, one place that hasn’t run anything about them is Eater—not sure if that’s because Eater gives its own awards (but then I’m also not sure if they still do that), or because they’re working on a piece about the Banchets and are having trouble finding, I dunno, enough Maori chefs in Chicago to structure the whole piece around how the Banchets overlook Maori restaurants. (I was quoted in an Eater piece a couple of years ago that badly wanted to prove that the Banchets didn’t nominate women chefs, except when they did.)
Anyway, not a lot of deep insight in most of the pieces—I think one of the most interesting things, which no one I’ve seen has commented on, is that the awards named for a chef whose restaurant was in north suburban Wheeling actually have, for the first time, a nominee from Wheeling (Stumara, a Georgian restaurant nominated in the Heritage Restaurant category). The best insight I saw anywhere, interestingly, came from Reddit’s r/chicagofood forum. It had, as usual at Reddit, the customary shitposting (though they pulled a chunk of posts about how the Banchets are bad because they didn’t nominate the restaurants Random Redditor Dude would have picked), but I thought this, from Rising Chef nominee Mike Satinover, was quite good on why people pay attention to the Banchets:
Some major hitters are nominated across categories and I think most Chicago’s chefs really respect this association for its breadth and depth. A lot of awards given to Chicago restaurants are run by outside organizations who don’t always know our landscape; the Banchet awards are run by us, for us.
Pretty bonkers that I went from making ramen out of my apartment for fun to being nominated on this.
Heather Bublick and D’Andre Carter, of Soul and Smoke, had similar words in an email for their nomination in the Heritage Restaurant category:
Chicago’s food scene is a remarkable mosaic of heritage cuisines from around the world, each bringing flavors and stories that make this city so special. To be recognized among these celebrated restaurants is humbling, and we’re grateful to contribute Soul & Smoke’s voice to this tapestry.
For us, BBQ is more than just a cooking style—it’s a tradition born in the Deep South, where it’s long represented resilience, creativity, and community. During the Great Migration, when Black families moved north, they brought their BBQ traditions with them to cities like Chicago, enriching the food culture here and creating new flavors rooted in Southern Black and Creole cooking.
D’Andre’s grandmother, with her Mississippi and Louisiana roots, passed down this heritage through her own soulful dishes. Blending those traditions with Chicago’s vibrant spirit and fresh Midwestern ingredients has allowed us to create something uniquely ours, honoring D’Andre’s Southern roots while embracing the abundance of local farms and infusing it with a little Chicago flair.
2. SANDING THE BURRS
There have been many pieces about idealized versions of favorite foods, and the mad scientists who devote themselves to perfecting recipes, like Mike Satinover. Then there’s John Carruthers’ explanation of how Crust Fund Pizza, his alley-based occasional pizza fundraiser and now, source of two cookbooks, came to be:
“This is not me trying to talk smack on how I grew up,” he said laughing. “A lot of people I know tend to talk about their recipes as this kind of loving bonsai tree that they just nurtured into perfect form.”
Instead, he had things that would annoy him about certain pizzas.
“I wish this crust was crispier,” he added. “I wish this one wasn’t drowning in such cheap cheese. I wish there was more of the sauce on this. So it was kind of like sanding off all these annoying burrs of what I was doing until I’m like, ‘OK, this isn’t any of the pizza I grew up with, but it’s the exact pizza I wanted to grow up with.’”
That’s in a piece by Louisa Chu in the Trib.
3. SHOES FOR INDUS
I got emails from PR about a new Indian restaurant in Highland Park, opened by the son of a celebrated Indian chef, now deceased, named Jiggs Kalra. I was probably still working on the book then, so I didn’t exactly race there. But I’m interested in checking out Indus Progressive Indian after Steve Dolinsky’s piece at NBC 5:
There is a vibrancy to the dishes at Indus Progressive Indian. Certainly, some of that is the result of the kitchen’s commitment to first toasting their cumin, coriander, black pepper and cinnamon in a dry skillet, then grinding them into a potent spice blend every couple of days. That feeds into the owners’ philosophy.
