[Via Gapers Block] Check Please! is something of a Chicago institution. Airing on Chicago’s PBS channel, WTTW, the show rounds up 3 Chicagoans who recommend and review eachothers’ favorite restaurants. Back in 2001, then State Senator Barack Obama appeared on the show to recommend his favorite restaurant – Hyde Park’s Dixie Kitchen. The Obama episode will re-air Friday, January 16th at 8 PM, just in time for inauguration. Centerstage Chicago also has a list of Obama’s other favorite restaurants in the city, including Topolobampo, Spiaggia, and Fiesta Pizza. At the right are Barack and Michelle visting Spiaggia for their anniversary.
Friday Foodie Link: Obama on Check Please
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Happy New Year!
Happy New Year, Everyone! In honor of 2009 – here are some global food traditions. According to Epicurious, some particularly auspicious foodgroups from around the world include: grapes, greens, fish, pork, legumes, and cakes. Sustainable table has even more good luck food traditions, including eating twelve grapes at midnight in Latin America and Spain, lentils in Brazil and Vasilopita, a cake with a coin inside of it, in Greece.
Finer Things Club: Torrone for the holidays
As the holiday season draws to a close, we are finishing up the last of the Christmas goodies – including one of our favorites torrone. It’s a pretty simple confection made of egg whites, honey, almonds and sugar. Popular across Southern Europe, this almond nougat is known as Turrón (Spanish), torró (Catalan), or torrone (Italian).The origin of Turron is Arabic, and was created by moors in the town of Jijona, in Valencia, Spain. Spanish turron comes in 2 basic varieties – soft Jijona or turrón blando, and hard Alicante or turrón duro, similar to peanut brittle.
Torrone is most commonly consumed around the holidays – La Florentine is one of the most popular varieties in the US, and has individually-warpped portions of soft torrone in Vanilla, Lemon and Orange flavors. You can even get La Florentine torrone online, though it is pretty commonly available in larger grocery stores. Delicious Days even has a recipe to try on your own, even though it seems pretty tricky.
Filed under Finer Things Club, Holidays, World Eats
Brazil: Texas de Brazil
Texas de Brazil
Woodfield Shopping Center
Schaumburg, IL
Holy crap this is a lot of food. And a lot of buffet centerpiece. No seriously, check it out… Though you might not be able to tell, this centerpiece is probably at least 6 feet tall. The whole Texas de Brazil experience is about opulence and excess, from the giant funeral pyres out front (or giant torches of some sort) to the high ceilings covered in red leather (?!?) to the dozens of gauchos and the shiny glass bar. So its no wonder then that this place will put a dent in your wallet ($45 per person for all-you-can-eat dinner, $30 for just the salad bar). We recently attended a family dinner here, and this is definitely different than M and my usual dining repertoire.
Texas de Brazil is like most Brazilian steakhouses in the US, in that the main shtick is that gauchos come around to the table with giant skewers of meat. At Texas de Brazil you are given a token that is red on one side and green on the other. If you want more meat you flip the token to green and a gaucho will promptly arrive with a giant skewer and serve some more food. Now at our table of 15, it was kind of a tight squeeze, so oftentimes the skewers and giant knife blades were literally only inches from you. A little disconcerting but you got your food, I guess. There was filet mignon, shrimp, lamb chops, pork medallions in bacon, along with a dozen or more other meat varieties. Sides including mashed potatoes and plantains were placed on the table.
However, aside from the never ending parade of meats there were some interesting items in the salad bar, including some that were more or less Brazilian. Though mainly comprised of soups, salads, cheeses and bread, the buffet itself boasted Farofa (toasted manioc flour – used as a condiment) and Feijoda (Black bean stew). Trying to keep it as “Brazilian” as possible we ordered the popular cola drink Guarana, as well as Brazilian Cokes, which came in tiny glass bottles. But feijoda and farofa do not a meal make. We ended up ordering a lovely crème brûlée (not included in the price), but by that time we were pretty stuffed. So, go with voracious carnivores or don’t go at all. And maybe don’t eat lunch beforehand…
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Getting Ready for the New Year: How to say “cheers” in every language
Though it’s not quite New Years (2009?!)I thought the following link would be appropriate – how to say ‘cheers’ in many different languages. This is the most comprehensive list I’ve found so far – and some of these are pretty interesting! I like one of those listed for Sweden: Helan går (Everything goes) and Bolivia: Salud y amor y tiempo para disfrutarlo (Health and love and time for fun).
