Cooking Cicadas!

I had a not great experience eating an annual cicada years back. My friends and I were doing a shrimp boil on a balmy late summer eve, when a big green dog day harvest fly landed on a nearby table. “Shrimp of the woods” I declared (before I knew about the scrumptious mushroom of the same name.) It seemed like a no-brainer to toss the cicada into the boil. Chomping through its tough exoskeleton and the attending shrapnel of its legs and wings, I was treated to a burst of bitter bile-like ooze. No amount of Zatarain’s could mask that acrid flavor.

I’m a pretty dedicated bug eater, I love me some chapulines, have prepared my own, even. I’ve eaten crickets, ants, bamboo caterpillars at Sticky Rice, jarred Korean silkworm pupae (gross.) So faced with this spring’s magicicada emergence, I knew I’d have to buck up and give them another go.

Over on LTHForum, which was the media hub around the eating of cicadas the last time around in 2007, I read about harvesting tenerals, the freshly molted nymph stage, before the chitin of the adult cicada hardens. Soft shelled cicadas, if you will. 

After two weeks on the hunt, I was kinda ready to throw in the towel – I had only spotted a few of the ghostly white emergents in my neighbor’s yard early in the morning. And while cicadas in all forms are not the most appetizing-looking critters, there was something about the under-developed wings and grub-like ivory look of the soft shells that made me a bit queasy.

Then on a Friday night, I was enjoying a beer in the yard at dusk and spotted a major emergence of larvae crawling up every vertical surface in sight within a several yard radius around an old oak. By nightfall they were molting and I was able to collect a few dozen tenerals. Maybe it was the double IPA, but I quickly got over my trepidation and plucked them from their shells. Though docile while molting, the suckers got pretty squirmy in a deli container. They even made a faint squeaking sound. My wife and mother-in-law were none the wiser glued to Bridgerton in the other room.

First step was a quick blanch, following most recipes I had consulted. This worked well for me, since I intended to serve them two days later at Heron’s 4th birthday party and I imagined freshly molted cicada might have a short shelf life. To my surprise, the par-boiled cicadas had a pleasant, savory aroma.

On cook day, I had tinkering to do. I knew that I wanted to prepare and serve them as straightforwardly as possible. My first instinct was to deep fry them as is, a la chapulines, and season simply. I tried one this way and it sputtered quite a bit in the oil, its wings animated in deep-fried zombie flight. I gave it a few minutes, browning around the edges. It was too moist and the skin too delicate to properly crisp. The flavor was mild and downright edible though!

So I lightly tossed them in a bit of flour seasoned with s&p and fried in batches for about 3-4 minutes each until the breading had a tint of gold.

I hadn’t warned my guests that I was serving them, so a shocking addition to the birthday snack spread they made. 2/3 of the grown ups sampled them (my side of the family haha) and everyone was pleasantly surprised how mellow they were. My mom compared them to calamari, which the lightly breaded prep certainly suggested. A comparison to soft shelled crab is apt, but mainly in the texture of the taught chewiness of the skin. Compared to soft shelled crab, the textures were more uniform and the flavor was much more low key, with mild umami and a grassy finish I would liken to olive oil (they were fried in fresh canola, so I believe the flavor was from the bugs themselves.)

Probably the most joyful aspect of the entomophagy was how Heron snarfed them down with relish! And this is a kid who mostly only eats bread, rice, and fruit. Avery was a bit more cautious, nervously nibbling one with a grimace.

It seems like the emergence from the ground is giving way to high decibel fornicating in the trees. But given the opportunity I might just fry up another batch of soft-shelled cicadas. Or wait until 2041…

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I’m Back – Food 2023!

Just like your favorite rock band faked you out with that last retirement, I’m back! Life is just too delicious! I actually did a top 10 last year over on Instagram and had originally intended to post this over there, but for a whole host of reasons, I’m burning out on that app. Also, I just paid the $200 renewal fee on this domain name, so let’s blog, baby!

Hermosa

Ethan Lim’s Hermosa is so damn tasty that it was on my list last year too. I was blessed to enjoy a prix fixe tasting lunch there with the always delightful Sher family. Ethan shares the bright flavors of his family’s homeland, Cambodia, reimagined with fine dining flourishes, while rooted in the vernaculars of home cooking and his humble hotdog stand origins. As fantastic as his food is, Ethan’s sense of hospitality is remarkable – he welcomes diners with warmth, intimacy, and care.

I was heartbroken to hear of the loss of Ethan’s mother later in the year, how truly grateful I am that we were able to taste her homemade sausage. I highly recommend watching “Cambodian Futures”, an award winning documentary about Ethan’s journey, which centers his relationship with Momma Lim and their family’s story of resettling in the US. When Kissinger died, I reflected on the grim atrocities enabled by American imperialism in Cambodia. We don’t deserve the Lims, who have so generously shared their culture, perseverance, and utmost hospitality.   

A2B Indian Veg Restaurant

In a former chain margarita-and-chips joint off our highway exit, I noticed a new sign with the vaguest name ever, A2B. I Googled – turns out it’s a new outpost of a popular vegetarian restaurant from Chennai, India. With their sprawling menu, this place has treated me to a for real education in Southern Indian cuisine. The first dish I tried there (which is actually Sri Lankan, a cuisine you don’t find often around here) was love at first bite: parotta kurma. These rolled, laminated flatbreads shatter like the best croissant. And that kurma curry – so rich with coconut and deeply spiced.

Phở Stuff

Big year for phở and phở flavored things! At the tip top spot is the Viet dip at Wicker Park’s Phodega, the most successful reinvention of the Italian beef I’ve ever had.

The Viet dip + the short rib phở at Pholicious, out here in da burbs, inspired me to make phở-spiced, braised short ribs with fresh “hot mix” giardiniera, on a menu that my client Dirk claimed might have been my best.

Gorditas Liselena

My homies at Birria Loca, here in Winfield, hipped me onto a new-ish Norteño gordita spot, Gorditas Liselena, a stones throw away in West Chicago. While the gorditas are great, the skinny burritos rolled in homemade tortillas are my biggest crush… until they teamed up with Birria Loca, dropping a birria-stuffed quesagordita collab. 

Little Palestine

The people of Palestine have weighed heavy on my heart for the past 83 days. I feel helpless in the face of such catastrophe. As I do, I connect with people through food and I felt compelled one morning to head down to where I’m from in the southwest suburbs, home to Little Palestine, an enclave anchored around Harlem Avenue. Fully aware that I had the luxury of eating the food of a people without access to nary a scrap of bread, I appreciated each bite of taboon, mutabal, and kofta with intention and gratitude. Most importantly, I was able to make eye contact and polite conversation with Palestinian people and find a flicker of human-to-human empathy in a menacing world. 

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Food 2021: This is it

The Italian Beefless from Buona Beef

Well, here I am writing at 5:30 AM again — I forced myself out of bed to eke out some precious me-time. Our toddler has been home for an extended winter break since a COVID case was reported in his daycare class four weeks ago (he’s fine though!) Shout out to the parents out there, especially those of us with kids under five, ineligible for the vaccine. For us, the slow motion grind of the pandemic has offered few moments of reprieve. So I really don’t have much to report in terms of exciting eating in 2021. I’ve eaten in restaurants all of three times in the past 21 months, travel has been limited to weekend trips to see family and friends in Southwest Michigan. My cooking keeps us nourished and satisfied, though I can’t say I’m particularly inspired. So on this wearied note, I am announcing this is my final year end blog post — I just don’t have that much to write about these days.

Beyond the kids and the pandemic, age is catching up with me. I don’t think I’m the only one whose blood pressure has gone up these past two years. I’m learning that it’s really hard to cut back on the miracle that is salt. And I’ve tried to eliminate beef entirely — not just bad for the bod, but the planet too. I’ve been fucking around with the new fake ground beef technology and not hating it. I’ve done Impossible/Beyond smash burgers, kefta kebabs, chopped cheese, chili mac, and lasagna. While lacking the luscious mouthfeel of real fatty beef, this newfangled fake meat has an umami factor and juiciness that the old ways of Garden and Boca burgers cannot touch. 

What else can gramps complain about? While I am totally inspired by the agility and resourcefulness of food entrepreneurs reinventing the service industry in the face of adversity, my schedule just never seems to line up with their latest drops. I wish I could support all the pop ups, delivery ops, and alt economies, many run by people of color cooking from their respective cultural traditions. But for now, I live vicariously through Instagram. Fortunately there’s a few newer brick-and mortar spots that fit this ethos, with regular hours, nearby my work, surviving these times and turning out creative and highly flavorful food: Lao Peng You and Kasama, who respectively made several of my favorite dishes I ate this year (eggplant and Xian bing at the former, combo sandwich and adobo at the latter.) 

I suppose that media is my main outlet to participate in the food world these days. I’m pretty proud of my cohort of omnivorous academic misfits for putting out three issues of the Chicago FoodCultura Clarion this year. If you don’t know by now, our humble quarterly food and art journal (printed as a newspaper tucked into copies of the Chicago Reader) was instigated by Spanish food artist Miralda in collaboration with U of C anthropology chair Stephan Palmié, food writer Paige Resnick, investigator of Southside culinary oddities, Peter Engler, and myself. In 2021 we covered everything from the history of Chinese Korean food in Chicago to cooking raccoon to voodoo catering to restaurant design by Chicago surrealist Richard Koppe, all with a splash of visual hijinks. The project was a blessing for me — it kept my mind active during extended periods stuck at home.

Working with a crew of serious writers helped me reflect on my writing practice — I realized that in the blog era, so much food writing, including my own, has been inundated with self absorbed rambling. Think about too many online recipes these days: you have to scroll through the 2000 words of babble about somebody’s charming trip to Cape Cod that one summer just to get to the recipe for that easy-weeknight sheet-pan baked fish. I hope my musings are more compelling than that, but I’m just not sure we need the perspectives of overrepresented folks like me crowding up space.

I found that I am more inspired by platforming other folks’ stories (which, in a way, harkens back to an older model of objective journalism.) On that note, I’d like to share a little more love for three friends that we featured in the Clarion and catch up with the ways they have persevered and thrived during these upside down times:

Illustration by Allison Fries

Jen Delos Reyes contributed to the second issue of the Clarion: meditations on solitary cooking both in prose and a collage of witty Instagram story snapshots. But I blinked my eyes and by spring Jen had sowed an urban farm in McKinley Park, complete with chickens and  adorable bb goats, called Garbage Hill Farm. And the abundance just took off from there: Jen launched a CSA to help fund her soon-to-be “residency for BIPOC arts and culture leaders and artists to rest and rejuvenate” featuring: a psychedelic array of veggies grown on the farm, a self care product line, ferments and preserves, organic cleaning products in refillable containers, liqueurs, ridiculously delectable sounding “farm-to-face” ready-to-eat products like Japanese breakfast granola and chicken of the woods lumpia. Jen is a self-made DIY force with a strict no waste ethic and an impeccable ‘gram game.  Ultimately, her project is one of care, envisioning a better world by tending to land, animals, and community.

