|
|
There’s nothing like freshly harvested fruits and vegetables, and they’re easy to find now that farmers’ market season is in full swing in Chicago and the suburbs.
One of my favorites opens tomorrow in Dunning, the Wright College-Eli’s Cheesecake World market, held 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. every Thursday.
Along with its bounty of just-picked produce and always-interesting farmers, this Northwest Side market offers free continental breakfast from 7 to 9 a.m. with a $5 market purchase, free parking and a weekly, 1 p.m. lecture on sustainable agriculture. The schedule of speakers includes Chris Koetke, dean of Culinary Arts at Kendall College, Chef Carrie Nahabedian of Naha, and Melissa Graham and Rob Gardner of The Local Beet. Eli’s also serves a special lunch each market day.
And, of course, there’s cheesecake.
 Chicago Roof Top Honey If you’re sweet on local food, try Chicago-made honey.
The Chicago Honey Co-op maintains 100 beehives producing natural honey on the derelict site of a Sears Roebuck warehouse in North Lawndale. Founded by Michael Thompson in 2004 as part of the Sweet Beginnings program of the North Lawndale Employment network, the cooperative began by training ex-convicts and other low-income Chicagoans as beekeepers.
In summer, its honey is flavored by clover and basswood, while in autumn, it tastes of wild asters and goldenrod.
Chicago Honey Co-op products are sold at several farmers’ markets, including the year-round Green City Market, and at a handful of shops around town, among them The Goddess and Grocer.
You can also get a pot of urban honey from the gift shop at Garfield Park Conservatory, which harvests the sweet product of its own hives.
Both are pricey — $10 to $15 per pound — but probably your best bet to taste city honey made by Chicago bees.
Unless you have the clout to get some of the Roof Top honey from the municipal hives atop City Hall.
Those hives were installed in 2003 in the mayor’s rooftop garden, from whence the honeybees range to flowerbeds in Grant Park and along Michigan Avenue.
Da Mare’s honey is often sold at exclusive charity auctions, but intrepid honey hunters can sometimes find it at shops in Gallery 37 (where the honey is processed) and the Chicago Cultural Center. There are beehives atop the Cultural Center, too.
One more urban apiary is at North Park Village Nature Center. Most of its honey goes home with center volunteers, but they do pass out samples during occasional educational programs about honeybees.
Luscious handmade chocolates from Gail Ambrosius are worth traveling to her Madison, Wisc., shop for, but you don’t have to.
Eno at the InterContinental hosts “A Night With Gail Ambrosius” from 7 to 8 p.m. Thursday, June 25.
Ambrosius will feature single-origin chocolates from Central and South America and Hawaii and truffles made with locally produced ingredients. Prices vary; a special wine and chocolate flight will be available.
 Suzanne Petri Marlene Dietrich never visited Skokie in person, but you can see her there soon.
Don’t miss award-winning Chicago performer Suzanne Petri’s re-creation of the film legend at 7 p.m. June 28:
“Marlene Muzik: A Tribute to Marlene Dietrich the Actress, the Music, the Desire.”
The venue is perfect — one that surely saw much of Dietrich on its silver screen back in the day.
The historic Skokie Theatre opened in 1912 as the Niles Center Theatre, a 425-seat, single-screen movie house. Its brown-and-white checkerboard facade has been a landmark in the northern suburb, but like most such independent movie theaters, its latter-day existence was troubled and, by 2004, it had fallen into disrepair and closed for good.
In spring 2005, the Skokie Theatre Music Foundation undertook a $1.5 million renovation to turn the theater into a 148-seat concert hall, which has now become one of Chicagoland’s top destinations for, among other things, cabaret music.
Petri, with Musical Director Bob Moreen, performs such songs as “Boys in the Backroom,” “Falling In Love Again,” “Lola,” “Black Market” and “Lilli Marlene.”
Tickets are $20 in advance and $25 at the door.
It may not fit the Dietrich theme, but Tim Tub Thai restaurant, a few blocks’ walk from the theater, makes a fine choice for pre-concert dining.
* * *
Beckie Menzie’s June 14 Skokie Theatre concert has been cancelled due to a death in her family. Our condolences and best wishes, Beckie.
 Andrew Curtis Forlines At first, I thought this was a hoax, but evidently not.
Phil Vettel recently predicted that Italiasia would be this year’s Worst Restaurant Name: “Anybody who comes up with a worse name than this is going to have to make an effort.”
I think we have a contender: Soylent Fuchsia.
