It’s run by a couple of industry veterans who’ve created the kind of restaurant they’ve always wanted to visit themselves. Steve Dolinsky joining us tonight with the story.

There is an exuberance in the kitchen at Maxwells Trading – which occupies the first floor of a non-descript brick two-story building in West Town. Cooks are busy grilling over open flames or sauteeing braised vegetables under the watchful eyes of Erling Wu-Bower and Chef Chris Jung. The goal for the owners was simple.

“A beautiful bar where my partner and I our wives could sit down, have a martini and listen to records and eat kinda the food we want to cook and the food that we want to eat,” said Wu-Bower. “My mother is from China; Chef Chris Jung’s parents are from Korea, and we grew up in the big cities of America,” he said.

Despite their backgrounds, the menu isn’t all Asian. Start with griddle bread – think half scallion pancake, half naan. A perfect vehicle for scooping up a housemade French Onion dip with a lot of chives.

“The French onion dip has truffle oil, chives, black pepper, there’s a little bit of soy sauce in there as well,” he said.

Suzuki tartare is Thai-inspired with coconut, peanut and lemongrass, topped by large nasturtium leaves.

From the starch section of the menu: a clay pot of Japanese rice for starters…

“On top of the rice is a 5-spice braised pork belly, swiss chard, yuba – which is tofu skin – braised shitake mushroom and lap cheong sausage.”

Arriving alongside, a trio of sauces.

“There is a housemade sriracha and a housemade chili crisp,” said Wu-Bower.

Plus, a soy sauce his mom imports from Taiwan. There’s also a fantastic Japanese sweet potato, served atop a pool of mellow Thai curry.

“The massaman curry is just a delicious, homemade curry; no cheating, made from scratch. And then put a Japanese sweet potato on top of it that we steam for three hours.”

That softened potato is layered with sugar then bruleed until the surface crackles beneath a fork. A half dozen heartier dishes feature lots of grilled items, like the half chicken a la brasa, marinated then grilled over hardwood, before being sliced and plated for easier eating.

“Black-eyed peas from the South, and then it has a ginger-scallion salsa verde which is a sauce from my childhood that I grew up eating on Argyle Street,” he said.

There’s also a vintage bookstore and coffeeshop adjacent to the dining room. You’ll find honey made from the rooftop. Wu-Bower says the menu is a reflection of his team’s collective experience.

“We call it city food by city kids,” said Wu-Bower.

And please save a little room for dessert! Only three on the menu, but the Basque butter cake is a crowd pleaser you can share.

Maxwells Trading

1516 W. Carroll Ave.

312-896-4110

Catholics traditionally abstain from meat on Fridays until Easter, and that means more demand for seafood. Our Food Guy visited a seafood specialist in Portage Park this week, approaching 80 years in business.

Back in 1946, a couple of Scandinavian immigrants moved to the Northwest Side from Door County, Wisconsin. They brought with them an expertise in sourcing, smoking and frying fish. The business is still in the same family, now on its fourth generation.

Don’t call the fire department, it’s just another day at the city’s oldest operating fish smokehouse. Hagen’s has been a fixture in Portage Park since it opened its doors in 1946.

“My great grandpa and his wife, and his brother and his wife; and they both came down from Door County,” said Eric Johnson, the fourth-generation owner at Hagen’s. “We smoke we fry and we’ve also got a fresh department.”

Lots of fresh seafood salads too, but it’s the smoking and frying that tend to take up most of the menu. The smoker is old school; no shortcuts here.

“Instead of just using pellets or sawdust – essentially just a cinder block room in the back with a big metal box I build a fire in, and hand the fish up over it. We’ve got salmon, whitefish, mackerel that go in a couple times every week,” he said.

Plus sturgeon and salmon steaks. Salmon fillets are seasoned a couple of ways – barbecued, garlic-pepper and candied.

“We brine it overnight in brown sugar, maple syrup and saltwater; we’ll take it out of the fire then glaze it with the honey,” Johnson said.

The fried fish is also plentiful.

A sandwich or a shrimp po’boy, but mostly just fried and served in a simple paper boat. Two of the most popular: plump shrimp and Alaskan haddock. The process is mechanized, but still quite simple.

Haddock for instance is submerged fully into the seasoned batter; it then emerges and is covered in fine breading, the excess shaken off, then dropped into a bucket, where it’s transferred to the fryers and cooked until crisp and golden brown. Johnson says beginning this week, the fryers are working overtime.

“Lent is one of the busiest seasons of the year for us, aside from Christmas/holiday season. Every Friday, this whole store is packed full of people looking to get fried fish,” he said.

Like pizza, fried fish is best warm, so either be prepared to heat them up at home or better yet, eat them in the car. On the other hand, smoked fish – especially the candied salmon – is great anytime.

Here’s where you can go:

Hagen’s Fish Market

5635 W. Montrose Ave.

773-283-1944

Kristen Ashley, a young entrepreneur, opened Cleo’s Southern Cuisine in Bronzeville a couple of years ago. She also has a Loop location open for lunch-only on weekdays, and in both spots, she honors her grandmother Cleo, whose Clarksdale, Mississippi roots influence the menu.

“Technically Biloxi – and I went to school at Grambling State University in Louisiana, so I took the Mississippi and the Louisiana and put it together and boom – there was Cleo’s,” said Ashley.

Buttermilk and hot sauce season the chicken just before it gets breaded, and ultimately fried in shortening, which helps promote a crispy, crackly exterior, while keeping the meat juicy inside. Same goes for catfish, aggressively seasoned, breaded and fried until golden brown, ideally served with a corn muffin that’s been dipped in vanilla extract and honey.

Mac and cheese begins with cavatappi tossed in a cheddar sauce with cottage cheese.

“It’s a deep South thing. Actually, a lot of people are always like ‘what is that peculiar taste?’ they can never pinpoint, but the cottage cheese is definitely one of my secret weapons.”

She then combines that with Monterey Jack, and finally, tops it off with Jack cheese to form a sort of cheesy crust that is ultimately the perfect cap to this starchy side. Sweet potatoes are topped with a healthy amount of white and brown sugar, vanilla extract and pineapple.

“So I think that’s something that kind of off-sets that sweetness, because pineapples are pretty tart, so it doesn’t overpower.”

Chicken and waffles is another option, made sweeter with the addition of honey and powdered sugar, but careful, because the Purple Rain and Mississippi Sunshine are also sweet, as is the splurge-worthy chocolate-pecan bread pudding, that is even better when eaten warm out of the oven.

Ashley says running her business in this neighborhood, on this block, makes sense on a number of levels. “I actually grew up five blocks from the restaurant. When this space became available I was like, ‘you know what grandma, I feel like you’re talking to me here,’ so I really need to jump on this.”

She’s glad she did, because the neighborhood continues to improve with new construction and with it, a lot of hungry new neighbors.

“So to be a part of that, on the grassroots level was super, super important to me.”

While the Loop location is open Monday through Friday during the day, the Bronzeville restaurant only serves dinner on Friday, Saturday and sunday.

Here’s where you can go:

Cleo’s Southern Cuisine

4248 S. Cottage Grove

773-633-2757

190 N. Wells St.

312-285-2140

NBC Chicago’s Steve Dolinsky takes a look at some of the best French restaurants here in Chicago, where nearby residents can get a taste of the cuisine while taking in this summer’s games.

Below is a look at some restaurants in downtown Chicago to check out next time you’re craving a taste of France.

Obélix

700 N. Sedgewick

312-877-5348

Bistronomic

840 N. Wabash

312-944-8400

Brindille

534 N. Clark St.

312-595-1616

Les Nomades

222 E. Ontario St.

312-649-9010

Café Cremerie

615 N. State St.

312-266-7466

The last two years have seen a bumper crop of new pizzerias in Chicago with styles ranging from deep-dish and tavern style to Detroit and Sicilian.

At a new spot on the Northwest Side, the staff started off with one style, then added a second after popular demand.

The Chef behind Giant – one of the city’s better restaurants – jumped into pizza during the pandemic, then opened a spot next door doing thin, East Coast-inspired pies. Those required some tweaking, and while he perfected those pizzas, he added a weekly tavern style to the mix. Guess which one is more popular with the neighbors.

Chicago isn’t blessed with a ton of slice shops. But at Pizza Matta – a sister restaurant to Giant in Logan Square – the vibe is certainly East Coast, with its compact dining room and modest case.

“You know we have Giant next door and we take a lot of feedback from customers and the feedback was they wanted slices,” said owner Jason Vincent.

Vincent spent months working on an East Coast style thin that now ferments for eight days, allowing for more depth and complexity.

“Fermentation definitely deepens the flavor; it makes it sour, but also very pleasantly so,” he said.

Bianco di Napoli tomatoes serve as a base, then a sprinkling of Pecorino Romano. Vincent always places a few balls of fresh mozzarella beneath his handfuls of Grande shredded mozz, adding an extra boost of creaminess. The Cleveland native opts for Columbus, Ohio-based Ezzo pepperoni, and bakes the pie for about a dozen minutes, until it emerges with an evenly browned crust, a tight but airy crumb and a properly charred undercarriage.

Experimenting with his dough sheeter, he decided more recently to add a Chicago-style thin.

“Two different doughs, two different fermentation lengths, two different sort of critical points that you have to look at every day when you check on your dough,” he said.

The thins cure overnight in the fridge to help dry them out, unlike his other pie.

“I’m assuming like having twins, where you see ‘em both, but you have to check on their needs independently,” he said.

Same basic construction – sauce then Pecorino and mozzarella – we go with a sausage and giardiniera because, why not; and the bake time is similar. Post bake, he finishes it with shredded Sarvecchio, kind of a Wisconsin parmesan that’s super nutty. The results – that crispy, crunchy crust – cracker thin, is exactly what the regulars love. The pies are elevated somewhat, thanks to Vincent’s commitment to using the best ingredients he can find.

“The thought of using commodity pork or chicken or whatever just bums me out,” said Vincent.

Lots of name dropping on this menu – in a good way: Ezzo pepperoni, Slagel Farms sausage, ham and chicken; Four Star mushrooms. If there was ever a marriage between a thoughtful Chicago chef and a pizzeria, this is it.

Here’s where you can go:

Pizza Matta

3211 W. Armitage Ave.

773-661-6521

Opening a restaurant is hard enough. But opening one with a unique perspective can be even harder.

A new neighborhood restaurant in West Town is taking that path, fearlessly cooking dishes that may not have mass appeal, but are certainly delicious.

If you’re a new restaurant in Chicago, typically over the last year or so, you’re offering pasta or some version of Italian. Why? Because it’s a crowd pleaser and the margins are better. But there are exceptions.

Warlord is probably the best example, and now, a two-month-old all day restaurant and market on Chicago Avenue, where Midwestern ingredients are given the star treatment.

The homemade focaccia – chewy and dense – is one sign the kitchen takes great care with everything at Nettare, a new restaurant and market near the corner of Chicago and Damen in West Town. From the highly curated list of spirits in their market up front, to the dishes they serve in the airy, spacious dining room in the back, the focus is regional.

“The game plan is to showcase and highlight really cool things from the Midwest and the Great Lakes region,” said John Dahlstrom, the chef of Nettare.

And few things are as Midwest as Lake Superior whitefish, which Dahlstrom turns into a spreadable rillete along with some grilled focaccia.

“We brine it and then smoke it. Made into rillette using crème fraiche that we make in-house, dill, chives. We dehydrate the skin then we fry it to puff it to make chicharrons to garnish the dish with,” Dahlstrom said.

Porchetta is made in-house, sliced thin, then drizzled with a verdant chimichurri, as well as dollops of orange marmalade all covered with pea shoots.

Walleye is cooked skin-side down so it gets crispy, but the star of the dish is what rests below it: a brodo, or Parmesan-seasoned dark chicken stock that takes two days to make.

“Cook off some onions and garlic in brown butter, add your collards, deglaze that with your brodo; finish with some lemon, some butter, chives,” he said.

Echoing those chives, a final flourish of chive oil.

The surprise hit of the menu is the beef cheek. They’re going through 75 pounds a week. Cheeks are cured in salt overnight, then covered in beef fat and cooked slowly on day two.

“The next day they’re cold and we just put ‘em on the grill to get ‘em nice and crispy so they’re soft on the inside, nice and kind of grilled and crispy with a little bit of char on the outside. Plate it up with a white barbecue sauce – it’s a soubise sauce that’s seasoned like Alabama white barbecue – and then we garnish them with a chili-lemon-olio saccharum, it’s kind of our play on hot honey, and chive oil,” explained Dahlstrom.

Dahlstrom sayid the kitchen also produces some ingredients for their exceptional cocktail program, and he’s hoping the neighborhood embraces their all-day ethos, even if it’s just for happy hour.

 “We’re just trying to highlight the cool stuff the Midwest has to offer,” he said.

Everything on the dinner menu is under $30, with one exception called the “Big Animal Dish for Two.” There’s also a tight daytime menu with an incredible lineup of tea options from local tea guru Rare Tea Cellar.