Filed under Links
Merry Christmas, Everybody
This is a picture I personally took a few weeks ago. Santa and Mrs. Claus apparently like Rosati’s Pizza after a long day on the job. Happy Holidays everyone – happy eating!
Southern US: Smoque
Smoque
3800 N. Pulaski
Chicago, IL
So obviously, the ‘south’ is not a country, but it does have a rich culinary tradition of its own, so we’re comfortable including it on ETW. Well, mostly because it’s a darn tasty cuisine. Our latest adventure into Southern Foodways is Smoque Barbecue. Smoque has gotten a lot of press, so we went in with some skepticism. Could it really be as good as all this hype? Short answer = yes. We arrived at 11 AM on a Saturday, right when Smoque was opening. We could tell that they did a brisk takeout service, from the fact that there was already a line, and someone had called in an order of 20+ sandwiches to go.
The menu itself is probably what you would expect from a BBQ place – the choices of meat are Pulled Pork, Brisket, Chicken and Texas sausage (which they began to make this Summer). They also have 2 types of ribs: Baby back and St. Louis. What was interesting though was that you could order small side orders or some of the meats – so if you felt like sampling something, but didn’t want a whole sandwich or a platter you can do it for $3. A ‘taste’ 1/4 slab of ribs is $4.
For lunch we opted for a Pulled Pork Sandwich platter ($8.95) and Sliced Brisket sandwich platter ($8.95). Each of these came with one side as well as homemade cole slaw. Interestingly, even for a take-in order, though there is some sauce on the sandwich, it isn’t slathered, and the order comes with a cup of the BBQ sauce came on the side. At first we were skeptical, but it makes a lot of sense since then you can add as much as you want and the roll doesn’t fall to mush. In the end we ended up using most of the cup anyway, since Smoque’s stock in trade is its peppery, vinegary, yet semi-sweet BBQ sauce. Delicious – not too too sweet, but not to vinegary either, I don’t know what they do, but they’re doing it right.
Onto the sandwiches – both were amazing. As you can see, the portions were generous. One of our sides was baked beans – which were excellent – turns out that they cook them in with the meat and BBQ scraps – so they have some nice smoky flavor. The mac and cheese was also delightfully creamy and decadent, and we would definitely recommend it to Mac and Cheese aficionados. The one disappointment was the small peach cobbler, which was only so-so ($1.95). The brisket, which you can get either sliced or chopped is uber-tender and comes with a nice smoky, crusty exterior. My sister, who doesn’t even like BBQ, loved it. the pulled pork sandwich though, was my favorite. The pork itself is light pink from the smoking and practically melts in your mouth. We were raving about our food for days.
Truth be told though, the location is pretty random – it’s right off of the Kennedy expressway, and tucked into an unassuming building in a mostly residential area. However, a few weeks after our maiden voyage, we made the venture again to get takeout. Now I understand why they do such a brisk takeout business – it tastes good even after an hour car ride! So if you can make the trip over – you should try to do it – this is some good BBQ.
Holiday Food Around the World
So we know about German Stollen and Italian Panettone – but there are so many other holiday foods from around the world that we never knew about. As ausual, Wikipedia provides a treaure trove of information about international and American holiday foods. It’s fun to explore. We have definitely not heard of some of these – like Chilean Cola de mono (literally, monkey tail) is a festive vanilla-flavored alcoholic coffee drink.
Filed under Finer Things Club, Holidays, World Eats
Friday Foodie Link: Macarons on Michigan Avenue
Macarons are perhaps one of my favorite cookies – mostly because they come in a million different flavors and are so darn photogenic! So I’m a latecomer to this news, but I have just been informed that there is a temporary Macaron store in the Park Hyatt (800 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago). The temporary story is the brainchild of Andrés Lara, the pastry chef at NoMi, in the Park Hyatt. The store is called “La Boule de Noël” (round Christmas Tree Ornament) and is open 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, until Dec. 31. Each Macaron is $2, in a range of flavors from traditional to exotic. I’m there!
