Category: food

Gail has been talking these up for awhile and I’ve kind of tuned it out. She reads all of the food blogs and is in charge of finding new places, but I figured the chances of us dragging ourselves out of bed on a Saturday morning to hit the Oak Park Farmer’s Market were pretty slim. Saturday is usually a busy morning and Oak Park is about 10 miles away, about 9 miles further than our local farmer’s market here in the city. What’s the point? Could they really be that good?

Yes. Yes they could be.

I thought it was a dream actually. We got up early last Saturday for some reason. It was maybe 6am when we both decided that sleep was no longer an option. We started planning on getting an early morning workout in but then Gail pipes up with, “Maybe we should hit Oak Park and check out those donuts.”

Huh? Sure.

So at about 7:15am, on a perfectly crisp and clear midwestern autumn morning, we park on Lake Street in Oak Park about a half block from the Farmer’s Market. In the far corner of the market, backed up to the adjoining church, there’s a tent set up with three different styles of cake donuts for $0.75 each and some coffee, tea, and juices. They’re pulling bins of these donuts out of some trap door that leads to the basement of the church.

My initial reaction was, “Oh, cake donuts, big deal.” But after the first bite of the cinnamon and sugar version, my reaction was, “HOLY COW, CAKE DONUTS!” They had a perfectly crispy outer shell and a fluffy center. They must have flash-fried them in perfectly warmed oil for just the right amount of time. You don’t get that stark contrast in textures with yeast donuts. My perspective on donuts was turned upside down after a single bite.

I will plan on multiple visits in 2012 to the Oak Park Farmer’s Market.

I’m inspired by Roots Pizza. In fact, it may be just the spark needed to get me writing about food again. It has rocketed to the top of my pizza list with a bullett. It wasn’t but a few months when I mentioned how much I love Lou Malnati’s pizza. But Roots has, at least for now, overtaken Lou’s. I’ll be honest, I don’t think there’s any looking back.

They do it in the style of the Quad Cities, which means malt in the crust, square cut strips, and a special sauce. The crust is of medium thickness and crispy all the way through to the center, but still nice and chewy. Because of physics, it takes two hands to support a fresh piece for the first few bites due to the long and skinny cut. But within a few bites you can have the piece in one hand and one of their many beverages in the other for some serious sports watching.

And the sausage, let me tell you about the sausage. It’s classic, crumbled, sweet, Italian sausage applied uniformly throughout the cheese-covered portion of the pizza. Simply the best sausage in town. Don’t get me wrong, I like the way Malnati’s uses the huge chunks and random application. And I like the sausage disk from Gino’s East. But the crumbled method at Roots rules in my book.

They have flat screens all over the place, a huge outdoor dining area, and garage doors facing Chicago Avenue. This strip of Chicago Avenue in West Town/East Village/Ukrainian Village has a bar/restaurant/bakery/coffee experience for everybody. Everybody. I love slashes.

This article about sums up why I quit doing the food blog stuff.

Foodie fatigue (12/27/2010 by Christopher Borrelli in Chicago Tribune)

I still want to keep the posts around. After all, I did pour my heart into it for about a year, all be it a little misdirected.

Now that my bro is the hotdog king of Findlay, I feel the urge to eat more dogs. Like this one from Franks ‘n’ Dawgs on Clybourn. Click on it and see my notes on the Flickr picture for more info.

Welcome back to Tasty Chicago. I’ve now integrated this blog into my network and added some new technology, so I’m hoping it will be much easier to keep up. I’m planning on doing occasional updates as the urge hits me, but certainly not once a week like I did in 2007.

I’m reviving things a little, but only for test purposes for now.

I notice that I’ve lost all my pics during the move to a new hosting provider and an update of WordPress. Not a big deal, I’m going to find all of them on Flickr anyhow, like I should have done in the first place.

Yes, we’re crunching. So Tasty Chicago is taking a few months off, but we plan to be back and better than ever sometime in the second quarter.

I grew up working in my dad’s supermarket. I started sorting 16 ounce returnable bottles at age 12 and worked at the store for the next decade. I was there all through my formative years – after school, on weekends, and during summer and holiday breaks. Today, the thought of going into a Jewel or Dominick’s is repulsive. It’s not that I have a bunch of bad memories, I’m just sick of being inside supermarkets. Just sick of it.

Let me contrast this experience with that of a buddy of mine. He owned his own pizza shop at age 13 and worked in the business during his formative years. I’m talking pizza overload during all of his teenage years. So shouldn’t he be sick of pizza? Shouldn’t he be repulsed every time someone wants order a bunch of pizzas and watch some football? No! And no! In fact, he’s a pizza aficionado. A veritable pizza guru. A pizza Yoda who can actually make a pie levitate.

What do you do when you have this sort of love for pizza? Well, you have all your friends over once a year and make pizzas to order. I was lucky enough to get invited to this private event and I snuck a camera in, hoping that I could learn something. Watch and learn grasshopper.

Use your fingers, don’t use a rolling pin. It’s all about making it round and keeping the air bubbles out.

In fact, do a fork-tap all over the pie to keep those pesky air bubbles out. That’s caring.