Nettare

1953 W. Chicago Ave.

Two ramen shops in Logan Square are taking two very distinctive approaches, yet both are laser focused on every component going into the bowl. Steve Dolinsky joining us tonight with the story.

There is a lot of pork bone broth in the ramen world. But two excellent shops are making do using beef and chicken, and both are obsessive about making their noodles in-house.

There’s plenty of unapologetic slurping throughout the night at Monster Ramen, a year-and-a-half old ramen shop in Logan Square. It’s a dream come true for Katie Dong, who grew up in China on beef noodle soup, but perfected her ramen technique at Japanese shops. The focus here is on beef stock.

“It’s more velvety and it’s actually lighter than pork bone stock,” said Dong.

The stock is made in just a couple of hours in a custom pressure cooker. There’s also a clear, shoyu ramen on the menu featuring chicken stock, but her signature Monster Ramen is a beefy bonanza.

“The beef paitan, creamy stock, with our miso flavor. A couple slices of the wagyu chashu and a couple slices of the wagyu rib roast.”

Plus bamboo, mushroom, seaweed and buttery corn, all swimming above springy, homemade noodles that were made in-house earlier in the day.

“I’m really just looking to make sure the portion feels like the right size…”

A half mile away, Mike Satinover makes two types of noodles in the front window of his brand-new Akahoshi Ramen on California, where lines form well before 5 o’clock, and for good reason. He’s been obsessed for 13 years, ever since studying abroad.

“Hokkaido – Sapporo, Hokkaido is known for miso ramen. It’s one of the dishes that emerges from there,” said Satinover.

He says there are five components to ramen:

“There’s the noodle of course, but there’s the soup. There’s the tare, which seasons the soup in the bowl; there’s the aromatic oil and there’s the toppings. Balancing all five is the tricky part.”

The signature bowl begins with bean sprouts tossed into a hot wok with lard; then the tare, or miso paste.

“Then we add the soup to the wok, pour it into the bowl over the noodles that we’ve prepared, which are a special type of noodle specifically designed for this dish. We have pork belly chashu that we make which is just pork belly that’s been simmered very slowly until it’s meltingly tender, a little bit of green onion and bamboo shoots,” he said.

There’s a soupless ramen that looks like Dan Dan Noodles – topped with seasoned ground pork and bok choy – it’s amazing. But to really appreciate his handiwork, seeing the effort that goes into each component is impressive.

“When you make a dish like this – truly from scratch – each of the components is intentional,” said Satinover.

Here’s where you can visit:

Monster Ramen

3435 W. Fullerton Ave.

Akahoshi Ramen

2340 N. California Ave.

In the rarefied air of a 3-star Michelin restaurant like Smyth, in the West Loop, dessert has to be a showstopper. The kitchen sources exotic Chestnut mushrooms from a local supplier, as well as tiny enokis.

“The brown enoki mushroom – which they were planning on growing the same way – most enokis are long, thin, small cap,” said John Shields, the executive chef and owner of Smyth. “And I said, ‘well what if we kept letting them grow, and let the cap open up?’”

The result is a tart unlike anything you’ll see in a bakery.

“Sweet tart, with cream on the base – it’s the shell of it – with apples, candied. Pieces of mushroom, and then the raw caps are up, almost like they’re sprouting out of the tart,” said Shields.

The customized cultivation stems from Four Star Mushrooms – a small business operating out of a West Side warehouse that looks like a set from a science fiction film.

“I started this because I’m super passionate about sustainable agriculture,” said Joe Weber, the owner. “And mushrooms are a keystone component in building sustainable food systems.”

The alien-looking fungi emerge from containers of upcycled substrate.

“All of our substrate is made with red oak sawdust and soybean hulls,” said Weber.

Managing the environment requires playing Mother Nature.

“So the variables we’re controlling are the temperature, the humidity, the level of oxygen versus CO2, and the air turbidity in the room,” he said.

The results have been impressive.

“Blue Oysters, Black Oysters and King Trumpet, and we’ve also got Chestnut mushrooms, Golden Enoki and Lion’s Mane mushroom,” said Weber.

Scaling the business, they’re now able to reach more customers, like The Dearborn in the heart of the Loop, where mushrooms appear all over the menu. On a pizza, Black and Blue Trumpets along with Chestnuts…

“…we just put the Chestnuts in for kind of meatiness…”

Trumpets and shitakes are sauteed with dumplings…even braised for soups.

“We use mushrooms in areas where you still want to have a substantial meal that feels good, that feels filling,” said Aaron Cuschieri, chef at The Dearborn.

A little bit of everything is sauteed, then placed on a roll with cheese on the other side, for a decadent melt that’s broiled open-faced, griddled and pressed like a panini.

“They just have that meaty chew that you want, and they’re rich,” said Cuschieri.

For more information:

Four Star Mushrooms

The Dearborn

145 N. Dearborn St.

312-384-1242

Smyth

177 N. Ada St.

773-913-3773

That would be extract… paste… and sometimes whole vanilla beans. While the raw product grows thousands of miles away, pretty much all of it is processed in Waukegan, before it gets to stores.

Vanilla comes from developing countries in a narrow band around the equator, grown as the fruit of an orchid. Mexico, Tahiti and Madagascar are the main sources. But for more than a century, a Waukegan business has been processing most of that vanilla for consumption all over the U.S.

Joel Reno scrapes a lot of vanilla beans at Pistores Pizza and Pastry in River North. The French Pastry School grad offers dozens of creative sweets at his shop, many calling for vanilla.

“We use Tahitian for its floralness, we use Mexican for backbone and depth and then we use the Madagascar for the bourbon-y type carmel-y flavor that it has,” said Reno.

One of his gelato flavors is called “Vanilla Vanilla Vanilla,” and you can see why: thousands of tiny specs of vanilla bean look like stars in the sky. The origin of those beans? Madagascar, by way of Waukegan.

“It’s definitely a very busy time of year for us,” said Matt Nielsen of Nielsen-Massey.

Matt Neilsen is the third generation at Nielsen-Massey, which started in 1907 as an aroma company, but quickly moved into vanilla processing.

“It’s a very, kind of, sensory evaluation we’re doing to ensure that the quality of the beans are meeting our specifications,” he said.

These beans traveled more than 9,000 miles from Madagascar.

“It takes us three to five weeks to produce a single batch of vanilla using our extraction process which is a continuous cycle of water and alcohol that runs through vanilla beans. It’s able to absorb all those good flavor compounds,” he said.

There’s extract, as well as paste, which gives you the visual flecks of the vanilla bean. Meg Galus uses a lot of Nielsen-Massey’s vanilla at Good Ambler, a bakery located in the lobby of Mondalez’s headquarters in the West Loop.

“Just about everything chocolate I add a little bit of vanilla to. It just enhances the chocolate flavor; just rounds everything out,” Galus said.

She adds some paste to her hazelnut brownie batter, and the results are impossibly hard to stop eating. She also torches whole beans for her unique bon bons.

“Toasted vanilla bean gets infused into cream then blended into the cream to make a ganache for the bon bon and it sort of evokes a s’more flavor,” she said.

For more information:

Good Ambler

216 N. Peoria St.

312-872-7165

Pistores Pizza & Pastry

546 N. Wells St.

312-624-8671

Nielsen Massey Vanilla

The food is inspired by childhood memories, and it’s a far cry from the traditional restaurants located in Ukrainian Village. The restaurants near the Ukrainian churches on Chicago Avenue offer Old World cooking: straightforward dumplings, stews and hearty cold weather fare. But this latest addition to Avondale is part two for a married couple – now allowing the husband to dive deep into his heritage.

For the last 10 years, Parachute has indulged Beverly Kim’s love of her Korean culture. She and her husband, Johnny Clark, recently closed their other restaurant down the block, and transformed it into Anelya, named for Clark’s Ukrainian grandmother.

“I wanted to do something that was related to myself, that could showcase my own story,” he said.

Clark begins with a zakusky tray, laden with small bites, like marinated mushrooms or head cheese with pickles.

“Zakusky is hors d’oeuvres or snacks eaten with the first drink. Herring, some fried olives…” he said.

There are thin and crispy potato pancakes, served with sheep’s milk cheese and sea buckthorn jam, but also pasta dishes.

“Varenyky is a huge platter and everyone passes it around and shares it, I wanted to treat it more of like a composed pasta, filled with potatoes and comté cheese. Glazed in a saffron chicken stock,” said Clark. “Halushki is kind of like a gnocchi or something; poach them off and top them off with braised short ribs that have huckleberries.

There’s borscht, of course, but Clark’s is a bit different from what you’d see around town.

“Pultava style borscht is usually made with game birds,” Clark said.

In this case, duck and smoked pears, finished with cultured cream. Kovbasa is similar to the Polish kielbasa, set over a nest of homemade sauerkraut embedded with dried fruit. And then there is holubtsi, typically meat-based, but not here.

“This holubtsi is filled with rice, millet and mushrooms, braised in a garlic cream sauce made with coconut milk,” he said.

Desserts are a must, only because they’re so creative.

Kyiv cake is a classic.

“Layers of sponge cake, apricot jam, hazelnut and chocolate buttercream topped with more crunchy bits of baked meringue,” said Clark. “I would say these are not what grandma would cook. What we do here is just something a little bit different. What I remember from Ukrainian food growing up, but also making that a Ukrainian American experience.”

The bread is dark and the cocktails are inspired – using slivovitz, brandy and kvass – but also homemade infusions.

“As Clark said, he’s not trying to replicate exact recipes from the Old Country, what he is doing is cooking a love letter of sorts to his grandmother, influenced by all of his experience as a professional chef. In Avondale, Steve Dolinsky, NBC 5 News.”

Here’s where you can go:

Anelya

3472 N. Elston Ave.

773-692-2192

The miracle of an ancient temple, staying lit for eight nights with just a small amount of oil, sets the stage for a lot of frying, mostly in vegetable oil. And considering how tough the deli business is, it’s equally impressive visiting an 80 year-old institution, followed by a spry 60 year-old one, to see how they’ve been keeping tradition alive.

There are few secrets to the potato pancakes – or latkes – at 80 year-old Manny’s, the cafeteria style deli in the South Loop that’s never changed its menu. Grated potatoes, onions, eggs and seasoning are thoroughly combined by hand, then simply fried until crisp in a deep pool of oil.

“Always made ‘em in our cast iron pans, and a bit thicker and it’s tradition here. During Hanukkah, it’s obviously the oil, so everybody wants them,” said owner Dan Raskin.

About as thick as the Peoria phonebook, they’re available year-round as a side with their massive, two-fisted sandwiches, but this time of year, a lot of folks get them with the requisite apple sauce and sour cream. And that original recipe is never going to change says Raskin, the fourth generation owner.

“Just from our experience, the best way to do everything is the way we’ve always done it,” said Raskin.

“It’s a little crazy,” said Bette Dworkin, owner of Kaufman’s Bagel and Delicatessen.

How crazy is it at 60 year-old Kaufman’s Bagel and Deli in Skokie right now? Latkes are available year-round, but they’ll do triple the business this week.

“We do sweet potato latkes, scallion latkes, veggie latkes, sometimes mushroom latkes,” she said.

The basic recipe hasn’t changed: potatoes, onions, eggs and potato flour plus seasoning. Scooped, smashed then deep-fried in large skillets, they’re as wide as a CD, thick and yet still tender. Another popular item this week – sufganiyot – or as Dworkin describes them, Jewish paczki, essentially jelly donuts dusted in powdered sugar.

She says a corned beef sandwich is a popular pairing with the latkes, but don’t overlook their outstanding smoked sable, available year-round.

“There’s always smoked fish demand!” said Dworkin.

Make sure to call ahead to see if you can time it to arrive when they pull the sable out of the smoker. If you make your own, add a Granny Smith apple and a little bit of celery root to bump up the flavor a bit.

Here’s where you can go:

Manny’s

1141 S. Jefferson St.

312-939-2855

Kaufman’s

4905 W. Dempster St., Skokie

847-677-6190

The two salads appear on plenty of Thai menus around Chicago, but few offer the sheer number of variations on display at Tuk Tuk Thai Isan Street Food in Lake View.

You’ll find the usual suspects like curry and noodles too, but no visit is complete without trying the specialty dishes.

The mortar and pestles – to say nothing of the forearms of the cooks – get a workout at the restaurant, just a few yards north of the Century Mall on Clark Street. That’s because som tam – the native dish from Isaan – has to be pounded to-order.

“The Som Tam – Som means ‘sour’ in Isaan – that means you have to have a sour taste for sure. Then follow-up with the salty, spicy and sweet,” said owner Ratchapol Treegamrongrit.

In addition to raw green papaya, there’s a range of flavors. Crunchy Thai eggplants, green beans and tomatoes; salted crab, fresh lime juice, fish sauce and basil, as well as palm sugar for sweetness.

After it’s thoroughly pounded and plated, they’ll add fresh vermicelli noodles, pork roll and crispy skin for a riot of color, flavor and texture, all of which can be tamed somewhat with a side of sticky rice to soak up heat.

On the softer side, laab. But unlike popular versions with pork or chicken, here they use ground duck.  

“It’s softer and tender,” he said.