Flickr Credit: Yuichi.sakuraba’s macarons from Pierre Hermé, Tokyo.
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[Road Trip Eats] Cambodia: Kolap
Kolap
601 N Dale St
St. Paul
We take every opportunity we can to eat cuisine that is not available in Chicago – and one cuisine that is not available at all in Illinois is Cambodian. The twin cities has a high Hmong immigrant population, many of whom were most recently from Cambodia. Kolap is a bit off the beaten track, in a nondescript storefront. The room was simply decorated and at 1pm on on a Sunday, was buzzing with a huge party in full swing – a Hmong family of 20+ digging into an elaborate lunch.
Though the restaurant itself was stark white and simple we noticed a disco ball and some pretty serious speakers. Perhaps Kolap turns into a dance club after hours? We were also struck by the interesting array of pan-Asian sauces on the table, as seen below.
Though the menu does in fact include some pretty esoteric dishes like pig intestines, stomach and ears (Pak Lou – $8.50) and Octopus with green peppers ($10.50), we started out slow. L ordered the chicken Lot Chaa ($7.50), a typical Cambodian dish. Lot Chaa (seen below) reminded L somewhat of the Thai dish Pad See Eiw, but with small fat rice noodles. M ordered Chicken with Green Peppers (Cha Kroueng Sach-Mouen, $8.50). However, this dish was lost in translation. M was thinking of green bell peppers, when in reality the dish came chock-a-block with spicy green Thai chilies. Even the normally heat-resistant M was breathing fire. K ordered the classic standby Pad Thai ($8.50), which was a nice rendition with a huge portion. The Cambodian rendition of this Thai dish packed an extra green pepper punch, though. The menu at Kolap is truly huge, and we are sad we won’t be able to sample some more options, but for anyone in MSP who is a Thai food fan, Kolap is a great introduction to Cambodian.
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When is a Cookie a Cookie?
Addressing a question that the eaters often contemplate, Slate’s Sara Dickerman recently had a discussion with two foodies, Dorie Greenspan and David Lebovitz, over what exactly makes a cookie a cookie…
It’s actually quite hard to define a cookie when you get down to it. The adjective “sweet” usually comes to mind, but I was eating a Dutch windmill cookie the other day and was surprised at how savory it was…. Butter is a fairly universal cookie ingredient but not an essential one, either. Macarons and macaroons and meringues and the like are made with little or none of it. In the end, I suppose my definition of a cookie has something to do with portability and with guilty pleasure….
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Cuba: Heladería Coppelia
In many countries the water and gas industries are nationalized. But how about the ice cream industry? Well, that’s the case of Coppelia, the official ice cream of Cuba. After the 1959 revolution, Fidel Castro, who was himself a fan of ice cream, wanted to create a state-run ice cream brand that would surpass any foreign varieties in quality. And so Coppelia was born. Every town in Cuba has a Heladería Coppelia, but the centerpiece of the Coppelia empire is located in Havana. The Havana Coppelia building is a mid-century marvel, made of colored glass in steel, and designed by Mario Girona in 1966. The whole complex takes up nearly an entire block in the Vedado district of Havana and seats over 700. The Girona building rose to some fame after it appeared in Tomás Gutiérez Alea’s 1994 film Fresa y chocolate (Strawberries and Chocolate).
What is interesting is that there are in fact 2 lines at the Havana Coppelia, one for those (usually tourists) who are paying CUC (Cuban Convertible Peso) and one for locals paying in CUP (Cuban pesos). Needless to say, the tourist-filled line tends to move faster. When Coppelia first opened, it boasted more flavors than Baskin Robbins at the time, though a selection 2 or 3 flavors a day is the standard nowadays. The logo of Coppelia stores are ballerina legs, as seen above, surely a reference to the ballet Coppelia.
[Flickr CC photo credits: top – arghon , middle –veo veo, bottom- esti]
Filed under World Eats
Sweden: Happy St. Lucia’s Day!
