It was the best of times (particularly for new steakhouses), it was the wurst of times (pork products remained en fuego). And it was another year of dining in Chicago, and there was no dearth of compelling stories. Here are the ones that resonated with us.
It’s still what’s for dinner
There continues to be no discernible limit to Chicago’s support for high-end steakhouses. Glen Keefer, of the well-established Keefer’s in River North, said he estimates that there are 1,000 more steakhouse seats in his area than there were 20 months ago. In that time, we’ve seen the debut of Benny’s Chophouse, Mastro’s and Chicago Cut, all in River North; Michael Jordan’s Steak House, on Michigan Avenue; and the latest, III Forks, in the Lakeshore East area. “The good news,” Keefer says, “is that this neighborhood is so popular, especially among younger diners (make that younger diners with money), that there are enough people on the street to keep everybody busy.”
The steakhouse boom was a godsend to chef Jackie Shen, forced out of her gig at Red Light (which closed shortly thereafter); the alert people at Chicago Cut, remembering the chef’s years running Lawry’s the Prime Rib, quickly brought her aboard, improving their appetizer menu, their desserts (especially with Shen’s famous Chocolate Bag added to the list) and, presumably, their bottom line. Smart move.
The toughest table in town
The nice thing about being considered one of the world’s best chefs is that the pre-opening publicity for your newest project pretty much takes care of itself. Hundreds of people registered online to learn about Next, the sequel restaurant by Alinea’s Grant Achatz and Nick Kokonas, not realizing at the time that doing so would get them first dibs for reservations when the restaurant opened in April.
Well, not exactly reservations; the labyrinthine process for dining at Next involves registering a user name and credit card on the restaurant’s website, jumping in at the precise moment tables are made available online (roughly equivalent to photographing a hummingbird midflight) and then prepaying for your dining “ticket,” which, like tickets to a hockey game or the opera, can neither be canceled nor refunded (but they are transferable, so you can sell/give your seats to someone else). More trouble than the experience is worth? Obviously not.
Next made its debut featuring a “Paris 1906” menu that re-created and interpreted Escoffier recipes; three months later, the menu had morphed into a contemplation of Thai street food, and by October the menu was a retrospective on Achatz’ and chef Dave Beran’s Midwest childhoods.
In 2012, Next will launch a painstaking re-creation of the fabled El Bulli restaurant (with chef Ferran Adria’s blessing), with Italian and Japanese menus to come. What, no steakhouse?
Pork belly’s future
Do you remember where you were when the Great Pork Belly Bubble burst? No? You didn’t hear? You say you had pork belly just last night? Well, that’s because, most likely, you ate fresh pork belly. In July, after 50 years, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange stopped trading pork-belly futures — which traditionally meant frozen pork belly futures. “In some ways, though, their demise had been written a long time ago, because of the changes in consumption of bacon and food storage over the years,” said John Lothian, president of the electronic trading division of Chicago’s Price Futures Group.
When fresh pork belly was a seasonal product, frozen pork belly futures — created in 1961 and a cornerstone of Chicago’s food history — made sense. “At one time, (pork belly futures) were even an inflation hedge,” Lothian said, a true blue-chip investment. John Landis’ “Trading Places” (rumored to have initially been set in Chicago) revolved around the trading of pork bellies.
But then consumers and restaurants began demanding fresh bacon year-round, the farm-to-table movement spread, the market for frozen pork bellies dwindled and pork belly futures became ghosts of their oily selves.
Will the pork belly trend also fade? “I think other items have somewhat stepped up, like bone marrow, to take its place on menus,” said Andrea Tambourine of The Publican. “Maybe it became a little familiar.” But it isn’t gone: Publican still serves pork belly, and Big Star in Wicker Park, its sister pig slinger, still does a breezy business in pork-belly tacos.
In April, Baconfest at the UIC Forum drew 2,400. “I do wonder if not trading pork belly is a harbinger for pork belly,” said event co-founder Andre Pluess. “But bacon isn’t over. Not at all. If anything the reverse is true.”