Chef Andrew Curtis Forlines has launched this new dining experience. There’s nothing wrong with the concept. It’s not a regular restaurant, but a series of dinners — evenings of “hedonistic gluttony,” according to the chef — held at Kitchen Chicago, a rental facility in West Town.
“After spending four years training at the fancy shmancy Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado,” Forlines writes, “I moved to Chicago to start my own uber-cool bohemian supper club that focuses on the regional food that connects us to the earth and brings us together as neighbors.”
Forlines also makes use of ingredients like tapioca maltodextrin and high-tech techniques such as sous vide. “If you have never had sous vide and molecular gastronomy cuisine, this will be an amazing introduction to the neo-new wave cooking,” he comments.
Upcoming parties take place at 6:30 p.m. Saturdays, June 27 and July 11. The six-course dinners cost $50 each, and diners may bring their own wine. The evenings also include a light show and music. Seating for each event is limited to 40.
In case the Soylent Fuchsia reference eludes you, the name recalls the 1966 Harry Harrison novel “Make Room! Make Room!” and the subsequent film “Soylent Green.” These science-fiction classics depict a vastly overpopulated future where any fresh food is a rare and costly delicacy, and all but the richest people live on sparing rations of highly processed “Soylent” wafers.
If that weren’t enough to make it an off-putting name for a restaurant, well … let’s just say that, in the film version, the prized Soylent Green turns out to be the result of a rather extreme form of recycling.
“We humans are like rats, we’re omnivores,” Forlines writes on his Web site.
I note that the menu for both of the upcoming Soylent Fuchsia dinner parties is … ahem … long on pig. I’m as adventurous as anyone, but in this case, I think I’d sign up for the vegetarian option.
It’s National Foie Gras Week! From June 11–16, Chicago Chefs for Choice fete the first anniversary of the return of the unctuous duck liver to Chicago menus with the 2009 Foie Gras Fest. Each restaurant offers a specially-created foie gras dish — or more — for just $10.
Chef Rick Gresh of David Burke’s Primehouse was all a-Twitter: “I have 10 foie gras dishes each for $10 or get all 10 for $75!!!”
The event celebrates the repeal of the Chicago City Council’s 2006 ban of the luscious but controversial delicacy. Pro-foie spokeschef Didier Durand saw his restaurant, Cyrano’s Bistrot, vandalized by duck-loving foie foes during the flap.
Rising national ridicule, and urging from a disdainful Mayor Richard M. Daley, made aldermen backtrack last year. “I think that was one of the silliest, silliest decisions anyone made, to outlaw foie gras,” the mayor said. “Just think, you’ll go down every ethnic food in the city and [the council will say], ‘Outlaw. Outlaw.Outlaw. You can’t eat this, you can’t eat that.’
“The City Council will be sitting in your kitchen to determine … what you should [eat].”
Participating Foie Fest restaurants include:
Cafe Bernard, Lincoln Park, Chef Bernard LeCoq
Cafe Matou, Chef Charlie Socher, Bucktown
Carlos’, Highland Park, Chef Carlos Nieto
Cyrano’s Bistrot, River North, Chef Didier Durand
David Burke’s Primehouse, River North, Chef Rick Gresh
Hemmingway’s Bistro, Oak Park, Christopher C. Ala
May Street Market, West Town, Chef Alex Cheswick
 Theo Ubique’s award-winning “Evita” runs through June 27 at No Exit Cafe. Theo Ubique Theatre Company swept the spring 2009 Joseph Jefferson Awards, winning seven of the 26 prizes given for non-Equity theater performances. The annual awards ceremony honoring Chicago’s storefront and black-box theaters took place last night at Park West.
Theo Ubique’s cabaret production of “Evita” received six awards — the most for any single production — including Outstanding Production &mdash Musical or Revue. Its director, Fred Anzevino, also received honors, as did its principal actress, Maggie Portman, and actor, Chris Damiano, who also received a second award for his supporting role in Theo Ubique’s “Jacques Brel’s Lonesome Losers of the Night.” “Evita” Choreographer Brenda Didier and Music Director Ryan Brewster were the other winners.
The prize for Outstanding Production — Play went to The Hypocrites’ “Our Town,” and the Outstanding Ensemble award went to Steep Theatre’s “In Arabia We’d All Be Kings.” Ken Prestininzi received the best new work award for “Beholder” at Trap Door Theatre. Other acting winners included Esteban Andres Cruz for Raven Theatre’s “Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train” and Laura Coover for “Blue Surge” at Eclipse Theatre. In addition, Pegasus Players’ founder Arlene Crewdson received a special award for her lifelong contributions to Chicago theater.
