If you want to get your fix of gourmet mini donuts from Beavers Coffee & Donuts, you normally look to their website or Twitter to find the food truck’s location and hours. But once Beavers opens its first storefront restaurant in the Chicago French Market in early January, you’ll know where and when to get your hot breakfast on demand.

Since the Beavers truck opened in December of last year, requests for its catering service—and for donuts after the truck’s weekday morning-through-lunch hours—grew so rapidly that co-owners Gabriel Wiesen and Jim Nuccio started planning an expansion this summer. “Logistically, it makes sense to have a storefront in conjunction with a food truck,” Wiesen says. “Being able to facilitate those requests was really hard without a store.”

Operating a food truck makes starting a brick-and-mortar restaurant a much easier task. For starters, the idea has already been tested: Food-truck owners know what sells, know who their customers are and, when scouting for locations, know where their customer-base lives. They already are making money, and they’ve built a brand that can attract investors. Read the rest of this entry »

Boasting a company small enough to “roast on demand,” Bow Truss Coffee Roasters call themselves a “collective of veteran coffee professionals.” The crew at Bow Truss seeks to simplify the coffee experience. They roast in-house, allowing customers a behind-the-scenes glimpse of how a raw bean turns into a pour-over masterpiece that quells even the most discerning of coffee drinkers. Read the rest of this entry »

By Michael Nagrant

Five years ago, I was just a hungry kid with a dream. As I became a professional food writer, I’ve tried mightily to stay close to those roots. Somehow, though, I’ve found that lately I’ve become a bit of a grumpy critic. In the zeitgeist culinary parlance, I’ve been a bit of a foochebag, aka foodie douchebag.

I knew I’d hit rock bottom when I found myself watching a new episode of “Check, Please!” and yelling at the TV screen because a young woman recommended a Mexican restaurant that had a huge wall mural of a cheesy dude in a sombrero.

I mean I was crankier than the crotchety Sun-Times critic Pat Bruno after being forced to review a non-Italian restaurant with hearing-aid-threatening noise levels. There had been all kinds of signs of my decline. One of the most poignant came earlier this year when Roy Choi got named a Food & Wine magazine Best New Chef.

For those who don’t know, Choi is responsible for one of the biggest Twitter food sensations, aka the California-based Kogi Korean BBQ taco truck. With a wink and a jar of kimchi, Choi tapped into an unquenched, but previously unknown desire for Asian-spiced and marinated meat-filled tacos.

But, disgusted that once again Curtis Duffy, the naturalistic molecular gastronomer over at Avenues in the Peninsula Hotel had again been overlooked by Food & Wine, I twittered something like “Dude I’m sure your (Choi’s) food is good, but you make tacos.”

For years I’d been calling for big-time chefs to bring their talents to the masses in an affordable way. And yet, when someone did, I discounted his efforts because he wasn’t serving thirty-seven-course tasting menus. I now realize I owe Mr. Choi an apology.

I came to this realization over tacos one afternoon at Del Seoul, the new Korean “street” bbq taco stand in Lakeview. As much as I love to laud Chicago chefs’ originality, Del Seoul probably doesn’t exist without Choi. Read the rest of this entry »

Rockin' Taco's tofu taco

By Michael Nagrant

Johnny Cash was givin’ me the middle finger. So it goes at Lakeview’s Rockin’ Taco, where posters of rock gods, including a squinty eyed Bob Marley smoking a fatty blunt, an impossibly youthful Clash slumming in an alley, and a pissed-off Man in Black giving the big eff-you to the camera, hang near the cash register.

I thought it was a metaphor. I thought everything was.

After the Beatles vs. Stones, there is maybe no more prevalent turntable-side discussion than The Clash vs The Jam. And those who pick The Clash, at least to those born in America (for Brits have generally always derided The Jam as unserious popsters—probably spot on when you consider the Motownesque backbeat of a “Town Called Malice”) and subject to the overwhelming popularity of “Rock the Casbah,” are sometimes regarded as pop-swayed dilettantes. American Jam fans tend to be argumentative types who appreciate (or pretend to) their driving-though-less-hooky singles like “Eaton Rifles.” Those folks also tend to count the slightly greater post-Jam success of Paul Weller over Joe Strummer’s post-Clash career (far too much) as evidence of The Jam’s musical superiority. Of course, those who argue too vehemently about these things sometimes still live in their parent’s basements.