Alberto Aguilar awakened his 50 ingredient molé project from a many-year hibernation when we needed it the most. The project is about bringing people together and the molé, in its multitudes of ingredients, is a metaphor for amalgamation. So during the warmer months of this year, when things felt a bit safer, more optimistic, Alberto hosted two molé events, the first at Ox-Bow, was covered in issue #4 of the Clarion. The second event was hosted in the fall at Edra Soto and Dan Sullivan’s home gallery, The Franklin, for which he raided their larder to make a brilliant molé that reminded me of a clove-heavy curry. He also invited artist Ricardo Vilas to make a Brazilian side dish of feijão tropeiro, which also truly blew away my taste buds: a kind of meaty salad with collards, sausage, and yellow beans topped with nutty toasted manioc flour and some unidentified pickled red veggies.

I ate a few of my favorite things this year with Alberto. The day of our interview for the Clarion, I had the pleasure of joining him on a food crawl around his home in  Forest Park. The highlight of the jaunt was definitely the dark and sticky goodness of chicken adobo and pork humba off the steam table at mom-and-pop Filipino grocer, Lola Tining’s. Much thanks to Alberto for the much needed companionship and delicious grub. 

Hyun Jung Jun started baking cakes to commemorate friendships — an occasion to pause and find gratitude in our relations, perhaps tinged with the melancholy of knowing that these moments are fleeting. 18.5 thousand Instagram followers and two New York Times features later, her Dreamcakes are a sensation, Hyun Jung has found a huge audience for her sentimental confections. Dreamcakes are works of art, not your typical fussy, carefully piped cakes — they are naturalistic, seemingly birthed from the bed of a garden or forest floor. The flavors she brings are unexpected, with savory earthy elements like sesame, beets, and herbs bound by delicate buttercreams and merengues. To share a slice of this enchanted cake we can fulfill our longing for connection with those that we love in a time of isolation.

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A Top 10 of Top 10s!

A buffalo chicken pie at the old Pleasant House Bakery

And of course, I can’t just go out on a whimper — being the list-maker that I am, I couldn’t resist the indulgence to make a meta list — a top 10 of what I consider to be my best pieces of writing from thirteen years of year end lists. Besides from adding a few paragraph breaks for ease of reading, I present these writings, warts, misused punctuation, and all, to preserve the evolution of my writing from 2008 to present.

2008 #9 Mondays at the Depot American Diner

What’s not to love about the Depot- fresh fried donuts to order with piping hot mocha sauce, house made roasted turkey and corned beef for the sammies, blue plate specials, gravy on fries, brisket sandwiches with frizzled onions, coke in a bottle- this place is the real deal for hand made American classic diner food. In less considerate hands, this kind of fare can be a little pedestrian for my tastes. The real lure, though, is the company. Monday is a good day for us gallery folk to extend out the weekend a little- at least for the morning. Danny, Carmen, and I often adhere to this leisurely schedule and try to at least once a month do a lunch out together- in 08 the Depot was our spot. Its a great moment- good friends, good food, enjoying each other’s company without booze, guiltlessly slacking off just a wee bit. And the staff at the Depot is as warm and inviting as the grub- but what ever happened to Alex? We miss her.

2010 #2 Ye’s Bluegills

Every year during our last week at Ox-Bow we have a staff picnic, it’s the only day of the summer when the entire staff has the day off to bond and relax together before we are off to the “real world”. So the tradition goes that in order for kitchen staff to be able to chill, everyone has to pitch in on the task of feeding ourselves. This is a lot of fun, we can sit back and enjoy the day and everybody else gets a chance to show off their skills in the kitchen, after being fed three meals a day by us for three months. And inevitably we eat a lot of junk food- chips and dip, the kind of stuff that normally doesn’t grace our sophisticated from-scratch table.

I usually offer to pick up supplies for people’s particular dishes in the week before the picnic and this year one of our fellows had an unusual request, Ye Qin Zhu wanted a whole tilapia. Okay, it’s not that weird- if we had been in Chicago I could have wandered down to the corner and procured a whole fish from any of a number of Mexican or Asian grocers. But it was already the day before the picnic and I didn’t have time to drive around Holland aimlessly looking for one fish. It just so happened that a couple of the other fellows had some skills with the old fishing rods and had collected bluegills to fry up for breakfast that day. They were kind enough to lend one to Ye and he did it up.

A native of Guangzhou, China, Ye cooked it in a style that he says is popular all over southeast Asia, a quick boiling of the whole, gutted fish. On the side he prepared a tangle of aromatics- ginger, garlic, scallions, which were then scattered on the cooked fish. He heated oil and poured this on the fish and aromatics, releasing their bright flavors. A few splashes of soy sauce and a garnish of cilantro complete the dish. It was really lovely. I had never eaten bluegill meat and had completely avoided Ox-Bow lagoon fish after tasting bites of muddy bass and pike. This meat was sweet and tender, though scarce on the tiny fish, in a way, quite precious. Ye’s recipe is both simple and upfront with clean, bold flavors, just amazing- I’ve used the same prep for other fish at home since.

This dish spoke to me on so many levels- eating fish from our own waters, sampling an everyday dish from a culture on the other side of the world, and connecting with Ye, a brilliant guy that I had not found enough time to get to know during that hectic season. Ye spent that afternoon pulling up a bucket load of more bluegills. After sundown, when we were all weary from a day’s activities in the sun and starved of real nutrition from eating French onion dip all morning, another round of invigorating and healthful fish was the perfect end to a perfect day. Thanks Ye.

2012 #5 The ‘Burbs

I grew up in the ‘burbs, surrounded mostly by other white kids like me. I had access to other cultures though- our nextdoor neighbors were Greek and welcomed my family to many of their celebrations. My best friend was from Poland and his mother was a tremendous cook. My sister and I had Korean, Filipino, and Indian friends and occasionally we’d be lucky enough to join their holiday parties to sample new treats like lumpia or samosas.

A life in the suburbs still represents the ideal of the American dream to many, regardless if folks like my parents are too hip to live there nowadays (they moved to the city six years ago). New populations are always taking root and bringing their cultural traditions with them. The area I grew up in, the Southwest suburbs, is now home to the largest Arabic speaking population in Metropolitan Chicago and if you take a ride down Harlem through Bridgeview, Worth, and Palos Heights you’ll see plenty of signage for Arabic owned businesses. The diner formerly know as the Sandpiper- where we used to smoke cigarettes and drink coffee in high school- now houses, in my estimation, the area’s finest Middle Eastern restaurant, Al Mawal. One bite of their muthawama, an aioli like spread related to toum, and you’ll understand what I’m saying, pure ambrosia. Everything I’ve eaten there is perfection, from light and crisp kibbeh to deeply spiced and caramelized chicken shawerma.

Looking to the west suburbs you find strip malls filled with Indian and Chinese grocers and restaurants, a long time foodie favorite is Katy’s Dumpling House in Westmont for their hand pulled noodles in fiery broths and handmade dumplings. Hop off the Kennedy on Dempster and you’ll find a plethora of Korean eateries specializing in particular dishes, like jeuk suk yum so bokkeum- goat hotpot- at Chun Ju in Morton Grove or my favorite Cho Jung in Glenview for pajeon- scallion pancake and various Korean stews like soon dubu- tofu and seafood stew.

On my trip to LA this year, most of our food adventures took us out to the burbs, areas such as the San Gabriel Valley for its Northern Chinese cuisines. Most notable was a spot called Shen Yang, recommended to me by LTHer TonyC where we attacked piles of chicken bone with cumin, which were literally piles of deep fried bones, which you gnawed at to get at bits of hidden gems of remaining meat. I also ate one of the more challenging meals of my life at Japanese izakaya restaurant, Torihei in Torrance where I met my match in a bowl of fermented squid guts. Fortunately, the chicken skin yakitori was a great palette cleanser. In Torrance I also spotted an outpost of Mitsuwa Marketplace, which along with our local Arlington Heights location is a one- stop shop for all things Japanese.

Mitsuwa is also the home to Chicago’s best (only good?) bowl of ramen at the Santouka franchise in their food court, the best reason I can think of for braving 294 to shop at nearby IKEA! Bomb the suburbs? Nah, wouldn’t want to live there again, but willing to drive there for the food!

2013 #2 Community-based Eateries

Pardon me for inventing a term. Its kind of a vague one at that, I mean this could mean many things: a school cafeteria, a coffee shop (succeeding the diner in contemporary America), a neighborhood tavern with pub grub, a Somali cabbie joint, a grocery store taqueria. Chinatown… If we accept the definition of community as a group of people with a particular interest in common, we could argue that someone’s interest in the same restaurant as someone else makes them a community.

My interest is in places that aim to serve communities– have a role greater than just feeding their clientele, becoming convivial nexuses of their neighborhoods, that encourage people to hang out. I have two examples that I witnessed recently at two pretty old restaurants that exemplify this kind of hospitality:

Podhalanka is one of my favorite places to have a leisurely lunch in my neighborhood. On any given day you can witness a cross section of the neighborhood’s demographic dining there: an amalgam of old timers, cops, Polish speakers, young families, and the young, hip, and upwardly mobile. As gentrified as most of the surrounding area may seem though, the “triangle” at Ashland, Division, and Milwaukee remains a gathering place for the daytime drinking crowd. Podhalanka remains mostly unchanged to how it felt when I first dined there in the late 90s and has a frozen-in-amber vibe that harkens back to the bygone heyday of old “Polish Downtown”.

In the past, the room was always lovingly presided over by owner Helena, who would offer complimentary compote juice as you took to your table. In the past few years a younger member of the family has relieved Helena of the lion’s share of the front of the house duties. I, and other longtime patrons I know, have had a rough transition dealing with the new server. He treats much of the clientele like noobs who have never heard of a pierogi before, upselling you multiple plates of food before you have a chance to crack open the menu. I was worried this favorite place of mine was losing its hospitable charms. But the new guy got to know me, picked up on my typical order and now things feel cozy as always.

A few months ago I witnessed just how important this place is to its community, though, when a down-and-out denizen of the triangle plopped down at the bar for coffee. He was in a bad way. The server guy emerged from the back with two packed to-go bags and gave them to the homeless man. He insisted that the food was free and reminded the man that they’d be closed on Sunday, so he packed him enough food for two days. This moment made me care a lot less about that time I felt like I was treated like just another naïve walk in hipster.

My other example is not in my neighborhood and I’ve only been once, but based on the collective love from guys I know who grew up eating there in the 70s and 80s as well as younger Roger’s Park natives, Noon Hour Grill holds a warm and fuzzy place in a lot of Chicagoan’s hearts. This cozy diner, formerly known as Pusan House is owned and run by Susie Lee, a one woman force who cooks up mighty fine bibimbap and while we’re talking Korean fusion, crazy omelet concoctions like bulgogi/kimchi/American cheese. When we walked through the front door I immediately ran into a former student of mine who lives in the neighborhood. I asked him what his go-to order is and he said “bibimbap, Susie knows”. Apparently she remembers every face that walks though her door. This place is a real gem.