Again, tossed with a technicolor range of ingredients like red onions, dried chilies, toasted rice powder and the omnipresent fresh lime and fish sauce, plus fresh herbs and makrut, an aromatic lime leaf. Once plated, crispy duck skin is added for toothsome crunch.

Familiar items like Pad Thai are more than respectable, since they add tamarind juice and serve it not only with the shrimp heads intact, but also small sides of sugar, peanuts and chili.

“We serve that on the side, together, but if somebody doesn’t like it, you can take it off,” he said.

Bring some friends and get the whole fried fish, buried in cilantro.

“You can eat that and it can be shareable,” he said.

Panang curry is familiar to most Thai food fans; here, they use curry paste but add coconut milk to temper the heat.

“Normally have the coconut milk inside; you can put some extra,” he said.

That is, unless you prefer it more spice forward, in which case there’s roasted chili oil.

“…To make it a little bit spicy,” said Treegamrongrit.

Our Food Guy Steve Dolinsky says they are not fooling around with the spice levels at the restaurant. So if you want it mild, say so. Otherwise you might find yourself pleading for a side of rice, as he did on one visit.

“It was kind of a glorified hot dog stand,” said Michael Madden.

So Madden – a Wilmette native who launched a pair of Left Coast Food & Juice concepts in the city – decided to tackle a refresh.

“My education, my friends, my family, the game of golf, everything I got from this amazing town, and this is sort of my way to give back to the community,” he said.

You can start off with chunky pimento cheese and grilled bread, or a trio of crispy Virginia oyster lettuce wraps with kimchi remoulade and radish. Heartier starters include St. Louis ribs – smoked, fried then tossed in Korean barbecue sauce, showered in pickled peanuts and scallions.

At lunch, a crab cake features mostly lump meat, seared then served over mustard crème fraiche and several spoonfuls of roasted corn salsa.

“Real Maryland crab – I don’t know too many places that do that,” he said.

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There’s a chopped salad with pretty rows of pumpkin seeds, corn and smoked salmon, as well as couscous, to be tossed at the table with a creamy basil dressing. Meanwhile, the turkey club features Publican Quality whole wheat bread slathered with dijonaise, plus smoked turkey and Benton’s bacon.

“The bacon in the club sandwich we bring in from Tennessee.”

Also tomatoes, ripe avocado, red onions and lettuce. It’s a two-hander for sure. At dinner, the fried chicken is gluten free, served with crispy Brussels sprouts and a buttermilk biscuit, drizzled with hot honey.

“Harrison’s chicken is kind of a local favorite. All of our meat comes from a local butcher in town here; he only brings in Prime meat,” said Madden.

USDA Prime Rib is shaved thin for the French Dip, served with horseradish crème fraiche and a side car of au jus.

Even the Transfusion – a refreshing golf course staple – contains grape juice with a specific provenance.

“We fly in our concord grapes,” he said.

Madden says the response has been a pleasant surprise to locals.

“People come in and try the food. They’re blown away,” he said.

Here’s where you can go:

The Lawn at the Wilmette Golf Club

3900 Fairway Dr., Wilmette

847-256-9626

For nearly a decade, a neighborhood favorite has become a fixture there. In many cases, updating some of the flavors while still making everything from scratch.

The past is inspiration at Spinning J Bakery & Soda Fountain, which hugs a well-worn corner in the neighborhood. But the forces behind it don’t let history get in the way of creativity.

“We are an old-fashioned soda fountain and lunch counter. We make everything in-house – all of our bread, pastry, pie,” said Dinah Grossman, the owner.

The 1920s era marble bar and barstools were salvaged from Milwaukee. Most of the space was built using reclaimed and recycled materials. But they start fresh each day when it comes to sandwiches, where you’ve got a few good options first thing in the morning.

“So the breakfast sandwiches are usually on our homemade English muffins: scrambled egg, bacon from Slagel Farm…” she said.

A homemade bialy with cream cheese is an excellent base for smoked trout and hot giardiniera – the lovechild of a Jewish-Italian deli if there ever was one. 

“And then we also do a gravlax bialy,” added Grossman.

Pastries and cookies run the gamut from old school to new school.

“Sort of classic style with the buttermilk biscuits but we also do a buttermilk biscuit with blue cheese and herb. We always have a few things that are a little bit different too, like a layered pastry with artichoke hearts, brie and smoked gouda. We do a cinnamon roll but it’s a sourdough cinnamon roll with malted vanilla icing,” she said.

At lunch, there are usually five well-chosen sandwiches, including a stellar tuna melt with house-made pickles, dill and sharp white cheddar stacked between slices of homemade sourdough. And then of course, there’s dessert, including a cake and pie lineup that will leave you with some hard decisions.

“Bundt cakes, we do matcha tea cake with almond. Instead of just a key lime pie we have a key lime hibiscus pie with a blueberry compote, and we do a s’mores pie with a homemade marshmallow topping. We have a cheesecake with a guava topping,” said Grossman.

The café also serves as a de facto wine shop, coffee shop and meeting place, where there’s always something tempting on display.

“Really classic, familiar, comforting stuff,” she said.

Pie orders for the holidays are almost done. Their signature pie during Thanksgiving is a cranberry-yuzu meringue pie, but you can’t go wrong with any of their flavors. Do be on the lookout for a raspberry-pear-ginger crumble. I devoured one all by myself.

Here’s where you can go:

Spinning J

1000 N. California

872-829-2793

This year marks the 50^th anniversary of Chicago’s connection to Osaka, Japan,  and a delegation from here has been visiting dignitaries and cultural ambassadors in Japan all week.

In Osaka, preparations had been underway to celebrate a national holiday, which was marked by a Lights Festival along their version of Michigan Avenue on Thursday.

World Business Chicago – led in part by Deputy Mayor Kenya Merritt – brought around 20 local business leaders and entrepreneurs here, hoping to forge economic ties. Also Chicago Sister Cities, which celebrates 50 years of cooperation between Chicago and Osaka. They brought along a Chicago chef to engage in some “food diplomacy.”

First stop: Tokyo. The largest city on the planet is a riot of colors, sounds and flavors, and our first visit is with U.S. Ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emanuel. I sat down with our former Mayor over a lunch of cooked eggs, miso soup and tempura vegetables, to talk about the similarities between Chicago and Osaka.

“Very boisterous, very tell you like it is; not scared to be straight to you, which is a different kind of set of qualities. They also have a Michigan Avenue kind of Magnificent Mile down there; a river that runs through the central part of the city, so there’s a lot of characteristics similar to the city of big shoulders.”

Osakans have an impressive appetite, having created udon noodle soup and street foods like takoyaki. Batter is poured into half-moon molds; each sphere embedded with a tiny piece of octopus. Once fully cooked, they’re topped with a semi-sweet sauce, Japanese mayo, smoked and dried tuna shavings and powdered seaweed. This is what interests Paul Virant. The Chef and Owner of Gaijin in the West Loop (the name means “foreigner”) – is here to learn from the pros and find inspiration. Gaijin is known for its okonomiyaki, or massive pancakes, but he’s fascinated by the takoyaki at a local restaurant where they serve it with Champagne.

“I mean this is really inspiring. I think takoyaki would be something that would be really cool to serve at Gaijin. I’ve typically seen it with the okonomiyaki sauce, the kewpie mayo, the aonori and the bonito flakes, which I love, but it was really cool to try it with not everything all at once,” he said.

Virant shops a local market to find ingredients for a pair of okonomiyakis he’ll make alongside an Osaka chef at Chibo. Typically made with cabbage and scallions, Virant brings his own ideas…

“So one of the okonomiyakis I’m doing today is a signature item with fried shrimp but it has influence from Louisiana, we make like a creole butter with the corn…”

He then tops it with fried shrimp from the market. Local maitake mushrooms and kabocha squash are used to show off a vegetarian version. His host keeps things classic, topping with kewpie mayo and dried tuna shavings, while showing off his presentation skills. This cultural exchange of ideas is what the Sister City relationship is all about.

“Like a Chicago pizza or Osaka Japanese pancake, the crossover, the relationships make innovation,” said Tetsuya Nakamura, the General Manager of Osaka Tourism.

They have a saying here in Osaka, “kuidoare” which roughly translates to “eat until you drop.” They love talking food here.

“So think of okonomiyaki or takoyaki as kind of our version of the hot dog or Maxwell Street Polish or even the Italian beef. They’re quick, delicious, and apparently, a lot of competition among vendors.

Information about the spots Dolinsky visited can be found below:

Tokyo

Pizza Marumo

150-0022 Tokyo, Shibuya City, Ebisuminami, 1 Chome−11−13

The Pizza Bar on 38^th (at Mandarin Oriental)

2 Chome-1-1 Nihonbashimuromachi, Chuo City, Tokyo 103-8328

Kien

2-18-8 Akasaka Minato-ku

Osaka

Takoriki (for takoyaki)

1 Chome-6-1 Kawarayamachi, Chuo Ward, Osaka, 542-0066, Japan

Usami-tei Matsubaya (for Udon)

3 Chome-8-1 Minamisenba, Chuo Ward, Osaka, 542-0081, Japan

Chibo (for Okonomiyaki)

Dotonbori, 1 Chome−5−5 Dotonbori Building 1～6F, Chuo Ward, Osaka

Dotonburi Street for all kinds of street snacks (though touristy)

The College of DuPage has an enormous campus in Glen Ellyn. A big chunk is dedicated to teaching hospitality; they even have a full-service hotel. But it’s the restaurant where you’ll find some truly great deals.

Hidden away on the campus, there’s a hotel with a handful of restaurants, including their crown jewel – Waterleaf.

 “The goal is for them to learn the objectives to the course so I think that that’s really important,” said Mary Beth Leone, a Professor of Hospitality and Tourism Management. “And this is a safe space for them, and then when they go into their workplace they’ll have the confidence they need to become a great chef or a great server. Front-of-the-house servers learn to serve correctly, and the back of the house cooks the food, and the two classes have to work together, and it’s really a great learning experience for them.”

Menus change frequently – International, Vegetarian, Steakhouse…and on this day, Regional American, specifically, New England. That means clam chowder; maybe a salad with pears, cranberries and walnuts, or one with arugula and frisee, roasted beets and mushrooms. Entrees range from chicken pot pie with root vegetables to cod that’s poached in white wine with sautéed spinach. Instructors oversee both the front-of-the-house and expedite dishes in the kitchen.

“Really allows for the students to get the feel for what it’s like, to be in an industry – in a safe environment – where they’re learning. And they can make mistakes, and that’s ok. Because we want them to be prepared when they go,” said Leone.

And it’s hard to complain about that under seasoned or overcooked dish here. A four-course lunch, including dessert, runs $20 – that includes tax and tipping is not allowed. Dinners range from $20-50 for five courses.

There is also a grab-and-go counter and a more casual café on site, but for Waterleaf, you do want to make reservations on Open Table.

Here’s where you can go:

Waterleaf at the College of DuPage

425 Fawell Blvd., Glen Ellyn

630-942-2284

For reservations, click here.

Head here for more information about the restaurant and the college’s culinary program.

Both with a Tijuana accent, and both available in a Little Village taqueria where they make everything from scratch. Steve Dolinsky joining us tonight with the story. Tijuana is a border town, near San Diego. And the plan to bring that city’s food culture to Chicago is a dream come true of sorts, for one entrepreneur who takes no shortcuts.

All day long, customers tuck into plates overflowing with tacos and bowls filled to the rim with hearty birria, inside Taco Sur, which hugs the corner of Pulaski Road and 31st Street in Little Village. The menu is an homage to Tijuana.

“Tijuana I think is between a flavor from California and Mexico, drawing together,” said Veronica Fabre, the owner of Taco Sur.

As the weather cools, you’ll want to seek out their birria, which is made from beef, rather than the Jalisco-style with goat. Cooked until it can be shredded, it’s submerged in a deeply rich consommé, or broth.

“The key is the broth because it has such a different flavor than what we’ve seen here in Chicago with more like Jalisco birria style,” she said.

You can gussy it up with fresh cilantro, radishes and lime, or combine it with cheese to make tacos. Speaking of which, they make their tortillas from fresh masa dough throughout the day.

“Serving a taco in a handmade tortilla gives it a completely different taste to everything,” Fabre said.

Their trompo – or vertical spit – features pork, but they don’t call it “al pastor;” rather, “adobada.”

“It’s because it marinates the pork. Adobada means ‘marinate’,” she said.

Sliced then finished cooking on the flat top, it can be topped with onion and cilantro, mashed avocado and a splash of freshly-made salsa. All three are made in-house.

“Green one is made out of jalapeño; we consider that one our mild. The more spicy one is made out of chile de arbol,” she said.

But the medium-spiced one is just perfect: guajillo, arbol and morita chiles are toasted on the plancha, then combined in a blender with roasted tomatoes and some water. It has just the right amount of heat without being overpowering.

Fabre says it’s just one component of a menu she proudly stands behind.

“It’s important because I want to bring authentic Mexican food to this area,” she said.

Here’s where you can go:

Taco Sur

3057 S. Pulaski Rd.

773-502-0647

After 24 years, Lula Café finally has a cookbook out, documenting their own story, of how their menus have evolved and changed right alongside Logan Square over the years.

