A bagel place is opening in Wicker Park. I cannot find out anything about it, but I do not care. It is called Bagel on Damen, which means it will serve bagels, and this is a city that needs more bagels. It’s at the corner of Potomac and Damen.
Manee Thai’s Addison location, which burned down in May 2008, has been rebuilding at an impressive pace for the past few weeks. Still, staff at the currently-operating Manee Thai, in West Town, say that the Addison location will reopen in early March 2010.
Also, just for kicks, here’s what Big Star, the forthcoming bar (with tacos) from Paul Kahan and crew in the former Pontiac Cafe space, looked like this morning. It’s been painted, the lights are on inside, and there’s a squadron of vehicles parked outside practically every day. Somebody is working hard. It’s just a matter of time….
The owner of Waterhouse, Rebel and Blue Light—Dan Latino—is opening a new bar: Pitchfork. “It’s a tavern, with really good food,” says Brian, the manager. (Check out the menu.) But I had two other, perhaps more important, questions for Brian.
Q. Will there be trivia nights, like at Waterhouse?
A. Yes, on Wednesdays.
Q. Have you ever heard of the site Pitchfork.com?
A. Nope.
Q. Really?
A. Yeah, why, what is it?
Oh, how much Brian has yet to learn. If you do know what Pitchfork is, you may enjoy the 9.4 Best New Jokes About Pitchfork (Not The Site, the Just-Opened Chicago Restaurant) from Idolator.
Pitchfork, 2922 W Irving Park Rd (773-866-2010).
The French Pastry School should get a matchmaker award. Brooke Dailey and Gina Howie met there, and went on to open the aptly named Lovely: A Bake Shop. Howie also met Bob Hartwig at the school, and he quickly put a ring on it. Now the couple is giving Lovely a sibling when they open Bakin’ & Eggs in early November. (Dailey is also involved, and the restaurant bears the subtitle “A Lovely Idea,” but it appears to be Hartwig’s baby.) “Upscale comfort food” is how he describes the breakfast/lunch/brunch menu, and he backs it up by rattling off items like a caramelized onion, balsamic and blue cheese frittata; bacon-encrusted Gouda mac and cheese; an Alsatian onion tart; and a bacon “flight” of four-to-five types, including at least one cured in-house. The space itself is about twice the size of Lovely, with a hefty pastry case, full-service dining area and dedicated coffee bar manned by a team of what Howie calls “outstanding baristas.” Let’s hope that a love connection at the espresso machine spawns a genius coffee truck that cruises downtown doling out shots.
Slated to open the second week of November at 3120 N Lincoln Ave. Breakfast (Mon–Fri), brunch (Sat–Sun), lunch.
The opening of Dan Smith and Steve McDonagh’s upcoming restaurant, Hearty, has been pushed back to around Halloween. “We’ve got an appearance at Epcot the third week in October, and we just didn’t want to open and leave for a couple of days during the first few months,” McDonagh explains.
In the meantime, you can hit up the Hearty Boys brunch on Sundays or go to the next preview dinner of the restaurant (slated for sometime in September). Or you can tide yourself over the way I am, by longingly reading Hearty’s tentative dinner menu over and over again. I’ve posted it after the jump so you can get started.
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The exciting news, first: Two restaurants, Florian Opera Bistro and The Sarah and Peer Pedersen Room, are slated to open in the Civic Opera House in late September. (312 Dining Diva has some photos of the luxurious spaces.) Both are named after Lyric patrons donors and will be operated by Jewell Events Catering. The more formal Pedersen will have two seatings for its $28 prix fixe, which includes dishes like steak with chive mashed potatoes, while the Florian, located on the third floor, will be a la carte, with more casual offerings like a pastrami sandwich. Now, the damper: Both will be open only to opera patrons with tickets to that night’s performance and will serve pre-, post- and intermission fare. So, got your Tosca tickets ready?
Bubble gum, Mediterranean sea-salt caramel, strawberry-balsamic: This is gelato to get excited about. When the Texas-based gelateria Paciugo opened its first Illinois location in Forest Park last year, many were naturally excited. But I’m not exactly one for trekking to the ‘burbs, especially when I can get my hands on this stuff pretty much as often as my heart desires. So imagine my excitement upon spotting Paciugo moving into Lakeview (not too far away from another upcoming opening I’m also looking forward to). The new store, owned and managed by Anirudh Poddar, will offer about 32 flavors each day from a recipe cache of 220 (which includes some less bizarre ones like plain old mint-chocolate-chip), as well as gelato concoctions like affogato and coppa gelato and beverages such as hot chocolate. So what brought Poddar, a Wisconsin transplant, to open a gelato shop? “I have a taste for the finer things in life,” he says. Oh, don’t we all.