My tribute projects got me thinking about how eateries function in artist’s communities– starting with FOOD in the early 70s, a restaurant run by artists serving other artists, creating a social hub. These places seem to come and go with the movement of artists in cities. Leo’s Lunchroom, for instance, existed in a golden time and place: an on-the-cusp-of- gentrifying part of town that attracted a lot of creative talent in a moment when Chicago was attracting and exporting much of this talent.  The place reflected the neighborhood and its customers: a cheap, slightly dingy hole in the wall of a coffee shop turning out scratch made, creative food. Literally nourishing the vibrancy of the scene. But the neighborhood changed and as artists and musicians were priced out the need for Leo’s waned. Sonny’s may have had a captive audience of being the only eatery situated within an institution, but again, he offered cheap, homemade food to a customer base that he took the time to interact with and get to know. I suppose I long for my own cozy hole in the wall serving honest, from scratch grub by a friendly face where I can feel comfortable to hang up my hat and hang for awhile. For now, I’ve got Podhalanka and Susie’s, hopefully they’ll stick around for awhile…

2014 #8 Cortez Mullet

The oceans seem to be dying. There are many environmental factors, but irresponsible fishing practices are a major issue for many fish species. Imperatively, we must look at sustainable alternatives to overfishing, which will require us to make sacrifices and look at other types of fish ~if any at all~ to help turn this impending crisis around. You know I’m a champion of finding the nutritious and delicious in undesirable sources. Ever eat mullet before? They’re a bit lean and a bit bony, but abundant, fished sustainably (in the gulf of Mexico), and enjoyed since Roman times. I hadn’t thought too much about mullet until I read last year’s top ten list by John T. Edge, the director of the Southern Foodways Alliance and one of my favorite food writers. What caught my eye was not mullet as an ingredient specifically, but the location where he discovered it. A pizza shop in Cortez, Florida was serving a grilled Caesar salad with mullet roe. My parents winter in Anna Maria Island Florida, a sundrenched place of infinite oceanic views with a fairly redundant food scene. I like a grouper reuben as much as the next guy, but after night five, you crave stuff like, well, pizza.

The story doesn’t stop with Village Idiot Pizza. After a bit of Googling, I discovered a piece in the New York Times about a cool dude named Seth Cripe, who supplies Village Idiot Pizza with their mullet roe. Mr. Cripe salts and sun dries the roe sacs, producing a product called bottarga, which you might know as an Italian delicacy, typically used sparingly as a garnish due to its intense flavor and high price tag. Mullet is the primary catch in the fishing town of Cortez, which is just east of my parents place, where we frequent fish shacks for not-so-local grouper and cheap beers. I got to try that salad at Village Idiot and it was fantastic, the bottarga subbing not only the brininess of traditional anchovy, but also the cheesiness of the parmesan.

Little did I know my mullet quest had just begun? We also happened to be in town the weekend of the Cortez Mullet Festival. This event looked like a typical flea market/ country fair type of event, with cheap crafts for sale, expensive shitty drinks, and a fairly decent variety of food vendors both local and from the big city, Sarasota. We had a few bites of decent food, but I needed to know where the mullet was at, finding it strange that the namesake fish was sorta underrepresented. Not wiling to throw in the towel, my unstoppable appetite led me to the mullet culture. Fairly central to the fest, I had misinterpreted a couple of extra wide smoker rigs for a BBQ set up. These old dudes were stoking the wood fire and dutifully manning their smoker. Once I started poking around with my camera phone they waved me over to check out the rows of small golden, butterflied fish enveloped in the caress of smoke. Awesome. I ordered a whole one. It was smoky, oily, and assertive, drizzled with a mild BBQ type sauce. Hell, why can’t fish be BBQ, because that’s exactly what was going down. Next, I strolled over to the pier and found a group of mullet fishermen engaging with the crowd about their work and hawking what was called a “Cortez hotdog”, a corn meal encrusted, perfectly fried skinny filet of mullet on a cheap bun with tartar sauce and a scattering of diced onion. A delicious lesson in making do with what you’ve got.

2014 #2 Midwest Melting Pot

I did not travel very far this year besides a few trips to visit friends and family. I filled in the gaps with a couple of day and overnight trips to nearby cities with some of my buds. Clearly, Chicago has one of the best food scenes in the world. But as I get around the cities of the greater Midwest, I am increasingly stoked to eat amazingly across the board no matter where I am. I mean, you can get a decent bowl of bun cha in tiny Holland Michigan at a pool hall attached to a grocer that sells durian and frozen giant water bugs.

I know that dining-wise, fancy chefs are opening up spots in flyovers across the country, but you know me, I’m looking for the homespun traditions and the cuisines of recently transplanted cultures, the down home and the cheap. I’ve done Detroit a few times in the past few years. You’ve got the classic, working class chow of the Coney’s, sliders, and Mike’s ham place. Travel into the burbs to Dearborn and you’ll find the country’s largest Middle Eastern population with the bakeries and kebab shops to prove it. The little hamlet of Hamtramck, nestled inside the city’s borders is a patchwork of immigrant populations as disparate as Polish and Bangladeshi.

Milwaukee, just an hour and a half north up the lake has a killer food scene. Of course there’s the brats, tavern style thin crust pizzas, and butter burgers, but also old school Jewish deli. Jake’s on North Division is almost sixty years old and has remained a stalwart of the neighborhood offering stacked hand cut corned beef sandwiches to the shifting populations of the neighborhood. Just up the street at another corned beef spot, House of Corned Beef you can taste the old world cohabiting with the new in a Jim Shoe sandwich, overflowing with hand cut corned beef, Italian beef, and gyros.

Did you know Milwaukee has a Southeast Asian Hmong population? There’s a grocery store called Phongsavan to prove it where you can buy frozen beef bile, dragonfruit, black chickens, and locally produced Hmong bacon. After shopping, take a load off at their food court and enjoy freshly pounded papaya salad in your choice of styles: Lao, Hmong, or Thai with a side of salty Hmong sausage. My favorite spot in the Milwaukee area has got to be Ono Kine Grinz in Wauwatosa, which is proudly gay owned and serves the native Hawaiian cuisine of one of the owners. His mom does the cooking in the back of this very charming (if not somewhat cluttered with tchotchkes) converted house turning out soul and belly filling plate lunches piled with kahlua pork, mango chicken, yes more corned beef, and poke with sides of macaroni salad, purple rice, and kimchi.

I had the pleasure of joining Matt Zatkoff for a tour of his hometown of Indianapolis, which also, very surprisingly offered an incredible range of grub. There’s stuff you’d expect to find in the Midwest, like southern style barbecue at Hank’s Smoked Briskets, deli, you bet, at Shapiro’s, old school German at the Rathskeller. But there are also spots in outlying neighborhoods serving more recent immigrant communities like a Pakistani owned grocery called Bombay Bazaar with an attached catering business and like 3 greasy tables squeezed in amongst stacks of Bollywood DVDs in the back. Here we were treated to luscious goat biryani, sizzling lamb chops, and deeply aromatic spinach and goat curry. Matt’s buds recently discovered a Northern Thai spot masquerading as an average Ameri-Thai restaurant in a converted Sizzler, where I sampled many new-to-me flavors like fermented chicken wings, stuffed bitter melon soup, and a coconut rice dessert sprinkled with shaved, salty, dried shrimp.

My favorite Midwest bites this year were served to me from a take out window in the parking lot behind a liquor store– the best jerk I’ve ever had at Jamaican Jerk. Around the picnic table, we didn’t talk much, grunting our way with greasy hands through Styrofoam trays of smoky, aggressively spicy jerk chicken and ribs served atop the best peas and rice and deep, deeply savory stewed oxtail or curry goat. On a sunny day with some Mavado testing the limits of a set of computer speakers, you’ll forget you’re in Indiana. Next stop, St. Louis.

2014 #1 I See You Chicago

White people like me generally don’t venture to the Westside or the Southside. Sure, we’re all used to taking over Pilsen by now. But for real, giant, I mean giant swaths of the West and South sides of the city are inaccessible to the imaginations of those confined to the comfy conveniences of their Northside neighborhoods. Over 90% of these neighborhoods are black. I’m not the best person to give you a history lesson here, but a century ago realtors set horribly racist, restrictive policies to not rent or sell to black people in white neighborhoods, not to mention the straight up violence met by blacks moving into white neighborhoods. Then midcentury came strategically placed, oppressive housing projects. Overpopulation, unemployment, poverty, race riots, “shoot to kill” orders, a vicious cycle ensued. Unfortunately these conditions have not changed much, concentrated poverty plus economic decline plus the systemic lock up of black men plus a steady supply of guns plus plus plus has put Chicago back in the news the past few years with spiking murder rates.

These conditions are abstract to most well off white folks.

I believe that by visiting these neighborhoods and actually getting out of the car and looking people in the eye, this is the first step to understanding segregation and where racism lies within yourself.

I found the kernel of racism in myself this year. I found myself in Austin, one of the most fabled bad neighborhoods on the Westside. I knew kids in high school that used to cop their heroin there. You can see the corner boys, the junkies, the undercover cops, they are there. I was there to try this jerk chicken taco that I’d heard my friends rave about. We pulled up on a fairly busy stretch of Cicero, the place was jumping. I was nervous to go in, my innermost racist fears were quaking. I caught myself about to tell Jessica– who was waiting in the car while we were double parked– to lock the doors. But I refrained. There it was. The classic “lock your doors, this is a bad neighborhood” hang up. 

The customers inside were really nice people. One guy advised me to order an extra shell, since the tacos were so overstuffed with chicken. Another dude, rubbing his hands in anticipation, exclaimed that I was in for a treat. Sure, as I ordered, I was too soft spoken and got hollered at by the counter lady about what I wanted on my taco and my wrist got slammed in the revolving door of the bullet proof glass as I picked up my order. But I survived. But you know what? Fuck that, ordering tacos is not even something I should have to feel proud of surviving. Survival? Please. I ordered tacos. I had pleasant encounters with other folks ordering tacos. End of story.

I don’t care if you want to call my approach touristic. You are not going to see the world if you do not get out there. You are not going to firsthand confront your subjective judgments and prejudices if you do not get face to face with real people. And I could go on and on about how the experience of food connects people culturally, which I believe it does. This is simpler than that– its about seeing, looking fellow human beings in the eye.

Hit me up, I know where the good hand formed burger spot is in the South Shore; the real deal Belizean Garifuna cuisine in Marquette Park (and yes a Jim Shoe too); best jerk chicken in the city in Chatham; don’t even tell me you haven’t tried the apple fritter at Old Fashioned Donuts in Roseland; real Chicago BBQ? gotta get to Greater Grand Crossing! You’ll eat well and see what Chicago really looks like. And you’ll meet some real nice people while you’re there.

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2015 #2 Return to New Orleans

I had not been back to New Orleans since the spring of 2005. And I’m not here to construct a before-and-after the storm think piece. Although I had a handful of friends living down there, I mostly agonizingly experienced the narrative through the media. On this trip, we did not visit the 9th Ward, though an artist friend recently bought a house there, which must mean something. There was a whole lot of building happening all over the place. It was a little weird seeing a giant shiny condo development in the Bywater, though much of that neighborhood had the same funky, slightly festering, but colorfully vibrant vibe as it did when I used to stay there last decade. Mostly the city felt bustling, tourist money greasing the wheels of one of the most service-based economies I’ve encountered anywhere.

New Orleans is part of my food DNA and this recent trip was a great reminder of that. Although we didn’t partake, we found ourselves strolling past the Victorian turquoise of Commander’s Palace and I reflected that the chef who trained me worked there, so it’s likely that some of my technique is indebted to that famous kitchen. Chef and another co-worker native to New Orleans, were early mentors to me at Ox-Bow and however complicated those relationships have played out in my life, I am indebted to their influence, whether that be the way I make a roux, my love of reggae music (more on the New Orleans/ Jamaica connection another time), or a sense of waste-not in my cooking practice.

