With 77 food booths to choose among, it`s understandable that visitors to Taste of Chicago often sport a bemused, well-how-did-I-get-here expression. What to eat? What to avoid?
Ever helpful, Friday answers those questions with our annual Taste of Taste roundup. On opening day, we sent about 25 finicky eaters to Columbus Drive, sampling food from every booth. We spent $504 (and we were darn proud to see $42 of that going for amenities), and while we didn`t eat every dish
(though our dessert team gave it a heck of an effort), we feel confident that we know what`s what at Taste this year. Now you can, too, and it won`t cost you $504.
You`d think a vast undertaking such as Taste would include every dish under the sun. Not true; we uncovered a list of 10 foodstuffs that somehow did not make the grade, and reprinted them elsewhere on this page.
When you`re done with this, you might check out today`s Tempo section for more on Taste of Chicago.
Happy hunting.
Asian
Lee Iacocca may not like this, but Honda`s kushie mix clearly stood out in the Asian category with a pair of delicious and sizable shrimp, tangy pieces of chicken breast and two thick slices of spicy sausage-all on skewers. Except for a punchy lumpia shanghei from Priscilla`s, the egg rolls proved universally dull at other Asian booths. The same goes for the tempuras offered by some. Instead, opt for tastier specialties: Pasteur`s beef brochette, for instance, or Bando`s kalbee-huge slabs of sweet, fat and marinated short ribs. Priscilla`s fills you up with a delicious quarter-chicken. Thai Room`s chicken satay makes up in quantity and fine texture what it may lack in curried heat. If tempura you must, get Guey Lon`s find-the-shrimp number. The two or three that turn up do taste wonderful.
Robert Cross.
Burgers
Old reliable Billy Goat Grill is again serving up cheeseburgers, cheeseburgers, cheeseburgers (the servers are even shouting that famous phrase, God bless `em). At Hamburger Hamlet, ”Baby cheeseburgers” is kinda misleading for what they`re serving. True, the sandwiches are bite-size (you can probably polish one off in three gulps), but they are far superior and have more meat to them than the more famous ”sliders” that we grew up on.
Allan Johnson.
Chicken
At Alfo`s booth, the chicken Vesuvio-a Chicago specialty-had none of its usual charm. There was little of the garlic that is characteristic of this dish but plenty of the oil, most of it soaked into the undercooked potatoes that accompany it. Neither was there much garlic evident in the bland but generously portioned whole chicken breast from Como Inn. Arnie`s chicken teriyaki also featured a whole breast-moist, tender and coated with a light fruity sauce, but again pretty bland. At Michael Stuart`s, where the servers wore T-shirts reading ”All natural” while pumping liquid cheddar cheese onto the steak sandwiches, the chicken breast in pita was a tasty sandwich much like a gyros; there was a garden of lettuce and tomato topped with yogurt sauce, all folded in a soft, warm pita. At Counselor`s Row, the attendants didn`t even bother providing a fork with the Athenian chicken, but the surprisingly juicy and flavorful half-chicken was worth the seven tickets in terms of quantity and quality.
Steven Pratt.
Smart man, that fellow at Mama Desta`s. As he handed over the dorho kilwa, he offered a big stack of napkins. Don`t turn him down and by all means don`t pass up the booth. Order the dorho kilwa and out come two completely different tastes: a leg that is more spicy than hot, a little sweet and full of onions, and a big juicy thigh that packs a punch with a spicy red sauce. Other than that, the best thing to be said about the barbecued chicken is that none of the lines were long. Scampi serves a skinless, boneless chicken breast tucked into a split hard roll. The sauce really isn`t bad, sweet at first then a bit spicy. Fitzee`s offers two pieces of chicken-nicely cooked, though greasy and covered with a thin, bland sauce. The only offering at Carson`s is a half of a barbecued chicken. The meat was juicy, but getting to it required negotiating a mess of sauce and a lot of charred skin. Stick to the ribs, Carson`s.
Pat Dailey.
