Warmed by the delights of four big bowls of steaming ramen at Rumplings in five day’s time, I asked my baby boomer pals on Facebook a simple question this week: When did you first encounter instant ramen? What did you think of it when you did?
Continue reading Ramen guys do ramen and dumplings at Rumplings
Category Archives: BY PRICE FOR TWO
Dundee done be a gastropub now
What’s a gastropub, anyway? This culinary neologism has been floating around since the middle of the last decade, and some say it cries out for mockery. “Gastropub”? It sounds, a bit unnervingly, like some kind of medical condition afflicting the digestive system.
What’s more, plenty of the more pompous food scribes decry the term. I still remember an odd analysis by one local food reviewer, who dismissed “gastropub” as an annoying label, misused and meaningless, reserved for bars that wanted to serve house-made ketchup.
Continue reading Dundee done be a gastropub now
Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, get your donuts here
What warms an icy winter morning better than a hot, freshly made donut? Are you with me? Then you’ll want to Schoolhouse Rock right over to LowBrow across from Kroger, where a charming little donut shop run by a friendly Cambodian immigrant family recently opened in the tiny building that recently housed Chicago Gyros.
If you can’t wait to get them home or scarf them in your car, you can settle right down at either of two cozy tables. Go. You’ll be glad.
Clifton Donuts
2317 Brownsboro Road
749-6806
The pizza caper goes down at Cafe Lou Lou
Who’d like to get in on a caper? I’m not talking about a hilariously wacky criminal plot. Even if it were victimless and presumably foolproof, I’m naturally nervous about activities that could land me behind bars. Nor an ancient Celtic jumping and bounding dance, either. I’ll take my exercise in milder doses, thanks!
No, I’m mentally munching into an edible caper, those little green BB-shaped things made from the pickled bud of a Mediterranean lily-like flower, an item that most of us buy in little briny jars from Lotsa Pasta and stash on a refrigerator shelf, never to be seen again.
Continue reading The pizza caper goes down at Cafe Lou Lou
We eat 2,000 grains of rice at charming Bentuhua Teahouse
“I like rice,” the late, wacky stand-up comic Mitch Hedberg famously said. “Rice is great if you’re hungry and want 2,000 of something.”
This is funny because it’s a presumably true statement about a reality that we’ve probably never considered before, and yanks a laugh out of our bellies before we suddenly come up short with the obvious follow-up: “So what?”
Continue reading We eat 2,000 grains of rice at charming Bentuhua Teahouse
8UP is stunning, but how about the food?
Even after many years of wisecracking about food, I have to doff my toque to Calvin Trillin, whose culinary scribblings in The New Yorker and elsewhere surely qualify him as the funniest food writer ever.
So, upon my recent visit to 8UP, the self-described “Elevated Drinkery and Kitchen” atop the new downtown Hilton Garden Inn, it was with great glee that I went a’Googling in search of my favorite Trillin quote about rooftop eateries.
Continue reading 8UP is stunning, but how about the food?
Mapping the Mediterranean at the Grape Leaf
Quick! Can you find the Mediterranean Sea on a map?
This should be easy. It’s that long body of water that stretches from the Straits of Gibraltar at the far end of Spain, all the way over past Italy and Greece Continue reading Mapping the Mediterranean at the Grape Leaf
Craft House: “You’re not really here for the food, are you, Bob?”
Remember the old joke about a hunter’s repeated efforts to bag a giant grizzly bear? It’s a little too long and risque to quote here in full, but it ends with the bear lovingly whispering, “You’re not really here for the hunting, are you, Bob?”
Craft House in Crescent Hill is kind of like that too. Continue reading Craft House: “You’re not really here for the food, are you, Bob?”
Signs of the apocalypse: The White Castle veggie slider
I can’t resist mentioning this briefly, since my mini-report on the HotBytes forum and Facebook on New Year’s Day blew up with “Likes” and comments, hinting that there’s public interest in this bizarre development: White Castle, at least for a while, now offers a veggie burger, of all things. They’re only 99 cents each, cheap, but like their meatful siblings, it takes a few to satisfy an appetite.
Continue reading Signs of the apocalypse: The White Castle veggie slider
Mitchell’s Fish Market re-chains, stays about the same
Here’s one reason why I don’t often review corporate chain eateries: They’re generally predictable. Even the good ones don’t change much, unless the stockholders scream for change, and nothing good generally comes of that.
Take Mitchell’s Fish Market: I last reviewed it in November 2001, when it and its then-corporate partner Martini Italian Bistro had just arrived as anchor restaurants the new Summit shopping center. Continue reading Mitchell’s Fish Market re-chains, stays about the same