Chicago’s very own culinary stars The Hearty Boys are celebrating a new endeavor in their food-making careers. The guys-next-door are innovating a new kind of cooking school at 3819 North Broadway called “HBTV,” where students can get the inside look at the highs and lows of hosting your own TV food show. “We kind of just tell people it’s the Dan and Steve ride at Disney,” says Hearty Boy Steve McDonagh. “Food TV right now is so hot and everyone is so interested to see what it’s about—it’s a great way to goof off and have fun with liquor and knives.” The class, which will be more of a fun, interactive private party setup rather than a traditional cooking class, will feature beer, wine and cocktails and light hors d’oeuvres, and it will offer guests a chance to “get their Rachel Ray on for three minutes” in front of a real TV camera. “We’ve gotten people to understand it by calling it ‘cooking karaoke’—the idea that you go to a bar and have drinks and your friend gets up and sings and we all get to laugh at them,” McDonagh says. “Instead of singing they’re getting up in front of a TV camera as if they’re hosting a show and still the friends are all laughing at them.” Visit www.heartyboys.com for registration info.
Hot Chicken Gets Warm Welcome in Chicago: Cluck It! Cluck It!—a ghost kitchen on south Wabash that opened last month—served us a more moderately spiced chicken. This is the kind of comfort food that many of us are craving.
Foods of Our Own: Unique Deliciousness, Made in Chicago Here are two of those Chicago originals, foods—and one Chicago original drink—found many times nowhere else but here and that, for better or worse, have become something unique, a Chicago thing, foods of our own.
Lake Whiskey: The Marvel That Was Chicago’s Chapin & Gore Just over a century ago, prohibition ended Chicago’s Chapin & Gore as a business. Today, the Chapin & Gore Building, at 63 East Adams, is part of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Symphony Center campus and a Chicago landmark.