The secret at Great Godfrey Daniels is to hold the chicken wings far away from your body; otherwise, your clothes must go straight to the cleaners. The three wings come in a pool of spicy, very greasy barbecue sauce, with blue cheese dressing on the side. The same eating technique is recommended for Daniels` blackened chicken breast sandwich. The hefty slab of tender chicken is heavily slathered with sandwich spread, which tends to shoot out one side of the sandwich as you bite into the other side. Best bet for wings are the eight little meaty drummettes at Excalibur. They`re easy to eat, and the hot sauce (not too hot, but it has a bit of a punch) is soaked through them. Jimmy G`s and Harold`s Chicken are both serving deep-fried, crispy chicken wings, each with three wings per serving. At Harold`s, you squirt barbecue sauce
(mild) yourself from a large container. Jimmy G`s wings, which come with hard roll, were quite plump and tasty; barbecue sauce gets ladled on if you ask for it.
Barbara Sullivan.
Chinese
Head straight for the egg roll at King Wah, where the crispy package is chock-full of juicy ground pork and cabbage and an intriguingly pleasant infusion of cinnamon. The Chinatown restaurant`s crab stick wonton is also a worthy choice, pairing cream cheese and crustacean for a light and savory filling. Shrimp fried rice, however, fails to inspire.
At Sun Wah, the Argyle neighborhood eatery`s dim sum samplings suffer from the preparation-to-serving lag time. Steamed shrimp dumplings and chicken buns are best purveyed directly from a tableside steam cart. Here, because they do counter time before consumption, both are reduced to overly-glutenous, barely flavorful versions. Roasted barbecued pork fares a bit better, soley on the merit of a mildly fruit-enhanced coating.
Leigh Behrens.
Corn
There`s plenty of sweet and delicious corn on the cob being served by the four booths at Taste. Sharko`s` roasted-to-perfection corn, dripping with butter (even though it was smaller than that served at the other booths) is absolutely divine. The corn at both Hard Rock Cafe and Flapjaws tastes wonderful and is well worth the three tickets. Reilly`s Daughter was the only disappointment. Flapjaws is the only booth not offering black pepper.
Itasca Wiggins.
Dessert
In this heavyweight category, only Sara Lee dares to bare calorie counts. Among two under 200, light chocolate mousse was pleasingly puddinglike, while the lemon cream cake was too frozen to enjoy (four tickets each). Go for a side of fresh strawberries or green grapes (one ticket more). Among the cheesecakes, Eli`s brings in both the winner (plain with strawberry: the coolest and creamiest) and loser (key lime: couldn`t taste the lime here). Second-best is Cheesecake by JR`s pecan caramel, nicely edged with mousse piping. Mrs. Field`s double fudge brownie beats out My Husband`s Cookies cream cheese brownie in size, taste and-not surprisingly-price (four tickets vs. two). Mrs. Field`s signature oatmeal raisin cookies don`t disappoint (three for four tickets), but the chocolate chip were too hard and flat. Tastiest budget-buy is My Husband`s semi-sweet cookie (one ticket).
Darlene G. Stevens.
The best place to stop is Zephyr for an ice cream sundae. For four tickets, a generous scoop of tasty vanilla is covered with a choice of hot fudge, fresh strawberries or pineapple. The strawberry gourmet yogurt at Bresler`s also was a good-sized portion for four tickets. It tasted more like ice cream than yogurt, although lighter; but the flavor was rather artificial. For three tickets, a frozen chocolate-covered banana at Carousel Corner is a nice combination of flavors. The frozen fruit tastes like a light, refreshing flavored ice.
The best value was the rainbow cone at Original Rainbow Cone. A scoop each of chocolate, palmer (french vanilla with cherries and walnuts), strawberry, pistachio and orange sherbet sit precariously atop a plain cone. It`s an incredible amount of ice cream for four tickets, if you can keep the scoops from falling off the cone. Skip the fried ice cream at Ditka`s; the sparse cornflake-cinnamon topping is soggy.
Dorothy Anderson.
