1. FAREWELL TO HANK’S HAUTE DOGS

When I went to Hawaii recently, I knew exactly one person there, barely—Henry Adaniya, who had owned Trio in Evanston and recruited its chefs, including Rick Tramonto and Gale Gand, Shawn McClain, and some kid named Grant Achatz. So one of our first days in Honolulu we stopped at a little mall and ate lunch at Hank’s Haute Dogs, which like Hot Doug’s offered a collection of sausages with different ingredients and flavorings. I had met Henry once before, but interviewed him by phone a couple of times, including, needless to say, for my book. We had a nice chat and a few very good haute dogs.

Well, good thing we got there in time—because word now comes that Henry is retiring and closing his hot dog stand. From SFGate:

“I recently turned 70 and felt complete in what I accomplished,” Adaniya tells SFGATE in an email. “I also felt like I still had time for one more chapter. Not sure what that is yet though, waiting to walk through the door of opportunity first.”

…Adaniya was born in Los Angeles and raised in Chicago. His parents were from Hawaii and had their own hot dog stand in Waikiki in the 1950s. The restaurateur found success in Chicago as the owner of “ground-breaking” fine dining restaurant Trio, which helped put chefs like Grant Achatz on the map. He closed the restaurant after 12 years in 2006 and moved to Hawaii, opening Hank’s Haute Dogs in 2007.

For more of the story, including from Henry himself, watch for my book.

2. MIRRA MIRA ON THE WAZWALL

It’s ironic that Michael Nagrant’s piece on Mirra (which he misspells Mira in the headline, or maybe that’s a joke I didn’t get), the Mexican-Indian fusion spot from Wazwan chef-owner Zubair Mohajir (which I guess is closed now? but Coach House still exists?) and Rishi Kumar (ex of Bar Sotano), starts by talking about Asheville, North Carolina, which just a few days later is in a state of devastation from Hurricane Helene:

I also hit Chai Pani in Asheville, North Carolina. Asheville is a lot like Wicker Park in the mid to late 2000s, but an entire city where it feels like every citizen has their own performance art project and at least half of them also run a craft brewing concern.

You can walk around Asheville, step into a random bar, have somebody blindfold and spin you around three times in front of a beer cooler and then have you walk toward it with your arm outstretched. Whatever you end up grabbing has a like an 87% chance of being one of the best beers you’ve consumed in your life.

Chai Pani is a James Beard-award winning “Indian street food” restaurant.  Do they have butter chicken?  Yeah, sure. But, unlike so many Indian restaurants which cater to spice-averse palates, Pani went bold, serving up fiery chaats, including one of the best green chili and sour sweet tamarind-infused bhel puri I’ve ever had.

I’ve never been to Asheville, though I was set to go a few years ago for one of my wife’s legal meetings, but this thing called COVID canceled that one. Hope it comes back from this disaster, too! Anyway, on to Mirra, here’s something about that Mexican-Indian fusion:

One thing we know white folk like, because the immigrants who opened first wave American Mexican restaurants have been luring those folks in with free endless bowls of them for decades, is chips and salsa. Well, it turns out the greatest chips and salsa might be papadam aka lentil or bean flour fried crisps, and achar, a South Asian pickle.

At Mirra, the papad are wafer-thin airy spinnakers of deliciousness. In addition to the achar, the platter includes a serrano-rich salsa Tatemado, one of the better fresh salsas I’ve had anywhere. Rounding out the offering is velvety guacamole and sikil pak which if you’ve never had is kind of like a pumpkin seed hummus. I love the abundance and contrasting textures and bursts of acidity and heat that abound in this offering.

3. MONTREAL, VIA EVANSTON

Steve Dolinsky checks out a new bagel place in Evanston, Lefty’s Righteous Bagels, and comes away impressed:

Hand-rolling, boiling and baking are the keys to a good bagel, and at Lefty’s Righteous Bagels in Evanston – which doubles as a coffee shop. The business plan is simple:

“The business plan is people love bagels; I love bagels,” said owner Brad Nadborne.

