Best of Chicago 2004
Best personal encounter with a celebrity
Jerry Springer
The sun shines bright on Michigan Avenue, but it always even brighter when the most unlikely of gladhanders is casually pounding the pavement, getting the cheeriest greetings and giving them in turn by well-wishers left and right. No Cusack, no Corgan: is that Jerry Springer, rouser of the rabble, in the nice business suit, the politico’s winning smile? Indeed. He’s such a likable presence when you catch him on city streets, and seems so liked by everyone who “Hey!!”s and “Halloo!!!”s, you almost have trouble imagining anyone remembers what he does for a living.
Best film with a Chicago scene in the last year or so
The Company
Robert Altman’s first dalliance with digital video is more post-documentary morsel of implication than a true drama, but it’s filled with rich, offhand glimpses of Chicago. The most emphatic would be the dance numbers in Grant Park with the skyline gleaming against the night. But while Altman’s inarticulate characters say hardly a thing, the city is a powerful presence, starting with the North Wabash where the production prepped and shot much of the movie, including the not-Joffrey Ballet dance studio and third-story glimpses of the El in the background of Neve Campbell’s character’s apartment. Then there are the understated appearances of Neo, Marché, and an Old Town tavern where Campbell and beau-to-be James Franco flirt with looks and posture across the bar, a pool table, an old-fashioned phone booth, all to Elvis Costello singing “My Funny Valentine.”
Best Movie Theater to see blockbusters
AMC River East 21
The big screens of yore are a fading memory, and now cinema’s definitely a “medium”—at least in the scale of the screens where you can watch the brightest and biggest and loudest of movies. Fifty years ago, a movie theater like the Century would take up half a city block, instead of merely two new floors atop the shell of a wedding cake façade. Two years ago, “new build” megaplexes were planned across the city and suburbs before the financing fell through, so downtown Chicago’s got but one big, shiny pleasure dome. Many of the amenities may be duplicated in the ‘burbs, but the proximity to downtown, river North and all the bus lines running to Navy Pier are one more plus to the stadium seated, sonically crisp surround sound, generally bright projection that mark a movie at River East 21.
22 E Illinois St (312) 596-0333
Best place to drink tequila
Salud Tequila Lounge
The best place to drink tequila is on a deserted, white sand beach along the Gulf of Mexico at sunniest sunset, but closer to home, Wicker Park’s Salud eases the pain. The owners of Cans (and the late Big Wig) took over the Holiday Club space, gave it a sleek, appropriately smoky, below the border, below-the-belt décor. For non-tipplers of tequila, there’s a full bar, but the fifty or so specialty tequilas are the attraction, dividing into "Blancos," unaged clear tequila bottled after distillation; mellow "Reposados," aged in wood tanks or barrels for up to a year; and aged "Anejos" are matched by an imposing selection of "reserves de casa," with a range of cognac-like entries that bite the palate and the wallet. Signature items like Roasted Pork Tenderloin are designed to complement the tequila savor.
1471 N. Milwaukee Av., (773)276-7582
Best new restaurant (opened in the last year or so)
Avec
Moving across the alley, the partners of Blackbird, including James Beard Award-winning Paul Kahan, partnered with chef Koren Grieveson, to turn a 1,500 square foot storefront into a 49-seat wine bar that finally makes small dishes the new big thing. Intense flavors of an elevated minimalism, drawn with shrewd discernment from across the Mediterranean, are to be savored daily, including palate-tingling handcrafted salamis. An immense woodburning stove from Australia isn’t the hottest thing: it’s the crowds from dusk to 2am, shoulder-to-shoulder to share the gustatory delights and serendipitous camaraderie.
615 W. Randolph, (312) 377-2002
Best ice cream shop
Margie’s Candies
Hurry up, order a Turtle! Gimme some hazelnut truffles! Quick! Grab that booth. Wasn’t it all this way in the days before we were born? Endless summers and root beer floats and the sugarlicious half-gallon monsterific World’s Largest Sundae? Shakes to literally take your breath and hand dipped candy and amazing marzipan and chocolate sauce and eighteen percent butterfat superflavors? (There’s a rumor than one page of the menu has actual food on it.) A Bucktown mainstay since 1921, legend holds that this third-generation family-owned institution has hosted everyone from Al Capone to the Beatles to Liz Phair. Margie’s motto: "Highest quality, best possible service, and be proud of your product." The hot red-orange script of the Margie’s neon is one more old-fashioned, even anachronistic, element to savor.