At Franco`s the lemon ice is excellent; at Mama Tish`s, the lemon ice is much better than the strawberry. Papa Milano`s fried dough is very good; JJ`s fried dough is fine, but you have to sprinkle the sugar and cinnamon yourself, which is tricky when the wind blows. The candy combo sampler at Aunt Diana`s is a chocolate lover`s delight; everything is great. And last but not least, don`t miss Fannie May`s almond ice cream bar.
Cynthia Davis and Annie Noble.
Eclectic
A definite hit in this catch-all category is Edna`s Restaurant. The soul food plate is a very nice combo of tender short ribs, smoky collard greens and sweet potato. The Frisbee-like cornbread pancake may be safely discarded, but the rest tastes very good. Mareva`s is offering pierogi at three for seven tickets (a bit steep). The mushroom pierogi, filled to bursting with moist minced mushrooms, are far superior to the meat pierogi, which are dry and a bit coarse. Both pierogi are fried, and on the greasy side. Winston`s Sausage offers Irish sausage that tastes like a mealy version of breakfast sausage;
the Bridie sandwich is a meat pie, substantial enough but in need of a flavor transfusion. Over at Mama Desta`s Red Sea, you can get zilzil (they call me mister) tibs or yebeg tibs; the zilzil (beef) are pretty spicy, while the yebeg (lamb) are much milder. Both are pretty much cooked to extinction, but if you like well-done meat. . .Run, do not walk, from Gibson`s onion rings, which are bad beyond polite description.
Phil Vettel.
The only ingredient missing from the spinach pie at Counselor`s Row is the sound of Opaa! A fork is given for the dainty, but it`s tastier to pinch off a bite with your fingers. The gyros sandwich is no match; it`s dry, with only a strand of onion and tomato in the warm pita. Maxim`s, despite the French name, has the best gyros, packed with creamy yogurt sauce, onions and tomatoes. Maxim`s Greek sausage seems lost in its pita blanket. With a name like Yiannis, the tastebuds have high expectations, but the food doesn`t do the name justice.
Pamela Sherrod and Terry Wilson
Hot dogs and Polish
The only hot dog available is Vienna Beef`s great Chicago-style dog, offered at the Vienna Beef stand for four tickets and at Fluky`s for three.
(You figure that out!) The purist will prefer Fluky`s. It comes fresh from an ideal-temperature water bath in a soft, poppy-seeded bun with mustard, onion and iridescent green pickle relish. Vienna Beef tries to improve on perfection (or hide it) by adding a blanket of onion, relish, tomato, hot chili peppers and a dill-pickle strip. Vienna Beef`s five-ticket Chicago Fire Dog is a long, soft, slightly greasy hot dog over-enlivened with red pepper flakes. It comes with the same garnishes as the hot dog.
An option, at both stands, is first-rate Polish sausage (five tickets). The differences are minor but significant. Fluky`s tastes meatier, moister and comes with a strongly dilled pickle slice as well as grilled onions. In Vienna Beef`s nicely charred ”Maxwell Street” version, the pickle is less cured and firmer and the onions are meltingly soft. Those of the gourmet persuasion should skip both and go directly to Mareva`s. The seven-ticket portion is small, only two 2 1/2-inch pieces in a paper container. No bun! But the sausage is wonderfully meaty and crisp-skinned and comes with a generous amount of soft, flavorful, mildly sweet sauerkraut. A blue-ribbon entry.