“Taking what was traditional cooking, and building upon it,” said Ajit Kalra, co-owner of Indus Progressive Indian. “Pushing it in another direction, with smoked meats, with cured meats…”
4. LOGAN’S RUN
Titus Ruscitti offers five more places in Logan Square worth checking out—you’ve probably heard of most of them, or like me been to all of them, but most of them have new things to check out, like:
Speaking of my favorite places in town, Best Intentions is another Logan Square spot on that list. I love what they did at 3281 West Armitage in turning an old neighborhood dive into a new neighborhood dive. Best Intentions has everything I want in a local bar – the drinks are reasonably priced and can range from a bottle of High Life to a well crafted cocktail – there’s a really nice sized patio and an outdoor bar to boot – and most importantly they have some damn good bar food. The burgers and fries are top notch but of late I’ve been planning my visits around the Filet ‘O’ Friday – their take on the Filet-O-Fish. It’s a pretty classic rendition down to the square shaped filet of breaded cod they use. The fried to order fish is dressed with a miso tartar sauce plus shredded lettuce and chile oil on a toasted potato bun and it’s the best fish sandwich in town right now (Friday’s only).
I want to go have that fish sandwich just for Titus’ photo of how geometrically precise it is.
5. GAVROCHE BOBOIS
That’s an obscure joke which I will now spoil by laboriously explaining, melding a street urchin from Les Miz with a posh funiture line. But it suits Michael Nagrant’s piece on Jason Chan’s new restaurant Gavroche, since it begins with the (by now, somewhat expected) carping about the restaurant-publicist nexus, and goes down Nagrant’s usual path of the innocence of the waiflike restaurant business being despoiled by commerce. Gavroche opened with a media dinner that, given the state of food media these days, might as well have been the senior tour. (Geezer me was invited but could not attend.) Anyway, he gets around to talking about Gavroche:
Because the overnight oats mafia now fears excess, what’s happening at Gavroche really doesn’t exist much in Chicago anymore. Yes, people do truffles. Some people do foie gras. Some people do caviar. Some people do butter..Some people do fat-boy burgers. Some people do heart stopping aioli. No one is doing all of them on one burger like they do with the “King Louis Royale” burger at Gavroche which includes a golden mountain of beef-fat fries.
6. FOOD GLORIOUS FOOD
The Infatuation gives a 7.8 rating to Oliver’s:
Most of the short menu is made up of luxurious dishes like beef fat-griddled sourdough and truffle gnocchi smothered in cheese. The dining room is full of velvet chairs and vintage dishware you might find at a wealthy widow’s estate sale—along with well-dressed couples on date night and groups of friends giggling over a quietly jazzy soundtrack. The excellent cocktails involve things like caviar-stuffed olives and egg white crowns. It’s all enough to make you forget that you’re not the heir to a shipping magnate’s fortune.
Well, it is in the former location of Acadia (another heir to a fortune), so posh is no surprise.
7. PARMO FOR THE COURSE
Sandwich Tribunal has an English sort-of-sandwich that refutes stereotypes about American excess being uniquwly excessive, the Parmo:
The Parmo is anything but delicate. Originally a breaded pork cutlet–often served with chicken instead these days–fried up crisp, then covered in bechamel sauce and cheddar cheese before being finished under a broiler, it’s been estimated that a standard order of parmo and chips runs around 2600 calories. And it is most certainly not a sandwich, despite a contingent of UK Tiktokers who have vocally encouraged me to try it.
8. MAGAZINES—READ ALL ABOUT THEM!
Saveur has a piece on indie food mags—actual printed on paper magazines!—that includes Chicago’s own Bon Vivant:
Bon Vivant is a culinary journal that bolsters every topic it touches with superb writing and gorgeous photography. Launched in 2021 by chef and writer Hugh Amano, with photographs by Alexis Teichman set in stunning designs, each issue puts a single topic under its lens.
But they all look worth checking out, I have a feeling I’m about to spend a bunch of money.
9. ESMOVIE
Eater has a video about Restaurant Esme and its artful approach to food.
10. LISTEN UP
Chewing talks to Ruth Reichl about her documentary Food and Country.
Dominique Leach (Lexington Betty’s) was at Culinary Historians of Chicago to talk the history of Chicago barbecue.
And David Manilow talks to local beverage mavens about where they like to eat and drink in Chicago.
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