Happy St. Lucia’s Day! St. Lucia’s day is the day dedicated to the Sicilian martyr St. Lucy, and is traditionally celebrated in Sweden on December 13th, and represents the start of the holiday season. Like most other winter holidays, St. Lucia’s Day boasts some unique treats, especially in Sweden: saffron buns (lussekatt) and gingersnap cookies (pepparkakor). On St. Lucia Day in Sweden, a long-running tradition is that girls dress in white with crowns of candles (electric nowadays for kids) and serve their parents lussekatt, as seen in the painting below.Here are recipes to make your own pepparkakor and lussekatt, if you’d like to try.
St. Lucia by Carl Larsson [1908]
Filed under Holidays, World Eats
Friday Foodie Links: Food Photo Sites
We love food, and we love photos. So what could be better than websites that feature nothing but food photos. Though there are many permutations of food photo blogs, our favorites are the constantly-updating grid-style sites that feature multiple pictures at a time. Our 3 favorite sites so far are: Photograzing, TasteSpotting, and FoodGawker . All these photos are user-submitted, which makes us believe maybe we can make some of these beautiful recipes ourselves. For now though…it’s fun to look.
Filed under Design and Photography, Links
What is Black Garlic?
I recently came across a new food that, while it looks kind of frightening, is pretty intriguing – black garlic! Black garlic is popular in China, Korea and Japan and is really just aged and fermented whole cloves of garlic. The flavor is more mellow than raw cloves with a bit of a tang. And it’s spreadable. Some Whole Foods stores sell black garlic, but you can get it online, too.
Filed under World Eats
Mexico: Taquería El Milagro
Taquería El Milagro
1923 S Blue Island Ave
Chicago, IL
It’s an annual tradition for the Eaters to spend a day in December wandering around Chicago’s Pilsen district. We stop by the National Museum of Mexican Art to catch their annual Día de los Muertos exhibit, do some Christmas shopping at the museum’s Mercado Navideño (Christmas Market), and then have an afternoon meal at one of Pilsen’s great Mexican restaurants. For the past few years, this has meant ordering the mole enchiladas (for L) and the fajitas (for M) at Restaurante Nuevo León (1515 W. 18th Street). But this year we decided to try something new, so we walked an extra few blocks to Taquería El Milagro.
El Milagro’s relatively unadorned exterior wouldn’t be very noticeable from the street – if it weren’t bright magenta/pink, that is. The interior is inviting – Spanish colonial tiles adorn the walls around the entrance, and large Mexican paintings hang from the other walls. But this is by no means a fancy restaurant – the cafeteria-style setup is quick and simple. You wait in line, order your food, pick a seat, and a few minutes later it is brought out to you. It being a cold day, L and I took the opportunity to each try a champurrado, ($1.75) a Mexican hot chocolate drink, thickened with cornmeal and with cinnamon and other spices. If you are thirsty, this is not the drink to try – think of it more as a liquid dessert. Perfect for a cold day, though. Champurrados are normally served with churros, and while I didn’t order any, I really should have bought some from the man who came in the restaurant to sell them.
We had anticipated finishing our warm drinks by the time the food arrived, but no such luck. Both L and I had ordered chicken burritos ($4.95), which to our shock were entirely made to order. Neither of us care much for refried beans, but we decided to go with it because asking for our burritos sin frijoles just seemed like such a gringo thing to do. Otherwise, there were no other order options. No qualifications for what toppings or sides we wanted, no tortilla specifications, nothing. Just straight chicken burritos – and they took care of the rest.
We can use this to contrast with Chipotle, the fast-food joint that bills itself as Mexican. When you order a chicken burrito at Chipotle, the chicken is sliced into little cubes that get put inside a watery, thin flour tortilla, all for $7. They ask you each and every ingredient you want, holding up the line and using all the questions to overcharge you for prepping. Not so at El Milagro – when we ordered chicken, two fresh raw chicken breasts were plopped down on the grill, just for us. When the burritos came, they had lettuce, rice, two halves of a tomato slice, and some cheese all bean-sealed inside a thick, warm, grilled flour tortilla. Five bucks. And so very excellent – you could tell all the ingredients were fresh and filling without being unhealthy. L and I had purposefully not eaten all day in anticipation of our meal, but suffice to say between the champurrados and the burritos, we both had a hard time finishing.