William Rice
Italian
For Italian food the way mama used to make it, go to Mama`s house. If you`ll settle for mass-produced quantities of food selections ending with vowels, head for Taste of Chicago. . .Hands-down champ for this team is the toasted ravioli at Lino`s. It`s filled with generous amounts of tasty cheese, breaded and toasted, and served with a delicious red sauce on the side. Lino`s calamari, a generous serving breaded and fried, gets a ”tough” rating from two out of three. . .Alfo`s lasagna gets six thumbs down-it`s heavy on the pasta, light on the filling, short on the baking, and fat on the grease. We were not charged extra for the piece of body hair that graced our serving. . .Somewhere between supremo and mezzo-mezzo is Como Inn`s uninspired ravioli with mealy meat filling and somewhat watery sauce (actually preferred by one team member). Como`s minced clams are hot and flavorful, but overcooked and a chewy challenge. . .Ricobene`s breaded steak with red gravy and peppers is paper-thin overbreaded and overfried pancake of mystery meat, stuffed into a chunk of Italian bread, slopped over with red sauce and garnished with green sweet peppers-and the best thing we had all day. Looks, as your Mama so often told you, aren`t everything.
Tony Natale, Kathy O`Malley and Michael Pullin
Mexican/Spanish
All of the Mexican offerings at Taste remind me of my Aunt Ellen-fun, but basically WASPy. Still, if you want authentic, go to Mazatlan; if you want a Latin accent and some fun at Taste, try the steak burrito at Don Pancho and the steak taco at El Jardin; they`re filling and flavorful. Don Pancho`s beef tastes wonderfully of the grill (though it comes off a bit dry and tough in the stand`s tacos and tortas; added beans cure that problem in the burrito). At Aqui Mi Tierra, beef for burritos and tacos is more stewed than grilled-more tender, but far less flavorful; the salsa there tastes fresh and tart, though. No quesadilla at Taste is worth tasting. El Jardin`s looks best-browned nicely, with wonderfully chunky salsa-but are bland; the nachos are worthy of a suburban movie theater.
The Spanish entry, Cuchilandia, isn`t inspiring. Roast pork and pork kebab are gristly-greasy-not for weak stomachs, visually or gustatorially;
perhaps it was providence, but the stand was out of codfish fritters on our visit.
John Teets
Pizza
The challenge: to keep the thin pizza crisp and hot, even though there`s enough heat and humidity to wilt nerves, much less pizza crust. All of this year`s entrants succeeded by bringing their kitchens (including huge ovens) to the Taste. The result is surprisingly good pizza that`s a good value (three to four tickets).
Carmen`s Pizzeria takes top honors for its super-crisp, hot sausage. There`s lots of cheese in the generous slice at Jake`s Pizza; Bacino`s gives you a comparatively small slice of pizza. It`s cheating to label the chorizo and chicken offerings at Hat Dance as pizza; they`re really fried tortillas topped with cheeses, green peppers, onions, corn and meat. No matter though;
these nifty rollups are quite tasty (the chorizo is best) and just the treat Taste samplers should try.
Linda Bergstrom
Stuffed and deep-dish pizza are among Taste`s biggest sellers, year after year. This year`s overall winner is Lou Malnati`s. For four tickets, you`ll get an excellent crust that breaks with a bite, and plenty of sausage. Although the tomato sauce was runny, it has good flavor. Try Gino`s East for its slab sausage and spinach pizza, and Bacino`s for stuffed spinach pizza, a flavorful blend of vegetable and cheese. Giordano`s is no bargain at six tickets, but Carmen`s, at five, is unforgettable. A tip to the feasters: Bring napkins. You don`t always get enough, and Gino`s doesn`t even put them out.
Manuel Galvan
Poultry
Asking who makes the best barbecued turkey drumstick is like asking which episode of ”Who`s the Boss” is best: The thing being compared probably doesn`t need to exist in the first place.
But, alas, two Taste booths are serving up this puzzling dish. The versions from Kenny`s and Great Godfrey Daniels are like night and, well, late afternoon. The Kenny`s limb is lukewarm, bathed in too-sweet sauce and so small that it may very well have been pulled from a masquerading chicken. The Skokie eatery`s leg is more like a war club: big and hostile looking, challenging men with facial hair, especially, to try and eat it with dignity. But it has a smoky sauce, crisp, black skin and succulent meat inside. Kenny`s gets points for including the essential barbecue accoutrement, a slice of white bread.