Daytime brunch is always busy at Lula Café, which transformed a long time ago from the old Logan Beach coffeeshop into one of the city’s best places to eat. Expertly made sweet corn and ricotta omelets are as commonplace as the bowls of chilled spicy peanut noodles. And The Lula Café Cookbook not only features the dishes from their humble beginnings, but also their more ambitious dishes, dictated by the Midwestern farms and farmers they’ve come to know personally over the years.

“So to me that makes the experience of cooking and then the experience of eating, a deeper, more emotional experience, and I think that really matters, especially now,” said Jason Hammel, the chef-owner of Lula Café, who also wrote the cookbook.

Hammel shows off one day’s delivery highlights: peppers and root vegetables; heirloom tomatoes, stone fruit and lettuces. They dictate what shows up on the menu, but there’s always room for the classics.

“Pasta Yia Yia is a recipe from my wife’s family. It’s bucatini, feta cheese, brown butter cinnamon and garlic,” he said.

The Tineka is one of the few dishes that pre-dated Lula, but it’s never left the menu.

“The sandwich has a peanut butter and soy sauce spread – kind of a version of a satay – on the bread. And then a lot of crunchy, juicy vegetables,” he said.

Much of the menu – and as a result, the book – is defined by seasonal ingredients, like this radicchio salad.

“We just happen to get radicchio from a farm here in the city; we happen to get Asian pears from one of our favorite producers that is actually on the West Coast. And then we try to find a way to marry that together. We created this vegan dressing with white poppyseed,” he said.

Hammel adds fried parsnips for crunch, then showers it with Pecorino Romano.

“So like a lot of products that we’re really deeply connected to that just kind of come together at the same time,” he said.

Three Sisters Farm is another longtime supplier. He turns their baby corn into a delicious vegetarian side dish.

“And we grill that over Japanese charcoal and finish it with a sunflower salsa verde,” said Hammel.

There are desserts in the book of course, but hard to beat their carrot cake – another menu regular. Hammel says he wants the book to be a starting point for inspiration at home.

“Go to the market, find something exciting, it’ll give you an idea of how we think about food and then hopefully inspire you to get in your kitchen and start cooking,” he said.

Here’s where you can go:

Lula Café

2537 N. Kedzie Blvd.

773-489-9554

But there’s a lot more to eat in the Cream City these days than just a brat at the ballpark. The city’s food scene has exploded, to the point where “Top Chef” is shooting its next season there.

Less than a mile from the ballpark, Story Hill BKC – that stands for bottle, kitchen, cocktail – offers hearty brunch in the form of hickory smoked ham and Alpine cheese crepes, showered with house-made pickles, dijonnaise and soft poached eggs. But their curried chicken salad sandwich is also a winner.

Just up the road, fantastic artisan thin pizza at Wy’East – which offers a style of pie rarely seen in Milwaukee. Blistered edges and chewy middles are the highlights here.

Just south of downtown in Walker’s Point, Momo Mee is run by a former Chicagoan. The Chinese menu features dan dan noodles and xiao long bao, the prized soup dumplings from Shanghai. Each one made by hand, then steamed for seven minutes.

Just a few minutes north, the Zócalo food truck park offers plenty of options for even the pickiest eater. The bar is inside, but the eating is mostly outdoors. 

“We have all types of cuisines. We have sushi, burgers, pizza, tacos, Venezuelan arepas – we have it all,” said Jesus Gonzalez, owner of Zócalo.

In the historic Third Ward, parking is a little more of a challenge, but Bavette Boucherie is worth it, especially if you’re a fan of Wisconsin charcuterie and cheese boards, or dynamic sandwiches, like a corned beef tongue reuben or a plump kimchi chicken sausage dressed with poblano cream, cukes and cashews.

Slightly more upscale dining on the Lower East Side at Birch, one of the city’s best new American options, where the open flame hearth is the focus of the kitchen, cooking whole trout, butterflied with fermented tomato paste and poblano puree, then topped with tomatillo salsa and charred onions. Seasonal salads feature juicy heirloom tomatoes and stone fruit.

“That’s the best thing about this time of year in Wisconsin is the abundance of summer produce but also the fall things start to come in season,” said Kyle Knall, the chef-owner of Birch.

Up the road, on Brady Street, The Diplomat is a great option for ever-so-slightly upscale casual fare served in a relaxed atmosphere. There’s a perfectly executed Caesar salad, a knob of rich chicken liver mousse with housemade rolls; even a grilled ribeye. Cocktails are also made with care.

And in Wauwatosa, just an 8-minute drive from the ballpark, 30 year-old Ristorante Bartolotta still sets the standard, transporting guests to one of the regions of Italy each night. Paul Bartolotta cooked at Chicago’s Spiaggia decades ago; he says his family’s tiny restaurant set a standard long before there was serious interest in food here.

“Trucks from Chicago, vendors from Chicago, fish companies, meat companies, bread companies, linen companies were all coming up to Milwaukee, and more and more, it was the birth of what Milwaukee’s dining scene is today,” said Bartolotta. “It was all about this evolution of our cooking and the restaurant that has been incredibly well embraced by the community.”

And on the way home, be sure to hit Leon’s, for some of the best frozen custard on the planet.

Here’s where you can go:

Momo Mee

110 E. Greenfield Ave., 414-316-9003

Zócalo Food Truck Park

636 S. 6^th St., 414-433-9747

Bavette Boucherie

217 N. Broadway, 414-273-3375

Story Hill BKC

5100 Bluemound Rd., 414-539-4424

Wy’East

5601 W. Vliet St., 414-943-3278

Birch

459 E. Pleasant St., 414-323-7372

The Diplomat

815 E. Brady St., 414-800-5816

Ristorante Bartolotta

7616 W. State St., Wauwatosa, 414-771-7910

Leon’s Frozen Custard

3131 S. 27^th St.

Also worth checking out:

Allie Boy’s Bagelry

Odd Duck

939 S. 2^nd St., 414-763-5881

The die-hards want to know if they’re hand-rolled, then boiled-and-baked.

I’m still a fan of the old school places on the North Shore like New York Bagel and Bialy or Once Upon a Bagel. But few, if any shops, use an all-natural sourdough starter for their dough. You can taste the results before you even say “schmear.”

Rachel and Adam Beltzman got bit by the baking bug during the pandemic, moving from bread to bagels pretty quickly. The resulting business – R & A Sourdough – which now occupies the corner of Lawrence and Winchester in Ravenswood, has allowed them to grow steadily.

“We had nothing but time, so it kind of allowed us to do something with that time and slow down and create something out of nothing,” Rachel said.

The key to everything is their sourdough starter.

“So a sourdough starter is like the bloodline of this bakery. It provides the bacteria; instead of commercial yeast it allows the bread to rise,” she said.

They take a little bit of the starter each day, adding it to their large batch of dough.

“We’ve gone from our 5-quart KitchenAid we got at Target to our bagel mixer that can hold 100 pounds of flour,” the business owner said.

The dough is portioned into balls using a machine, then each sphere must be turned into a bagel, using both hands. They’re eventually boiled for a few minutes, sealing the shape. Some are dunked into sesame seeds or turned into “everything” bagels or another half dozen-plus options. They’re finally baked until crusty outside.

Their team produces nearly 2,000 bagels a day, all of which can be either schmeared with one of several cream cheeses or sandwiches, featuring cold-smoked salmon, which is made on the premises, then hand-sliced and paired with the usual suspects: tomato, red onion, capers. There’s also corned beef, if you’re not a fish person.

The key, Beltzman said, is feeding that sourdough starter every day, with equal amounts water and flour.

“So we feed it and we take care of it every day, kind of like another child. Even when we go on vacation we need somebody to babysit our starter,” she said.

All of the baked goods at R & A have a sourdough starter in them. Not just the bagels and the breads but even the sweets, like the pumpkin whoopie pies.

Here’s where you can go:

R & A Sourdough

1938 W. Lawrence Ave.

NBC 5’s Food Guy Steve Dolinsky has been searching for a few good versions as a way to kick off Hispanic Heritage Month, which starts Friday. There are several options for the arepa in Chicago, and all use the same brand of corn flour, but they get creative when it comes to the fillings.

Understanding the arepa provides a window to Venezuelan cuisine. At Bolivar & Lincoln, just a few blocks south of Wrigley Field, three brothers took it upon themselves to share their culture.

“We see it as a way of being ambassadors of our country and beyond our country, our people,” said Alejandro Balza, the co-owner of Bolivar & Lincoln.

Corn flour, salt and water are turned into dough, which is formed into thick discs then cooked.

“It’s kind of like a round pocket that is baked over a griddle,” he said.

Split open then slathered with butter, they’re primed for fillings. One example: avocado, mayo, cilantro and spices are pureed, then folded into pulled chicken to make a one-of-a-kind salad, stuffed into the pocket along with shredded gouda cheese.

Like several versions around town, they’re stuffed beyond the normal range of most people’s jaw hinges.

A few blocks south, on Belmont, the tiny 11 Degree North also honors Venezuelan culture with its homemade arepas.

Split then stuffed with a dozen or so options, including that chicken-avocado-mayo mixture, as well as the Pelua – jammed with sweet plantains, shredded beef, garlic cilantro sauce and a handful of shredded gouda.

In Uptown, El Rincon de Fabio offers nearly a dozen arepas; all of the dough is made by hand, formed into thick discs that are griddled, split open and stuffed. Not just with the usual beef, beans and plantains, but also veggie versions with sauteed mushrooms, carrots and cabbage.

Be sure to try their lemonade made from sugar cane and lime.

In Ravenswood, Bien MeSabe has been a neighborhood favorite for nearly eight years. It also has a second location in the Loop.

“It represents for us a lot of our tradition, our culture, our everything,” said Pedro Ron, the owner of Bien Mesabe.

Like everyone else, they use the PAN brand of corn meal for their dough, but rather than rely on eye-balling, they use a custom press to form their discs so they’re all the same width.

Shrimp is sautéed with onions and peppers for the Mochima – it’s stuffed with a springy, stark white cheese and giant wedges of avocado. The Llanera, meanwhile, features grilled strip steak.

“It’s made with beef on the grill, handmade cheese, pico de gallo and avocado,” said Ron.

Ron says the sandwich has its fans, especially among his gluten free customers.

“And definitely they love it,” he said.

Here are places you can go:

Bolivar & Lincoln

3349 N. Sheffield

773-360-8203

11 Degree North

824 W. Belmont Ave.

773-904-7284

El Rincon de Fabio

1002 W. Argyle St.

773-654-3650

Bien MeSabe

1637 W. Montrose Ave.

773-549-5538

29 E. Adams St.

312-285-2911

But inside one East Pilsen supermarket, there’s a tiny counter where they bring in whole fish every week, and break it down themselves.

312 Fish Market is a cozy sushi counter tucked away on the second floor of the sprawling 88 Marketplace, which houses a number of restaurants and food shops, just west of Chinatown. Walk past the groceries and just to the right of the no frills dining court to see the chefs unpack enormous hamachi and kanpachi. There’s bright orange kinmedai nestled next to horse mackerel and smaller flying fish.

“We get them from Toyosu Market in Japan twice a week. We also get some fish from Hawaii, also get it from the Atlantic,” said Joe Fung, the Sushi Chef at 312 Fish Market.

There’s scaling. Then butchering, using precise knife cuts; lots of trimming. Then meticulously pulling the pin bones out. The salmon flesh is a gorgeous deep orange, highlighted with parallel lines of fat.

Fung removes the silver skin of his mackerel with a chopstick. And within minutes, he’s sliced it and presented it in a flamboyant display including the carcass it just came from.

Meanwhile, the rice has to be made. Right after it’s cooked, it’s seasoned.

“Mostly it’s vinegar, salt, sugar. We use a grain vinegar instead of a rice vinegar. It’s more acidic, so you have to drop the acidity levels. I add in yuzu as well,” said Fung.

The cook then cools the rice by agitating it and even using a small fan.

“You want it kind of like pasta, al dente; the kind of texture when you bite into it, you can still have that little bit of bounce,” he said.

Back at the counter, some fish gets torched, while others are assembled raw. First, some fresh wasabi root is grated; a finger’s worth is added to the inside, then the rice is hand-formed and placed onto it for some classic nigiri.

They also make maki rolls with imported nori, or seaweed sheets. When eating the nigiri, Fung stresses the importance of the rice.

“You wanna feel that grain; you want to taste that grain. You want that texture,” he said.

Therefore, he recommends lightly dragging it through soy sauce – fish side down.

“I think the best way is with your hands. You don’t want any of the soy to soak into that rice,” he said.

The dining room inside the restaurant is tiny, but they have more tables out in the common area, next to the grocery store. It’s certainly one of the most unique places to eat sushi in town.

Here’s where you can go:

312 Fish Market

2105 S Jefferson St, Chicago, IL 60616

872-222-7288

“I wanted to build a loyal following, and over the past eight years I’ve been able to do that,” said Broussard.

For starters, a peach cobbler parfait of sorts.