Rocky road for ice cream
By now, 111 years after the publication of Theodore Dreiser’s seminal, Chicago-set work of urban miserablism, you would think someone in Illinois would have established a “Sister Carrie Award” — you know, for honoring great achievement in crushing the spirit of earnest, well-meaning young city dwellers.
Anyway, if there were a Sister Carrie Award, this year’s winners would be the creative, artisanal small-batch ice cream makers of Chicago, who felt more than the usual chill last summer when Kris Swanberg of Nice Cream was visited by a representative of the Illinois Department of Health. The take-away? She needs to have “a dairy license,” change her labeling, switch from fresh fruit to irradiated fruits or syrups, buy a very expensive pasteurizing machine, on and on. A few days later, she tweeted that Whole Foods was no longer ordering Nice Cream. Shortly after, many of the other small and local ice cream makers were visited.
“I actually found them not hard to deal with,” said Alison Bower, of Ruth and Phils Gourmet Ice Cream. “They were helpful in explaining the rules.” What was vague was a timeline for compliance. Asked if she feels safe, she said: “I don’t know for sure. I’ve just got to grow into following rules.” As for Swanberg — her business is dead at the moment. She started a Kickstarter-based online campaign to raise money for legal fees; it pulled in $7,600. She said there’s a chance that a solution can be worked out. But right now the rules governing large corporate ice cream makers are the same applying to tiny, artisanal food companies.
Food fests
Give Chicagoans a reason to show up to a food event, and chances are they will. In February, Chicago Restaurant Week, in its fourth year, had more than 200 participating restaurants offering three-course lunches ($22) and dinners ($33 and $44), and 60 of them extended their bargain menus beyond the official Feb. 27 ending. The event has grown exponentially since its modest beginnings in 2008 (when 36 restaurants participated). Mark your 2012 calendars for Feb. 17-26.
Things were less joyful at this year’s Taste of Chicago, which cut way back on its entertainment budget, reduced the number of participating restaurants and experienced a major reduction in attendance. But here’s the thing: This was the first Taste of Chicago (apart from the very first Taste of Chicago) to have zero tie-in with the city’s traditional fireworks display. Last year, budget cuts forced a partitioning of the display into three areas (the idea being to cut down on crowds and so require less police presence), but the truncated display by Navy Pier at least took place during Taste. This year, Taste concluded July 3, and so the prospect of a fireworks show didn’t swell attendance figures as it had done nearly every previous year.
For the first time, September’s Chicago Gourmet food and wine festival (this was its fourth year) endured rain, and the resultant muddy turf in Millennium Park, but apart from the skinny-jeans-and-stiletto crowd, few were seriously inconvenienced. There was more food available than ever, the lines moved well and some of the free (with general admission) wine seminars were spectacular. And at the kickoff event, the Hamburger Hop gourmet-burger competition, it was a night for the little guys, as Bandera won the judges’ votes and Palmer Place, in west suburban La Grange, took home the people’s choice award.
LTH Forum sold
June 29 came and went, and LTHForum.com continued as before — an online message board for the most ardent of Chicago food enthusiasts, where one can easily spill 2,000 words on Mexico City-style tacos de fritangas.
But behind the scenes was a legal feud that shook the foundations of the influential 7-year-old website.
The back story: LTH Forum founder Gary Wiviott ran into financial troubles a few years back and borrowed money from a fellow LTH contributor. When the loan went unpaid, Wiviott was sued, and the plaintiff was awarded a default judgment. Wiviott filed for bankruptcy protection and listed the website — which has no advertising and no means for monetizing — as an asset. The bankruptcy court acquired the site and sold it June 29 for $40,000 to three of its most frequent posters: David Dickson, Ron Kaplan and Steve Zaransky.
“We’re quite happy with the transition. I don’t think much has changed,” Dickson said. “We did not (acquire the site) because we were unhappy with LTH Forum. Quite the contrary.”
As for Wiviott, the self-described “Barbecue Life Coach” has joined the staff, as pitmaster, of Lincoln Park’s Barn & Company.