So, yes, of course, Rockin’ Taco with its dingy shiny head-shop-stereotype posters and cheesy big-screen-television-clad dining room was all about the friendlier Clash. I mean, c’mon, they serve hot dogs and tofu tacos. They have a special called the Friday Night Fight where if you polish off ten ghost pepper (hottest pepper in the world—check out the YouTube videos of people eating them to understand the decline of Western Civilization) hot-sauced tacos in an hour, with only one drink and one napkin to save you, you get a t-shirt, a picture on their wall and “eternal glory.” Hell, it wasn’t just Johnny Cash. The whole idea of this place was giving me the middle finger. Read the rest of this entry »

Resto 100 is, as always, a list of “essential” restaurants, which is most definitely not synonymous with “best.” We strive to reflect a world of dining in a constant state of innovative transition, to capture a snapshot of the state of the food world at this time.

As last year, when we first dropped Charlie Trotter’s, we’ve continued to cull the old guard of the high-end, both as a reflection of the economic times and as a call to action for such spots to up their game. This year, TRU, MK and Boka didn’t escape the chopping block. While we don’t deny their importance in creating the food scene we have today, there are many other places we’d rather send folks—for example, Sepia, Bonsoiree or Cibo Matto (where, ironically, chef Todd Stein is a vet of MK).

Rick Tramonto and Gale Gand are two of the most successful cooks this city has, but neither spends a significant amount of time at TRU. This is not so much an observation as it’s a cry for the fact that we really miss Rick’s cooking. We appreciate his cookbooks and that he tried to open a nationwide restaurant chain, but with that not working out, why not return to his roots? It should also be noted that Chef de Cuisine Tim Graham was doing some incredibly innovative work, but was recently transferred to Brasserie Jo.

Boka, which we loved for its Charlie Trotteresque complexity, has frankly been a little inconsistent in its execution on recent visits, and frankly maybe too Trotteresque. We love the direction Perennial has gone, look forward to Stephanie Izard’s Girl and the Goat, and think maybe they outshine the original jewel in Kevin Boehm and Rob Katz’s mini-empire.

That’s not to say you have to be cutting-edge innovative or perfect to make the list. For if you do something old-school or classic and you continue to do it well and you didn’t make your bones by being a game-changer, we honor that as well. This year, we added some overlooked classics including Marie’s Pizza, Ginza and, much to our own surprise, Hyde Park’s Calypso Café. Maybe the biggest surprise was Café des Architectes, which used to be as old-school as it gets. Martial Noguier and his pastry chef Suzanne Imaz are probably two of this city’s most underrated cooks, putting out slighty twisted old-school French gourmet plates flawlessly.

Likewise, the trend of informal, casual rustic dining doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere, and we dig that. To celebrate that movement we’ve added The Bristol, Paramount Room, Brown Trout, Kith and Kin and others.

The beauty of any list, though, is that you may not agree. So drop us a line and let us know.

—Michael Nagrant, Resto 100 editor Read the rest of this entry »

By Michael Nagrant

I cried watching Kid Rock on VH1 Storytellers the other day. It wasn’t a watershed, rather more of a single rolling tear. That a greasy-haired-beer-guzzling-tattooed-fedora-wearing-skuzzy-facially-haired-dude who used to cavort with a profane dwarf named Joe C and who by his own admission is “straight out the trailer” moved me, was a surprise. But, that’s hometown pride.

For decades, outsiders have been slagging on my dingy beacon on the river, Detroit. For almost as long, they never got it right. For every wolf cry about Detroit as flaking rust belt, there were still millions of blue-collar assembly liners rolling off their shifts in chrome-trimmed Cadillacs. For every crumbling rough-patinaed high rise, there was a shiny silver recently hoisted Red Wings Stanley Cup.

For every hellfire and ash-pile of a former building shown from a helicopter camera angle on Devil’s Night, or every reported carjacking or murder, there was a kid reveling, though shivering in his moonboots, on Woodward Avenue across from the old Vernor’s factory watching a Thanksgiving parade more glorious and real than that fairy-dusted televised production dream from Macy’s in New York.

