Photo: Michael Silberman

By Amber Gibson

Chef Homaro Cantu can make cheesecake without sugar, fat or cheese. Instead, all he needs is a spoonful of non-fat sour cream, a lemon wedge and a miracle berry tablet. Lemon and sour cream might not sound like dessert, but the miracle of the berry is that it makes these two ingredients taste better than Eli’s Cheesecake.

Cantu, a molecular gastronomer, among other things, has spent more than eight years researching the rare miracle berry, which temporarily makes sour things taste sweet. At a recent cooking class at his Michelin-starred Moto restaurant, he demonstrated to wide-eyed guests how easy miracle berries are to use.

“You just made cheesecake in a split second,” Cantu tells his class of fourteen students, after they diligently squeeze several drops of lemon juice over their servings of non-fat sour cream. After exchanging incredulous looks, one by one each person eats a miracle berry, then tries the sour cream. It’s unanimous. This stuff tastes good. 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

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 »

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 »

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 »

By Michael Nagrant

In Chicago you can score foie gras milkshakes and edible seaweed-flavored paper for dinner. Breakfast, though, has remained a relatively familiar selection of eggs, pancakes and bacon. Innovation usually comes in the form of sickeningly sweet towers of chocolate and fruit-infused pancakes or savory breakfast burritos as big as Jay Leno’s head. Breakfast is really one of the last frontiers for culinary innovation. There’s really no master of the flat-top, no diner designer kicking out orange-juice bubbles and French-toast snow to the morning masses. To find out why, I checked in with John Bubala, former chef/owner of Timo, who now teaches classic-breakfast cooking at Kendall College culinary school, as well as Chicago’s top dinner dramatists, Grant Achatz of Alinea, Homaro Cantu of Moto and Graham Elliot Bowles of Graham Elliot restaurant to see why innovation has been slow and what their visions of breakfast look like.
Read the rest of this entry »

By Michael Nagrant

Chefs are the new rock stars, and as such, some of them have been honoring that heritage by acting like first-class liquored-up self-indulgent retards. I figured since this is the common-sense issue, I’d try and bring a little balance to all things silly and culinary.

The first object of my ire is David Chang, chef of the Momofuku empire in NYC. As much as he’s been covered by the national media, you’d think he’d got cancer of the tongue, recovered and won Best Chef America honors from the James Beard Foundation. But, unlike Grant Achatz, all Chang had to do was bring a little high-class pork belly and some poached egg to humble Asian noodle dishes like ramen. Once he did, he became a first-class media darling, so much so, that he’s been able to launch three restaurants in the last four years, including his newest, a twelve-seat pre-fixe-style chef’s bar, Momofuku Ko, where the chefs cook and serve your food.
Read the rest of this entry »

By Michael Nagrant

Despite the fact that condos are popping up in the West Loop like sightings of Britney Spears’ nether-region, the number of great restaurants hasn’t followed suit. Since Jerry Kleiner’s prescient Daniel Boone-like maneuvering in the late nineties there’s been a slow dribble of similar establishments such as Blackbird, Moto, Follia and, now, Sepia. Of course, great doesn’t have to mean haute, but most of the ethnic spots in the area feel like Grecian theme parks.

As a denizen of the West Loop, I’m jealous of a foodie mecca like Lincoln Square, which has three top Thai spots (Opart Thai, Spoon Thai, Thai Oscar), and seems to be the landing pad for every new chef-driven restaurant. Lincoln Square’s also a five-minute drive from Uptown’s little Vietnam, Albany Park’s Middle Eastern bazaar and Devon’s Pakistani and Indian fare. It’s enough to make a food writer move.

Despite the West Loop’s culinary shortcomings, though, I dig my ‘hood and its affordable proximity to the Loop. Read the rest of this entry »

By Michael Nagrant

Grant Achatz is the culinary Barack Obama. If you stacked all the press that positively chronicles his rise, you’d have a glossy skyscraper of Sears Tower proportions. Where his peers, evolutionary gastronomists like Homaro Cantu at Moto, have endured scathing criticism, Achatz has been a Teflon Don. The worst thing anyone has written was when GQ’s Alan Richman said Achatz’s food was “a little too safe.”