“Currently we are offering a peach cobbler filling with soft serve and our signature salted caramel peach pie slice on top,” she said.

There’s cookies and cinnamon rolls too, but pies are the focus.

“My dad loved pies, but I loved everything – pound cake, brownies, crispy treats – the brownies that we serve are really special. I make them in a really small pan to ensure everyone gets an edge. We put dark chocolate and milk chocolate using Valhrona chocolate, so it’s very rich, fudgy,” she said.

Broussard has more challenges than most business owners. For one, she can’t greet her guests and work at the same time.

“Because I cannot talk and work at the same time. I literally have to stop, look at you, because I rely on reading lips as a form of communication.”

With so much new equipment, the business was also a target for thieves during construction.

“It was very discouraging, and I started to question if I was even supposed to open in this neighborhood,” she said.

But now with a finished space, and room for classes, Broussard is already getting compliments from her new neighbors.

“People say ‘I’ve lived here since 1969 and this is exactly what the neighborhood needs,” said Broussard.

After a few weeks of practice, Justice for the Pies officially opens on Friday. For now, the bakery will only be open Friday to Sunday.

Here’s where you can go:

Justice of the Pies

8655 S. Blackstone Ave.

“Always fresh fruit, fresh ingredients; quality product is really what makes the paleta,” said Eric Gutierrez, co-owner of Mixoacana Paleteria

They make about two dozen water-based, nearly 30 milk-based. One of them is fresa, or strawberry. “We basically make a milkshake out of those strawberries,” said Gutierrez.

Once pureed, the mixture is poured into steel molds; then wooden handles are plunged through whole strawberries and then set into the molds. To quickly freeze, the molds are submerged in Glycol, sort of like a food grade anti-freeze, for about 20 minutes.

“So it won’t freeze, but it will go really low in temperature, to like negative 20 degrees,” he said.

They’re released into a holding bin, then quickly placed into the packing machine so they can be boxed and shipped.

“It has to go from the cold liquid straight to the packaging machine and right to the freezer so it can maintain its form,” he said.

Another great milk-based option is the cookies and cream. Or the pistachio.

“You get that strong pistachio flavor; we add almonds to it – it’s really an amazing bar. We also do banana-Nutella. We fill the middle of the bar with Nutella, which turns into a chocolate bar, so you’re biting into the banana and you’re biting into the Nutella-chocolate bar, it’s pretty amazing,” said Gutierrez.

On the water-based side, watermelon with lime is fantastic; so is the limón, which is all lime. The house special is the Mangonada.

“Mango with chamoy and tajin – it’s really spicy, really sweet,” he said.

Whichever you choose, it’s an inexpensive treat not just in summertime, but all year long.

“It’s an easy snack to buy and take home,” said Gutierrez.

Los Mangos

3551 W. 26^th St.
773-277-7300

5758 S. Pulaski
773-735-4402

5923 W. 63^rd St.
773-498-6277

3859 W. 26^th St.
773-277-8944

5915 S. Kedzie Ave.
773-918-0198

5706 W. Cermak Rd., Cicero
708-683-6266

333 E. Indian Trail Rd., Aurora
630-340-3968

170 1 N. Larkin Ave., Crest Hill
815-630-2611

While those bakeries are impressive, they all tend to serve the same things. But a new bakery in Palos Hills is offering the community a very different lineup.

From Bridgeview down to Palos Hills, most bakeries along South Harlem Avenue have plenty of baklava and kunefa. But a French pastry school grad decided to shake things up a bit, by offering her community a taste of what she has found in other cities and adding her own twist to them.

Looks can be deceiving at Cake ‘N Bake, a tidy bakery in a non-descript Palos Hills strip mall. You could swear they’re filling donuts; they’re not. Passionfruit, mango and raspberry are layered with almond cake, in a treat no more than four bites across. Even the series of mousse cakes is beguiling, some “painted” in chocolate or coffee.

“I wanted to have something that I would love to see in any store I wanna go to; I wanna try something new,” said Wasfia Shalabi, the owner of Cake ‘N Bake.

And so after a trip to New York, where she saw rolled croissants, she figured out how to make them. Dough is laminated with layers of butter, just like a croissant, but then rolled, stuffed like a filled donut or a paczek, then topped with echoes of the filling.

“We have the pistachio, hazelnut, Lotus Biscoff, chocolate topped with Nutella and strawberry cheesecake,” she said.

Puff pastries resemble giant ice cream cones, but they’re not.

“Custard and fruit on top, the other one is chocolate and Nutella with a Ferrero,” said Shalabi.

One of the pastry chefs works on a special mousse cake they call “banoffee.”

“Banana, toffee and chocolate mousse on top…”

Meanwhile, her coffee mousse is downright stunning. It looks like an enormous coffee bean, but eats like a sweet, soft cloud.

“It has a chocolate sponge, with a chocolate crunchy and hazelnut, we have coffee crème brulee and coffee mousse on top,” she said.

Pistachios play an important role in the kitchen, not just in the rolled croissants, but also the cheesecake.

“White chocolate, pistachio, and we put our pistachio paste on top and decorate it,” said Shalabi.

And decoration seems to be the common thread here. A simple tart is elevated by a dome-shaped mousse cake.

 “That’s a vanilla strawberry mousse cake, and we put it on top of a fruit tart, which has a strawberry tart and custard.”

Shalabi says customers are intrigued by her creations. Most of which they’ve never seen before.

“And they want to try everything,” she said.

Here’s where you can go:

Cake N’ Bake

10456 S. Harlem Ave., Palos Hills

708-971-1777

The problem I had with some legendary spots was the soft serve just had a very artificial sweetness, with a texture that was, um, lacking. These five all not only taste great, but the first two also offer vegan options.

The ice cream and novelties at Dairy Star – a legendary soft serve temple in Lincolnwood – have fed generations on hot summer days. The store went completely kosher in 1999, and more recently, added a vegan option.

“We think there should be something here for everyone and there’s a lot of people who don’t eat dairy, so we have a delicious vegan soft serve,” said Chris Kersten, one of the owners at Dairy Star.

Using soy milk, the soft serve can be topped just like any other cone, or turned into a shake.

Over in Wicker Park, the two year-old Vaca’s Creamery is a 100% vegan creamery, making sundaes, cones and shakes that get some customers – like this mom and her kids – to drive down from Palatine.

“We use an oat milk base for our vanilla and chocolate then we have a seasonal flavor which we use a different base – we make our own tahini milk. And then we flavored it with orange blossom,” said co-owner Dylan Sutcliff.

In the West Loop, Cone has an Irish theme to their malts and sundaes, but in addition to their hard ice cream, their soft serve has just the right amount of sweetness. And while the chocolate-vanilla swirl is a reliable option, the orange-vanilla dreamsicle combo is just delightlful.

Down the block, VietFive is known for their Vietnamese coffee, but they also have a stellar soft serve, currently featuring ube – the purple yam – as well as vanilla. As good as the swirl is, it’s really the icy-creamy texture that lures me back again and again.

And the Asian influence is taken to another level at Kurimu, which now has three locations in the city – including in Lincoln Park – as well as Schaumburg. Their Asian affogato is irresistible.

“We start with the whipped Dalgona coffee on the base and we put our Hokkaido milk ice soft serve on top, and then we put the mini Stan’s donut and then top it off with chocolate hard shell,” said Ming Ng, Owner of Kurimu.

Flavors rotate among the four stores. On a recent day, it was either the Hokkaido milk or Nutella – or both, which is great – and then you have to choose which type of cone to have it in.

“Matcha flavor, lavender, chocolate, red velvet; all the kids love the color cones,” he said.

Here are a number of soft serve joints you can check out:

Dairy Star

3472 W. Devon Ave., Lincolnwood

847-679-3472

Vaca’s Creamery

1436 W. Blackhawk St.

2324 W. Giddings

Cone

1047 W. Madison

312-666-5111

VietFive

1116 W. Madison

312-929-4732

Kurimu

1632 W. Division St., 773-687-8710

1159 W. Taylor St., 312-877-5227

2668 N. Halsted St., 773-360-1656

601 N. Martingale Rd. #165, Schaumburg, 630-283-0782

Honorable Mention:

Burger Baron

1381 W. Grand Ave., 312-733-3285

132 E. Golf Rd., Arlington Heights, 847-258-3736

Thattu, a new restaurant on Chicago’s North Side, goes in a completely different direction, featuring dishes from India’s southernmost state, and as a result the menu is unlike anything else offered in the area.

The Indian state of Kerala is tropical, with a massive coastline that stretches out more than 300 miles. Spices like black pepper and cardamom originate there, and coconut trees are abundant.

So when a local couple decided to open a restaurant dedicated to the food from that region, they had to consider the source of their spices as much as any other decision they had to make.

Margaret Pak’s story is a unique one. A Korean-American, she’s the chef and co-owner of Thattu, a new southern Indian-focused restaurant next to the North Branch of the Chicago River.

“I fell in love with Vinod and Kerala cuisine around the same time, 20 years ago when we met,” said Pak. “Coconut is life. Coconut oil, coconut milk, coconut chips, roasted coconut. Coconut is a huge part of the cuisine.”

You can indulge in a fried chicken sandwich at lunch, served with tater tots dressed in chaat masala. The batterless chicken is fried, dressed with greens, spicy cucumber pickle and a homemade curry leaf aioli, all sandwiched between brioche buns. Their chicken bites are made the same way, with the same marinade.

“Kashmiri chile, some ginger-garlic and a multitude of spices including black pepper, cumin. And then that’s served with a cooling yogurt sauce,” she said.

But there’s also plenty of vegetarian-friendly options.

“Chorum Kariyum – and that loosely translates to ‘rice and curry.’ It’s a black chickpea; we make it into a Kadala curry salad; that avial dressing is where the curry leaf and the coconut and the coconut milk come into play,” she said.

The black chickpea is also combined with roasted coconut gravy, served with either rice or fluffy-crisp appams, made from coconut milk and rice flour; the perfect vehicle to scoop up the savory stews, as well as pappadum.

“Pappadum, that’s a crispy chickpea wafer,” she said.

Fish rotates, but on this day, it was three small fillets of catfish in a saffron-tinged marinade.

“Kashmiri chile, some turmeric and then salt and lime. We have a methi chutney and then a watermelon and onion salad,” said Pak.

Visitors should definitely try one of their drinks, whether it’s a Kapi – a combo of dark roast beans and bitter chicory combined with scalded milk – or a more refreshing Malabar Cooler, containing black pepper and cardamom syrup, plus mint, lime, pineapple and watermelon.

Pak says she only started cooking professionally about seven years ago, but her frequent trips to Kerala over the past 20 years have yielded immense knowledge.

“And I’ve learned a tremendous amount from Vinod – and from his mom,” she said.

Diners should know that the menu is tight at lunch with several more options at dinner, including steamed fish, bone-in pork chops and mussels, but do try the vegetarian dishes to really get a sense of Southwest Indian cooking.

There’s a lot of overlap with the more popular Lebanese and Jordanian menus in town, but there are a few dishes unique in the Iraqi kitchen.

The vertical spits of beef and chicken shawarma are hand-stacked and sliced throughout the day, just as the juicy kebabs are, always served with one of three different rices, at Spice and Fire Grill, in a Morton Grove strip mall on Golf Road. The family cooking everything is from Iraq.

“We have a traditional way of cooking the food, so when you come here, you expect the best,” said Aws Bahjat, whose family owns the restaurant. “For example, with the falafel, we use amba sauce, we don’t use the tahini sauce which is the white sauce.”

That’s not the only difference.

Consider the half dozen or so salads – some of which are familiar, like parsley-jammed tabbouli or creamy baba ganouj – others, such as a pasta salad with vegetables or an eggplant salad, are rarely seen in Lebanese kitchens in town. Also, the addition of pomegranate sauce is unique.

“The pomegranate sauce, it gives it that sourness, also a bit of sweet flavor,” he said.

And like neighboring Iran, rice is paramount. Here, they make three kinds.

“Iraq is known for the rice; we have a lot of different rices. We did the yellow rice, the tomato rice and the biryani rice,” said Bahjat.

All of which will be found beneath the lamb quzi.

“The quzi is our best dish because we cook it for five hours; it’s very tender. You pull the bone away, and the meat falls off,” he said.

They also prepare massive chicken platters, featuring slow-cooked, whole or half chickens, cooked down with some of their braising liquid and a bit of food coloring, turning them fire engine red.

“When we put it in the pan, we put the broth with it and then we put our secret sauce with it, and pomegranate of course,” said Bahjat.

Bahjat says many dishes may look familiar if you’ve had Lebanese, Jordanian or Palestinian, but the Iraqi difference comes just before serving.

“We put our sauces on it to make it more flavorful,” he said.

Here’s where you can go:

Spice and Fire Grill

7925 Golf Rd. Morton Grove, IL 60053

847-730-5428

It’s called “jerk” – and it stems from a seasoning and preservation method, developed by the indigenous people, who later taught it to African slaves. The tradition continues to this day.

