Eat It, Chicago!
Big City Chicken, a Lettuce Entertain You restaurant on Chicago’s Navy Pier, serves up fried chicken worth fighting through crowds to get to. (Just to clarify, for my Polish relatives in Detroit, that’s Big-City Chicken, not Big City-Chicken. I know … sigh.)
Bleu cheese wedge salad, out-of-the-ordinary buffalo wings, and apricot cheesecake at the Union Tap & Grill in downtown Traverse City
During Restaurant Week, Chicago eateries such as the elegant Blackbird, the storied Paramount Room, the everyman’s Public House, and the spicy Salpicon present special, prix fixe lunch and dinner menus, featuring everything from duck confit to fish tacos, from mussels to steak tartare.
Traverse City has a food truck court called The Little Fleet, but it also has some interesting restaurants, like Georgina’s. I’m glad there’s no interstate that takes you to Traverse. It ensures that Traverse is a destination, rather than someplace you just stumble into – and it deserves to be a destination.
Butcher & The Burger is a BYOB in Lincoln Park, Chicago. It’s a build-your-own-burger restaurant, specializing in local, sustainable, made-in-house ingredients.
Cantina 1910: flavorful Mexican fusion in a colorful Chicago neighborhood. We’re talking small plates, ceviche, tacos, dinner plates, and we’re describing it all after two glasses of bourbon and mescal, with the lasso of truth compelling us to tell it like it is.
This is where Jesus likes to go after church on Sunday. Jesus Hernandez, I mean … my downstairs neighbor. Azul 18 is a New American (Mexican) restaurant in Chicago’s funkadelic Pilsen neighborhood. Jesus led me here for breakfast. He had a scramble. I filled up on crêpe.
Chicken Works and Salad Company is a grilled-chicken and salad bar joint in northwest Chicago (in the Irving Park neighborhood). MiLam reviews a meal it had there, while contemplating what “chicken works” means. Chicken will do? Chicken and everything that goes with it? An industrial chicken factory?