Regarding Achatz’s cuisine, that’s typical Richman. Richman, who once lambasted New Orleans cuisine in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, is fond of making arguments that’ll play in Peoria whether he believes them or not. Regarding Achatz’s personality, Richman was on to something.

Achatz is one of the most deliberate folks I’ve met. He’s got a thoughtful answer to every question, and he’s a philosopher as much as a cook. He’ll turn the abstract wall art at Alinea into a visual metaphor for his cooking style at the drop of a fork.
While most college kids were finishing their last keg stands, Achatz had already graduated from the Culinary Institute of America and worked at Charlie Trotter’s and the French Laundry. When he was labeled a molecular gastronomist, he knew that being dubbed a food scientist might distance him as a chef in an ivory kitchen, and he smartly rejected the label.

Given this background, I was surprised to see the cover of last Sunday’s Chicago Tribune Magazine.  There beaming in black and white ring-a-ding-ding rat-pack glory is Achatz with ruffled hair, in loosened black tie, his smiling chin exaggerated into Jay Leno like proportions by lens distortion. It’s definitely a carefree playboy side of Achatz we’ve never seen. Next to Achatz in the photo is a frizzy-haired, doe-eyed, mascara-slathered supermodel leaning over the dining table. She’s looking at the camera with a full-on quivering lower lip so plump it reminds one of Angelina Jolie after a few minutes in an angry beehive.  And as my father who was in town this weekend said, (he’s also one of the most religious people I know), “It looks like she’s angry that someone just interrupted her while she was coming up from under the dining table.” To cap it off, the sub-headline on the cover dubs Grant Achatz as a “Haute cuisine hottie.”

Normally, I probably wouldn’t blink at the cover, as I think people are too serious about food and they need to lighten up in the spirit of growing and learning as tasters and cooks. And on the surface this was just a garden variety shot, the kind of ego-driven photography spurred by high budgets and overactive stylists (Achatz’s socks matched the chair fabric in the picture) that you see every day in fashion magazines.

But this was Achatz, the choir boy of what is sometimes a drug-fueled world. Despite the fact that Alinea is very expensive, I still think of Achatz as a democratic chef who believes in improving people’s lives through food. The Tribune cover seemed contrary to that.

Also, the cover undermined what was a well-written feature, documenting the most memorable meals of some of Chicago’s culinary leaders, with witless glamour. The cover appealed to the crowd that equates the cost of a meal with the quality of a meal, the same kind of folks who see Alinea got four stars, immediately make reservations and then wonder why they can’t order a side salad. It sent the message that the best meal ever should involve vacuous models at the expense of good food.
Achatz doesn’t have control over the editorial decision to call him a “hottie,” so I contacted the Tribune editors to ask about the decision, but they did not respond by press time. I told them that I thought the headline trivialized Achatz’s craftsmanship by reducing him to a pin-up, and that if they ran the same photo and headline with a female chef, people might be up in arms citing blatant sexism.

I thought Achatz had control over whether he agreed to the shots in the magazine, so I asked him about it. He was in the middle of a house move, but he did mention my query to his publicist Jennifer Galdes, who reiterated that there should be no question where Achatz’s heart is. She said, “Grant works as hard as any chef, and spends an incredible amount of time in his kitchens.”
In the last year, I’ve seen him de-stemming rosemary and separating seeds from fruit during afternoon prep. I suppose he’s entitled to have fun, or at least appear like he’s having fun. After all, magazines, as a local editor recently told me, are aspirational.

In the end though, for Chicagoans who care about food, I think the Trib went for the sexy cover to sell issues. Now that we’re no longer the second city of cuisine, we should expect more from our journalists. I’m willing to bet most of the serious food enthusiasts in this town regard Amanda Hesser or Mark Bittman and the rest of the New York Times food crew as a better and more informative read than those at our local dailies. This will continue as long as editors send the message that glamour is more important than the idea of cooking as a craft and dining as a cultural gathering point.