1960 N. Western Ave, Chicago, (773) 384-1035
margiescandies.com
Best place to buy denim
US # 1
Felix Unger-neat, this Milwaukee Avenue storefront with the blah façade holds a mini-museum of skinny hipster-guy clothing, mostly from the 1960s-1970s; along with all kinds of gaudy shirts you wouldn’t be caught wearing tucked in, there’s a wall of jeans from faded to black to blue to bell bottoms and flares and boot cuts and back in. (Plus the boots to wear them in.)
1509 N. Milwaukee 773.489.9428
Best place to buy foreign magazines
Europa Books
Feeling stateless on State? Europa Books embraces more than a couple of lingua francas in their inconspicuous storefront, with foreign dailies in several tongues and an emphasis on Latin American language as well as titles in French, German and some Italian and Portuguese. (How many languages do you want your Harry Potter paperbacks in?) From Hello! to a variety of Vogues, Europa is as packed as a Southwest jet with fashion, fashionista, food, music, movie and soccer periodicals to bring your niche of the world closer.
832 N. State, Chicago, (312) 335-9677
Best brunch place
Flo
Low-key and uncluttered, Flo is an oasis of calm on a busy thoroughfare. The Southwestern taste-of-New Mexico menu is a treat day and night, but breakfast and brunch at a decent price in the emerging neighborhood are the best. There’s huevos rancheros, a red chile enchilada, a tasty chorizo scramble, and breakfast tacos are a treat: corn tortillas grilled with cheddar, stuffed with portabello and scrambled eggs with puddles of red chile and a pile of black beans. The egg sandwich—scrambled with roasted red papers, spinach and basil mayo on brioche is tangy, too. Add to the savories the out-of-place charm of the room with its understated folk art and the charmed diners and Flo is a place to savor. Specials change every couple of weeks and there are a variety of mimosas and sangria.
1434 W. Chicago (312) 243-0477
Best restaurant
Green Zebra
Shawn McClain’s sprung from the mostly seafood menu at Spring (with partners Sue Kim-Drohomyrecky and Peter Drohomyrecky) and foodies are flocking from around the nation as well as the gentrified West Side: a vegetarian menu, largely made up of small plates, that even the most inveterate meat-eater can enjoy the taste of? What have you done right to get almost 1,400 words—“enough… true winners [to make it] far more than a curious and noble experiment”-- in the New York Times and in the International Herald tribune, covering most of a broadsheet of newsprint? Named after a variety of heirloom tomato, the chartreuse room, seating bout 50, is sedate and soothing in a familiar Chicago kind of underminimalism. But it’s the thirty or so items on the menu on any given visit that wow, including inventive salads, a rich polenta and an avocado panna cotta, tomato gelee and crème fraiche concoction won’t be forgotten. One chicken and one fish dish is on offer each day, and butter is not a no-no.
1460 W Chicago, (312) 243-7100
Best thing about the Daley-Tribune feud
Important issues continue to be ignored
“The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” “The Mayor is pissed!” “The multibillion-dollar conglomerate is pissed!” There’s a silent slapstick move that’s been described as the “spread-eagle and scram”: get caught at something, jump in the air while making a big face and run like hell. Questions about crime, health, education, the concentration of media power in the hands of an immense corporation, the concentration of civic power in a politician who will not let go? “No, he did it!” “No, they did it!” Whimper, whimper, whine, c’mon, kids, let’s put on a show.
Best male radio voice
Ira Glass
Among dozens of id-i-o-syn-cratic radio voices from the world of guys in Chicago radio history we could pull out the still-hill-and-valleying antediluvian wavy-haired inflections of 86-year-old social troglodyte Paul Harvey (“Paul Har-veee NEWS.”); the unforgettable gravel of the recently passed Lu Palmer; the smooth-hip of 1970s-era John “Records” Landecker on “50,000-watt clear channel” WLS. Try as you might to think, um, of, well, another STORYTELLER who’s put his im, um, imprint on the inner ear of a generation or radio listeners passing on into their own comfy middle ages, we could, could, could do worse than attempt to mimic the rhythms of our very own, this Chicago’s Ira Glass. Love, lust, hate, deny: he’s still there at the end of the Pier, encouraging a new generations of storytellers to only, only hesitate when editing their digital sound files.
Best restaurant to go off the Atkins diet
Tufano’s Vernon Park Tap
There’s no need for excuses to pile on Italian cuisine family style, but if it’s a swift solid return to rational eating, you’re kicking for after getting all stringbeany and feeling munchy on Atkins, west Little Italy’s unadorned home of the piled-on pasta chosen from a wall-sized chalkboard would be our warm-and-friendly favorite after you’ve thrown down that set of body fat calipers. Weekends, the authentic southern Italian delights include splendid ravioli and cavatelli.