Nadborne was inspired by what he saw and tasted in Montreal.

“We hand-roll our bagels like they do in Montreal; we boil ‘em in honey water, which they do as well. And then it goes into a wood-fired oven, which is very Montreal,” he said.

4. ILLINOIS NAFSI

A Tribune piece by Louisa Chu makes a lot of hay out of a soul food restaurant, Nafsi, being located in the once-segregated and restricted South Shore Country Club, though for most people its most notable history will be the benefit concert thrown there by the Blues Brothers. Anyway, here’s what she says:

Executive chef Dondee Robinson, last at the critically acclaimed Bronzeville Winery, has created a menu reclaiming the space, with a nod to the family history of restaurant owner Donnell Digby, best known for The Woodlawn venue.

“To have a Black-owned restaurant, and a Black executive chef in an establishment that once didn’t want us here,” Robinson said, “it’s a statement.”

Nafsi is a Swahili word that means soul, said the chef, so their concept is elevated soul food “to bring new flavors and new ideas to the South Shore community.”

“We both have some background in South Shore,” said Digby, who always wanted to create a space with a certain “style and vibration” for everyone to enjoy in the neighborhood.

5. ROMA NORTE

My younger son developed a thing at one point for the Roma Italian beef joint on Pulaski—though I doubt he had Italian beef there; probably burgers or hot dogs, but like me he had a thing for blue collar joints where half the customers are wearing reflective safety vests. Dennis Lee talks it up, and finds a hidden gem:

…these Italian beef empanadas (two for $5), are a really fun and clever use for Italian beef.

They’re stuffed with Italian beef, mozzarella, and giardinera (you get a choice between hot or mild), and each serving comes with a little cup of beef jus for dipping, which is a nice touch.

They’re deep fried, and don’t skimp on the filling, either.

We’ve all seen empanadas that are mostly puffed up with steam, but these are densely packed, which is really the Chicago way. They come out as screaming hot as a pizza puff, so don’t burn your tongue. Like I did. Pizza puff style.

6. PLOUGHDOG’S LUNCH

An Irish bar in Avondale hardly seems like an adventurous pick for Titus Ruscitti, but The Wolfhound is really Chicago Irish:

It’s owned by a Chicago Firefighter so the food takes after an old Irish Pub and also a meal at the firehouse. It’s a very modern menu with bits and pieces of Chicago spread through out. For ex. the sausage rolls are made with mini links from Winston’s Sausages on 63rd St. I really like these one bite snacks wrapped in a puff pastry, especially at their happy hour prices (1/2 off apps from 4p-6p on Thurs).

7. NUEVE

The Infatuation’s ratings always seemed to land in the 8s, but suddenly—especially for Mexican food—they’re handing out 9s. The latest example, and the highest rating I can remember seeing from them, is 9.3 for Mariscos San Pedro:

Mariscos San Pedro could serve their Mexican seafood in the middle of the Kennedy during rush hour and we’d still tell you to risk life and limb for a spoon of their hibiscus-and-beet-cured scallop aguachile. Lucky for your insurance premium, all that’s required to enter this wildly delicious seafood party is a visit to Pilsen (and occasionally, a reservation).

It’s funny that they call out a south side restaurant with a reference to a north side expressway, though.

8. SENEWICH

Sandwich Tribunal is really trying to knock off countries from its sandwiches eaten list. Latest is the Senegalese Pain Ndambe:

The only real identifying information [Thrillist gave] in [a 2019] writeup is that the sandwich hails from Senegal. This triggered a memory though, a memory of Anthony Bourdain sitting on a bench next to a street food stall, eating a baguette filled with some mysterious “good stuff.” Bourdain gave the sandwich a name though: Ndambe.