Fried chicken & gumbo, Lil' Dizzy's

New Orleans cooking for me is one of the truest expressions of an American cuisine, one of my very favorites. And we did it right on this three day jaunt. Armed with a recommendation list from my NO native bud, Fredo Noguiera, chef at Chicago’s Analogue, we made no haste on our ravenous path. The new school spots provided some good bites– grilled oysters and fried boudin at Cochon and an Asian leaning spicy catfish dish at Peche, but the sweetest eats were found at the down home neighborhood spots. Within an hour of landing we found our way to Fredo’s favorite, Lil’ Dizzy’s in the Treme. A perfect intro– they were hosting a packed-to-the-rafters graduation party, so we had to take an al fresco seat on the sidewalk, on a 75 degree, sunny day in December, poor us. We giddily dispatched of plates of crispy fried chicken and bowls of deep creole gumbo, rich with filé and a seafood-based stock, chock full of all sorts of meaty bits like shrimp, tasso ham, andouille, and was that a second type of sausage?

Lunch was digested over an eye-opening trip to the homespun, psychedelic temple to the Mardi Gras Indians at the Backstreet Cultural museum. It was everything, New Orleans culture in a two block radius.

A sandwich 1-2 the next day found us across town on Magazine street. A roast beef po boy at Guy’s was a kissing cousin to the Italian beef, subbing peppers for the “dressed” style of lettuce, tomato, mayo, as unmannered of a messy of a sandwich as I’ve met. Gut buster sandwich #2 arrived at Casamento’s, a beautifully tiled, 98 year old canteen, specializing in local seafood, particularly oysters. The banter is as thick as the lines are long, but it’s worth it. The signature oyster loaf is a two handed beast of a sandwich seemingly built on half a loaf of bread stuffed with brittly corn-breaded oysters that are sweet as can be.

I’ve gotta say though, my other favorite meal was back in the Treme at the institution that is Dooky Chase. I knew about its famous guests, its importance to the neighborhood, the Chase family’s philanthropy, and their commitment to local art. I was not prepared for how damn good the food was. Chicken creole with jambalaya was even more complex than that gumbo down the street– its like the best sauces down there just sit on the stove for weeks on end, with new bits and seasonings thrown in the pot each morning. As good as that was I couldn’t keep my hands off of Jessica’s perfectly fried chicken that was surely brined, so juicy with a hit of garlic. And you have to talk about hospitality in New Orleans. We had a couple of snags in our service at Dooky Chase, which the floor manager, making rounds of the dining room, was quick to realize. To make it up to us, she invited us back into the kitchen to meet head chef and matriarch, Leah Chase, who well into her 90’s, was still donning an apron. Like Ms. Chase in her kitchen, New Orleans perseveres, as does my love for the place.

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2017 RIP Perez

I started working in the West Loop in 1999 as an apprentice mosaic maker. The area was then in its nascent stage as a hot spot for restaurants and art galleries. Our studio was based out of my boss’s apartment on the second floor of 119 N Peoria, a building that a few years later would become a major art world hub where many friends ran, worked for, and showed at galleries. The studio I worked for made a bunch of mosaics for Red Light, which was probably the 2nd fancy restaurant on Randolph (after Marché.) As poor, young art students, we couldn’t afford to eat at those places. There were two spots we frequented, a dingy grill called S&S at Green on Randolph and a cheery Mexican spot at Peoria, Perez.

At that point in my budding foodie-ism, Perez was about as good as it got. On the table with chips, they offered this salsa negra, which to this day I’ve never been able to reverse engineer (La Pasadita makes a similar version.) Just a kiss of smoke, it was really rather bright and fresh tasting, just the best. I’ve always loved huevos dishes and Perez made my favorite in town, machacado con huevo, which is common in Mexico but not so much in taquerias in Chicago. Most versions employ a chewy, reconstituted beef jerky, which is tasty, but Perez used a pleasantly stringy but tender beef, almost like a ropa vieja. And big old chunks of hot jalapeño. It was my go-to order for 18 years! They did a few other things well– I ate my first goat birria tacos there, which still tasted pretty good on a recent visit to my now birria-sophisticated palate. Seafood was always fresh, shrimp in particular in ceviche or a big bowl of caldo.

Mostly, though, they were a serviceable gringo-type spot slinging big plates of cheesy enchiladas and burritos suizos and margs galore. The perfect post gallery-hopping haunt. As I got around more, I knew there was better stuff out there, but Perez remained a convenient stalwart. Even after prices jacked up, it was still the cheapest spot around there to grab a bite and a drink.

Alas, development took hold of the neighborhood. Every restaurateur with the capital opens there. Google, the fancy hotels. Many of the galleries my friends ran were edged out for tenants paying higher rents. At this point, I can’t even handle parking around there. RIP West Loop.

Perez was there 33 years. I tried to chitchat with the owner on my last visit and he seemed more than ready to go. He told me “never get into this business.” Sage advice from a veteran of the hottest restaurant neighborhood in the city.

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2018 Intro

I felt like we were at the edge of the world, a dystopian future-world, the kind that I’ve unfortunately had negative fantasies about too often in the past two years–perched on a wobbly stool in an unheated trailer getting weird looks from the Slavic truckers waiting around us. We traveled far to get here, to a windswept stretch of truck stops off 80/94 in Gary Indiana. We traipsed through the thick mud of an ambiguous parking lot, confused by how to find our way into the elevated yellow trailer. Once inside, the wiry, tattooed counter guy, likely years younger than his grizzled demeanor would suggest, spoke in unintelligible grunts, barely cocking an eye through the fogged Plexi partition between us.

Balkan Grill is a way station for Serbian truck drivers to fuel up on calorie-dense charred meats and thick flat breads. I’d read about it in a piece by Mike Sula and it was high on my list. But as we waited twenty minutes for our orders of cevapcici–uncased, hand formed beef sausages and pljeskavica, an oversized onion-y burger, stuffed with cheese, contemplating where the grilling was happening considering there was no obvious exhaust in the back of the trailer, I wondered why we were doing this.

The food was good– hearty, simple, and satisfying. But something else drew us here. Call it a Bourdain-ian compulsion to find culture wherever you can get to it. In these xenophobic times, like cutting yourself to remind yourself that you can feel.

It was a fucked up week. Some food critic I had never heard of wrote a five point take down of the entire culinary landscape of Chicago. With too much time on my hands (wife and kid away for two weeks) I took the bait and indulged in a bit of online trollery, I’ll spare you the tit for tat. But aghast at some egregiously uninformed statements with tinges of racism, I couldn’t help but say something.

What have we come to? Everybody has something to yell about. And it’s too easy for everyone else to yell back. Truly informed criticism is dying. Facts don’t count. This is the pre-apocalyptic environment that makes me want to drive to a trailer in Gary Indiana and clear my head, uncomfortable as it may be.

I also turned to a recently fallen hero, Jonathan Gold, and watched “City of Gold.” Not only was I reminded of true journalistic integrity, but humility. Gold understood that the eateries he championed– humble, mom-and-pop run, immigrant-owned, were not doing it for him, but to serve their communities. And he acknowledged the tremendous work that is put into running these businesses.

John and Tony are gone. When Bourdain died, I thought hard about how much he inspired me and why. It came down to his ego-less-ness, which might sound odd considering his out-size personality. But he put everything aside to give the world a view into culture and platform the way that everyday people around the world ate and lived.

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Food 2020

Ugh, I keep saying that I don’t have anything left to say about this forsaken year. But at the very least I need to brag about my sourdough and say fuck you to the government…

It’s pretty clear to me that our government doesn’t give a fuck about most things that I value – the arts, education, racial justice, equity, the planet – but I did not expect the non-response to the collapse of restaurants. Maybe they’re punishing blue cities and their hip eateries, but I live in a small town and our handful of family diners and blue-collar watering holes are suffering too. Restaurants don’t just feed us, they’re central to our public lives. But with a pandemic raging, we cannot lead public lives right now. The value of these spaces is not just the food they serve, but their central role in the culture of our communities – it’s past time for our government to BAIL OUT THE RESTAURANTS.  

In the early days of pandemic panic, once I had taken stock in my family’s relative safety and security, my worries turned to the public businesses that are so central to my community: galleries, restaurants, music venues, bars. I feared for my friends, both the business owners and legions of workers employed by them. So many folx I know gravitate toward the flexibility of the service industry to support their creative practices. But the nature of this work has always been precarious and now much of my community is facing exponential insecurity. Folx have had to choose between their health and safety and making ends meet, if they even have a job to return to.

It’s been tricky for me to find a way to personally support restaurants and it’s made me feel like an inadequate citizen and friend. We’ve hunkered down in a major way and maintain strict safety precautions – Jessica was pregnant for the first three months of the pandemic and we’ve had a vulnerable little one at home since. My own work has been dramatically scaled back, so I’m not commuting to the city much.

Tips n links combo from Honey 1 BBQ

I’ve made a point to hit up my tip top favorite spots every single trip I’ve made into Chicago. At each stop, it’s been a relief to be greeted by familiar faces, smiles contained by masks. And the second the take out hits, those favorite flavors, it’s just sheer joy. The two most soul-satisfying take out bites of 2020 were the unctuous, smoky nuggets of a tips and links combo from Honey 1 in Bronzeville and the wondrously juicy and crispy af “pica pollo” fried chicken from Morena’s Kitchen in Belmont-Craigin. Notably, both of these spots are Black-owned – you should support them and treat yourself to some of Chicago’s finest cuisine. Also shout outs to Johnnie’s Beef, JP Graziano’s, Aroy Thai, Katy’s Dumpling House, and Birrieria Zaragoza (< I know birria tacos trended hard this year, but them greezy quesabirria beef tacos a’int got nothing on the GOAT.)

So far it seems like my favorite spots are hanging on. My preferred establishments tend to be mom-and-pop joints that have lower overhead –cheaper rents and less employees than fine dining spots. And many of my faves already had established take out business and are less reliant on the dine-in experience of service, cocktails, etc. Bottom lines have been devastated across the board, but places that rely on indoor experiences seem pretty much fucked. One COVID-related closure that hit close to home was Danny’s Tavern on Dickens, where I DJed occasionally, danced my ass off at often, but also had the ambiance of a cozy living room and could be the perfect place for an intimate Sunday night drink over candle light. I asked Jessica out on our first date at Danny’s. A few other closures hit my community pretty hard including the community-focused Korean-Italian hot spot, Passeroto and the Humboldt Park new school bistro, Café Marie Jeanne. It’s been heartening to see the bravery of business owners *pivot* to meet the times with things like subscriptions, affordable comfort foods, and mutual aid projects. I’m particularly inspired by the Community Kitchen project from the Marz/Kimski/Maria’s team, tapping the community organizing roots of their nonprofit arm, Public Media Institute, to offer free meals to the hungry and employ out-of-work cooks.

Tawk Zalian, owner of Pa Lian Burmese Restaurant, taking my order

I’ve watched most of this happen scrolling social media from the comforts of my couch. Our eating-out budget has been slashed in half, and again, the guilt has weighed heavily. In the spring, I started a Patreon where I shared home cooking recipes, daily, to raise funds to support friends in the restaurant business. I raised a couple hundred bucks and decided to give it all to my favorite spot closest to home, Pa Lian Burmese Restaurant in Wheaton. Owner, Tawk Zalian had been struggling to attract new clientele before COVID and like so many others, he turned to GoFundMe to keep the lights on. There’s nothing like this food anywhere near us (they’re actually the only Burnese restaurant in Illinois) and now that we’re not leaving the neighborhood much, the bright flavors and textures from Pa Lian have been indispensably inspiring.