Since your home oven probably can’t get to 800 degrees, pre-cook the dough for a little just to make sure it’s crispy. Use a pizza peel to move it in and out. Oh yeah, you can just stick your bare hands in the oven (below) if you’re tough enough. If you’re afraid of burning your fingers, well, maybe you should just have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or something.

Lay out the ingredients and give your friends free reign in choosing the toppings. Hey, it’s your party and their party. It’s everybody’s party. I’ve obscured the faces in the previous and next picture to protect the innocent, of course.

Here’s what mine and my wife’s looked like. I’m a straight sausage guy, but my wife tosses in a little mushroom and black olive. It’s all good, we’re all happy. No need to fight about what toppings to use because we got plenty to go around.

Thanks man, the pizza rocked.

This food blog experience has really opened my eyes to the genius that’s often hiding within regular folks. Take for instance this blog called the Burrito Bracket. It’s done by a resident of Wicker Park who has decided to have a “tournament” pitting 19 top burrito places in the neighborhood against each other.

The championship comes up in a few weeks so you better start paying attention. At this point, there is one more match-up in the Elite Eight before we get down to the final four. Here are the pairings with all of the match-ups and a link to the review.

My favorite post thus far is titled The Burrito Spectrum. The only point of the post was to espouse a certain theory on the burrito, which I found refreshing and informative. This fellow Nate got in my kitchen and really shook things up. He explains the burrito by taking his readers on a trip from the taco to the sandwich. It’s groundbreaking stuff and has given me several new terms that I plan on using in everyday life.

Nate, you rock! Keep it up.

Hecky’s. You’ve seen it. I’m talking about the one at 1234 N. Halsted. It’s integrated with a gas station on a very fluid stretch of Division Street. I’m sure it’s not as charming as the original Hecky’s in Evanston, but it’s all owned by the same legendary ribmaster, Hecky Powell.

What side do you get with your ribs? In somewhat of a deviation from my standard operating procedure, I went with the baked beans (the cole slaw was standard). As you know, I usually pair big chunks of bovine or swine flesh with either a grain or potato. But with ribs it’s just a little different; I don’t feel the need to get a starch in every bite.

So on this fine evening I made a great call, Hecky’s ribs and baked beans did not disappoint. It was good all around – tender ribs and smoky baked beans. There wasn’t any special zing in the sauce, but it was tangy. I’m not necessarily going crazy over these ribs, but I made some errors when ordering so I’m taking responsibility. I should have ordered some extra sauce to help me understand it better and I should have taken a different route on the style choice.

They give you two rib options. One is “classic” and the other is “Chicago style” (I think that’s what they termed them). As the woman behind the counter describes them, Chicago style are a little tougher and stay on the bone a little better. My wife and I opted for the classic because in general we feel that fall-off-the-bone is good. And they were good. But they went a little overboard with the fall-off-the-bone. These things fall off the bone more than any other rib I’ve had in Chicago. In fact, you can’t even pick them up by the bones because the gravitational pull of the earth is too strong for the meat/bone bond.

It really piqued my interest to try the Chicago style. I think I’d definitely like the “tougher“ texture, so I’ll be back soon. Plus, there’s even more reason to be back if you listen to the majority opinion over at the LTH Forum, the fried chicken is supposed to rock (mostly at the Evanston location). As always with the LTH Forum, they denigrate the supposed “fake” Hecky’s that I frequent on Halsted. New and non-traditional usually gets panned. Whatever.

I am a breakfast pastry titan. If I were to enter any sort of competitive eating contest (look out Kobayashi!), it would certainly be in the realm of cinnamon rolls, donuts, scones, muffins, or some sort of quick bread. Yeah, I said quick bread. Well, I actually wrote quick bread, I don’t think I’ve ever uttered the words together.

According to Wikipedia, a quick bread uses a chemical leavener such as baking powder as opposed to a leavener like yeast. The chemical leavener makes the quick bread “relatively uniform, reliable, and quick.” Imagine that.

The classic quick bread is banana bread. I ate it sparingly as a kid but lately I’ve developed a special fondness for it. In part because I’ve sampled plenty of the homemade banana bread at the Jupiter Outpost and it’s really good. Check it out above.

It’s usually the same woman working the counter at this warehouse district coffee shop and I think she’s the owner/baker. They have a full boat of coffee and espresso drinks and some breakfast and lunch sandwiches, but I haven’t strayed from the bevy of quick breads and cakes. They’re all baked daily in a kitchen about 15 feet from the counter and there is no doubting the freshness once you sink your teeth into one.

The banana bread is stuffed with fresh bananas and walnuts. Look closely at the picture and you can see that you get some of each in every bite. It’s moist and tasty and perfectly complemented by a cappuccino.

Did I mention that she makes the cappuccino like it should be made. At Starbuck’s, to get a real cappuccino you have to tell them to make it dry or extra dry; if you don’t you get a latte. That’s not the case at the Jupiter Outpost. Her small cappuccino barely fills the cup past half way – foam and all. Now that’s a cappuccino, plenty of espresso flavor with just a little milk and slightly more foam.

It’s a great place. They care about freshness and they respect the roots of good, Italian espresso drinks. The reviews on Yelp are a somewhat mixed. I just like the place and I’m becoming a regular.