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

The only thing I’m more ashamed of than my Hot Pocket addiction is that I wasted hundreds of hours of my life watching the television cooking battle royale, “Hell’s Kitchen.” Host Gordon Ramsay, the vicious foul-mouthed Brit who has more angry scowl lines on his face than a geriatric Shar Pei, is a terrible man. If you’re not familiar, and if you aren’t, you should be proud, Ramsay’s a decorated Michelin-starred chef from Britain who made his bones in America dehumanizing a long procession of cooks on TV, calling them animal names (donkey, his favorite) or inanimate objects (“fucking donut,” my favorite).

Mostly Ramsay’s continuing the cycle of French-brigade-begotten kitchen violence and dealing with daddy issues he hasn’t resolved with his own mentor Marco Pierre White (a legendary chef who’s machismo makes Anthony Bourdain look about as tough as Kim Kardashian) who was rumored to once have had the young Ramsay slumped in the corner of his kitchen crying on the floor.

But, as when an Elvis-impersonating governor allegedly sells an effing golden United States senate seat or a lieutenant governor nominee maybe assaults his prostitute girlfriend with a knife, “Hell’s Kitchen” is just one more train wreck from which it’s tough to look away. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Eric Young Smith

By Chris Chandler

At ten o’clock each night, Akira Yokoyama phones three fish importers and orders seafood from around the world. Most of it will be flown in fresh by noon the next day. Nothing is more important to a sushi restaurant than fresh seafood.

Akira grew up in Tsuruoka, on the northwest coast of Japan’s main island facing the Sea of Japan, where for hundreds of years fresh fish has been the staple food. He can tell you the habits of each fish and shellfish, and describe the evolution of sushi over the past 1,400 years.

He bought the Ginza restaurant in downtown Chicago twenty years ago and has been painstakingly preparing the food six days a week ever since. The restaurant is plain-looking, like a typical one in Japan, tucked into the first floor of the Tokyo Hotel at 19 East Ohio. Akira expresses his art in the creation and presentation of each dish. There is an ancient Japanese tradition that food should be visually pleasing, sweet smelling and delicious. Akira follows that formula assiduously. Read the rest of this entry »

Curtis Duffy/Photo: Evan Sears

Last week, Food & Wine magazine revealed their annual “Best New Chefs” in America list, and despite Chicago’s rising culinary status, none of our local chefs got a nod. In fact, no chefs from the Midwest made the list. That being said, there’s no shortage of kitchen talent in our fair city, so we decided to stage our own “Best New Chicago Chef” competition.

We invited seventy-five of the cities top toques (many former Food & Wine Best New Chef winners), sommeliers, artisans and food experts to participate in a write-in poll naming their choice for Chicago’s best new chef. Read the rest of this entry »

In the kitchen at Alinea/Photo: Lara Kastner

Resto 100 is, as it has been in years past, 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.

In these particular hard economic times, we find ourselves dining out a lot more at the BYOBs, mom-and pop-spots and small ethnic joints than we do at the high end.  That being said, while we didn’t set out to consciously create a list to address our lighter wallets, it sure turned out that way.  More than ever, this list is a cross section of the wealth of culturally diverse and reasonably priced restaurants Chicago is lucky to have. Read the rest of this entry »

River North’s Mr. Beef Deli has been serving Chicagoans beef sandwiches for thirty years. Its walls, decorated with old and new album covers, movie posters and autographed celebrity photos, testify to both its age and enduring popularity. In a much-publicized crisis, Mr. Beef is facing foreclosure. Unable to get a new line of credit “in these economic times,” the sandwich shop may be forced to shut its doors. Read the rest of this entry »

By Michael Nagrant

With his fierce tattoos, imposing frame and black lacquer glasses, chef Graham Elliot Bowles looks like the lovechild of Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo and a bouncer from a death-metal bar. However, the aggressive-looking “innocence” tattoo on his left forearm is more a reflection of the artist who also did ink for Pantera than of Bowles’ true personality. As Bowles says, “I look like I’m ready to hurt someone, when I really just want to cry on their shoulder.”

Opening his eponymous restaurant Graham Elliot (opened June 2), the tattoo that might mean the most is the one on his right forearm: a German monogram depicting four “f”s, a graphic from the punk band Jawbreaker that stands for “Frisch, Fromm, Fröhlich, frei.” (Hardy, God-fearing, Cheerful, Free). Read the rest of this entry »

Establishing yourself as a so-called “Chicago institution” usually takes time, effort and an inordinate amount of luck. For Mr. Beef at 666 North Orleans, it was many years before the beef stand’s big break: Jay Leno being named host of “The Tonight Show.”

“He pretty much promised my father, ‘If I make it on ‘The Tonight Show,’ I’m putting this place on the map,’” says Chris Zucchero, Mr. Beef’s co-owner and manager, explaining that Leno would come to the shop weekly and order their now-defunct meatball sandwich. “He was the first celebrity we had walk in this place and after that it just sorta trickled down and everybody started coming in here.” Read the rest of this entry »

By Michael Nagrant

Mohammad Islam would make a first-rate drug pusher. The executive chef and co-owner of the new River North hot spot Aigre Doux (which means sweet and sour in French) is standing next to his wife, pastry chef and co-owner Malika Ameen, and Oriana Kruszewski, aka “The Walnut Lady” in the basement pastry kitchen. Islam repeatedly dips his hand in Kruszewski’s zip-locked stash, and gives me handfuls of her black walnuts (they taste like extraordinary dried apples). Kruszewski’s also brought along some homemade preserves, frozen cornelian cherries and raspberries. Islam is handing spoons of the stuff to me as if he were a countercultural shaman bestowing a particularly robust strain of Humboldt County pot. As Islam chews on a cherry, there’s a child-waking-up-on-Christmas-day-like glint in his eyes as he tells Kruszewski he’d like to see her at the back door of Aigre Doux every two weeks. Kruszewski looks at him and tells him he’s crazy, and that if he buys her high-quality-but-pricey products that frequently, he’ll go out of business. Read the rest of this entry »