Otherwise, I cook (and cook and cook.) Mostly I’m not sick of it. In fact, after spending pretty much the entire day wrangling the kids, a focused task is a welcome respite for my mental well being. Especially if it means stepping out back with a beer to cook over fire. I put some tunes on and relish in the productivity.

The biggest shift in habits has actually been with the shopping. I’m only heading out once every two weeks, with a delivery or curbside pickup for beverages and odds and ends in between. I’m a pro shopping list maker, but two weeks requires actual menu planning to make sure each ingredient ends up in the right place. I do worry a bit that I could be tapping into some inherited OCD issues – is it weird I’ve saved every shopping list and menu since March?

At the onset of the pandemic I was extra ambitious in the kitchen, folding my own dumplings, deep frying, baking new-to-me stuff. But then baby came and I slid back into a relatively low key repertoire. The one thing that stuck was that thing all the basic b’s did in 2020, SOURDOUGH! It’s Jessica’s spirit carb. She gifted me the Tartine Bread book years ago, but I was always too intimidated by the labored, two week process to coax a starter out of thin air. Even with an active starter, the country bread recipe takes three days:  feeding the starter/levain > resting > stretching and folding > more resting > scoring and baking. I stuck with it, though, and by month six I could finally make it from memory. I still couldn’t tell you what an autolyse is, but I was smart enough to tweak the recipe to cut back on discarded starter. I could probably adapt it to produce 0 discard, though I like to save up the ~tablespoon of leftover starter from each bake to make this incredible recipe for fancy Cheez-its from an old friend Peter Barrett. I haven’t actually branched out beyond Tartine’s country bread recipe, it’s that freaking good – really the best bread I’ve ever had.

Well, I’m tryna get out of here without taking up too much of your time, but some last shout outs – a few delicious new things I ate in the before times: okonomiyaki at Gaijin (closed for winter), tsukemen “dipping” ramen at Chicago Ramen (open for delivery & pick up in Des Plaines), and birria at Las Tias, West Chicago (RIP.)

Not only is it good to support local business, but some take out needs to hit the table ASAP, so big ups to my local-est places in Winfield for that piping hot, deep fried fix – Berger Bros. for burgers & fries and Chinese Ho for fried rice, egg foo young, and crab Rangoon.

And hugest gratitude to all food workers: in the fields, the slaughter houses, plants, and packing houses; driving the trucks; homies grinding on the line, servers braving the patios, and the delivery drivers; and last but not least everybody stocking the shelves & checking us out. Special thanks to the staff of Angelo Caputo’s on North in Carol Stream where I shop every two weeks. You really are essential, you’ve risked your own health to keep the rest of us fed.  

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The Chicago Foodcultura Clarion

My gallery attracts eccentric folx, some who seem to show up just to eat the home made snacks I serve at openings (remember when we could do that, I sure do miss it.) So I didn’t bat an eye when, about a year ago, a man in his 70s wearing a hot pink puffy coat with a tightly wound top knot made a beeline to my famous pigs in a blanket and helped himself.

But then he looked up from the buffet and asked me, in a Spanish accent, are you Eric?

Almost immediately, it struck me who he was – legendary food artist, Miralda. I knew he was in town teaching at University of Chicago. My friend Zach Cahill had tried to connect us a year earlier and I thoughtlessly let the e-mail sink in my inbox. But more recently, another old friend, Peter Engler, renowned scholar of Southside culinary oddities, had reached out to let me know he was working with Miralda and that I should meet up with them for an eating adventure. Sounded great, but I had a packed calendar of catering work with the holidays approaching.

So Miralda, the man about town he is, found himself at UIC’s art department’s open studio night. I had catered the event, serving up what I called “party subs around the world.” Miralda was apparently impressed and was chatting with the department’s Associate Director, another friend, Jen Delos Reyes. Jen encouraged Miralda to check out the opening at Roots & Culture the next night (for more snacks perhaps?) And the rest is history, Miralda ate his first pig in a blanket and we hit it off immediately.

A toast of micheladas with Miralda and Peter Engler

The next week, I took Peter up on the offer to go eat with him and Miralda. We were joined by one of their students, Paige Resnick, who is an accomplished food writer in her own right. We traversed the Southside to head to my favorite restaurant in town, the temple of goat, Birrieria Zaragoza, making stops at Tortilleria Atotonilco and a “pollos vivos” spot that Paige was working on a project about.  The goat was sublime and the conversation was lively. I suggested that we make a stop at Southwest Signs, just on the other side of Midway from Zaragoza’s.

Chuck Wilmarth of Southwest Signs with legendary Spanish food artist Miralda admiring his work

Chuck, Carol and Dan, who run the 65 year old sign shop are like family to me (its like a big extended family down there, they are also close with the Zaragoza’s.) So it was an amazing convergence of worlds for me to introduce them and show off their art to word famous Miralda.

Fast forward to this past summer and I was contacted by Miralda, Peter, Paige, and U of C Anthropology Chair, Stephan Palmié about contributing to a publication they were putting together, culminating their work with their class, The Chicago Foodcultura Clarion. My beat was fitting – to interview the folks at Southwest Signs. It was a real treat to sit down for a chat with Chuck about the history of his art form and the shop. Miralda and his designers in Barcelona decided they wanted to use Chuck’s lettering for the design of the paper, so I helped to arrange that, as well. Beyond the honor of working with such admired colleagues, it’s just been nice, in this moment, to have a project to keep my head in the world outside my house. Many Zoom meetings later, and all the work somehow earned me the title of Senior Editor and I’m thrilled to work with the Clarionistas on two more issues to be released in 2021. Check out a .pdf of the first issue HERE.

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Food 2019

Lil Chompers Club at Gnarly Knots

I’m going to focus on restaurants this year– I ate a lot of good stuff around Chicago, the burbs, and out of town. As for cooking exploits, I feel like I’ve shared plenty on other media throughout the year– food porn from the catering kitchen over on the ‘gram + if you’re looking for recipes, the cookbook I compiled for Ox-Bow, which has been almost a decade in the making, was finally released!

If I had to track trends, an immediate one of the past few years would be the expanded field of “food halls”, which should seem up my alley as a child of 80s mall food courts. Three opened in the West Loop alone (and hey, I like one of them, more on that below.) But more often, you’ll find me haunting old school food courts adjacent to suburban Asian grocery stores or the subterranean mall in China town, more on that below too.

What a time to be alive if you like Asian food. Finally there’s great Indonesian and Burmese, and ever expanding regional Chinese (+ In-on Thai is back!) And a new generation of Asian-American chefs and restaurateurs is opening places outside of historical cultural neighborhood enclaves. Two great examples opened recently in my old neighborhood. Phodega on Ashland just south of North, an appropriately diminutive storefront amusingly dressed up like a corner store you might find on, well, Argyle street is slinging, for sure, the best bowl of pho south of Argyle, if not one of the best in town. And Lao Peng You in a serene space on Chicago Ave at Damen is serving lovingly scratch made Northern Chinese dumplings and noodles, rarities even for Chinatown.

Another spot I loved this year (though only got to once, so I didn’t feel like I could comprehensibly represent on the list) is Hermosa Restaurant, a media favorite of the past few months. Run by the talented and humble Ethan Lim, who comes from a family of Asian American restaurateurs, this modest sandwich counter presents as a hot dog and Italian beef spot. But pick up the paper menu and you’ll discover a set of sandwiches featuring Southeast Asian flavors including scarce-in-Chicago Cambodian preparations like prakoh khtiss, fermented mudfish paste with pork. These sandwiches have explosive flavors that don’t shy away from funk or heat. Chef Lim’s was, for sure, the best chicken sandwich I ate this year (though I do think Popeyes’ is a good deal at $3.99)

Indian food seems to finally be having its moment in Chicago, with a handful of high profile openings ranging in concept and price point. I’ll go more in depth into my favorite of these new options below, but would like to give a nod to Superkhana International in Logan Square. Lots of people I like have their hand in this place and the playful, colorful lounge-feel of the space is worth a trip. I especially love the huge mural presiding over the bar painted by my favorite Indian American painter, Kaveri Raina. I thought the chow was great too especially the blistered bread on the butter chicken calzone. Though I wouldn’t exactly call it Indian food– more in line with the kind of casual, globally riffing, ingredient forward grub found around that neighborhood.

Mostly, if you know me, I’m always on the hunt for mom-and-pop, hole in the wall type joints. And you gotta leave the West Loop and Logan Square to find the good stuff sometimes, so buckle up as we head to Belmont-Craigin, Wheaton, and Michigan City.

Egg-O-Holic

In the year of Indian openings, this one was my fave. I had encountered an ersatz hard boiled egg half in a biryani before, but who knew about this entire cuisine of egg-focused late night street food from Gujarat? This second outpost (the OG is in Schaumburg) on Chicago Ave, not far from a cropping of cabbie Indo-Pak places, slings an overwhelming array of ovular curries, rice, omelets, wraps, and sandwiches. And the eggs themselves take many forms in the dishes, boiled and shredded, fried, scrambled, poached into sauces, etc.

As the name implies, this is drinking food, meant to sop up the sauce at the end of a bender. This is heavy-duty stuff, both spice and calorie-wise. Which also makes it ideal winter food– surti gotalo is a shakshuk-ian dish of jiggling sunny sides in a volcanic garlicky tomato gravy, perfectly delivered hand to mouth with flaky roti bread. The queso-esque lachko eats like a dip of sorts– a smooth blend of mild green chilies, cheese, and eggs. Green egg rice is another fave, rice fried with a garden’s worth of verdant herbs including mint and curry leaves. And don’t sleep on the “Anda” sandwiches, double decker club sandwiches with curried egg salad and melted cheese, a trippy East-West mash up which might just lead to a nap afterwards. Also don’t miss their excellent chai, which is intoxicatingly aromatic, slightly bitter in its astringent tea-ness, and lusciously viscous. It’ll perk you back up after the heavy food and fortify your bones for the wintery windswept wrath of Chicago Avenue.

833 W Chicago Ave. Chicago, IL 60642

Minna’s

Minna’s blipped on the foodie radar last year, likely since they are next door to Morena’s (best fried chicken in Chicago, Dominican style, which made last year’s list.) And the reason why Minna’s is on my 19 list and not my 18 list is because I could never find it in my heart to cheat on Morena when I parked my car at the intersection of Grand and Armitage. But Morena was closed for a few months this year, graduating to bigger digs from her tiny storefront, so I finally checked out Minna’s.

Minna’s lunch counter is a beckoning sight, wo-manned by a team of several generations of masa makers patting out tortillas and other goodies “a mano”. The place is always packed with a cross section of Chicagoans, I’ve had some pretty authentic encounters with folks at that counter, including a memorable lunch shared with a vegan biker.

I ate a lot of great antojitos made with fresh masa this year, but Minna’s are the best in class. Golden crispy on the outside, steaming with supple corny richness inside. You can’t go wrong whichever format or topping you choose– piquant chicken tinga stuffed in a crisp gordita, saucy flor de calabaza folded with cheese in a quesadilla, or a veritable salad of nopal cactus topping a plate sized huarache. My favorite though is a simple taco–salty cecina, partially dried, grilled beef adorned with grilled onions and poblano peppers and gilded with an avocado slice, my favorite taco of the year.