“It’s something I’m enjoying. It’s something I’m good at it,” said Wiviott, who continues posting on LTH Forum. “The restaurant is doing well, and the barbecue is coming out great.”
Food trucks
At this point, about 16 or so months into Chicago’s food truck saga, we need to ask: Is this an uplifting tale of pluck? Or a tragedy about unrealized potential? “It’s definitely evolving quickly, in surprising ways,” said Matt Maroni, who started Gaztro Wagon, the Chicago Food Trucks collective, and started the push for a city ordinance allowing actual cooking on traveling kitchens. One of those surprising ways? Maroni himself launched Morso last summer, a brick-and-mortar, stationary restaurant, in Lincoln Park; he works at Gaztro by day, Morso by night. Which is not super surprising considering The Southern started a macaroni-and-cheese truck, Southern Mac — which led to a Southern Mac Store that opened in September.
Then there’s Phillip Foss, formerly of Lockwood, who had one of the first food trucks in the city. By the end of summer, he was running three meatball wagons and, by autumn, had ditched them to go back to staying in one place, his new restaurant, EL, on 14th Street. “I don’t see any reason why I would jump back into the scene,” he said.
Which kind of disappoints Maroni, “though I know it’s tough out there.” Nevertheless, he said there are 35 to 40 trucks operating in the Chicago area now, with more coming. Google just hosted a food truck networking night. The Chicago Food Trucks website even offers an online forum for buying and selling old trucks (a handful of the first that launched in 2010 never made it through last winter). And as for that proposed ordinance, which our new mayor, Rahm Emanuel, said he might be open to considering — it faced resistance last summer when Ald. Tom Tunney (44th Ward), who owns Ann Sather, expressed concern that four-wheeled restaurants would be too close to the standard kind. You know, the kind that can cook.
Michelin Man’s return
Was anything more anticlimactic than the second coming of Bibendum (yes, the Michelin Man has a name) to Chicago this November? Some of us figured the Michelin inspectors, with another year to consider our dining scene, would uncover additional star-worthy gems, but such was not the case.
Michelin made the safe and defensible decision to strip stars from Sixteen and Avenues (both lost their head chefs, and Avenues closed), curiously took back its star from Crofton on Wells (which seemed, well, mean) and demoted L2O (which lost chef Laurent Gras) to one star from three. Michelin did award a richly deserved star to Courtright’s, but apart from these minor tweaks, the star listing remained the same.
More outrageous was Michelin’s decision to ignore Next, only the most talked-about concept to hit Chicago in at least five years. Granted, Next, which changes concepts more often than I change my toothbrush, is a tough place to evaluate, but that, Bibendum, is your job. Giving Next the Gallic shrug was a dereliction of duty, and smacked of laziness.
Stick Men
The introduction of kushiyaki culture into Chicago was not so smooth. This fine Japanese tradition of grilled meats on skewers never quite caught on here, and restaurants with early promise — Shochu, Masu Izakaya — became quick casualties. While Lakeview’s Chizakaya looks to be reversing this trend, there are even greater expectations for two kushiyaki joints that opened in late 2011, largely because of the marquee names in their kitchens.
Slurping Turtle opened in River North in late November, with Michelin-starred chef Takashi Yagihashi cranking up the BTUs on his “binchotan” charcoal grill. He’s also incorporating the Sunday ramen brunch from his flagship Bucktown restaurant into Slurping Turtle’s everyday menu, including fan favorite duck fat-fried chicken “karaage” (our favorite dish on the menu, by a mile).
A week after Slurping Turtle opened, Matthias Merges introduced Yusho to Logan Square. It was a culinary departure for a man who spent 14 years at Charlie Trotter’s, but the dishes at Yusho are just as nuanced and unexpected. The ubiquitous-in-Osaka street food takoyaki — a sweet-battered octopus fritter — is re-imagined here with duck confit. Grilled chicken skin with hot Japanese mustard and pickled garlic is predictably awesome. The nascent Chicago kushiyaki culture just got pushed to the forefront with two high-level endorsements.
