1. VOTE FOR PEDRO

At Chicago mag, John Kessler finds Mariscos San Pedro to be a brightly colorful improvement at Thalia Hall:

[Chef Marcos]Ascencio, whose fingerprints are the most apparent on the menu, explained his flavor-building strategy to me this way: “There’s something creamy, something salty, something sweet, something acidic, and something crispy-crunchy.” It’s maximalist, and when it works, you swoon. His snapper ceviche, in a yellow Peruvian pepper sauce, features apples, hot chile, taro, coconut, deep-fried lentils, and a frizzy fright wig of fried ginger threads. It’s electric. Milder but no less freaky good is his kampachi aguachile with compressed watermelon, licorice-tinged hoja santa, and Sungold tomatoes in a tomato-red broth. A tostada with fresh sardines over pistachio mole and dotted with golden raisins is exciting if less successful, since the fish tastes bitter.

Sounds promising to me, but I was a little thrown by the conclusion it leads Kessler to:

There’s something happening in Chicago now. Poilevey, Ascencio, and Incandela are at the heart of it, along with John Manion (Brasero, El Che Steakhouse & Bar) and Erling Wu-Bower and Chris Jung (Maxwells Trading). It’s a happy food movement, a spirit of exuberant joy in restaurants where you can go big or just crush some oysters and tacos, where cultural boundaries blur and high-end culinary training is employed in service to easy pleasures. After so many years of modernist high jinks, it feels like Chicago’s dining scene is finally starting to relax.

Hmm, can’t say I particularly agree with that (as a theory, that is—I like all those places). To name just two, what were Avec and Longman & Eagle about, nearly 20 years ago, if not unpretentious pleasures on a high executional level? Modernist high jinks seem to be at most the province of a small sliver at the top—albeit one the media and things like Michelin pay a lot of attention to.

2. NOVEL, ET

Maggie Hennessy at Time Out thinks pretty highly of Novel Pizza, a new pizza spot in Pilsen:

At golden hour on this second-summer night in Pilsen, it felt as though this third place had anchored the corner of 19th and Wood Streets for decades, rather than just over three months. Of course, it helps that Novel’s excellent tavern- and pan-style pizzas leapfrog their often middling bar-food and tourist-trap categories, giving us pies as destination-worthy as they are comforting.

3. ALLEGRO PICANTE

I guess The Infatuation likes Mexican food—they just rated Cariño a very high 9.0 out of ten, and this week they do the same for Alegrias, a seafood restaurant on Ashland in Wicker Park:

If you’re equally a fan of shellfish and fun restaurants, you should know about Alegrias Seafood Chicago. They specialize in Nayarit-style dishes, and with Nayarit being a Mexican state that borders the Pacific Ocean, you can expect a lot of delicious fish and spices in the mix.

But they’re not impressed by Mano a Mano, which is a “pasta project” (but not a pasta lab) from the Andros Taverna team:

Its decor style is unfinished dark old basement, with wood paneling and a few seashell lamps. And the inconsistent pastas don’t make the stale space worth it—the homemade pappardelle are too firm, and the squid ink tagliatelle is one-note.

4. SANTA CLASA

I felt fairly certain Steve Dolinsky would get around to Santa Masa Tamaleria sooner or later—since I met up with him for lunch ther a few weeks back. For chef Danny Espinoza and his wife Jhoanna (whom NBC 5’s transcriber mispells, fyi), it’s all about the masa:

“It’s the legacy that continues to carry on through the teachings of our grandparents, and the foods that, honestly, we just love eating,” said Espinoza.

“Nixtamalized corn that we bring in from Sinaloa [Mexico], it’s non-GMO. Vegetable shortening; we whip it up until it’s like three times its volume. We scoop it onto the dried corn husk that we rehydrate in hot water overnight, and then your filling of choice.”

5. SPEAKING OF AVEC

Dylan Patel has been under the radar as head chef of Avec, but I’ve thought for a while that it’s as good as it’s ever been, and so it’s good to read Anthony Todd’s account of how he got the gig:

Patel actually began his career at Avec in 2015 as an intern and never left, with the exception of a few stages at other restaurants… Patel climbed the ranks by putting his head down and cooking; you don’t see him doing a ton of social media, competitions, or TV appearances. Originally, he worked in the tiny basement at Avec West Loop (“we call it the underbelly”) on the day shift. He got the attention of Hendrix and One Off Hospitality chief Paul Kahan with his food — not for the customers, but for the staff. “The best way to show a chef that you’re ready to put something on a menu is through your staff meals,” explains Patel. “Paul and Perry would eat what I made, and they would say I needed to put things on the menu.