5046 W Armitage Ave, Chicago, IL 60639

Bumbu Roux and Thattu at Politan Row

All my favorite foods are brown piles

Okay, about that food hall in the West Loop. On the ground floor of McDonald’s corporate HQ nonetheless (as an aside, RIP to their OG HQ, my favorite Brutalist building on my commute on I-88.) I mistakenly thought Politan Row was operated by the clown and co., but it’s actually a chain of concepts from the south. Anyway, if you look at the offerings at most food halls around town, they all have pretty similar line ups consisting of scaled down versions of established, mostly well funded, and publicized restaurants like Antique Taco, Budlong Chicken, Aloha Poke, Smoque. All of these brands turn out fine product and for downtown day jobbers, I imagine they make for a pretty decent set of lunch options.

However, if you get around much, in many major cities around the world and even as nearby as Richland Center in Chinatown, you’ve experienced a different breed of food court– offering unique, handcrafted, and regional cultural food products. And from an urban economic standpoint, these markets can function as incubators for start up businesses with modest resources. So you have to ask why Chicago doesn’t offer more centralized or visible food markets like this, though if you have any experience with the city’s department of business affairs and the red tape of their licensing and costly fee structuring, you know the answer.

So one of the shiny, fancy new food halls is doing it right. I have no idea what their rent costs and of course there’s no getting around the city, but Politan Row has a refreshing line up of new vendors with concepts you won’t find at other food halls, or even other stand-alone restaurants around the city. Big flavored cuisines made largely by people of color representing their respective cultures. My two favorite vendors are Bumbu Roux and Thattu:

Bumbu Roux is an unorthodox concept from chef Chris Reed, who has run the Rice Table Indonesian pop up dinners for years. Although Chef Reed and I orbit a similar intersection of the art and food worlds (I know his partner from nonprofit art stuff), I still have yet to sample his epic Rijstaffel family-style buffet dinners. So I was pretty stoked when he opened Bumbu Roux, where I can waltz in any old weekday to sample his heady, spicy cooking.

Reed’s biography drives his concept. His father is from New Orleans and he began to sneak Cajun/Creole dishes at the pop ups with the Indonesian fare that he cooks with his Dutch-Indonesian mother. And the menu at Bumbu Roux represents both sides of his family. There’s little in the way of fusion, so to speak, there’s no lemongrass in the gumbo or roux in the rendang. I prefer it that way, leaving it up to the diner to find differences and similarities between the two cuisines and perhaps enjoy an unexpected mouthful of noodles and red beans. It’s pretty exciting having access to two of my favorite cuisines in one transaction, let alone under one roof. The beef rendang was the number one thing I ate this year. Chicago has a dearth of Indonesian food and rendang is one of my favorite curries from anywhere, so just its very existence makes me happy. But this stuff goes beyond– an insanely rich, reduced coconut milk gravy popping with lemongrass, sweet spices, and unrestrained chili heat enveloping fork tender hunks of beef.

I know less personally about the wife/husband chef/owner team behind Thattu (you should just read Sula’s piece.) I do know that I had never sampled the food of Kerala before I tucked into their bowls of rich curries scooped up with the ethereal fermented rice flour based crepes, appam. Of the big year in Indian, my favorite bite was their vegan Kadala Curry (with appam of course). Coconut features prevalent in this food from the tropical southern state of India, so this dal of black chick peas offers a rich and aromatic coconut gravy. The appam also features coconut (milk in this case), which is just one of those foods you can’t help but giggle a little after popping your first bite, light and bubbly texture with a rich mouthfeel. It’s amazing by itself, but like Ethiopian injera bread, all those little air pockets make for a perfect sop with saucy curries.

111 N Aberdeen St, Chicago, IL 60607

Tong’s (and Chengdu Taste) RIP

And speaking of suburban Asian food courts, many favorite bites were had at two of them out in my west suburban stomping grounds. And such is the transitional nature of these places, the two vendors of my favorite snacks unfortunately closed up shop within a year of opening.

International Mall in Westmont is a throwback– 80s food court vibes intact, ground floor of a kind of office mall adjacent to a dusky Chinese grocery. Most notably it was home to the elevated Korean mastery of hanbun (on my ’16 list) whose owners went on to open a refined, proper sit down, Jeong in the old Green Zebra space this year (still haven’t been, sorry Dave & Jen!) Taking their place was Chengdu Taste who served up face meltingly spicy bowls of Sichuan classics with a not-for-the-gringos lunch special. Those in the know (Titus) spotted rare items on their extensive menu like wanza mian, a cousin of dan dan noodles fortified with yellow peas. I thought their noodles were fine (not home made) but the dish that topped my list, which I consider a benchmark of Sichuan cooking, was boiled fish, a volcanic brew of slippery fish filets, glass noodles, and vegetation that cleared the sinuses. But within a few months they were gone.

About 10 miles west off Ogden from the International Mall, is Naperville’s outpost of H-Mart. I’ve always found that their food court kinda sucks. So I was thrilled when I heard that Tong’s, a purveyor of Beijing style street food, had resurfaced after closing up at Chinatown’s Richland Center food court a few years ago. The online food cognoscenti were most hyped for Tong’s jiagbing, a popular street snack of folded crepes, crispy omelet, and condiments, which is a huge hit in foodie scenes like Portland. But not common here and I suspect it’s another case of scarcity preceding hype. I like it fine– texturally interesting, but a pretty plain snack overall. Tong’s dumplings though… At any given time you could spy a team of women rolling and filling them in the back. They were the best I’ve had in Chicagoland– delicate, but chewy skins encasing fresh, juicy, and, aromatic fillings. Tong’s nailed another foodie holy grail– the lattice potsticker. While the pan is hot, a slurry of cornstarch is poured into the negative space around the dumplings, bubbling up and frying crisp into an ethereal web, interlocking the pot stickers. Dramatically beautiful and delicious, Tong’s filled theirs with a popping mix of shrimp and scallions. Unceremoniously, Tong vanished once again sometime over the summer. Avery and I very much miss those dumps. I miss Tong the human too, a beacon of warmth and hospitality, who always put the needs of my kiddo first. I’ve heard rumors there might be a spiffy new food court opening in Chinatown, so fingers crossed for Tong’s third act.

Pa Lian, Wheaton, IL

Burmese food has come up in my year end lists before, but in all due respect, I think its kinda over-hyped by foodies, likely due to its scarcity in the States. In the same breath, I need to acknowledge that, like every non-Western cuisine, Burmese is not here for us. Immigrant owned restaurants serve their communities a taste of home.

But is that enough of a customer base to keep a business open and thriving? That’s a question Pa Lian, now the only Burmese restaurant in Illinois, begs to ask– is there a market for a little-known-to-Western-tastes cuisine in conservative Wheaton, IL of all places?

Obviously, I’m the perfect audience for a place like this, though my global cosmopolitan palate might be a bit of an anomaly in western DuPage county. I love this restaurant and its thoughtful owner Tawk Zalian, who I’ve gotten to know in my semi-monthly visits. Tawk is open about his experience as a refugee in the area. I did not know that there’s a community of 2000+ Burmese refugees settled in Wheaton, who Tawk proudly serves. He’s a member of an immigrant chamber of commerce who has the ear of our recently elected Democrat congressman, Sean Casten (who I am a fan of.) And we share more than politics– Tawk is about my age and has toddlers at home too.

I take Avery out to lunch about once a month on Tuesdays, both to broaden his palate and refine our table manners, we call our dates the “Lil Chompers Club”. Pa Lian is one of his faves, he especially loves the golden fried chick pea “tofu”. Burmese food is not super spicy, full of noodles (a kiddo staple), but is also texturally dynamic with bold flavors. His other fave is Kauk Swe Thoke, a room temp noodle dish, wonderfully creamy from the addition of chick pea flour to the dressing + crunchy fried bits.

My more grown up favorite dishes include Laphet thoke, the famous tea leaf salad, a symphony of crunchy fried lentils and fresh cabbage, with a funky bass note of fermented tea leaves. And Wetthar pon-ye-gyi chat, a simple curry of jiggly chunks of pork belly in a deeply savory gravy. Burmese food, like its geography, is a crossroads of Southeast Asia– the slow cooked aromatic sauces of Indian food, the noodles and stir fry techniques of Chinese, and the lime dressed salads of Thailand. Yet entirely its own thing.

So is Wheaton ready for this? Chatting with my local librarian ladies, Pa Lian has been the talk of a Wheaton mom’s Facebook group. Tawk confirmed that this ladies-who-lunch posse has been driving his business. Nonetheless, he laments that he needs to connect with a broader customer base. If you are reading this and inspired to make the 40 minute trek out to Dupage county, Avery and I will gladly welcome you to Lil Chompers Club on a Tuesday.

I have faith that Tawk will succeed, his food is delicious and approachable, as seemingly exotic as it may seem in the suburban bland-scape. Heck, my three year old loves it. And Tawk is a hospitable human doing his best to make America work for him, while enriching his community.

254 E Geneva Rd, Wheaton, IL 60187

Cool Runnings, Michigan City, IN

This is another fine example of hugely flavored global cuisine that popped up in a place that desperately needed it. My parents have a home in the Michiana area, where I spent most summers of my youth, and continues to be a regular getaway for the fam. The dining scene on both sides of the Michigan/Indiana border has always been rather uninspiring.

Over a fish taco wrap one summertime lunch at Bridges, a funky riverside dock bar and grill that I am fond of, across the river I spied unexpected colors for LaPorte County, the black, green and gold colors of the Jamaican flag. Some disorienting mapping led us over the Washington Street bridge past the Blue Chip Casino and around the old Pioneer Lumber Yard to a corner in an old residential neighborhood. And there was Cool Runnings– bar in front, very laid back patio in back with a mural of patron saint Bob Marley smiling down on the diners, some Bobo Ashanti dancehall bumping on the speakers.

Owner and chef Jermaine Miller got his start with an award-winning food truck  before landing in his now impeccably chill digs. In my handful of trips, I have not made it past his jerk chicken, which in all honesty might be my favorite chicken preparation (over fried chicken, whaaa?!) And this is the best I’ve had at a restaurant– smoky, juicy, exploding with the aromatic trio of thyme, allspice, and ginger. The sauce is on the thicker side, the way I like it, with the serious Scoville kick of Scotch Bonnet peppers. And the sides, so flavorful and homestyle that they hold up to the huge flavors of the bird. Now there’s proper food to match weekend trips filled with sun and sand.

501 Center St, Michigan City, IN 46360

Bitter Ends, Pittsburgh, PA

Our besties moved to Pittsburgh, so now we go to Pittsburgh, which we’ve found to be a lovely, under-rated town. While I ate my way across the city on my first trip there a few years ago (which I recount on my 2016 best list), now we mostly hunker down for QT with Elizabeth and Brian (& hi baby Abe, haven’t met you yet!) in their stately Victorian. This spring, Elizabeth turned us on to this gem of a diner on rollicking Liberty Ave. in the charming Bloomfield neighborhood, which is now a must stop.

