Nailed firmly to almost turquoise walls are box-shelves made of unfinished wood that hold pots, moleskin journals and books ranging from Sartre to “House of Leaves.” A tranquil mood is set by slow music playing overhead, where far from bright lights shine from up above. The place: the Loose Leaf Tea Loft.

The Loft is set up by Michelle Wu and Conor Pewarski, Harvard and Yale graduates who, on a brave whim, decided to set up the tea joint in Irving Park after a post-graduation return to Chicago. “We decided to open a tea shop in July 2008, drove all our things in a U-Haul from Boston to Chicago, found a few spaces on Craigslist, and fell in love with this corner immediately,” Wu says. “Then, with help from family and friends, we repainted the entire space and collected wine crates for the wall display. We tasted hundreds of teas to pick our thirty-six for the menu. We filed for restaurant licenses and business permits from the city.”

After about three and a half months from conception to their actual opening, Wu and Pewarski have established a space with a relaxing atmosphere with character to boot. “Our general mission is to promote health and happiness through balance and community,” Pewarski says. “Tea is the perfect way to do that, because a key ingredient is time—time for the leaves to steep, time for conversation. We also wanted to create an intimate space that the community feels free to use for their own artistic, social and intellectual gatherings—poetry readings, musical performances, open mic nights, writing workshops, game nights. We love it when someone comes to us with an idea for an event that they’d like to host at the shop.”

With hopes of attracting delightful crowds, Wu and Pewarski have added to the Loft all the necessary tools for a nurturing atmosphere. “Hoping to create an atmosphere of reading, writing and conversation, we decided to sell notebooks along with tea and put all our favorite books up on the wall for decoration and use. That gave us the name of the shop: Loose Leaf Tea Loft, for loose leaf tea and loose leaf paper. Then with our favorite books in the wine crates, it just made sense to connect the teas with our sources of inspiration,” Wu says. And the teas’ names are no joke, either. “Each tea is named after a different literary character that has some trait or connection with the tea, and almost all the characters come from a book in the shop. For instance, Jack Kerouac’s character in ‘On the Road’ gave us our Sal’s Paradise tea, sharp ginger with tangy orange freshness. Miss Scarlett’s Sweetest is a white tea with playful peaches and spunky tangerine, reminiscent of Georgia and southern society in ‘Gone with the Wind.’ And of course, our Barack’s AudaciTea promises to ‘change the way you think of oolong with the flavor of hopeful hazelnut.’”  (Micah McCrary)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Loose Leaft Tea Lost is closed as of July 2009, and will soon reopen as Latte on Lincoln.

Loose Leaf Tea Loft, 4229 N. Lincoln, looseleaftealoft.com

By Michael Nagrant

I punked out a few times this year. Tired and overworked and having drunk too much bourbon or ingested too much garlic (I’m mildly allergic) on a Pat-Bruno-worthy Italian red-sauce bender, I’ve occasionally written a few columns that didn’t require a whole lot of research (like this one). I’ve hated myself for it. Shame on me. I plan on doing better next year. But, I’m not the only one who mails it in from time to time in the culinary world, and so in the spirit of the New Year, I give you my resolutions for the Chicago food community. Read the rest of this entry »

Sit down, relax and have a cup of coffee.

The coffeehouse has become a center in the contemporary city, serving as a meeting place, a “home office” and a study hall for the community. And the best serve as counterpoint to the prevailing corporate culture: shaggy, friendly and, rather than studies in the science of turning tables as quickly as possible, welcoming enclaves where lingering is virtually encouraged. Chicago has a wealth of great coffeehouses, and with due respect to the chains, it’s the independent, locally owned and operated institutions that give the city its caffeinated flavor. Treasure them and support them, though, for many are fragile endeavors. And as we learned this year when Filter gave way at one of the liveliest spots in Wicker Park, it’s not necessarily Starbucks that threatens their existence. Apparently, it’s the inexplicable need for a bank branch on every corner.