…Eventually I found such a recipe on YouTube–which spelled the dish “Nbambe” rather than Ndambe. It, as well as nearly every other recipe I’ve seen for Ndambe, uses black-eyed peas, not lentils. But this recipe seems right in a way that the recipes using lamb do not, a simple, meatless recipe that a woman selling bean dip outside a bakery on a dusty side-street in Senegal might make.

9. LISTEN UP

I don’t participate on Reddit’s r/chicagofood, but I do check it out once in a while, a little bit because I might find actual information there but also because it kind of reminds me of the early days of Chowhound and LTHForum—mostly youngish people getting excited about the places they find and want to share them with the world, and thinking, like we did then, that they were the first ones to ever notice them. That’s the best of it; then there’s a lot of people asking about places I don’t care much about (“Visiting Chicago, where should I go, Armitage Alehouse or Tortoise Supper Club?”) and at worst, a herd mentality against anyone who has strongly different opinions, made worse by the fact that Reddit’s structure lets a mob vote the people who disagree with it into invisibility. (Check out how it recently ripped into someone who simply opened in the former location of COVID-era internet villain Nini’s Deli, no other relation.) This punitive herd/mob mentality also reminds me of (slightly later) early days at LTHForum….

Anyway, Michael Nagrant, in his series of podcast interviews, talks with Mitch Gropman. Who’s that? The founder of, and moderator of, r/chicagofood, whose own contributions have included some obsessive listmaking (like trying 200 different French fries around town to rate the best). I’ve only listened to the first chunk, so I don’t know if it eventually gets to exploring the up and downsides of how this kind of food social media shapes its own discourse and behavior (they all have them, LTH and Chowhound certainly did) but in any case, if you’re interested in where a lot of people are talking Chicago food these days, check it out.

At The Dining Table, David Manilow asks chefs he’s interviewed lately, from Danny Grant (Etta) to Stephanie Hart (Brown Sugar Bakery) about their favorite hidden gem restaurants.

And at Joiners, they talk to an old Chicago media name, long since decamped for New York: Julia Kramer, ex of Time Out Chicago, later at Bon Appetit.

10. WE HAVE EVENTS

Chicago Chef Cooks will have an event for Hurricane Helene relief next Sunday, October 6, led by Chef Art Smith. Go here for details.

IN MEMORIAM

The patriarchs of a couple of old school places passed this week:

Anthony Durpetti was neither Gene nor Georgetti, but he took the legendary steakhouse over following the death of co-founder Gene Michelotti, who was his father-in-law, in 1989. An announcement from the family describes his long stewardship:

Over the three decades that followed, Tony turned Gene & Georgetti into a beacon of hospitality and a true Chicago landmark, championing the traditions that have made it a beloved institution until today. Whether welcoming celebrities like Frank Sinatra, Harry Carey or Keanu Reeves – or the thousands of local families, regulars and visitors that passed through Gene & Georgetti’s doors every week – everyone was treated like a long-lost relative with a firm handshake, a double-kiss or a friendly joke. An integral part of the brand’s national recognition, Tony always tempered tradition with innovation. He led the first-ever expansion of Gene & Georgetti by doubling its size in 1996, growing seating from 120 to 220 people. He also expanded the business with a new location in Rosemont, IL in 2015 and later brought an outpost of the brand to Chicago’s Midway Airport.

He was 80.

Joseph Monastero founded the now-closed, but long-running northwest side Italian restaurant and banquet hall bearing his name. The Trib tells the story:

In 1962, Monastero, his sister, Gina, and his brother, Salvy, bought a Northwest Side pizzeria, La Canopy. Five years later, they built and opened Monastero’s Ristorante in a nearby space at 3935 W. Devon Ave.

Over the years, the popularity of the restaurant and its Sicilian fare allowed it to expand several times. In 1969, the restaurant opened a garden courtyard with a trellis.

“Dad, his brother and his sister always were ahead of the times, and al fresco seating didn’t catch on until more recently, but back then, they gave it a shot, installing grape arbors and real grapes,” Monastero’s son said.

