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 »

Sunday night’s a stern nine degrees outside, but the 100-plus patrons at Big Star beam like crazy at the unconscionably fashionable new spot right by the Blue Line’s North and Milwaukee stop.

The ceiling of the late Pontiac Café is cut through by eight or more skylights, and emptied out by daylight, its simple box might resemble Blackbird’s simplicity that requires an ever-moving throng for the room to come to life; notably, the players here include Blackbird partner Paul Kahan, as well as other contributors from avec, The Publican and The Violet Hour, just across Damen to the west. Like the Rainbo Club to the south, it’s panopticon-style: there are no obstructions to the looking and being looked at, unless you count the fine small tacos in front of you, notably the De Panza, two bites of crunchy braised pork belly that would make a fine final meal along with a two-liter bottle of Dr. Pepper, using the bar’s Kold-Draft ice cubes. ”Super-fresh” is a phrase that rolls off Kahan’s tongue, and along with Buck Owens-style country on the turntable, it’s a daydream of a roadhouse, bare walls, dim bare bulbs dangling overhead. 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’m pretty sure I can pinpoint the moment Heavy D, aka Dwight Errington Myers, the rotund rapper who brought us the fine jingle “Now That We Found Love,” jumped the shark. It wasn’t when he portrayed the half-wit migrant worker Peaches alongside Tobey Maguire in the “Cider House Rules,” though that was close. It was much earlier in 1991, when he appeared on Michael Jackson’s “Dangerous” album rapping on the song “Jam.” Consider the heart of his rhyme on that ditty: “Mingle Mingle Jingle. In The Jungle. Bum Rushed The Door. 3 And 4’s In A Bundle.”

If that wasn’t bad enough, Heavy also dances in the video alongside Chris “Mac Daddy” Kelly and Chris “Daddy Mac” Smith, aka Kriss Kross, originators of the backwards-clothes-wearing movement and prepubescent crooners of “Jump,” the #75 rated song on VH1’s “100 Greatest Songs of the Nineties.” Oddly, Kriss Kross never actually sing on “Jam.” They just hobble around in their ill-fitting reversed baseball jerseys and flash baby gang signs throughout the video. Did the King of Pop mercilessly cut their vocal part? Read the rest of this entry »

Beet soup at Birchwood Kitchen

By Michael Nagrant

If Chicago’s newest gourmet sandwich shops Birchwood Kitchen in Wicker Park and Lunch Rolls in the Loop were twins, they’d be Julius and Vincent Benedict from the 1988 film, “Twins.” In case you’ve forgotten the plot, and really who could blame you, Julius and Vincent were the product of a secret experiment to create the perfect child from six different fathers. While the exercise spawned the superior intellectual/physical specimen of Julius (Arnold Schwarzenegger) it also created a fraternal twin, Vincent (Danny Devito) made from the leftover genetic garbage.  Neither Birchwood nor Lunch Rolls is particularly deficient like Vincent (in fact they’re both pretty decent options for their respective hoods), but as sandwich-slinging brethren they’re definitely opposites. 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 »

By Michael Nagrant

There’s just something about Bruno. And tonight, I aim to please him. How else explain that, though I’m a 32-year-old straight dude who shops entirely too much at Old Navy, I’m more skittish than a red-carpet-roving Hollywood starlet caught in the crossfire gazer beams of Joan Rivers and Steven Cojocaru?

Since I’m a food critic, Bruno Abate, restaurant impresario/owner of Wicker Park’s Tocco Pizze e Arte, should be the one to impress me. Yet I’m worried that my recently pressed white-stitched ultra-indigo dress jeans are slightly wrinkled at the ankle, and I’m wondering whether they drape over my pointy-toed Robert Wayne dress shoes enough to prevent me from looking like a court jester. Abate, who cooks from $8,000 San Lorenzo sauté pans, wears sunglasses that make Bono jealous and rocks orange shoes, has seemingly turned the tables. 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 »

By Michael Nagrant

Visiting a promising restaurant on opening night is probably a lot like scouting high-school and college-basketball phenoms for the NBA. It’s just too early to tell. For every fifty-point whiz like Kobe Bryant, there’s a two-point bust like Darko Milicic riding the bench. Likewise, opening night for a restaurant isn’t usually a fair gauge of future success. Sure, there’s been soft openings for friends and family to fine-tune things, but when’s the last time your best friend told you that you were ugly?

Yet many believe once a restaurateur asks for your money, he should also be ready to endure your mirth or your wrath.  And the blogosphere, for better or worse, has the print and digital media cranking out early reviews like hopped-up Kerouac-novel Benzedrine junkies.

Generally I believe it’s better to do something the best rather than to do it first, to get it right, rather than just to get it. And yet, sometimes you get so excited about a concept that you can’t wait to check it out. So I’m gonna break my rule, and review Michael Altenberg’s new spot Crust with the caveat that what follows is an anonymous opening-night review, but not a measured multi-visit extravaganza. Read the rest of this entry »

By Lisa Shames

If Charlie Trotter is the Chicago fine-dining scene’s Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, then Michael Carlson, chef and owner of Wicker Park’s Schwa, is probably its Johnny Rotten. Like the Sex Pistols lead singer, Carlson is unconventional, a culinary contrarian.

Call up Schwa during the day and Carlson might just be taking your reservation. That is, if you’re lucky enough to snag a res for the twenty-six-seat spot, which is currently booked two months out. If you are, Carlson will probably also play waiter and deliver a course or two to your table, and at the end of the night, you’ll find him cleaning up with the rest of his small staff.
Is this any way for an award-winning chef—Carlson was one of Food & Wine magazine’s Best New Chefs 2006 and Schwa was named best new restaurant by Newcity in 2006—to act? Well, if you’re Carlson it is, and that laid-back attitude coupled with a total hands-on approach is just as much a part of the draw of this Wicker Park eatery as is its quail-egg ravioli with Parmigiano Reggiano (more on that later). Read the rest of this entry »