1073 West Vernon Park Place (312) 733-3393
Jerry Springer
The sun shines bright on Michigan Avenue, but it always even brighter when the most unlikely of gladhanders is casually pounding the pavement, getting the cheeriest greetings and giving them in turn by well-wishers left and right. No Cusack, no Corgan: is that Jerry Springer, rouser of the rabble, in the nice business suit, the politico’s winning smile? Indeed. He’s such a likable presence when you catch him on city streets, and seems so liked by everyone who “Hey!!”s and “Halloo!!!”s, you almost have trouble imagining anyone remembers what he does for a living.
Best film with a Chicago scene in the last year or so
The Company
Robert Altman’s first dalliance with digital video is more post-documentary morsel of implication than a true drama, but it’s filled with rich, offhand glimpses of Chicago. The most emphatic would be the dance numbers in Grant Park with the skyline gleaming against the night. But while Altman’s inarticulate characters say hardly a thing, the city is a powerful presence, starting with the North Wabash where the production prepped and shot much of the movie, including the not-Joffrey Ballet dance studio and third-story glimpses of the El in the background of Neve Campbell’s character’s apartment. Then there are the understated appearances of Neo, Marché, and an Old Town tavern where Campbell and beau-to-be James Franco flirt with looks and posture across the bar, a pool table, an old-fashioned phone booth, all to Elvis Costello singing “My Funny Valentine.”
Best Movie Theater to see blockbusters
AMC River East 21
The big screens of yore are a fading memory, and now cinema’s definitely a “medium”—at least in the scale of the screens where you can watch the brightest and biggest and loudest of movies. Fifty years ago, a movie theater like the Century would take up half a city block, instead of merely two new floors atop the shell of a wedding cake façade. Two years ago, “new build” megaplexes were planned across the city and suburbs before the financing fell through, so downtown Chicago’s got but one big, shiny pleasure dome. Many of the amenities may be duplicated in the ‘burbs, but the proximity to downtown, river North and all the bus lines running to Navy Pier are one more plus to the stadium seated, sonically crisp surround sound, generally bright projection that mark a movie at River East 21.
22 E Illinois St (312) 596-0333
Best place to drink tequila
Salud Tequila Lounge
The best place to drink tequila is on a deserted, white sand beach along the Gulf of Mexico at sunniest sunset, but closer to home, Wicker Park’s Salud eases the pain. The owners of Cans (and the late Big Wig) took over the Holiday Club space, gave it a sleek, appropriately smoky, below the border, below-the-belt décor. For non-tipplers of tequila, there’s a full bar, but the fifty or so specialty tequilas are the attraction, dividing into "Blancos," unaged clear tequila bottled after distillation; mellow "Reposados," aged in wood tanks or barrels for up to a year; and aged "Anejos" are matched by an imposing selection of "reserves de casa," with a range of cognac-like entries that bite the palate and the wallet. Signature items like Roasted Pork Tenderloin are designed to complement the tequila savor.
1471 N. Milwaukee Av., (773)276-7582
Best new restaurant (opened in the last year or so)
Avec
Moving across the alley, the partners of Blackbird, including James Beard Award-winning Paul Kahan, partnered with chef Koren Grieveson, to turn a 1,500 square foot storefront into a 49-seat wine bar that finally makes small dishes the new big thing. Intense flavors of an elevated minimalism, drawn with shrewd discernment from across the Mediterranean, are to be savored daily, including palate-tingling handcrafted salamis. An immense woodburning stove from Australia isn’t the hottest thing: it’s the crowds from dusk to 2am, shoulder-to-shoulder to share the gustatory delights and serendipitous camaraderie.
615 W. Randolph, (312) 377-2002
Best ice cream shop
Margie’s Candies
Hurry up, order a Turtle! Gimme some hazelnut truffles! Quick! Grab that booth. Wasn’t it all this way in the days before we were born? Endless summers and root beer floats and the sugarlicious half-gallon monsterific World’s Largest Sundae? Shakes to literally take your breath and hand dipped candy and amazing marzipan and chocolate sauce and eighteen percent butterfat superflavors? (There’s a rumor than one page of the menu has actual food on it.) A Bucktown mainstay since 1921, legend holds that this third-generation family-owned institution has hosted everyone from Al Capone to the Beatles to Liz Phair. Margie’s motto: "Highest quality, best possible service, and be proud of your product." The hot red-orange script of the Margie’s neon is one more old-fashioned, even anachronistic, element to savor.
