By Michael Nagrant

Avenues

Since 2000, Chicago has gone from being a Rat Pack-worthy steak-and-potato-slinging stereotype to a destination for international culinary travelers. Chicago’s affordability, its diners’ willingness to suspend disbelief and its proximity to the sublime bounty of the Midwest all play a role in that transformation. Most important to the renaissance are the places that put everything together to inspire our collective culinary imagination, the best restaurants that opened in Chicago this decade.

Alinea
The history of cuisine was written in the kitchens of millions of chefs, but we only remember a few by name, guys like Escoffier, Careme and Robuchon. There are probably only three Chicago chefs, as of now, who have a shot at making that list: Jean Banchet, Charlie Trotter and Grant Achatz. Though Achatz started making a name for himself at Trio, Alinea was the game changer, the restaurant where every aspect of dining from menus and silverware to the wine service and emotional content of the food was reimagined.

Avec
Love it or hate it, this was ground zero for what is now today’s communal table free-for-all. More importantly, Avec was the place that launched a thousand salumi, the fringe of Chicago’s now-burgeoning charcuterie movement. Koren Grieveson’s restrained soulful style is still the late-night hang of choice for chefs.

Avenues
You probably don’t remember Gerhard Doll or David Hayden, the chef-stewards who drove the good ship Avenues through a successful seafood-driven era, but there’s no doubt you won’t forget the Pop Rock and foie-lollipop fantasia, the convenience-store chic of Graham Elliot Bowles. Without Bowles’ whimsical, accessible style, the emotional roller coaster of Grant Achatz’s cooking and the theater at Homaro Cantu’s Moto likely wouldn’t have quite captured the nation’s imagination, nor garnered Chicago cuisine the countless magazine features it received mid-decade. Today, Curtis Duffy, the culinary love child of Achatz, Thomas Keller and Alice Waters, is executing some of the most exciting cuisine Chicago has to offer. Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Allen, aka Ice Cream Man, is the Johnny Appleseed of ice cream. For five years he and his crew have heroically traveled the country giving away ice cream completely free of charge. Allen, who hiked the Appalachian Trail and walked from Mexico to Canada before getting seriously involved with ice cream, is both an entrepreneur and an adventurer. “I had to do something that was new, that hadn’t been done before,” Allen says. “I realized, holy shit, you can do anything with an ice-cream truck. It’s mobile, everyone loves free ice cream.” Currently featured on a Web series titled “Road Tripping,” Ice Cream Man is hitting major summer music festivals, doling out frozen treats and filming intimate artist performances. The Web series is being put on by Babelgum.com, which was originally interested in producing a music series in the U.S. Each webisode usually features an artist performing a song or two in front of Allen’s ice-cream truck. “Our whole mission is to give away half a million [pieces of] ice cream,” says Allen, who gave away about 45,000 pieces of ice cream at last year’s Lollapalooza. Ice Cream Man will be at the Pitchfork Music Festival this coming weekend, handing out fruit bars and ice-cream sandwiches to dairy-starved attendees.

By Sarah Klose

Hotdogs and liverwurst: two things I wouldn’t eat as a child. My aversion to eating hotdogs stemmed partly from wondering what the heck was in them. Since my mother told me “all beef” meant any part of the animal, this aversion lasted into my adulthood.

Recently, I passed Drew’s Eatery and noticed his green leaf logo and “organic hotdogs” sign. Was this an oxymoron along the lines of “military intelligence,” or could these hotdogs really be healthy? I decided to bite into one—a fire-roasted red-pepper, jalapeno-pepper, organic-chicken and turkey-sausage one, to be exact. Surprisingly, the hotdog was delicious as well as oh-so-healthy. I decided to talk to the owner and learn more. Read the rest of this entry »

By Michael Nagrant

Most people are familiar with the Taylor Street Twosome, but how many know about the Beverly-Bi? The Taylor Street Twosome is the tradition of sucking down a nutmeg-spiced Italian beef, with your knuckles slathered in gravy and flecked with stray giardiniera, at the original Al’s, followed by a saunter across the street for an icy sweet-plastic-spoon dip into a wax-lined paper cup of Mario’s Italian Lemonade.

The Beverly-Bi isn’t quite so easy, as you need a bit of willpower and have to walk about seven blocks to complete it, but it’s no less venerable than the Taylor Street Twosome. But, unless you come from a long line of far Southwest Siders, it’s probably not as well known.

The “bi” begins with a stop at Top Notch Beefburger in the neighborhood of Beverly. Top Notch was established in 1942 at 925 West 79th Street by Armenian immigrants John and Asanette Soulian. The location moved a couple of times before settling in at 2116 West 95th Street in 1984 and is currently run by second and third generations of the Soulian clan.
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I scream, you scream, we all—yeah, you get the picture. Slow your roll, though; this isn’t your run-of-the-mill 31 Flavors, nor the ubiquitous posh dessert boutique. Lincoln Square has something unique to scream about: Sweet Treats, the area’s rookie snack shop, now features Sherman’s ice cream, the family-owned brand from South Haven, Michigan that has quite a following here in Chicago. Read the rest of this entry »