We’ve put together this selective indie coffeehouse guide as a service to those of us who value their existence, and as a service to the spirit they inculcate. Read the rest of this entry »

For someone who has already drunk roughly six cups of coffee (espresso and drip cup) by 1:30pm in the afternoon, Intelligentsia’s designer, Matt Riddle, is far from excitable. Of course, that doesn’t mean he’s without excitement.

“It’s not just me; everybody here’s really into coffee. You kind of can’t help it,” he says.

A former U.S. champion barista who placed third in the 2006 World Barista Championship, Riddle, 29, now trains and judges Intelligentsia employees for future competitions. And quite the teacher he is—as soon as I walk through the door of the company’s West Town roasting facility, he begins a commentary I imagine might be a voice-over to a factory visit on a “Mister Rogers” episode. Riddle motions to the man tending to the blue vintage German machine that’s making all that noise. Read the rest of this entry »

Brimming onto the southernmost boundary of Ukrainian Village, Atomix opened in May 2001, around the first time Wicker Park coffeehouse mainstay Jinx shuttered. Milwaukee transplant Adam Paul (aka “Atom”) had thought it would open in two months, but the usual obstacles meant it took ten. It’s tough to open a small business in Chicago, says Paul, 37, “if you don’t know anyone. I knew nobody. I knew two people here and one was making a documentary [about the opening].” For six years, he was co-owner of a storefront in Milwaukee called Brewed Awakenings, also the duration (to date) of Atomix. Small businesses, he observes, “tend either to last six months or six years and I was lucky enough to have one that’s lasted for six years.” Real estate pressures have closed local mainstays like Filter, and the new Dominick’s half-a-block west is host to a Starbucks. Of independents, Paul says, “Maybe it’s just me, I don’t see as many of them opening. I think it definitely goes in waves.” Read the rest of this entry »

Chateau Latour

By Michael Nagrant

Despite what Jay-Z would have you believe (before he turned his back on it), Cristal isn’t the shiznit. It’s a good bottle, but I can think of many different Champagnes, some cheaper than “Cris,” that taste better. Like many luxury items, Cristal’s ascendance as the champagne of choice in the hip-hop community had as much to do with its marketed prestige and high price tag as with its quality.

I’ve often fallen prey to this kind of hype. Take Dom Perignon, the embodiment of champagne wishes and caviar dreams. I’d asked my father for a bottle to celebrate my college graduation. As a tool-and-die man of modest means, I hadn’t expected him to take me seriously, but as indulgent loving parents do, he honored his child’s whimsy, and came through. I’d treated that bottle as if it were the Holy Grail until I popped the top to celebrate the millennial turn. Much like the vaunted Y2K gloom and doom, my first glass turned out to be a total fizzle. Associating Dom with the best that champagne had to offer, I figured I hated the stuff, and avoided it for years.

Though I was generally soured on perceived luxury, the last week provided an opportunity to redeem my faith and see if the sound and fury surrounding a couple of expensive quaffs signified something real. On Friday, Eno, the wine and cheese bar in the Hotel Intercontinental, poured a 1945 Chateau Latour ($250 for a two-ounce pour), and on Monday night, local micro-roaster Intelligentsia served up the most expensive coffee in the world (they paid $130 a pound at auction), Geisha, from the Panamanian plantation Hacienda La Esmeralda ($25 for the tasting).

Unfortunately the Latour was out of my budget. I considered the stretch, but drinking old first-growth Bordeaux is a rich man’s game. Unknown storage conditions and the rise of counterfeiting in the wine industry make betting on the Cubs to win it all look like a more reasonable wager.  Still I got in touch with Eno’s wine director Scott Harney to check in on the tasting. Harney said that after the tasting he corresponded with a representative for Chateau Latour who confirmed my skepticism, saying in an email, “You didn’t think it would be any good, did you?”

Harney was hopeful, as the bottles had good provenance. They’d been purchased directly from the chateau by a British collector and had changed hands to a California collector before they were acquired by an auction house. The bottles also had the original corks and chateau-branded capsules, and the fill levels were relatively high, suggesting there had been little evaporation or chance of bad oxidation.