A predecessor to beef jerky, jerk chicken means using allspice, plus fiery Scotch Bonnet peppers. Those slaves – called The Maroons – seasoned their chicken to preserve it, then cooked it underground to evade British troops. There are lots of jerk joints in Chicago, including one on the Southwest Side that’s worth the trip.

The fire and smoke rises from the custom-built grill pretty much all day, inside St. Bess Jerk, located between a nail salon and a barber in a Burbank strip mall. Incidentally, they have another location in Norwood Park, on Northwest Highway. Named for the owner’s hometown of St. Elizabeth, Jamaica, they focus on just a couple of things, but mainly jerk chicken. The dipping sauce doubles as a marinade, and it contains two crucial ingredients.

“Scotch Bonnet pepper. You know you have to have that and allspice. If you don’t have those two, that’s not a jerk,” said Ricardo Blake, the cook and owner.

Blake makes the sauce throughout the day. Fresh scallions are a must, and so is a handful of fresh thyme – stems and all. Then those fiery, orange Scotch Bonnet chiles, knobs of fresh ginger and a handful or two of fresh garlic and white onions. He adds about a half a cup of vinegar to aid in blending, then some poultry seasoning and the ground allspice.

Blended until smooth, the sauce is poured over and rubbed throughout half chickens.

“First you marinate them overnight, to give that flavor,” he said.

Next day, it’s onto the grill, which sits directly above the hardwood charcoal. So it’s technically not a slow smoke, but rather, a high heat grill. Chickens are removed after about 35 minutes, and the result is a juicy bird with a nicely charred and seasoned exterior. The marinade penetrates it, but you might need to add additional sauce.

Sides are also worth a taste – all orders come with rice and beans, and if you like, gravy, but then you have to make some decisions.

“So we have cabbage, mac and cheese, candied yams, corn…”

Blake says he doesn’t offer jerk egg rolls or other riffs on his native cuisine. He prefers keeping the menu simple.

“Keep it authentic,” he said. “If it’s not hot, spicy, it’s no jerk,” he said.

Here’s where you can go:

St. Bess Jerk

4838 W. 79th St., Burbank

708-634-2057

5729 N. Northwest Hwy.

773-792-1553

Popular on the West Coast and downstate, these thinner versions look smaller, but still pack a lot of flavor. Steve Dolinsky joining us tonight with the details on five of his favorites.

Nothing thick and juicy about these… but it’s the technique of literally smashing the burger on the flat top, resulting in a crispy, lacey edge, which adds wonderful texture but maintains that optimal bite ratio I’m always looking for in a sandwich.

Since 1932, Miner Dunn has been a major smashburger destination for the folks in Highland, Indiana. Measured scoops of fresh ground beef, perfectly toasted thin buns and some nice smashing technique, resulting in crisp edges and softer middles. American cheese; your choice of mayo, ketchup, mustard and pickles and a side of handcut fries. This is Midwest nirvana, and don’t forget the soft serve!

Schoop’s has locations all over Northwest Indiana, and ironically, Curtis Rund worked there as a teen. He brought that experience to Roscoe Village several years ago, at The Region, where he makes some of the flattest and widest smashburgers around.

“Really thin and lacey and crispy on the edges, and as you work your way in, it gets a little thicker and more juicy,” said Rund.

He starts with a seven-ounce ball of freshly-ground beef.

“Then I use a bricklayer’s trowel to press it down and then kind of work the edges,” he said.

Not only does he work the edges, he scrapes and flips at just the right time. A slice of American, plus secret sauce, relish and onions is all it needs. Good luck keeping it all together.

Decadence is the name of the game at The Drop In, a West Town bar with a seriously delicious smashburger made from two, three-ounce patties of fattier Wagyu beef.

Toasted buns get a shmear of housemade sauce containing relish, chili sauce, mayo and mustard; then tart pickles on one side, spicier pickled jalapeños on the other. Meanwhile, finely shredded onions are mounded on one side of the smashed patty, which is flipped over, then topped with American cheese. The patties are stacked, then gently placed between the buns. Tons of flavor in this sandwich with good texture and a great burger-to-bun ratio.

Right next to the Kennedy, just South of Fullerton, The Leavitt Street Inn & Tavern has gained a passionate following for its smashburger. It dominates the rest of the menu.

“It’s a burger, right? So…I love it. I love burgers, so I’m glad everybody else loves burgers,” said owner Teddy Harris. “Crispy edges…I think it’s more flavor,” he said.

Two patties are smashed so thin, they need to be scraped off the flat top with what looks like a drywall spatula. Cheese and caramelized onions are layered in between, then the buttered and toasted sesame seed buns are topped with crunchy pickles and housemade sauce. Simple and yet so satisfying.

Finally, check out the technique at Taco Sublime, which runs the kitchen inside Marz Community Tavern in Bridgeport. Two, four-ounce patties are not only smashed, they’re pressed as wide as can be.

“Research went into it because we wanted to give you a smashburger that was pink in the middle,” said owner Khaled Simon.

Toasted sesame seed-jammed buns get covered in mayo, mustard, ketchup and pickles on the bottom, while both cheese-covered patties rest on top. The ratio is spot-on, and Simon is right: crispy edges, pink in the middle.

“It requires a little bit of technique; it’s just learning how to spin around the edge with the smasher.”

Here are plenty of places you can go for a smashburger:

Miner-Dunn

8940 Indianapolis Blvd., Highland IN

219-923-3311

The Region

2057 W. Roscoe St.

773-857-2874

The Drop In

415 N. Milwaukee Ave.

Leavitt Street Inn & Tavern

2345 N. Leavitt St.

773-661-9639

Taco Sublime at Marz Community Tavern

3630 S. Iron St.

773-579-1935

Honorable mention:

Dusek’s

1227 W. 18^th St.

312-526-3851

You can certainly start the day with a thick stack of pancakes at Miru, hidden away on the 11th floor of the gleaming new St. Regis Hotel, which is a small part of the stunning new glass-enclosed St. Regis Chicago, from Starchitect Jeanne Gang in Lakeshore East.

The food is almost secondary, when you’ve got commanding views of the Lake, Streeterville and River North. Miru does, afterall, mean “view” in Japanese. But look closer.

See that chef breaking down a side of tuna? Or those gentlemen, slicing sashimi and creating colorful platters of sushi? Miru’s focus is Japanese, so it’s no surprise to learn they also offer a traditional breakfast set.

“Traditional Japanese breakfast is white rice, pickles, miso soup, and cooked – usually – salmon, and salmon egg,” said Hisanobu Osaka, the chef at Miru.

The salmon filet is broiled for just a minute.

“We are using a New Zealand King salmon, and we brine it overnight,” said Osaka.

Once cooked to medium rare, it’s brushed with a shiodare sauce containing sesame oil, salt and scallions.

Salmon roe – or eggs – are placed into a wide, shallow bowl, topped with a soft egg that’s first cooked to 145 degrees, then held until an order comes in.

“Then kind of inside is a nice and runny egg yolk, then when we pick up, we poach it again, nice and firm outside, inside is still runny yolk,” he said.

Miso soup is salty and bracing, ladled into a cup with seaweed and firm tofu. Pickles are delicate and briny, providing some important crunch and color.
“It’s usually daikon radish, and pickled cucumber and pickled gobo,” said Osaka.

Rice is lightly seasoned, and don’t overlook the dried nori, or seaweed. It’s a perfect, umami-loaded wrap for that salmon. Order a pot of tea and just take in the view – it’s a power breakfast move that doesn’t require staying at the hotel.

“So far it’s a lot of people, it’s surprisingly; it’s good,” he said.

Here’s where you can go:

Miru at The St. Regis Hotel

401 E. Wacker Dr.

312-725-7811

Don’t let all that pasta confuse you. Daisies is not an Italian restaurant. But the kitchen does take pride in making everything from scratch, which now includes an ambitious bakery during the day.

Leigh Omilinsky, the pastry chef at Daisies – which moved a few blocks south into a much larger space – has free reign in the mornings, offering coffee cakes, scones, laminated pastries and Danish braids. Just about anything goes well with a coffee.

And during the day, you can bet the crew is busy making pasta – at least a half dozen varieties – including pillowy soft gnocchi or pappardelle, which requires several passes through a dough sheeter, then trimming, measuring and cutting.

But remember, it’s not an Italian restaurant.

“It’s more of the Italian philosophy for me, which is, you eat what’s in season, what’s around you, as simply as you possibly can with the best ingredients you can find,” said Chef-owner Joe Frillman.

In Spring, it’s ramps.

Their tops are embedded in ricotta, and along with an egg yolk, sealed in a ramp-infused pasta dough, which is turned into a giant raviolo.

Frillman browns butter, adding pickled ramps to it, then, after he showers the cooked raviolo in Sarvecchio – a Wisconsin parmesan – he tops it with the brown butter-cooked ramps.

“With the amount of fat, the egg yolk, the pickles cut really nicely through the dish,” he said.

That pappardelle is cooked with a Portobello mushroom ragú – one of the few dishes containing tomato sauce. Finished with fresh herbs and Pecorino Romano, it’s hearty and satisfying.

Beef tongue is grilled with charred cabbage, dressed with a razor clam juice vinaigrette, plus fried shallots and dill.

“We wanted to make vegetables and produce kind of the focal point of the menu.”

Check out the dip made of carrots you spread on gnoccho frito – tiny fried dough pockets. The carrots are confited – or preserved – in fat, served with briny pickled carrots on the side.

“We confit ‘em in duck fat, but the animal fat is there to kind of give you that savory umami that satiates you,” he said.

Frillman also makes great use of byproduct, like Salmon collars, which are simply grilled, then served with a zesty horseradish gremolata.

“It’s a really tasty piece of the fish; there is some bones in it, but for us it’s more bang for your buck,” said Frillman.

Desserts are Omilinsky’s department. Just like during the day, but a bit more refined.

“We get to play with nostalgia but also play with the local flavors,” said Omilinsky. “So the rhubarb crostata – rhubarb is in season now, we get it from Klug Farms in Michigan. And then there’s a pistachio frangipane and rhubarb compote and it’s served warm with a little chamomile anglaise,” she said.

Here’s where you can go:

Daisies

2375 N. Milwaukee Ave.

773-661-1832

You’d expect to see salads on a vegan menu, but at Spirit Elephant, tucked in among the boutiques along Green Bay Road in downtown Winnetka, the kitchen has to use vegan cheese, often derived from coconut milk. But you don’t feel like you’re missing anything on the blue cheese-covered wedge – there’s mushroom bacon along with pickled red onion and tomatoes. The goal of the restaurant was simple.

“A chef-driven, very creative, craveable, delicious restaurant with amazing food that just happens to be vegan,” said owner CD Young.

Buffalo wings are made from cauliflower. But a thick, juicy burger?

“We use a lot of mushrooms to create that meaty, steak-y feel,” she said.

The Jorge Burger features either an Impossible Meat or black bean patty with a bourbon reduction; mushroom bacon, a mammoth onion ring and vegan cheese.

What about the calamari?

It’s made from trumpet mushrooms; the stems are hollowed-out to be those rings that you’re familiar with,” she said.

Meaty, nutritious Lion’s Mane mushrooms are rolled in cornflakes, fried then tossed with chili spice.

“And then we have a harissa dipping sauce and a pineapple chutney,” said Young.

Spanish bomba rice is cooked until tender, then topped with a bouquet of color.

“It’s a vegetable harissa paella, which also takes advantage of that heat and a little bit of sweetness and all of the beautiful, colored vegetables. That one is packed with vegetables,” she said.

You’ll see plenty of those outside, on the massive back patio this summer. But then you have to ask the inevitable: how do you tackle a chocolate mousse with no dairy or eggs?

“It’s just a rich coconut mousse that’s decadent and creamy with cocoa powder, whipped cream and fruit – it’s something,” said Young.

Here’s where you can go:

Spirit Elephant

924 Green Bay Rd., Winnetka

847-348-9000

Elephant & Vine

2315 N. Lincoln Ave., Chicago

719 Church St., Evanston

When you see the plates of shrimp cocktail and beef tartare, or notice a bartender is making gin martinis while servers pour bold reds, you might think, “oh, steakhouse.” But Smoque Steak isn’t your dad’s steakhouse, because here, they’re cooking the ribeyes and skirts in a three-step process.

“I’d never smoked a steak before so I thought I’d give it a try and I thought it was life-changing. I thought this was the best steak I ever had and I wanted to figure out how to do it,” said co-owner Barry Sorkin.

Steaks are first seasoned with salt and pepper. Then phase one.

“We start by smoking it – just a little bit of smoke to put some flavor on it,” said Sorkin.

The steaks are smoked for about 20 minutes.

“Part of it is that you don’t want a super intense smoke. You still want that ribeye to eat like a ribeye,” he said.

They’re cry-o-vac’d, then phase two: placed in a water bath called sous vide.

“We use sous vide to finish the cooking, and get a real precise finished temperature,” he said.

Phase three takes just a minute or two.

“It comes out of the sous vide and goes in a cast iron skillet with a little clarified butter,” said Sorkin.

Once seared, they’re finished with housemade garlic butter while still warm.

“It’s a steak that eats like a steak but a steak like no other,” he said.

