2022 Chicago Restaurants E-Book

Andrew Delaplaine

• Herausgeber: Gramercy Park Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 47

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Andrew Delaplaine is the ultimate Restaurant Enthusiast.

With decades in the food writing business, he has been everywhere and eaten (almost) everything.

“Unlike the ‘honest’ reviews on sites like Yelp, this writer knows what he’s talking about. He’s a professional,  with decades in the business, not a well-intentioned but clueless amateur.”

= Holly Titler, Los Angeles

“This concise guidebook was exactly what I needed to make the most of my limited time in town.”

= Tanner Davis, Milwaukee

This is another of his books with spot-on reviews of the most exciting restaurants in town. Some will merit only a line or two, just to bring them to your attention. Others deserve a half page or more. 

“The fact that he doesn’t accept free meals in exchange for a good review makes all the difference in his sometimes brutally accurate reviews.”

= Jerry Adams, El Paso

“Exciting” does not necessarily mean expensive. The area’s top spots get the recognition they so richly deserve (and that they so loudly demand), but there are plenty of “sensible alternatives” for those looking for good food handsomely prepared by cooks and chefs who really care what they “plate up” in the kitchen.

For those with a touch of Guy Fieri, Delaplaine ferrets out the best food for those on a budget. That dingy looking dive bar around the corner may serve up one of the juiciest burgers in town, perfect to wash down with a locally brewed craft beer.

Whatever your predilection or taste, cuisine of choice or your budget, you may rely on Andrew Delaplaine not to disappoint.

Delaplaine dines anonymously at the Publisher’s expense. No restaurant listed in this series has paid a penny or given so much as a free meal to be included.

Bon Appétit!

Leseprobe

2022

Chicago

Restaurants

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The Food Enthusiast’s

Long Weekend Guide

Andrew Delaplaine

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Andrew Delaplaine is the Restaurant Enthusiast.

When he’s not playing tennis,

he dines anonymously

at the Publisher’s (considerable) expense.

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Senior Editor – James Cubby

Copyright © by Gramercy Park Press - All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

Introduction

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Getting About

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The A to Z Listings

Ridiculously Extravagant

Sensible Alternatives

Quality Bargain Spots

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Nightlife

INTRODUCTION

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What a wonderful town, Chicagoland.

I couldn’t believe the place when I first saw it. I was coming from New York (back in the ’70s) in fine weather in early summer. It was night. I took a cab into town and walked up the Magnificent Mile in awe. Ladies and gentlemen walked down the street arm-in-arm, actually promenading.

There was grass on Michigan Avenue. Real grass. I reached down and touched it. You wouldn’t find grass like that on Fifth Avenue. No, sir.

There was an electricity in the air in Chicago I noticed that very first night. And I’ve always been aware of it. There’s that same sense in New York, of course, a sensation of excitement, of swiftness, of opportunity—of hustle—but somehow it was different here in Chicago. The pace here has slightly less of an edge to it. The people are nicer. They are polite. They are not rude, crude or rough. Maybe the word I’m looking for is Normal. It’s that Midwest upbringing, I tell myself, and that must be it. This may be the City of Big Shoulders, but the people inhabiting it are as nice as the farmers plowing fields 300 miles away. (Well, there are certain neighborhoods....)

That first night I spent sleeping on the floor of our branch office at the corner of Oak and Rush, which I found out later was quite an exciting corner with a fascinating history. When I woke up in the morning and looked out of the floor-to-ceiling windows, I saw people swimming in the lake.

Swimming!

In the lake. In the 1970s!

I was aghast.

Back in New York, you wouldn’t dip your toe in the Hudson River or the East River.

That was then. This is now. Now they’re harvesting oysters from beds in the East River.

I remember running down and asking a cop how people could swim in the filthy water. He explained that the river flowing into the lake had been reversed. The river flowed backwards! The water was clean.

I couldn’t believe it.

But this was just the beginning of a long love affair with Chicago. There’s nothing not to like about this town—except the freezing wind that comes off the lake in the wintertime.

A couple of years later, in February, I was having a business lunch at the top of the Hancock Tower in what is now called the Signature Room. A blizzard blew snow off the lake so hard the snow moved horizontally, not vertically. Looking over the shoulder of the person opposite me, I saw the building swaying. I didn’t know if the Hancock Tower was swaying or the building I was looking at. I am not an engineer. I just knew this was no place for a Southern boy.

After lunch, my head bent down, I made my way back to my office and announced to the staff that the Editorial Department of our travel magazine (that would be me) was moving to our offices in Miami, at least for the winter months.

I’ve returned dozens of times, of course—even in February—and the simple truth is that whether it’s winter, summer, spring or fall, there’s no place like this Toddlin’ Town. 

Before we get into the nitty-gritty, I’m reprinting Carl Sanders’s famous poem “Chicago,” first published I think in 1914. It captures the city like no other verse ever written.

HOG Butcher for the World,

Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,

Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;

Stormy, husky, brawling,

City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for

I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps

luring the farm boys.

And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it

is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to

kill again.

And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the

faces of women and children I have seen the marks

of wanton hunger.

And having answered so I turn once more to those who

sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer

and say to them:

Come and show me another city with lifted head singing

so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.

Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on

job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the

little soft cities;

Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning

as a savage pitted against the wilderness,

Bareheaded,

Shoveling,

Wrecking,

Planning,

Building, breaking, rebuilding,

Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with

white teeth,

Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young

man laughs,

Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has

never lost a battle,

Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse.

and under his ribs the heart of the people,

Laughing!

Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of

Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog

Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with

Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.