1960 N. Western Ave, Chicago, (773) 384-1035
margiescandies.com
Best place to buy denim
US # 1
Felix Unger-neat, this Milwaukee Avenue storefront with the blah façade holds a mini-museum of skinny hipster-guy clothing, mostly from the 1960s-1970s; along with all kinds of gaudy shirts you wouldn’t be caught wearing tucked in, there’s a wall of jeans from faded to black to blue to bell bottoms and flares and boot cuts and back in. (Plus the boots to wear them in.)
1509 N. Milwaukee 773.489.9428
Best place to buy foreign magazines
Europa Books
Feeling stateless on State? Europa Books embraces more than a couple of lingua francas in their inconspicuous storefront, with foreign dailies in several tongues and an emphasis on Latin American language as well as titles in French, German and some Italian and Portuguese. (How many languages do you want your Harry Potter paperbacks in?) From Hello! to a variety of Vogues, Europa is as packed as a Southwest jet with fashion, fashionista, food, music, movie and soccer periodicals to bring your niche of the world closer.
832 N. State, Chicago, (312) 335-9677
Best brunch place
Flo
Low-key and uncluttered, Flo is an oasis of calm on a busy thoroughfare. The Southwestern taste-of-New Mexico menu is a treat day and night, but breakfast and brunch at a decent price in the emerging neighborhood are the best. There’s huevos rancheros, a red chile enchilada, a tasty chorizo scramble, and breakfast tacos are a treat: corn tortillas grilled with cheddar, stuffed with portabello and scrambled eggs with puddles of red chile and a pile of black beans. The egg sandwich—scrambled with roasted red papers, spinach and basil mayo on brioche is tangy, too. Add to the savories the out-of-place charm of the room with its understated folk art and the charmed diners and Flo is a place to savor. Specials change every couple of weeks and there are a variety of mimosas and sangria.
1434 W. Chicago (312) 243-0477
Best restaurant
Green Zebra
Shawn McClain’s sprung from the mostly seafood menu at Spring (with partners Sue Kim-Drohomyrecky and Peter Drohomyrecky) and foodies are flocking from around the nation as well as the gentrified West Side: a vegetarian menu, largely made up of small plates, that even the most inveterate meat-eater can enjoy the taste of? What have you done right to get almost 1,400 words—“enough… true winners [to make it] far more than a curious and noble experiment”-- in the New York Times and in the International Herald tribune, covering most of a broadsheet of newsprint? Named after a variety of heirloom tomato, the chartreuse room, seating bout 50, is sedate and soothing in a familiar Chicago kind of underminimalism. But it’s the thirty or so items on the menu on any given visit that wow, including inventive salads, a rich polenta and an avocado panna cotta, tomato gelee and crème fraiche concoction won’t be forgotten. One chicken and one fish dish is on offer each day, and butter is not a no-no.
1460 W Chicago, (312) 243-7100
Best thing about the Daley-Tribune feud
Important issues continue to be ignored
“The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” “The Mayor is pissed!” “The multibillion-dollar conglomerate is pissed!” There’s a silent slapstick move that’s been described as the “spread-eagle and scram”: get caught at something, jump in the air while making a big face and run like hell. Questions about crime, health, education, the concentration of media power in the hands of an immense corporation, the concentration of civic power in a politician who will not let go? “No, he did it!” “No, they did it!” Whimper, whimper, whine, c’mon, kids, let’s put on a show.
Best male radio voice
Ira Glass
Among dozens of id-i-o-syn-cratic radio voices from the world of guys in Chicago radio history we could pull out the still-hill-and-valleying antediluvian wavy-haired inflections of 86-year-old social troglodyte Paul Harvey (“Paul Har-veee NEWS.”); the unforgettable gravel of the recently passed Lu Palmer; the smooth-hip of 1970s-era John “Records” Landecker on “50,000-watt clear channel” WLS. Try as you might to think, um, of, well, another STORYTELLER who’s put his im, um, imprint on the inner ear of a generation or radio listeners passing on into their own comfy middle ages, we could, could, could do worse than attempt to mimic the rhythms of our very own, this Chicago’s Ira Glass. Love, lust, hate, deny: he’s still there at the end of the Pier, encouraging a new generations of storytellers to only, only hesitate when editing their digital sound files.
Best restaurant to go off the Atkins diet
Tufano’s Vernon Park Tap
There’s no need for excuses to pile on Italian cuisine family style, but if it’s a swift solid return to rational eating, you’re kicking for after getting all stringbeany and feeling munchy on Atkins, west Little Italy’s unadorned home of the piled-on pasta chosen from a wall-sized chalkboard would be our warm-and-friendly favorite after you’ve thrown down that set of body fat calipers. Weekends, the authentic southern Italian delights include splendid ravioli and cavatelli.
1073 West Vernon Park Place (312) 733-3393