3241 N Broadway. Slated to open August 24 or 27—we’ll keep you posted.
Before you roll your eyes at yet another new restaurant doing the whole farm-to-table thing, check out the cred of Chuy Valencia, chef/owner of Lakeview’s soon-to-open Chilam Balam. Born in Sonoma, California, to parents who grew their own food, he spent summers on the family orchard in Mexico. Valencia also learned a thing or two from his grandfather, a fourth-generation Mexican rancher who taught him how to butcher whole animals.
Valencia (who is all of 23 years old) plans to tap into all of those skills—in addition to the skills he picked up as sous chef at Frontera Grill and Topolobampo and chef de cuisine at Adobo Grill—when the 45-seat, BYOB restaurant opens in late August. The focus of the monthly-changing menu will be on small plates using as many local products as possible. “The idea is to use traditional Mexican snacks as a vessel for farm-fresh ingredients,” he says. Translation: grilled pork ribs with Oaxacan pasilla glaze, braised mushroom-filled empanadas, and squash-blossom-and-summer-squash quesadillas. And while Valencia isn’t a fan of frills—“Good food sells,” he says—look for plenty of made-from-scratch items, including tortillas, moles and chorizo. That chill vibe will be echoed in the decor too, with exposed brick walls, pillow-topped wood benches and brightly colored walls.
3023 N Broadway (773-296-6901).
And so the regional burger wars continue. To the already-crowded arena of patties imported from other cities (Fat Burger, Five Guys, The Counter, et al), Chicago will soon be able to boast Denver’s Smashburger. 11 of them, actually.
Smashburgers are (wait for it…) smashed onto a buttered griddle—that’s the schtick. Brian Rosen, President and COO of Food For Thought, which is bringing the chain here, threw down these fighting words about them: “As a lifelong Chicagoan, and a lifelong burger eater, I have sampled burgers from all over the globe. And by far, this is the best one I’ve had. By. Far.”
“No bullshit,” he added. “The thing will rock your world. You can quote me on that.”
The first of the 11—which will also serve salads, ice cream and local beers—will open somewhere on the North Side before the end of the year. Until then, be prepared to listen to some serious smack-talking from anybody hailing from Denver.
Here’s proof that nobody really goes to Green Dolphin Street for the food: They closed their restaurant in May, and not a single person seems to have noticed. Of course, that’s why they closed it in the first place. “It wasn’t generating enough money,” manager Byron Dorsey says.
But soon, Green Dolphin will reopen their restaurant under a new name, Orvieto. And the new spot will be a pizza-and-wine bar (traditional stuff like pies with mozz, potatoes and rosemary). The transition won’t take place until sometime after Labor Day, but if you can’t wait, get your ass on that dance floor: The chef is testing out Orvieto’s recipes on the club’s bar menu now.
A trio of heavy-hitters is teaming up for what’s sure to be fall’s biggest restaurant opening: Jimmy Bannos (Heaven on Seven), Scott Harris (Mia Francesca) and a yet-to-be-officially-named third party will unveil the Purple Pig in mid-September, smack-dab on the Mag Mile at 500 North Michigan Avenue. Mediterranean is the best umbrella to encompass the menu, which all three chefs will have some input on. Overseeing the project at close-hand is Bannos’s son Jimmy Jr., but before you go thinking that good old-fashioned Chicago-style nepotism landed the gig for Junior (or “Uncle Jun” as his Pops calls him), you should know that the younger Bannos has some serious culinary chops: After nabbing a culinary degree from Johnson & Wales and an externship at Emeril’s, he went on to Providence’s Al Forno, spent six months cooking across Italy, then landed in New York as part of the opening kitchen crew for Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich’s Del Posto and followed that up with a year at Dave Pasternack’s impeccable seafood spot Esca. So what will he do in Chicago now that he’s teaming up with Dad and friends? “The best stuff you’ve eaten in Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Greece,” says Bannos Sr. “We just want to have a wine bar with no pretension, incredible cheeses, beautiful panini, sausages like Spanish morcilla and cured meats like pata negra, seafood cooked a la plancha, stuff like this Sicilian dessert where they split brioche and stuff gelato in it, great wines under $40 with everything by the glass, the quartino or the bottle…. It’s gonna be the real deal.”
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