Harney said that all ten people (including sommeliers from NoMI and the Peninsula) who drank the wine on Friday were blown away, and that he considered it in his top five glasses of all time. Tasting notes included a bit of “catcher’s mitt leather,” eucalyptus, cedar and some surprisingly bold fruit. Two remaining bottles are available for $3,500 at Eno, which is a relative bargain. (Charlie Trotter’s lists a 1945 Latour for $8,000.)

Ironically, when I toured Eno’s cellar, which features a trove of magnificent old wines perched in rich wooden alcoves, I noted the two remaining bottles of Latour were unceremoniously packed in plastic milk crates on the stone floor. Harney responded, “People are so austere about wine. It doesn’t have to be so serious.”

Likewise, though Intelligentsia takes it coffee seriously, they don’t take themselves that seriously. Instead of some swank coffeehouse, the Geisha tasting was held in the spartan Intelligentsia warehouse. Backdropped by concrete floors and corrugated metal, Geoff Watts, Intelligentsia’s vice president, who looks and sounds a bit like the actor Jason Schwartzman, gave a presentation to fifty or so coffee pilgrims (including Alinea’s sommelier Joe Catterson and Thomas Meinl, owner of Vienna’s Julius Meinl coffees) from the top of a rickety stepladder.  Watts said he first tasted the Geisha beans in the Best of Panama competition in 2003. He said, “You could just tell it was something different when you got near the cup. Everyone was freaking out.” Since then, the Geisha has won every blind competition it’s entered.

Smooth with lemon and honey notes, the coffee channeled the perfect cup of tea. With no stomach churning acidity or even hints of bitterness or chocolate you might typically associate with coffee, it’s a paradigm shifting cup. Owner of the hacienda, Daniel Peterson, confirmed that the first time he tasted Geisha, he was worried about entering it in competition, because it was so different from typical Panamanian coffees.

Available later this week at Intelligentsia stores and online at intelligentsiacoffee.com, the geisha beans will retail for $55 a quarter pound and $99 a half pound. The Geisha beans are in many ways the Latour version of coffee, a grand cru cup in a world dominated by Folger’s aluminum cans. Since I don’t expect to find a first-growth Bordeaux for a few bucks a cup anytime soon, I most definitely will be lining up for some of these beans. If you’ve got the means, you should too. Fo Shizzle.

By Michael Nagrant

I hate coffee houses. It’s true, they are a fascinating study in anthropology, what with Bugaboo stroller-toting moms standing shoulder to shoulder with patchouli-scented Birkenstock-clad granola girls and guys clutching soy lattes copping free air conditioning and laptop zombies milking a three-dollar cappuccino for eight hours of free power to get their Internet start-up off the ground. But in the end, that mix is a volatile powderkeg, where people flash you death stares if you think about sharing their power outlet or stealing the other half of that table for ten they commandeered for themselves and their silicon army of Apple products. Read the rest of this entry »

Sausage Panino

By Michael Nagrant

“I don’t care if my tomato was raised in a lab or some hippie’s backyard. I don’t even care if it causes the occasional tumor in lab rats. I only care that it’s the best-tasting damn tomato available.”—Anthony Bourdain, Travel Channel TV host and bad boy foodie

You expect hyperbole from a guy whose personal logo is a toque-clad skull biting down on a chef’s knife dripping with blood. While I usually dig Bourdain’s brutal observations, my first instinct was to write this quote off as typical bobblehead claptrap to fuel television ratings. In the last few weeks though the quote’s essential truth has been haunting me a bit.

Last week I wrote favorably about Michael Altenberg’s new venture, Crust, the first certified all-organic restaurant in Chicago. According to a recent Chicago Reader article, the stringency of the organic certification process means that Altenberg can’t use the products of certain responsible local farmers, people that he’s worked with for years at his other venture Bistro Campagne, because those producers aren’t personally certified at Crust. For that matter, he can’t use many of the local sustainable farms at the Green City Market. Read the rest of this entry »