Now, though, Detroit is truly busted. The Big 3 have cut to the bone and laid off too many. You hear of foreclosures in Chicago, but in Detroit you see them in crumbling realtor signs, creeping prairie grasses and cracked porches choked with weeds. Read the rest of this entry »

By Michael Nagrant

Maybe I’ve been lookin’ for love in all the wrong places, but DMK Burger Bar, the new Lakeview burger joint from Michael Kornick (MK) and David Morton, says its meat patties are made from “grass-fed beef with love” and all I’m finding is a strong sense of like. You could be friends with the pillowy-soft toasted potato buns, but the floury residue on top is a deal-breaker for any long-term relationship. All beef patties here are grilled to a medium-well, but if I were to commit to something bigger, I need mine medium-rare.

The NY pastrami burger topped with grand cru gruyere, sauerkraut and “Leroy’s remoulade” reads like the Match.com girl of my dreams, but as anyone who’s been on an uncomfortably silent date knows, some people just give good profile. The gruyere lacks funk, the pastrami exhibits little pepperiness or punchy garlic and the sauerkraut has no tang. You don’t want a topping to overpower, but like any good partner you want it to complement and challenge. The pastrami-burger toppings are like a devoted trophy wife, “Mad Men”’s Betty Draper (before the affairs), who never says a damn thing. Read the rest of this entry »

By Michael Nagrant

Whenever friends came to town with the itch to throw down $50 for hunks of fire-licked glistening meat carved from glinting scimitars wielded by fake gauchos at spots like Fogo de Chao, Sal y Carvao or Brazzaz (the best of the three), I usually stopped at Sam’s for a couple bottles of Chilean or Argentine red and headed over to the popular BYOB Tango Sur in Lakeview instead.

Tango Sur doesn’t have the gigantor upscale all-you-can-eat salad bar larded with salumi, cheese, shellfish and all manner of stomach-filling carbohydrates cleverly designed to block you from actually eating much of the more expensive grilled meats. However, Brazzaz et al don’t have a swaddling awning-covered patio on the corner of Southport and Grace like Tango. There’s no soft Lake Michigan breeze, the beckoning blinking bulbs from the Music Box theatre marquee or the buzz of the Lakeview citizenry on any summery Friday night.

After a few hours, with Tango Sur’s steaks long simmering in their stomachs and with the only red wine left dotting the tablecloth or buzzing in their heads, next time they were in town, my friends begged to return. Read the rest of this entry »

By Michael Nagrant

I used to think the greatest thing the Coptics (Christian Egyptians) bestowed upon the world was the sixth secretary general of the United Nations Boutros Boutros-Ghali—well, at least his name, which may be the most amusing political moniker of all time. Turns out, though, I’m wrong. Their superior gift to humanity is falafel.

Forbidden to eat meat during certain Christian holy days, foremost the Lenten holiday, and seeking alternative sustenance, the Coptics ground fava beans, mixed them with spices, formed them into patties or balls and deep fried them. As the dish migrated toward the northeast, Chickpeas were substituted for favas.

As the Jewish diaspora resettled in the Middle East, they adopted the dish as their own. Falafel has become such a touchstone in Israel that it’s likely any scientific analysis of the particulate content of air in Jerusalem these days shows at least a few parts per million of chickpea and cumin.

My own history with the falafel, though short, is obsessive. I grew up in parts where a vegetarian, and the entrees he or she might consume, was pretty much greeted with the goodwill reserved for a Packers fan at Soldier Field. At best, a vegetarian would be a source of amusement at Thanksgiving dinner, regarded like a carnival oddity, and placated with a jiggly disc of canned cranberry dressing. Read the rest of this entry »

Macaron at Fritz Pastry

By Michael Nagrant

For many folks, a first trip to Paris turns out to be a bolt of culinary enlightenment. For me it was pretty much about trudging up thousands of really old stone stairs with the occasional side of mediocre pan au chocolat. Of course, as in substandard sex or pizza, one can always find something to love in a bad croissant stuffed with the gooey chocolate. But the point remains that during that trip I was not sophisticated enough to know where I should have gone for good pastry.

As such, my formative pastry education did not come from some burly handlebar-mustachioed European tall-hat-wearing chef. Instead, on weekend mornings, where Bostonian kiddies had mountains of Dunkin Donuts’ crullers and Jewish New Yorkers their H & H Bagels, I had Josef’s European Pastry Shop. Read the rest of this entry »