April 2011
20 posts
Pastoral's Artisan Producer Festival
If you like foods made on a small-scale with the utmost care and quality, you must check out Pastoral’s first annual Artisan Producer Festival. This free event takes place Saturday, April 30th, from 11am–3pm at the Chicago French Market and will feature both local and national culinary producers.
Pastoral, “whose mission is to make buying and eating great food and wine a fun,...
A Coffee CSA
There’s a delicious new service for the conscientious coffee fiend, a community supported agriculture project called (so not to confuse you) Coffee CSA. Subscribers receive a monthly delivery of freshly roasted coffee beans directly from small, 100% family-owned farms around the world. Beans come from 140,000 independent farms ranging in size from one to 10 acres in regions famous for...
More CPS Lunch Controversy
When schools start banning homemade lunches you begin to wonder if things have gone too far. Such is the current state of the cafeteria at numerous Chicago Public Schools (CPS), where one West Side principal dubiously reasoned, “Nutrition wise, it is better for the children to eat at the school.” Really? The decision to ban lunches brought from home is currently not a district-wide ban and is...
Next: The First Review
Someone had to break the ice. The ice being the formidable Next and the icebreaker being Chicagoist, the first publication to publish a review about the new restaurant. The review was published within a mere week of Next’s opening, which would traditionally be considered a faux paus in the restaurant world. Reviewers often allot establishments a few weeks, even a few months, to work out the...
Food Truck Summit
Chicago’s food truck scene has seen some pretty impressive growth over the past year despite our restrictive and dated food truck laws. Now it’s time to come together, discuss, and celebrate.
Chicago’s first food truck summit takes place in the parking lot of Goose Island Brewpub this Tuesday, April 19th, from 7-10pm. Participating food trucks include Flirty Cupcakes, The...
Congrats To The 2011 Eat Out Award Winners!
A big congrats to Time Out Chicago’s Eat Out Award winners Lillie’s Q for Best New Barbecue and Girl & the Goat for Best New Restaurant!
Props extend to Stephanie Izard for the Chef of the Year award and the Boka Group guys, Rob Katz and Kevin Boehm, who received the Restaurateur of the Year award. It’s been a stellar year for all.
Read more about the Eat Out Awards...
Aviary Opens...NOT YET
From The Aviary Facebook page: “We are NOT opening tonight… most likely next week.”
Aviary Opens...
While the alluring elusiveness of Next continues to captivate Chicago, the spotlight shifts today, April 13th, to next door bar Aviary. Originally scheduled to open last week in tandem with Next, the high-concept cocktail bar can accommodate only 200 patrons. Seeing as how reservations are not required as with sold-out Next, you can expect foodies wanting a piece of the action to descend in...
BPA Free
We all know that eating fresh foods offers us a multitude of culinary joys and health benefits, but now you have yet another reason to mosey on over the farmer’s market, dust off your Dutch Oven, and get cooking – protection from BPA. Bishphenol A, the much reviled substance that can be found in food cans, plastic-packaged foods, water bottles, baby bottles, and even store receipts has been...
Wine Doesn't Always Accompany Food (But We Knew...
Though we often like to believe that our penchant for fine wine is simply an efficacious accompaniment to whatever we have on our plates, a recent study of America’s wine drinking habits digresses and instead counters with the sentiment: you’re all a bunch of winos. Wine Opinions, a market research company, unearthed America’s clandestine wine drinking habits with the finding that only 41% of...
Chicago "Rising Star" Chefs
Will the accolades ever cease? We hope not. In the latest round of food honors, Chicago walked away with a healthy infusion of gold. Food & Wine magazine unveiled their list of Best New Chefs and, you guessed it, Stephanie Izard was one of them. Izard also made the cut in popular online culinary magazine StarChef.com’s annual list of “Rising Stars,” which honored 18 local chefs,...
The Artificial Food Dye Debate Continues
CNN reported last week that the Food and Drug Administration decided there is currently insufficient evidence to support a link between artificial food dyes and ADHD in children. However, the FDA did emphasize that more research is needed on the issue and that they believe there is a trend in food dyes and negative side effects in children.
In light of the current uncertainty surrounding the...
Food Recall Database
The Food and Drug Administration is evolving and consumers stand to reap the benefits. The agency recently unveiled a revamped web site that most notably includes a searchable database that aggregates information on the latest food recalls. The database lists each product recall by date, brand name, product description, problem with the food, company conducting the recall, and even includes a...
Fasting For Food Legislation
When Mark Bittman speaks about the massive food issues facing the world, people listen. When Bittman goes on a fast, news outlets across the country stampede to his doorstep. Bittman, a man who eats for a living, is fasting not for a quick detox from his gastronome lifestyle but rather in support of the consumption of food. Sound anomalous? Well, many believe House budget bill H.R.1 is as...
More Next
Next is now. Next opened on schedule Wednesday, April 6 despite a software glitch that delayed the sending of emails containing ticket information until opening morning. Though the emails are out, there are some reporting on Next’s Facebook page that there is still an issue with the software and they are unable to purchase tickets. The bad news is, if you’ve yet to receive an email from the...
The Bitter Blocker
Do your kids refuse to take their cold medicine? Not a fan of the bitter aftertaste of many artificially sweetened diet drinks? Help is on the way in the form of a newly discovered compound that can block the ability of taste buds to register bitter flavors. Once it hits the market the GIV3616 compound could be added to many bitter foods, beverages, and medicines to mask their unpleasant...
Artificial Food Dyes, A Concern?
Ever wonder what exactly that suspiciously eponymous “Yellow 5” ingredient listed on your child’s package of M&M’s was and how it might be impacting their health? You’re not the only one. Artificial food dyes, which have long been considered to be a benign addition to many common foods such as candy, salad dressing, and waffles, are now under scrutiny for their potential link to...
Food Republic
Despite the mass of food web sites, blogs, books, magazines, TV shows, YouTube channels, (and everything in between,) currently engulfing pop culture, one segment of the foodie population remains underserved: men. Enter Food Republic, the brainchild of celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson. The site is aimed at both the ambitious bachelor who may, “want to impress a date with budding culinary...
Next
The frenetic build-up to Grant Achatz’s Next, what the NYTimes is calling “the most hotly anticipated opening in the country,” has at long last ended! Achatz recently announced on Twitter “1st 1,000 emails sent from tickets@nextrestaurant.com just now. Be sure 2 check your spam box! As of right now 0 covers 4 tonight. Exciting.” Tickets for Next were expected to go on sale a few...
Foodie In The Huffington Post
Look for Foodie in the Huffington Post article “Tips For Getting Into Chicago’s Most Popular Restaurants”!