There’s been a turn back toward a style of California cuisine with roots undoubtedly in 1960s & 70s coops and Bay Area slow food, that was in full bloom in the 90s– hippie crunchy, health food-store-y, veggie-forward eating that has recently been championed by pretentiously hip eateries like LA’s Squirl (or Cellar Door Provisions locally.) I find this style eating a bit precious, its like stuff I whip up at home for breakfast on the cheap, but with tweezed-out microgreens for Instagram.

One thing I like about these places is that they’ve brought bread back (take that gluten intolerance!), which is the bedrock of Bitter Ends’ chow. The menu consists of a tight selection of sandwiches and toasts, built on naturally leavened house baked sourdough featuring seasonal produce grown on the café’s own farm outside of town. Its simple eating that clearly has a big audience of folks lining up for it each day.

The vibes are what get me though. It’s a shoebox sized lunch counter, every square inch optimized for storage, bread cooling on racks folded down from the ceiling overhead. The décor is tidy and carefully curated, decked in a 90s thrifted aesthetic. Its kinda just like the dearly departed Leo’s Lunchroom, that hipster greasy spoon that anchored and nourished Wicker Park back when it was still cool. The vibe is also not far off from the hippy punk look of the Ox-Bow kitchen when I first landed there in 1998, all granny dresses and patchouli. The staff looks the part, art school scruff but all smiles and bleary eyes in the morning. And since it’s Pittsburgh, Girl Talk blasting on the stereo. A throwback to simpler times, long live the punk diner!

4613 Liberty Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15224

Honorable mention- Gnarly Knots, Winfield, IL

Five years into living in a tiny village on the outskirts of the Western burbs, I’m ready to declare Gnarly Knots the best place to eat in town. A mostly to-go operation in a little shack, Avery and I love it in the warm months since its walking distance from the house and you can take your scratch-made giant soft pretzels out back to enjoy with the yellowjackets at a picnic table.

Seriously though, what a genius concept for the burbs, who doesn’t love soft pretzels! They’re only open five hours a day and there is a perpetual line (that thankfully moves at a brisk clip.) It’s better than it has to be, everything is made in house, including decent to good soups, a stable of topped pretzels both savory and sweet, and a fatty Vienna frank stuffed in a tubular pretzel. Every day they also offer special stuffed pretzels often filled with ostentatious things like mac and cheese and Italian beef. The latter is really good, which may seem strange coming from me, who stubbornly tracks the authenticity of this native sacred cow. The beef is legit– tender and juicy, giardiniera and extra jus are served on the side. Bulging from the bottom arch of a perfect crunchy/soft teddy bear brown pretzel.

27W570 High Lake Rd, Winfield, IL 60190

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American (Middle Class Artist) Pie

This “recipe” is my contribution to Jesse Malmed’s POME project and publication which debuted in June 2019 at Seattle Freezer project space in Seattle, WA

pie

This recipe is not for everyone. In fact, procuring these ingredients will be prohibitive for many, both in their cost and scarcity. However, it is this author’s opinion that this rich and savory, yet pretty conventional recipe is worth the tremendous effort– with fulfilling results that satisfy the soul every bit as much as they do the appetite! Optimally, this recipe requires two sets of hands. Rule number one is to share the labor as equally as possible, though each of you will bring your own skills to the kitchen. Pay attention to your fellow cook, if they are putting in more of the effort on the stew, it will be your duty to focus on the crust. And importantly, if one of you is arduously nurturing the pastry dough, the other cook will have to seriously step up their effort. This will likely be the most complicated recipe you have ever tackled, but remember, have fun!

Ingredients:

1 savings (at least 50K, likely an inheritance)

1-2 MFAs (student loans included)

Gallery representation

2-3 part time gigs (self employment, adjunct teaching, contractual labor, et al)

An egg or two, mixed with baby batter to form a soft dough

Chill the savings as long as possible.

Bring MFAs to a simmer. Do not skim out any teaching positions. Reduce to a tenure track position. If you do not find an ideal consistency, season with part time gigs accordingly. Do not over-crowd the pot, you will want to leave room for the addition of more ingredients later. Add gallery representation, which will require stirring, at least every two years. This is your “career stew.”

Roll out savings into a thick, yet seemingly manageable mortgage. Press this crust into any vessel that it will fit (flyover city, suburb, rando college town, etc.) Add the stew.

The mortgage will develop flaky layers of bills, taxes, and unexpected costs as the savings cooks out.

Meanwhile, carefully add the pastry dough to the oven (Note: this ingredient could cross contaminate the carefully developed tenure track portion of the stew.) Bake for nine months into a lovely pastry.

Taste for the bright, ecstatic flavor of unconditional love.

To support the pastry, which will also increasingly develop its own layer of bills, the career stew will need to be thickened with gigs. The tenure track base of the stew will not be hearty enough to support the weight of the pastry alone.

Keep an eye on the stew, it will require constant stirring. An MFA based in studio practice, can stick to the bottom and burn (it can be easy to lose track of the stew while you tend to the pastry.) This ingredient is essential for the development of the tenure track (and gallery representation), not to mention the overall flavor of the dish. Season with institutional group shows as necessary.

You might find that one MFA will be cooked out at his point, this is okay for the structure of the pie, though some seasoning may be lost in the process.

You might want to bake off another batch of pastry dough, whether deliberately planned or awkwardly timed.

Carefully, constantly, tend to your pie, as you build its delicate crust.

Enjoy with one or two adult beverages and Netflix, when you have time.

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Eric May for Western Pole

WP

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Food 2018

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I felt like we were at the edge of the world, a dystopian future-world, the kind that I’ve unfortunately had negative fantasies about too often in the past two years–perched on a wobbly stool in an unheated trailer getting weird looks from the Slavic truckers waiting around us. We traveled far to get here, to a windswept stretch of truck stops off 80/94 in Gary Indiana. We traipsed through the thick mud of an ambiguous parking lot, confused by how to find our way into the elevated yellow trailer. Once inside, the wiry, tattooed counter guy, likely years younger than his grizzled demeanor would suggest, spoke in unintelligible grunts, barely cocking an eye through the fogged Plexi partition between us.

Balkan Grill is a way station for Serbian truck drivers to fuel up on calorie-dense charred meats and thick flat breads. I’d read about it in a piece by Mike Sula and it was high on my list. But as we waited twenty minutes for our orders of cevapcici–uncased, hand formed beef sausages and pljeskavica, an oversized onion-y burger, stuffed with cheese, contemplating where the grilling was happening considering there was no obvious exhaust in the back of the trailer, I wondered why we were doing this.

The food was good– hearty, simple, and satisfying. But something else drew us here. Call it a Bourdain-ian compulsion to find culture wherever you can get to it. In these xenophobic times, like cutting yourself to remind yourself that you can feel.

It was a fucked up week. Some food critic I had never heard of wrote a five point take down of the entire culinary landscape of Chicago. With too much time on my hands (wife and kid away for two weeks) I took the bait and indulged in a bit of online trollery, I’ll spare you the tit for tat. But aghast at some egregiously uninformed statements with tinges of racism, I couldn’t help but say something.

What have we come to? Everybody has something to yell about. And it’s too easy for everyone else to yell back. Truly informed criticism is dying. Facts don’t count. This is the pre-apocalyptic environment that makes me want to drive to a trailer in Gary Indiana and clear my head, uncomfortable as it may be.

I also turned to a recently fallen hero, Jonathan Gold, and watched “City of Gold.” Not only was I reminded of true journalistic integrity, but humility. Gold understood that the eateries he championed– humble, mom-and-pop run, immigrant-owned, were not doing it for him, but to serve their communities. And he acknowledged the tremendous work that is put into running these businesses.

John and Tony are gone. When Bourdain died, I thought hard about how much he inspired me and why. It came down to his ego-less-ness, which might sound odd considering his out-size personality. But he put everything aside to give the world a view into culture and platform the way that everyday people around the world ate and lived.

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I have hope that a new generation of folks is emerging that speaks about food from perspectives within their own cultures (rather than, say, the scholarly gaze of journalism.) This year I found much inspiration reading about artist- driven cooking projects, all helmed by women, mostly women of color, sharing, unpacking, and complicated their respective cultures by cooking, hosting meals, and platforming conversations. Many of the projects are featured in this ArtSpace piece. My friend, New York-based writer, researcher, & cook Jasmine Lee, co-hosts a dinner series called Comic Sans Earth with her collaborator Bettina Yung. Their cuisine is rooted in Chinese, and specifically Hong Kong style ingredients and techniques, to quote Jasmine “Comic Sans Earth is a way for us to access our own histories.” Part of the proceeds of their inaugural event were donated to a New York based org fighting against deportation and family separation.

I was really inspired by an interview Jasmine published on the Creative Independent with Palestinian-American artist Amanny Ahmad, whose multi-faceted practices include cooking and hosting meals, horticulture & foraging, and writing. As a recovering artist, myself, who also embraced food, I related very much to her turn away from the materialism and market-defined hierarchies of the art world. Amanny and her peers are pivoting even further from the avant garde pretentions of contemporary art ideas like relational aesthetics to forefront conversations about immigrant experience, food justice, race, class, and sustainability. Houston-based artists Lovie Olivia and Preetika Rajgariah (who recently showed at Roots & Culture) share their own intimate cooking practices on Instagram as @twodykesandaknife and are launching a new project Pallets, Palettes, and Palates, that “intend to spark discussions that feature complicated topics of racial, ethnic, political and gender diversity through the lens of contemporary art and non-traditional dining experiences.”

Now is a time for activity, not passivity. Its too easy, too lazy, to sit behind a laptop and shout about how the world isn’t doing enough for you. I’m over it. In 2019, I want to focus on active endeavors like feeding myself, my family, my community. And being out in the world, eating, absorbing culture, learning, and hopefully meeting new folks.

For a second I thought about foregoing this annual round up, but alas, I was already a few thousand words deep before the past week’s drama. So, for the sake of respecting the hardworking folks making this food, let’s do this:

Morena’s Kitchen (and how I found her)

The best thing I ate this year (& ate & ate) was the pica pollo at the diminutive Morena’s Kitchen (its so small, her address has a fraction in it!) run by its namesake (the nickname of owner Mirian Montes de Oca.) Check out the Hungry Hound spot above (my prime time debut!) for all the deets. This stuff is the goods, my favorite fried chicken in town, not only gloriously crispy, but the meat has a deep citrusy, garlicky, herby marinade that sets it apart. And Mirian is the sweetest (sassy too.) This spot is peak neighborhood Chi, for sure. One lunch, this dude came in with a garter snake to spook Morena, which didn’t seem to make her flinch.

There’s another half to this story, although T likely wouldn’t want to block any of Morena’s shine. I found this spot, like so many others, through my bud, Titus Ruscitti, aka @chibbqking, aka Da Beef, aka King T, aka the guy behind Chicago Taco Tour. He’s an OG influencer, the guy that is literally out on the street every week (and increasingly around the globe), checking out every mom & pop and hole in the wall. Internet foodies and in-the-know journos pick up his recommendations and before you know it, boom, places like Morena’s are on ABC 7. From South Chicago to Beijing, King T is out here.