6. INDY BANDS

Titus Ruscitti offers a third set of reviews of places to eat in Indianapolis—and I’m surprised that one of my regular stops, Shapiro’s deli (as I have often told people, imagine Manny’s run by Lutherans) hasn’t appeared until now:

Indy is a good Roadfood city by which I mean there’s alot of fun old school spots you can stop in at. Shapiro’s Deli is arguably the most iconic of the bunch. This classic cafeteria style restaurant has been at it since 1905 and is still in the same family today as when it started. I think their Reuben is a contender for best I’ve had in big part due to the spectacular rye bread which they bake on site. The sliced corned beef is really good too but man oh man that hand cut rye bread is as good as it gets.

He’s not wrong (needless to say). I always come home with their rye bread. Anyway, there’s more here (including Heidelberg Haus, which I tried to take some people to on a road trip back from a film festival in Ohio, but it was closed on a holiday weekend… guess where we ended up?)

7. CHIU QUANDARY

There isn’t really one; I just took some people on a Chinatown tour and what else did we start with but a Portuguese egg tart from Chiu Quon? Anyway it must be moon cake season because the Tribune has a piece on moon cakes (not for the first time that I can recall):

[Owner Joyce] Chiu said the bakery typically makes one or two batches a week, but during the days leading up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, the bakers bump it up to 420 mooncakes each day. Typically, mooncakes are cut into halves or quarters and shared, but the “baby mooncakes” Chiu Quon Bakery sells are smaller and more square-ish.

8. YANKEE DILL-CO FOXTROT

The latest chef collaborating on a pastry at Daisies is… Jeff Tweedy, of Wilco. Huh? Ari Bendersky tells the story, but you can start by watching this video between Tweedy and Leigh Omilinsky of Daisies:

The savory Dill-Co comprises Daisies flaky, buttery croissant dough that Omilinsky filled with dill cream cheese, chopped up pickles, giardiniera, dehydrated pickle powder, and dill. The pastry, which she said resembles a Bear Claw in shape, gets topped with more pickle powder along with dill powder and sliced fresh pickle chips.

…The pastry will be available at Daisies starting Sept. 20 for $8.50. The restaurant will continue selling the pastries through the end of the month. Proceeds from the Dill-Co will benefit Nourishing Hope, which provides groceries, mental wellness and social services to Chicagoans in need.

9. WEIN AND DEIN

You’ll have to be a member at Wine Spectator to read it, but they have a piece on Galit, and how you make wine go with hummus and other flavors from that part of the world.

10. WE’VE GOT EVENTS

Not sure if this is Loulou‘s first event, but the spinoff of Lula Cafe will host Jeremy Salamon, of Brooklyn’s Agi’s Counter and a cookbook of Hungarian and Jewish dishes called Second Generation (which, oddly enough, was the name of the last restaurant in the Loulou space), this Thursday 9/26. Go here for more.

Cruz Blanca will be doing a German-Mexican Oktoberfest on Saturday, September 28, featuring a chef collaboration with Mark Steuer (Funkenhausen). Get tickets here.

The Scleroderma Foundation‘s Cooking Up a Cure is October 10; the chefs involved include Paul Kahan, Paul Virant, Zach Engel (Galit), Won Kim (Kimski), Barry Sorkin and more.  Go here for tickets.

The Evolved Network will hold their fundraising event, Eat & Evolve 2024, on October 21; participating chefs include Sarah Stegner, Paul Kahan, Greg Wade and Rob Levitt of assorted One Off spots, Tigist Reda (Demera), Christian Hunter, Lamar Moore, D’Andre Carter and Heather Bublick (Soul & Smoke) and more. It will be at Eden; go here to get tickets and learn more.

11. LISTEN UP

Continuing doing audio interviews at his Substack, Michael Nagrant talks to Donald Young, of Duck Sel.

At the Dining Table, David Manilow talks to Mark Kotlick, owner of the legendary Calumet Fisheries.

At Joiners, they talk to Hugh Amano, onetime chef at Fat Rice and ultimately co-author of their cookbook, then co-author of books on ramen and dumplings (see this Fooditor interview) and now does Bon Vivant journal, a publication on food underwritten by Sterling Bay. (No direct link, but it’s at your podcast app.)

At the Splendid Table, Abra Berens (Granor Farm) talks cooking with grains, the subject of her third book, Grist.