There’s more than beef here, a fine house salad with crisp watermelon radish, or a creamy bowl of grits with some butter-poached lobster tail and roasted peppers, scallions and corn.

“It’s upscale, but also a little bit downscale at the same time,” said Sorkin. “We wanted to have something for everybody; even if you don’t eat steak, there’s still something great here.”

Reservations are a must. And how about this: not only do they have a lot, but even the block the restaurant is on has free parking. Hallelujah. You’ve saved $20 before you even step inside.

Here’s where you can go:

Smoque Steak

3310 N. Elston Ave.

773-219-1775

But a new restaurant in River North is focusing on Spain’s Basque region, where the cooking can be wildly different

The dialect is different in Northern Spain, and so is the food. Basque Country has its own traditions, drawing from both the land and the sea. So when one local couple decided to try to replicate those flavors, they went all-in.

Doug Psaltis loves the cooking from the town of San Sebastian so much – the prawns and the razor clams and the tiny boquerones – he and his wife created Asador Bastian, an ode to the food from Northern Spain, located in a historic remodeled home in River North.

“The biggest challenge is, wasn’t really the location in Chicago where we are, but it’s finding the right products,” said Psaltis.

A fun hi-low starter is churros, topped with a mound of caviar. Those boquerones, or anchovies, are shipped in then broken down, and finally, placed on bite-sized toasts.

“We de-bone them all by hand, we cure ‘em in a little white wine vinegar and some seasoning, then hold them in olive oil,” he said.

Rather than focus on cuts of beef, he sources breeds that live for at least two-and-a-half years before slaughter.

“We’re fortunate to work with great French dairy cows – Simmenthals – British ones; Holsteins that are produced here in California, and the Galiciana as well,” said Psaltis. “So we bring in all our sides of beef, mature them in-house; we take liberties from the chuleton – the classic steak of the Basque region – which is a rib steak cut about two inches thick, all of them are cooked on the bone.”

And cooked over intensely hot charcoals that could melt a radiator. But that high heat sears the aged beef, melting fat and caramelizing the crust. Don’t order these anywhere past medium.

There’s also whole fish, including Besugo, or Spotted Bream, flown in from Barcelona. Cooked over the charcoals, it’s butterflied, then topped with some Condila chiles for punch. It’s both meaty and satisfying.

Dessert is Psaltis’ wife’s department. Hsing Chen is one of the city’s most talented pastry chefs; her citrus coupe is both stunning and refreshing.

“So it’s layers of grapefruit, orange, gelee, with fresh citrus, coconut cream on top, a grapefruit granita, topped with some dehydrated clementines and lime zest. Very light, very refreshing, kind of a palate cleanser,” said Chen.

Here’s where you can go:

Asador Bastian

214 W. Erie St.

312-800-8935

Just two cooks run the small kitchen at El Xangarrito, a straightforward Mexican restaurant on a Ravenswood side street. One of them is Rogelio Benitez, a veteran of several Lettuce Entertain You restaurants. He and his wife opened the restaurant during the pandemic, with a combination of his recipes and her front-of-the-house hospitality.

“We thought that we could start up a restaurant to showcase his food, his ideas,” said Erika, Rogelio’s wife and the co-owner of El Xangarrito.

Ceviche is like a whiff of the tropics, painted by Seurat. Plump shrimp is combined with fresh cilantro, mango, red peppers and cukes; a squeeze of fresh lime then a vigorous toss, plus cubes of fresh avocado, then mounded in a ring mold for presentation points, surrounded by a mild tamarind sauce and crowned with micro greens. You know what those tortilla chips are for.

Carne asada is griddled while three corn tortillas are covered with chihuahua cheese. Once the beef is cooked, it’s rolled up in the tortillas, which are then doused in a smooth mole negro.

“The dark mole is usually a little bit sweeter than the red one; the red one is gonna be a bit spicier than the other one,” said Benitez.

Mole is to Mexico what curries are to Thailand. Each one contains nearly two dozen ingredients. From chocolate and peanuts in the Negro, to almonds, sesame and pumpkin seeds in the red Coloradito. The thing all moles have in common: dried chiles, in this case ancho and pasilla, that are toasted, rehydrated and then blended with those other ingredients.

Back to those enchiladas, Benitez tops them with crumbled queso anejo and a drizzle of thick crema, topped off with tart, pickled red onions to balance that richness.

The Coloradito blankets cooked chicken, which is then sauteed and heated through; plated alongside garlicky green beans and Mexican rice. A garnish of sesame seeds echoes the ground seeds inside the slightly spicier sauce, burnished from the reddish pasilla chiles. A cinnamon-y sweet horchata is the perfect foil to some of those more assertive sauces.

“The sauces are also made by Rogelio, our chef, and every single one of them just has a different taste to them,” she said.

Reservations highly recommended since there are only 11 tables. And don’t forget, it’s BYOB, so bring your favorite wine or Mexican beer.

Here’s where you can go:

El Xangarrito

4811 N. Rockwell St.

773-754-8069

There’s shish kebab, adana kebab and of course döner – what the Greeks call gyros – but there’s another kebab I fell in love with on a recent trip to Istanbul. It comes from the Erzurum Province in Northeastern Turkey, and it’s an ancestor to the popular döner.

The only place in the U.S. where I found a chef with the courage to make it is here in Wicker Park.

Döner is everywhere in Istanbul.

The majestic towers of lamb and beef are essential to the Turkish diet. But there’s also cag kebab, the vertical döner’s horizontal ancestor, made from all lamb. Both have one thing in common.

“It all starts with quality meat,” said Turkish food writer Cemre Torun. “And then the craftsmanship of the usta – the master – who stacks it and then cuts it so it’s really thinly cut. For both of them, charcoal is essential.”

In the Old City, horizontal cones of cag are stacked, cooked and sliced all day long at Sehzade.

“They cut it, and then they can also put it on the grill last minute,” she said.

Those last few seconds over high heat sear the lamb; to eat, just pick up a skewer.

“You eat it off the skewer. We ate it fresh off the spit which was excellent and succulent and so juicy and beautiful,” said Torun.

In Wicker Park, the cooks at Café Istanbul say they’re the only ones making cag kebab in the U.S., and it’s hard to find proof otherwise. Just like Istanbul, sourcing lamb is key.

“It’s kind of hard to find sometimes that quality of the meat,” said Mustafa Guler, Chef and Owner of Café Istanbul. “We find the local butchers.”

He also found an usta, or master of the grill, who knows what it takes to make this ancient dish.

“It is a lot of work. To bring the meat, clean it, marinate it and skewer it.”

The restaurant features all kinds of kebabs – including lots of lamb – but it’s the enormous, charcoal fueled spit that commands most of their attention. Guler says don’t be afraid to eat it directly off of the skewer.

Here’s where you can go:

Café Istanbul

2014 W. Division St.

773-661-9487

But there are many more, all of which have been researched and documented in a new book by a pair of local food writers.

Don’t forget the pepper-and-egg sandwich and taffy grapes, found at your neighborhood steak and lemonade joint. Chicago has a rich history of street food, much of it cooked up in response to our working-class roots.

From hot dogs to jibaritos; even pizza puffs – Chicago is a city with lots of classics we love to devour. David Hammond has been writing about food in Chicago for decades. But his latest book, “Made in Chicago: Stories Behind 30 Great Hometown Bites,” is a tag-team effort with fellow food writer and lifelong Chicagoan Monica Eng.

“So this was an opportunity to dig deeper into the food of a city I’ve been living in my whole life,” said Hammond.

We met at The Hat, a Bucktown diner at North and Ashland, where they make several Chicago classic sandwiches.

“The most uniquely Chicago food is the Italian beef sandwich,” he said.

Typically topped with hot giardiniera, sweet peppers and then either dunked in the gravy (or not), it’s better known than the mother-in-law, which originated on the South Side.

“You put in that poppyseed bun a Chicago corn roll tamale, and then chili is put on top, and many of the same condiments that one would find on a Chicago hot dog. Well, they call it a Mother-in-law because it, too, will give you heartburn.”

Another bun-based sandwich is the Maxwell Street Polish, topped with onions and mustard.

“They were near the union stockyards. Lots of pork scraps there, Hog Butcher to the World, right?”

Right. One reason we have a bone-in pork chop sandwich here as well.

“And the trick to eating it is when you bite into the bun you hold on to the bone through the bun, and then you eat around it otherwise you risk biting into the bone and that would hurt.”

Up in Albany Park, Great Sea is one of a handful of restaurants left still serving Gam Pong chicken wings.

“In the early 1980s, a lot of ethnically Chinese Koreans moved to Albany Park, and they made this dish that was actually something they made back in Korea, but they noticed that wings in the United States were so cheap, so they said instead of doing the whole chicken, let’s just use wings,” said Eng.

Unlike wings at your favorite bar, these are transformed, thanks to the creators’ ingenuity.

“But it’s kind of messy, so let’s make a little handle by Frenching the wings and making them lollipop wings,” she said.

Great Sea also makes a different sauce than its competitor down the street.

“Made it spicier, stickier and sweeter and they actually sell the sauce here now,” said Eng.

We’ve only scratched the surface. The best thing about the book is the origin story behind each of these dishes. Stories of necessity and ingenuity.

“Made in Chicago: Stories Behind 30 Great Hometown Bites” – by David Hammond and Monica Eng

The Hat

1604 W. North Ave.

773-342-5000

Great Sea Restaurant

3253 W. Lawrence Ave.

773-478-9129

NBC 5’s Food Guy Steve Dolinsky is fond of Korean cuisine, and there are several eateries that are worth visiting this month.

For suburban diners, Koreana in the 1100 block of North Salem Drive, is a long-time favorite, nestled into a strip mall in suburban Schaumburg, with a loyal clientele that is boisterous and jovial.

“It’s mostly a barbecue restaurant. We have all kinds of special meats like the pork belly, (and) the non-marinated ribs,” Ellen Chang, one of the restaurant’s staffers, says.

The quality of the beef is critical, and you’ll get your money’s worth whether it’s grilled tableside or in stone bowls.

“You get a nice family experience as well, cooking together on the table and eating and talking and having a few drinks,” Chang said.

For an awesome experience, you can start with the restaurant’s seafood pancake, but don’t fill up, because there’s always vegetable-based banchan in store.

“Dishes comes with side dishes called banchan in Korean. After you cook the meat you can make a lettuce wrap with rice, meat and some of your favorite banchan, and then you roll it up into a gigantic ball and you stuff it all into your mouth,” Chang said.

The pace is a bit less frenetic at Woo Chon Barbecue, located in the 5700 block of North California Avenue in Arcadia Terrace on Chicago’s far North Side. They go old school, using live charcoal, which really sears the marbled beef that’s been marinated, or not.

The banchan is stellar – you can always ask for more – and instead of wrapping the beef up in lettuce, try a thinly-sliced, pickled daikon radish for a smaller bite.

Avondale’s Parachute, located at 3500 North Elston Avenue, emerged from the pandemic with a new focus on authentic Korean flavors. Gorgeous sashimi straight from Japan is served with aged Korean soy.

A vibrant, crunchy salad of whelks, or sea snails, is tossed with somyeon noodles, greens and artisan gochujang provide a tangy sharpness.

“Now we have a lot of access to artisanal products straight from Korea that have a deep flavor and craftsmanship behind it and I want to highlight those things,” says owner Beverly Kim.

There’s a delicate seafood and scallion pancake, plus bulgogi – featuring not only tiny enoki mushrooms, which adds earthiness, but also 30-day dry-aged Slagel Farm sirloin off the bone.

“It just has such a great, deep, umami flavor because it’s been dry-aged for 30 days. It’s also more tender because it’s been aged for that long. Our bulgogi is not your normal, typical bulgogi; it’s using really great product,” Kim says.

There is great Korean food all over Chicagoland these days – from the city to the suburbs – and it’s not always a barbecue house, with places like Parachute certainly proving that since they’ve been open.

The former bowling alley and tavern is now three different concepts, offering a variety of dining experiences. There’s a little something for everyone – from Midwest rotisserie to Japanese robata – and lots of chicken. Here’s Steve Dolinsky tonight with the story.

Stephanie Izard is back in town, having re-opened her Little Goat Diner just this week, near a familiar corner in Lakeview. Comfy bowls like Chili Crunch Chicken and Dumplings fit in perfectly with the neighborhood vibe.

In front of the diner, GG’s Chicken Shop – named for the chef’s mom – is an all-day ode to the bird, where you can have it slowly cooked, spinning before your eyes. The kitchen will chop it up, or pull the juicy meat for use in sandwiches or salads. A bit of breading and a hard fry turns it into messy, two-fisted sandwiches.

“I was kind of raised with rotisserie, fried chicken, pot pies, as a kid, so I always wanted to do something in her name,” said chef and owner Lee Wolen. “We always have 30, 40 birds spinning on the rotisserie.”

“…Can I get a fried chicken sandwich please…”

Sandwiches are the stars here, but don’t sleep on the sides. Smashed potatoes are seasoned with chicken drippings; crispy Brussels sprouts are tossed with chili lime salt; Mexican-inspired sweet corn comes with lime, a dusting of chipotle and cotija cheese. Even the spice-rubbed waffle fries and dipping sauces are all made in-house. One more thing: save room for the oatmeal cream pie.