We were so hungry in fact that we neglected to take our usual context photo. Instead we present the remains of our burritos, after I remembered we had forgotten to record them for our readers. This is a fairly common problem for the eaters – accordingly we have no photos of Jim’s cheeseteaks or any of our breakfasts in Puerto Rico. Overall impression? Take Chipotle – subtract the lines, the fat, the questions; add fresher ingredients, better prices, and more food – and you get El Milagro. Also, if you’re jonesing for some more tortillas, the El Milagro Tortilleria is right next door! We’ll be back.
Filed under Reviews
Food Trends for 2009
Epicurious.com posted a list of their top predicted food trends for 2009. Included are some international food trends we would love to see happen – like Peruvian food becoming the new Thai. Peruvian is M’s personal favorite, so we’d dig it, but we’re weighing in that Peruvian will only be the new Cuban. And we also love that they gave props to amatuer reviewers. Hello, Yelp!
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Germany and Austria: Adventskalender und Weihnachtsmärkte (Holiday markets)
It’s December 1st! And that means a new year of Advent calendars. Advent calendars (Adventskalender) date back to Lutherans in 19th Century Germany, where they were (and are) used to count down the days until Christmas. In our case, December 1st means chocolate advent calendars. There are some enticing looking varieties out there. But I’m going to opt for something a bit more low-key. Cost Plus World Market sells some good varieties from Deutschland for less than 5 bucks.
December 1st is also the traditional start date for Weihnachtsmärkte, Austrian and German outdoor holiday markets. According to Wikipedia, Vienna’s market is the oldest and dates back to 1294. This past weekend we had the fortune to go to Chicago’s very own Weihnachtsmärkte, the Christkindlmarket. The long-running market takes place at Daley Plaza in the heart of Chicago’s Loop and contains a giant Christmas Tree and tons of booths chock full of German handicrafts and food (like the Bavarian steins above). The Market runs through the 24th so there is still plenty of time to get festive.
Ethiopia: Addis Abeba Restaurant in Evanston [closed]
Addis Abeba [closed]
1322 Chicago Ave
Evanston, IL
A few weeks ago, I headed out on a rainy night for a group dinner at Ethiopian Diamond. I think perhaps Ethiopian food is tailor-made for group dinners, since it is designed to share! The restaurant itself was unfortunately barren except for our big table, owning to the freezing-rain downpour. As our group was evenly split between vegetarians and omnivores, we decided to order a range of meat and non-meat dishes to share. Like most Ethiopian restaurants, the food is served communally on a large, round mesob platter on a large piece of thin injera bread. 
On the vegetarian plate we selected a variety of chickpea-based dishes. We ordered Yeater Kik Wot ($10.25) – yellow split peas sauteed with garlic, cloves and cinnamon; Mitin Shiro ($10.25) Roasted, chick peas in cinnamon-clove spiced butter with cinnamon and cloves; and Azifa ($8.50) a cold dish of lentils, tomatoes and jalapeno peppers. In truth, being seated in front of the veg platter, and being an omnivore myself, all of the chickpea fare started to blend together. It was good, but not distinctive. Maybe not so many beans next time.
On the meat-eater platter we ordered Chicken Shish Kebabs ($14.75) with a spicy yogurt sauce; Yebeg alitcha ($14.75) a spicy lamb dish with onions, garlic and turmeric; Minchet abish ($14.00) ground beef served with a berbere sauce, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom and garlic. The chicken kebabs were nice and spicy, however the pieces were much too big to grab daintily with the injera. Had to use the hands here. The Yebeg Alitcha was deliciously garlic and tender. However, the combination of sweet and savory (ground beef and cinnamon) was bit too much for me, where the minchet abish was concerned.
To finish of the meal we shared a pot of flavorful Ethiopian coffee ($2.50) served in a traditional style. This coffee is potent, and accordingly served in tiny cups, but, with impending research papers in mind, we kept the refills coming. Though Ethiopian Diamond is definitely still our Chicago favorite, AA is pretty good for an Ethio fix in Evanston, especially if you bring a few friends along.
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Eating The World 