WHAT MIKE FED OTHER PEOPLE

My wife is president of her legal organization this year, and so part of that is that we help plan the national meetings of the group; we had one in Toronto in June, we’ll have one in Palm Springs next February, and this weekend we had one in Chicago. Of course, the excitement for me was getting to show off different sides of our food scene to people from all over the country—and also to vicariously spend legal organization and visitor money at places I like. Our first step was to pick a hotel to be based in; this group has met in Chicago many times before, national meetings about once a decade but the midwest regional meetings quite often, so the first choice was to orient the meeting away from the usual north side spots like the Fairmont. (It’s a big meeting—several hundred, anyway, with multiple meeting rooms for programs, etc., so only so many places we can even fit into.)

We based ourselves in the new Marriott Marquis near McCormack Place, the idea being to orient the meeting towards the south side and the redevelopment in the South Loop. Though there were some planned dinners, there were also a few free nights, and while some folks had their favorite Chicago places (I heard of people going to Harry Caray’s or Maple & Ash or ordering Lou Malnati’s), I knew people could use suggestions. So I wrote up a guide to good places to go in the area—and was very happy to hear all weekend from people who took my suggestion to go to the Duck Inn, or Moody Tongue, or Lao Sze Chuan or Manny’s, and loved what they had. Since Chinatown is the closest food neighborhood, I arranged a Chinatown tour where we tried a couple of bites at a few different places—Portuguese egg tarts at Chiu Quon, noodle soup at Slurp Slurp, flatbreads with lamb and cumin at Xi’an Cuisine—and I talked about the history of the neighborhood and the  evolution of food in Chinatown. We also bought out one of Sherman “Dilla” Thomas tours, of Bronzeville. (Finding ways to entertain spouses is a big part of keeping attendance up.) And as a big fan of Paul Fehribach’s Midwestern Food book (see here), we hired him to give a talk, which was a hit—a lot of midwestern nametags in the audience.

We also had a couple of dinners to set up for different-sized groups. The larger ones were in the hotel or catered at a place like the Adler Planetarium—the hotel one we did with a theme of Chicago neighborhoods, and hired Chicago designer Steve Shanabruch to do Chicago neighborhood banners for each food stand. (I think three were existing designs, but the fourth, for the dessert station, he created for our event—but will likely soon offer alongside his existing designs). Most of the food was made by the hotel, but for the dessert station, we managed to bring in mini-pops from Pretty Cool, another hit (I had never had the passionfruit hibiscus pop, but I strongly recommend it).

But for two smaller events, we chose local restaurants. The executive committee dinner, about 16 people, is usually at one of the nicer restaurants in whatever city we’re in—which depending on the city can often mean a pleasant but not wildly creative place offering lots of steak and seafood (I’ve never eaten so much sea bass in my life). Given our south side orientation, I knew where we should go—El Ideas. I told the backstory (Phillip Foss at the Palmer House, Meatyballs, EL Ideas) but still, when we got to the location in the middle of nowhere—”Mike, how do you find these places?” Hey, it’s just who I am… From the opening course, which you have to lick off your plate, they were beguiled by the mix of playfulness and the quality of the dishes, and the words “This is the best executive committee dinner EVER” were used. (I later heard another party of five went a few nights later and came out raving as well—”This is the best meeting ever!”)

Another dinner was the speakers’ dinner, that is, a dinner thanking the people who would be doing presentations during the five days. We needed a room that could hold 30-40 people—and I’ve been pretty sure for years what it would be, ever since Michael Muser told me that Ever was building out a separate private dining space in response to requests for a space that could hold groups of that size (Ever’s PDRs in the main restaurant max out, I think, around a dozen). No licking off plates here, but really nicely done dishes with some out of the ordinary touches—a scallop dish with a bit of jamon iberico and a main course of pork tenderloin were big hits, and the room, which I’ve seen fully lit and undecorated (and thus a bit bland) came to life with decorations and more atmospheric lighting. Plus, we got to peek in the Observatory at the end. If you need to feed 30 people and have the funds, it’s worth whatever it cost.

Upscale travel can blur together, upscale meals can seem all the same wherever you are. But I am happy to say that that was not the case in Chicago. Not just because we were licking off plates and eating ice cream with French fries for dessert—though all that delighted people. But even the things that seemed more conventional nevertheless seemed new and eye-opening and innovative. I was proud of my city for how it showed itself off to members from all over the country, not just from that small tasting menu sliver at the top (though they did show themselves well), and once again consider myself lucky to live in this exciting city, and to be able to share it with guests.