He was 93.

WHAT MIKE ATE

One meal I had during my wife’s legal event that I didn’t mention last week was that I went to Mariscos San Pedro, in Thalia Hall. John Kessler wrote in Chicago mag last week that:

[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.

This is a way of expressing cooking philosophy that I’ve heard more than once lately—Stephanie Izard, who fits it to a T, says it in my upcoming book. But when it doesn’t work, you wish they’d stuck to another common bit of philosophy—Coco Chanel’s line that before you leave the house, you take off one thing to avoid being overdressed. Mariscos San Pedro has quality ingredients and they cook them with a certain degree of skill, but nearly everything seemed overdressed—a tostada of fish, octopus and shrimp (I think; multiple seafoods, anyway) came bearing half an avocado and a small forest of cilantro, and was overblown with spice, negating the subtlety of raw fish; a shrimp gobernador taco came with a griddled layer of cheese, which tended to damp down the shrimp and everything else. I didn’t mean to get shrimp with everything, but I did by ordering wood-fired shrimp from the grill. I expected them to have a charred smoky flavor and texture, like outstanding shrimp I remember from La Sirena Clandestina, but they felt a little mushy (underdone?) and in any case failed to live up to the robustness of that memory. The one thing that wowed me was a dessert I would not have ordered from the description alone, but I overheard one of the cooks recommending it to the couple seated next to me: a fat grilled plantain, stuffed with requesón cheese (close enough to ricotta that they just called it that) and drizzled with cajeta caramel. I thought I’d be good for one or two bites, and I polished it off.

I was invited a few weeks ago to a media dinner at Bar Parisette, in the former Dos Urban Cantina space, but couldn’t go because of my trip to Hawaii. So we went last week as guests of the house. We started with two pates—chicken liver mousse and a pork pate. The first was letter-perfect classic; the pork pate was a little bland, or needed more flavors around it. Then we had something called pork belly Normandie, an apple cider sauce, and the standout dish—pappardelle with corn and blueberries which, chef Madalyn Durant explained to us, she had cured after buying them from a farmer in Michigan. We ended by sharing a steak frites—ironically, I had earlier told owner Matt Sussman that I never order steak out but the words “steak frites” proved kind of irresistible. The steak or its mustard-peppercorn sauce needed more salt, but the frites were perfect (attention Mitch Gropman!) We were too full for dessert but they brought us a little housemade soft-serve anyway. So, not the most exceptional French meal in town—at the moment I’d give that to Bistro Monadnock, I guess—but a good and reasonably priced one, and I can easily see going back. Hopefully Chef Durant will continue mixing French classics with things of her own invention, like the pappardelle with corn and blueberries.

One more meal last week—I knew there had been staff changes at Johns Food and Wine so I went back to see if it was consistent with what it had been a few months ago. I started with a beet salad, not the usual goat cheese one but working on very similar priciples with a creme fraiche dressing, and a pasta of thick tubular grana arso pasta with crab and lobster meat. As soon as I got the latter I realized I had seen it before—posted on Instagram by my friend Kenny Zuckerberg here. I agree with his praise for the pasta here, two meals and both times it was the pasta course (or however you’d classify a gnocchi course) that was the standout, by a country mile. Not that the others weren’t good—the other thing I had was some slices of pork neck in a wine and black garlic sauce—but the pasta reminded me how good pasta can be. Honestly, it wasn’t the crab and lobster meat, but the cheap stuff, mainly flour in different forms, that impressed—the pasta had just the right toothsome-rubber texture, and the sparing use of toasted bread crumbs, demonstrate what makes good pasta so good. I sat at the bar again, so ordered directly from people I could chat about my choices with, and even got to try two different wines (one white, one orange) to pick one to go with the pork neck. Johns seemed a little less busy this time (though still busy by the time I left) but it remains one of my favorite new-ish openings.

I’m off to my film festival in Italy this week, so no Buzz List for two weeks. I’ll be back on October 21.