On to duck, a meat which, by comparison, makes turkey look fowl. The roast duck with lingonberry sauce at Ann Sather`s (seven tickets) is an excellent and, by Taste standards, extraordinarily complex dish: a duck leg and thigh roasted at the restaurant, grilled to reheat on site, topped with the sweet sauce and served on a bed of superb caraway seed sauerkraut. Our only quibble is that all the cooking tends to leave the meat a bit more dry than is ideal. But none of this answers your main question: We don`t know what a lingonberry is, either.
Steve Johnson
Ribs
Because of price increases, only three booths are selling slabs of back ribs, a big dropoff from the past. The search pays off at Fireplace Inn, serving up the meatiest ribs slathered with a flavorful sauce that is both smoky and slightly sweet. The four-rib portion looked a bit stingy, but was satisfying. For those who like their sauce spicy, Robinson`s ribs will fit the bill. They`re so tender the meat just falls off the bone. Arnie`s ribs are too dry and look better than they taste.
Carol Jouzaitis and Stephanie Spira
Among rib tips, finger-lickin`, lip-smackin` Kenny`s comes up a clear winner. The generous portion comes hot and not overly greasy, with a flavor that says the meat`s been smoking all morning. The sauce is mild but flavorful and it lets the pork and smoke essence come through. Fitzee`s` monster portion of rib tips are meaty and messy and come with a hard roll. The vinegary sauce lacks smokiness, but even then, the charcoaled meat flavor comes through. The rib sandwich is no sandwich, but a quarter-slab with a hard roll. It is leaner than the tips, but the flavor is the same. Quantity does not make up for quality at Jimmie G`s, where the huge portion of rib tips is greasy and flavorless. The sauce is no better than Open Pit and there is bone in every bite. The Fireplace Inn`s rib sandwich is formed to make it look like ribs. The meat is nicely seasoned and doesn`t have to rely on the tangy, moderately spicy sauce for flavor. We can`t believe we ate the whole thing!
At Robinson`s, what passes for a rib sandwich is bland, pressed meat coated with an almost flavorless sauce. The large patty tastes as if it were done on a short-order grill and basted with ketchup. Extra hot sauce helps, but overwhelms any other flavors.
Karen Olson
Seafood
Faced with the sea of choices, you might let your own personality lead the way:
Extrovert: Walk around with a dozen bright red, sweet little crawfish in your hand and you`ll gather friends. Or at least stares. Get them at Maple Tree Inn, and they`ll even show you how to eat them. Heavy but spicy-good cornbread dressing, too. Big wheel: Lobster tails at Al`s Fishery. Mild flavored (translation: tasteless), warm-water twin tails are mercifully cracked for easy eating. Lotsa garlic taste on the crab legs in the same booth. Connoisseur: Hot, juicy, light battered but meager (five) shrimp at Shrimp City. Refined: Gently sauteed scallops and rich-flavored turtle soup-with an add-your-own touch of sherry-at Binyon`s. Gutsy: Salty, cornmeal-battered, crisp-fried catfish or sweet bass (three to an order) at J & J Fish. Great with beer.
Patricia Tennison
Vegetarian
Finding tasty vegetarian food isn`t as difficult as you might think it would be. Check out the Chicago Diner-their savory-sauced veggie burger, made with soybeans and served on a whole-grain bun with lettuce and tomato, is delicious and satisfying. So is the zingy pasta salad, studded with cashews and red peppers. Or try the flavorful, fresh-tasting falafil at A Natural Harvest, which comes with plenty of sprouts. (My fellow taster, Dave Koppel, and I found the vegetarian tamales at the same booth to be on the bland side.) Bando Restaurant serves up hearty portions of good, slightly oily vegetable tempura, fried crispy in vegetable oil. And if you`re in the mood for soul food, stop by the Edna`s Restaurant booth, which offers a red beans, sweet potatoes and white rice vegetable plate.
Lynn Van Matre.
What: Taste of Chicago
When: 11 a.m.-9:30 p.m. through Wednesday
Where: Grant Park near Buckingham Fountain
How much: Admission free; food tickets sold in strips of 11 for $6