Nearly half the awards went to Rogers Park venues in the Glenwood Avenue Arts District.
Performances of “Evita” continue at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays through June 27 at No Exit Cafe in Rogers Park. Tickets are $31, or $54 with a pre-show dinner of Argentinean cuisine.
Continue reading Theo Ubique takes top honors at Jeffs →
 Lake Bluff's new Inovasi serves mid-sized portions, meant for sharing. 
California winemaker Craig Becker pours his limited-production wines — including the 2007 High Flyer Viognier, 2006 Priest Ranch Cabernet Sauvignon and 2005 Peacock Family Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon — from 6 to 9 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, June 10–11 at the brand-new Inovasi in Lake Bluff.
Chef John John des Rosiers (ex-Bank Lane Bistro) has just launched this first solo effort, a casual, New American restaurant specializing in mid-sized plates priced in the $10 to $15 range. The ever-changing menu relies on fresh, locally grown and often organic produce.
Expect such items as slow-roasted pork-shoulder lasagna with tomatoes, buffalo ricotta cheese and farm fresh basil and lime-tequila creme fraiche; dry-aged New York strip steak with spring asparagus, “Civil War” grits and spicy citrus sauce, roasted duck breast with red Inca quinoa, Chinese cabbage, Thai duck reduction, spring peas and crispy leeks; and Gunthorp Farms suckling pig with organic Carolina gold rice, pistachios and green onions.
“We debone the whole pig, marinate the meat with herbs and spices and the skin and cook it for two days before letting it rest, slicing it and sauteing it,” says des Rosiers. “It’s crispy on the outside and soft and juicy on the inside.”
Des Rosiers’ hand-picked wine list concentrates on boutique vintages, and spirits include such libations as a locally made limoncello.
Housed in a 90-year-old building, Inovasi seats 25 in its Jerusalem limestone-accented bar and 80 in the main dining room. It boasts a glassed-in kitchen and an outdoor patio seating 50. The restaurant is open for lunch and dinner Mondays through Saturdays.
As a doughnut town, Chicago doesn’t rank very high, but we do have a solid tradition reaching back to 1938: Doughnut Day.
National Doughnut Day, always the first Friday in June, was created back in 1938 by the Chicago post of the Salvation Army as a fundraiser in honor of the “Doughnut Lassies” of World War I, who cut out doughnuts with baking powder cans and fried them soldiers’ helmets. (See the recipe.) This year, with staggering unemployment figures and so many hungry people to feed, the Salvation Army will have Doughnut Day taggers out collecting donations both today and tomorrow.
Today, catch them from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at James R. Thompson Center, 100 W. Randolph St., Chicago, as they celebrate with celebrity friends, music and more. We don’t know whether they’ll play the “Doughnut Girl” theme song, but you can hear vaudeville star Arthur Fields sing it on a 1919 Edison cylinder in the link under the photo.
Tomorrow, they’ll be collecting donations throughout the city, or you can click the image at right to donate online. The Salvation Army says they can feed a family of four for a month on $132.
Meanwhile, if you’re only here for the doughnuts, two national chains will be giving away ringed confections all day today. Krispy Kreme Doughnuts offers one free doughnut per person to anyone who visits, while participating Dunkin’ Donuts provide a free doughnut with a beverage purchase.
 Denzel Thornton They’re on their way! 25 aspiring young chefs are that much closer to their goals with more than $400,000 in cooking-school scholarships, awarded as prizes to high-school students in this year’s Careers through Culinary Arts Program Chicago Cooking Competition.
Top winner Denzel Thornton of Chicago’s Corliss High School won a full-tuition scholarship to Johnson & Wales University, valued at $88,596.
To win their prizes, each competitor had two hours to whip up from memory a two-course French meal: poulet chasseur avec pommes de terre chateau (hunter’s chicken with turned, sauteed potatoes) and tarte de baie fraiche avec le creme de patisserie (fresh berry tart with pastry creme).
How long would it take you to make that?
And the judges were a tough crowd: Chef David Muchowitz of Washburne Culinary Institute; Chef Rick Gresh of David Burke’s Primehouse; Chef Cheryl Carrado of the Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago; Chef Richard Camarota of Custom House; Chef Phillip Foss of Lockwood; Chef Mark Mendez of Carnivale; Chef Seth Siegel-Gardner of C-House; Chef Carrie Nahabedian of Naha; and Chef Graham Elliot Bowles of Graham Elliot.
Continue reading Congrats, culinary students! →
|
|