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Chinese Century

Beyond the old Sunday night take-out order of bbq pork fried rice and egg rolls, this year, I noticed how Chinese food, ingredients, & techniques have infiltrated my weekly diet. Much like how twenty years ago salsa, tortillas, and beans became my staples– noodles, leafy greens, and stuff like black bean paste have landed in my weekly shopping cart. And that’s because Chinese food and culture is increasingly accessible and becoming a part of the American (slash global) plurality. I recently heard a piece on WBEZ about how Chicago has the only growing Chinatown in the country. Its very cool to see joints like A Place by Damao on Halsted, which I wrote about last year, owned and operated by a new generation of Chinese immigrants, serving a younger clientele. From the growth of Chicago’s Chinatown and expansion into adjacent neighborhoods, to burbs in places like northern metro Toronto, the San Gabriel Valley outside of LA, and nearby me in the western suburbs, to my own kitchen, this idea of the Chinese century is reaching our palates.

So here’s a quick recap of my year in Chinese cuisine– I did some major exploration in Toronto in June. We ate Hakka chili chicken downtown from Yueh Tung, kissed by the breath of the wok and heavily redolent of the garlic and ginger. In the could-be-China suburb of Richmond Hill, we blissed out on perfectly fried potstickers and sesame-paste & chile oil drenched Sichuan style wantons from Northern Dumpling Kitchen taken to go and eaten off the arm rest of our car. In also very-Chinese Markham, next door, we finally made it to the highly recommended Mei Nung Beef Noodle House for my favorite of the Asian noodle soups– niu rou mian. The soup was good, especially spiked with their house chili oil, but the noods did not quite have the personality of my faves at Katy’s Dumpling House in Chi-land. Perhaps I wasn’t able to fully relax into this bowl, though, since a particular outhouse-y odor lingered on the nose– the stench of another famed Taiwanese dish, stinky tofu.

Speaking of suburban beef noodle soup, a purveyor of Taiwanese chow in a food court in the west burb of Westmont, alongside Styrofoam bowls of hot soy milk and crullers the size of my forearm, does niu rou mian on weekends. Their hand pulled noodles have a delightful texture with an initial softness, but chewy bite-through in a complex broth with bits of dried ginger and a bone-fortified richness. In city noodle news, I sampled hand made Xi’an style cold rice noodles in another food court, the subterranean Richland Market, Shaan Shan Taste. In a vinegar and chile oil sauce with fresh matchsticks of cucumber, it’s the type of dish I like to make on a summer’s day, though the dried pho noodles I’d use at home are lifeless in comparison.

One of my favorite bowls of noodles of the year was at a Millennial-vibed Bridgeport joint, Min’s Noodles. They have a menu of customizable noodle bowls, but I settled for an old favorite, Sichuan dan dan noodles. Min’s fortifies their sauce with sesame paste, which further complicates the hot, salty, and sour flavors with a nutty creamy richness. Craving the creamy style dan dan but unwilling to drive to the city one day, I turned to a recipe by culinary life coach, Gary “GWiv” Wiviott, which turned out very similar and as good as Min’s. Good old tahini makes a reasonable substitution for Chinese sesame paste. Which got me thinking about the origins of an old hippy classic, the Moosewood-ian sesame noodles. Maybe Chinese food infiltrated our diets long ago.

 

At Mike's Ham PLace in Detroit, a very favorite food memory of the year (& all time.) Avery loved the grub & Mike and his wife were so sweet to us!

At Mike’s Ham Place in Detroit, a very favorite food memory of the year (& all time.) Avery loved the grub & Mike and his wife were so sweet to us!

The Year in Between Two Slices of Bread

Reviewing my best-things-I’ve-eaten-this-year list revealed that 2018 was low key a good year for sandwiches. A big factor was the opening of Tempesta Market by the team behind Nduja Artisans, makers of the meaty manna, addictive, gonna kill ya, spreadable salami that is nduja. They sneak the brick-red stuff into their goods in unexpected ways, they do an ndjua gelato! (which my sweet-toothed but spice adverse two year old gobbled without noticing the Calabrian chile heat) My two favorite sandwiches (so far) employ rendered nduja oil– in a vinaigrette on the Dante, which is an update on a classic Italian sub (somehow elevating a perfect form) and drenching fried chicken (!!!) in their take on a Nashville hot chicken sandwich (the Smashville.) This spot is like a cross between Publican Quality Meats and JP Graziano’s, with meat lockers full of house made charcuterie, imported goods, and a Renaissance painting- worthy deli case.

Shall we rack our brains on the perennial debate on whether wraps and things in flat breads qualify as sandwiches? For some reason, I do count gyros and shawarma, but not tacos and burritos. Is it the depth of the wrap? So where does roti fit in, somewhere in between a pita and a tortilla? If a roti wrap qualifies, then the chili chicken roti I had at JK Kebab, an Indo-Pak kebab place in Naperville (& original on Devon) was the best sandwich of the year, flaky, chewy flat bread encasing succulent and spicy shreds of chicken.

Speaking of gyros– this year Chicago discovered that in Greece, simply seasoned sliced pork stacked on the rotating spit is more traditional than our homespun lamb/beef forcemeat version. I had two excellent versions, at Apolis in Lisle and Charcoal Flame in Morton Grove. While both joints served up crispy, bacon-y goods, I definitely have to tip my hat to the latter who serves it up in a more traditional fashion than the Chipotle-esque topping-heavy approach of the former. I recently ate my favorite house made lamb/beef style gyros at Greek Islands, to compare, and I’m officially a pork convert. I gotta say though, does all Chicago gyros have to be served on that sponge-y Kronos pita?

Fleshing out the sammy list are the lowest key of the entries, the type of spots I eat at regularly out of convenience, suburban parent type places like cafes and bar & grills. Huge shout out to my best bud Ryan Hammer and family who opened a kick ass coffee shop and community hub in next door West Chicago, Kindred Coffee Roasters. Over the summer they introduced lunch, turning out super fresh, hugely flavored sandwiches off a panini press in their matchbox-sized kitchen. The Italian Panini with prosciutto & arugula is right up my alley.

Fortunately, we were able to fill the void of our dearly departed John’s in our little downtown Winfield with Berger Bros. Pub. They specialize in a genre of “small plates” type food that’s stuck in the 90’s (or maybe 00’s?) with balsamic this and ahi tuna that. Huge piles of Brussels sprouts with bacon, you know what I’m saying? The sandwiches are the least fussy offerings and pretty great– juicy hand formed burgers (no pulled pork on there for me though thanks), crispy grilled cheeses & melts (one with grilled chicken, bacon, & avocado works better than it should) and a super decadent pot roast on a brioche bun.

Closing out my sandwich wrap up, I’d like to give a nod to my favorite food blog on the internet, Sandwich Tribunal. For the past five years, @JimTheBeerGuy has been covering– eating & making, every sandwich on Wikipedia’s list of sandwiches entry, three per month. Thorough, personal, and appetite-inducing, it’s some of the best food writing that I go to regularly.

5

Stuff I cook!

My Pie

I had to quit my favorite pizza place this year. After too many rude and discriminatory experiences with the new management, I said goodbye to Al’s in Warrenville, who makes one of the best tavern style thin crust pizza in Chi-land. So what now? Wifey’s favorite food is pizza. I can be more discriminating than her and have found that the other local joints each screw up some element of their product. I do like Jet’s for chain pie, though you only want gut bomb deep dish so often.

So I make my own, which I always have, and Jessica actually likes the best. But I’ve got the routine down to where it doesn’t feel like a chore (fun fact: the labor involved in cooking is often in inverse proportion to the pleasure of eating.) It’s just about thinking ahead. My dough needs at least a 24 hour proof. So the day before, I mix the dough, takes about 10 minutes. I make a double batch, freeze half. Then pizza night comes together fast, stretch the dough, prep the ingredients, pop it in the oven. I can do the whole thing in 30 minutes. Folks often ask me for my recipe, here it is below. I do use a pizza stone and believe that it makes a huge difference. I think a peel comes in handy too, though you could use the back of a sheet pan. And I stretch the dough out on parchment paper to prevent sticking and making for an easy transfer.

Makes two 14”ish zas:

At least the night before make the dough– I use Gold Medal unbleached all purpose, but go ahead and splurge on the imported 00 stuff. So in your stand mixer (you could do it by hand too): 4 cups flour, 1 tsp dry yeast, and 1 ½- 1 ¾ cups ice water. It should be a sticky dough, but not too sticky to handle. I mix for a few minutes, until just incorporated. Put the dough in the fridge for 24-48 hours. On pizza night, pull out the dough about two hours before the cook. Crank the oven as high as it will go. I usually stretch out the dough an hour before the cook to let it relax. Then top it with your desired ingredients. And into the oven. I keep an eye on it, looking for golden color on the crust if not a bit of char. I also like the moisture to cook off the top and the cheese to caramelize around the edge a bit. It should be done in 10-12 minutes.

6

Sweet Leaf

I’m not going to say I suck at gardening. But our property is shady as hell. So, we’ve figured out which decorative plants work (employed to breath-taking beauty in my wife, Jessica Labatte’s recent photography show at Western Exhibtions.) But there aren’t a lot of edibles that I’ve had resounding success with. Cherry tomatoes, okay, chiles too. Leafy greens in the spring and herbs. I found one crop that went nuts for me this year– perilla, a big bushy mint that’s used as an herb and leafy green in Korean cuisine. It’s a cousin of shiso and similar in flavor profile, though perhaps a bit earthier. It’s probably best known in the west as a wrap for Korean BBQ or ssam. I put in four seedlings that grew over three feet tall each. I had so much of the stuff that I could use it on my catering menus. I had an idea to use it as a base for Thai one bite salad with peanuts, toasted coconut, ginger, lime, and dried shrimp. The leaf’s herbaceous-ness worked well, though it occurred to me that I could adapt the concept to tie in more Korean flavors. So I invented a Korean one bite salad– a base of perilla leaves with a smear of about half a teaspoon of a blend of ssamjang (or miso) and honey in equal parts, a few cubes of finely diced ginger (about ¼”), about a teaspoon of chopped kimchi, then topped with a pinch of Korean spicy dried squid shreds and a sprinkle of black sesame. Roll it up, pop in your mouth, repeat!

 

My deck, my favorite place to eat & drink

My deck, my favorite place to eat & drink

Also, Also

RIP Kenny Shopsin; burn-your-ass Lao sausage & papaya salad at Lao & Thai Spicy Noodles in Elgin; Eritrean at Keren in DC, a city I look forward to exploring more someday; Feijoada at Brasil Legal which you’ve driven by a zillion times on Western; the contemporary Great Migration cuisine at the Delta in Wicker Park; fried fucking tacos at Loncar’s in S Chicago; Pop’s Beef always my #1 (tried Chickie’s & Original Mr. Beef in White Flight-land and neither stacked up); the way-better-than-they-have-to-be smashed Tallgrass burgers at Avery’s favorite toy-train-food-delivering spot, 2 Toots in Glen Ellyn; the Peruvian eats at SanguCHE in Naperville esp. their sauces smothered all over salchipapas; hazy IPA’s– OG NEIPAs that Doug Sher brought me esp. Hill Farmstead’s Society & Solitude series and Trillium’s DDH Farnsworth St. also those Transients from Bridgman, MI; local hazies Marz Yuice & Penrose Midwest Vice; brut IPAs pretty cool too, like Hopewell’s Clique & esp. Middle Brow’s Brett Brut; figuring out how to make jaew, the Thai hot dipping sauce for meats (secret: tamarind); that insane hen-of-the-woods season and finding morels on my property; mom knocking it out of the park at Thanksgiving this year (green bean casserole!); and my Easy Eats catering team– Erin, Nate, Latham, Christina, Stella, Gabe, & Caitlin!

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