Next door, Itoko, which means “cousin,” is kind of a sister restaurant to Momotaro in the West Loop. That’s where Gene Kato worked previously, supervising everything from the sushi to the cooked items.

“Have all the great things about Momotaro – like the quality, the technique – but just make it a loose interpretation of Japanese food,” said Kato. “The handrolls are in the sushi category that we weren’t able to do at Momotaro.”

Don’t let those handrolls sit too long or the nori gets soggy. It doesn’t do the warm crab inside any favors. Kato’s skill in the hot kitchen is more impressive, especially at the robata, where blazing hot binchotan charcoals sear a number of skewers; the chicken thighs are particularly good.

“It’s also nice too, because you can order by the piece; most of our robata items are two pieces. It allows you to try different cuts of vegetables and meat,” he said.

Larger appetites should go for the roasted teriyaki chicken, topped with pickled onions, charred scallions and dried yuzu kosho, a condiment made from fermented fresh chiles.

“It’s cool to have a sushi/Japanese place, a fried chicken/rotisserie chicken and kind of an all-day diner to complement everything,” said Wolen.

Here’s where you can go:

Little Goat Diner

3325 N. Southport Ave.

773-819-7673

GG’s Chicken Shop

3325 N. Southport Ave.

773-819-7671

Itoko

3325 N. Southport Ave.

773-819-7672

NBC 5’s Food Guy Steve Dolinsky has been tracking this, and since he’s in Los Angeles, he decided to pay them all a visit.

The weather and the year-round produce are certainly big draws for chefs in LA, but there’s a lot of competition too. How do you distinguish yourself? You do what’s worked already in Chicago.

The hand stretched, artisan pizzas and toothsome pastas share a menu with plenty of salads at Stella Barra, the only Lettuce Entertain You restaurant in Los Angeles, located just blocks from the ocean in Santa Monica. Opening Chef Jeff Mahin brought the concept here from Lincoln Park, and yes, you can still use your Lettuce Frequent Diner points.

A few miles inland, the team behind Bucktown and River North’s Etta has opened at the base of a boutique Hyatt hotel in Culver City. The Mediterranean menu is very similar here.

Meanwhile, the Boka Restaurant Group made a big splash a couple of years ago near downtown, by opening the second Girl and the Goat with Chef Stephanie Izard.

“If you look around where we are here right now at Girl & the Goat in the Arts District, it feels like the West Loop or Fulton Market,” said Gabe Garza, the chief development officer of the Boka Group.

“Looked in Ann Arbor, looked in Washington D.C., looked in a few places and then one day Rob and Kevin were like ‘I think we found something you’re gonna love. We want to get you out to L.A.’” said Izard. “I walk into that space, and you could just see it happening.”

“Obviously we have a couple of crossovers. The green beans are gonna be the green beans, right? We can’t get rid of those. This menu did evolve in its own way and it is specially curated for the market here,” said Garza.

I mean, local strawberries in a salad – in April? One of many examples of the West Coast advantage.

“Chicagoans think that people in L.A. don’t eat bread and don’t eat gluten and all these things and it’s just not true, especially not on the East Side. We sell so much of our naan, which is our bread. We sell so much more than we do in Chicago,” said Izard.

A 10-minute drive into a gritty part of downtown, the Boka Group also runs two restaurants inside the Hoxton Hotel. On the first floor, Café Basque, inspired by Spanish ingredients.

“Really a celebration of Basque food in a diner type setting. Very approachable, very kind of an everyday space to go,” said Garza.

And on the rooftop, next to the pool just like the one in the West Loop, Cabra turns out vibrant Peruvian dishes like ceviche or raw tuna with cubes of fried potatoes. Izard says Angelenos have big appetites.

“They wanna eat; they wanna eat all the things we have and we sell more desserts there too!” said Izard.

Izard is actually back in Chicago, where she’s reopening her diner this week in Lakeview. It’s part of a trio of new restaurants all tucked inside the old Southport Lanes space.

Here’s where you can go – if you visit Los Angeles:

Girl and the Goat

555-3 Mateo St.

213-799-4628

Café Basque

1060 S. Broadway

213-725-5900

A result of the Great Migration, it features unique smokers requiring special skills to master. In south suburban Homewood, there’s one establishment worth trying.

Conveniently located next to a gas station, the ribs, tips and hotlinks coming out of the kitchen at Uncle John’s are truly a thing of beauty – whether you like smoked pork or turkey, their Pitmaster understands low and slow.

South Side barbecue tradition is alive and well at Uncle John’s, which occupies a sliver of a space between a cellular store and a taco joint, in a Homewood gas station parking lot. Aja Kennebrew took the reins from her dad after he retired recently; the lessons have been passed down.

“What wood to use, the recipes for the hot links…” she said. “Low and slow. You have to be diligent to mind the fire so it doesn’t burn your tips. So it’s not exactly easy. It takes some experience. It takes a few years to get it just to where you want it.”

The aquarium-style smoker is unique to Chicago. Ribs, tips, hot links and chicken sit directly over the fire, which is constantly put out, to prevent overcooking. Hot links are first smoked, then fried, giving them a texture that’s crisp but also soft and juicy inside. There are both beef and pork ribs, as well as the fattier rib tips.

Orders always come served over fries, doused or buried in zesty barbecue sauce, covered with bread and wrapped to go – most orders are carryout since there are only two tables. Kennebrew has also added slightly healthier options.

“We have the turkey hot links which is kind of identical to our pork hot links; we also have the turkey tips,” she said.

Barbecue is a tradition that’s hard to mess with. But Kennebrew says she’s up to the task of carrying on her dad’s legacy.

“I was happy to take over for my father. I’m the Last of the Mohicans of my siblings left in Chicago. Everyone else went south for the warm weather. So I’m just holding down the fort.”

Please do me one favor: if you go, ask for sauce on the side. That way, you get to really see the Pitmaster’s skill – hopefully a nice, bright, pink smoke ring around the perimeter, and then sauce as an accent only.

Here’s where you can go:

Uncle John’s Bar-B-Que

17947 S. Halsted St., Homewood

708-960-4612

You know that means pierogis, but also lots of potato dishes and hearty soups.

Polish culture is as synonymous with Chicago as Malört, dibs and potholes. And you don’t necessarily have to lineup at a buffet. In fact, there’s a family-run restaurant on the Northwest Side where they make every customer feel like a long-lost relative, which means feeding them too much.

The cooks are sort of an extended family at Smakosz, a cozy, casual Jefferson Park restaurant that quietly makes some of the best homemade Polish food in the city. Rather than Krakow or Warsaw roots, the recipes come from a town between those two, on the Eastern edge of Poland.

“Lublin, we eat a lot of pierogies. A lot of beans, potatoes,” said Renata Kaminska, owner of Smakosz.

Besides mashed, they also appear in delicate, handmade pierogies, often served with caramelized onions or rendered bacon.

“Potato and cheese, meat, sauerkraut and mushrooms, blueberries, sweet cheese and our signature pierogi is buckwheat, farmer’s cheese and fresh mint,” she said.

Potatoes also star in pancakes, as wide as a CD and crisp as a chip.

“We grind the potatoes ourselves, by hand, so they’re really crispy,” said Kaminska.

Soups and stews are noteworthy. Take the Zurek, which is based on an all-natural starter, not unlike sourdough.

“Zurek is a soup that started with my father, who started zakwas, which is fermented oats, rye flour and garlic. Kapusniak is a sauerkraut soup with spices, potatoes, sausage,” she said.

And then there’s beet borscht – a clear, intensely flavored vegetable broth, embedded with tiny beef dumplings. More thumb-sized dumplings of the potato variety, served with the beef stroganoff. To balance the richness, salads: tart beets, sauerkraut, or finely-chopped coleslaw. To drink, try a fruit-forward kompot or a traditional Polish beer.

Kaminska says her entire menu – especially the soups – provides fuel for warmth.

“They have a lot of spices, a lot of herbs, so they keep you really warm from the inside,” she said.

This truly is “grandma’s cooking,” right down to the wood paneling and handmade pierogis.

If you like what you have, be sure to tell your server everything was “smaczne” – that’s delicious or tasty. Even though tradition from Lublin dictates you have something with potatoes, like the pancakes or pierogi, make sure you that you save enough room for coleslaw, sauerkraut or beets.

Here’s where you can go:

Smakosz

5619 W. Lawrence Ave.

773-205-1771

I have my favorites of course – places like Hoosier Mama Pie Company, Spinning J and Bang Bang Pie. But after a recent visit to Edgewater, I realized there’s yet another pie shop worth shouting about; it started in Milwaukee, but moved here a couple of years ago.

After a burger and a beer from Edgewater’s Beard and Belly, you might have room for dessert. Honeypie is here for you. The owners of the bar and restaurant loved the Milwaukee-based pie shop so much, they reached out.

“We decided to partner up so we could bring Honeypie’s pies down to Chicago, so we opened up the restaurant and the bakery with two storefronts,” said Andrew Barbera, the co-owner.

“We do fresh-baked cream pies and fruit pies every day, along with treats like salted chocolate brownies, chocolate chip cookies.”

The stand mixer gets a workout whipping heavy cream into a light and airy topping for many of their creations. Key lime is popular, but so is a straightforward chocolate cream.

“Our pies are kind of modeled after 1950s, 1960s old school housewife sort of pies – really simple. Graham cracker crust for the cream pies, kind of crumbles as you cut into it, with a layer of custard cream and then fresh whipped cream on top,” he said.

They’ll occasionally push the envelope with a unique take on something like lemon chiffon, and instead use Meyer lemons for both the filling as well as the topping.

Meanwhile, fruit pies take a different approach. Here, strawberries, raspberries and blueberries are the stars, and below them…

“Really simple, just a butter dough, classic pie crust, nice and flaky and delicious,” said Barbera.

Meanwhile, on top: brown sugar, flour, oats and cinnamon.

“We do a nice, sweet, simple streusel topping that crumbles on top,” he said.

Barbera says the big pie events tend to be later in the year – Thanksgiving of course – but also Mother’s Day, so it’s never too early to think about what kind of dessert you’re going to having.

“It’s always a good time for pie,” said Barbera.

Honeypie Bake Shop

6155 N. Broadway

773-754-7429

Also mentioned:

Hoosier Mama Pie Co.

1618 ½ Chicago Ave.

312-243-4846

749 N. Chicago Ave., Evanston

847-868-8863

Bang Bang Pie & Biscuits

2051 N. California Ave.

773-276-8888

NBC 5’s Food Guy Steve Dolinsky says it’s the only time of year corned beef and cabbage or Shepherd’s Pie seem to show up everywhere. But he’s taking a different approach, looking for real flavors from Ireland, enjoyed there year-round.

There’s more to Irish food culture than corned beef, cabbage and potatoes, right? Fortunately, the Irish owners of one of the best restaurants near Millennium Park stick to the basics, putting more emphasis on high-quality seafood and spirits.

This time of year is fraught with contradictions for the team at The Gage, an Irish-owned bar and restaurant serving food better than it has to be, considering its Michigan Avenue address and proximity to Millennium Park. But around St. Patrick’s Day, they turn things up a bit.

“It’s so easy to recognize that it all just becomes sort of Irish cream in your coffee and smashed potatoes. So to be able to not only lean into our Irish culture, but also to be able to show people that it is more than that,” said Torrence O’Haire, the beverage director at The Gage.

Start off with a riff on Finnan Haddie – otherwise known as the smoked haddock cake.

“You could almost think of it like a crab cake, it’s just made with smoked haddock instead,” he said.

Resting on a dill créme fraiche tartar sauce, it’s crowned with a small shredded salad. Haddock also stars in the Dublin Bay seafood chowder, which begins with monkfish and shrimp as well.

“It’s a main course chowder, tons of seafood and really high-quality stuff. We fly it all in ourselves, we butcher everything in house, break down all the whole fish for it,” said O’Haire.

After sautéing with leeks, the chef adds carrots and potatoes to help thicken the chowder. Seafood stock fortified with heavy cream is added, along with some jumbo lump crabmeat and mussels, plus some fresh herbs. Served in a giant, deep bowl, the dish is finished with some fresh dill, a half a lemon and a few slices of griddled bread.

Shepherd’s Pie is available, but it’s not what you’re used to at your local pub.

“We’re not gonna do the ground beef and instant mashed potatoes shepherd’s pie. Slow braise on the high-quality meat, it’s built with so much flavor,” he said.

In terms of drinks, the bar is ambitious here, not resting on its laurels as simply a place for a pint.

“Black and tans are great, Irish cream is fine, but we wanted to lean in to both quality of spirits and also a little bit of interesting Irish history,” O’Haire said. “So our Monserrat Old Fashioned, blended with port barrel-aged cognac, Carribean spiced bitters.”

Grainne O’Malley – the most famous woman pirate in history – so a traditional pirate punch, rum, madeira – fortified wine – touched with apricot and champagne. Really cool way to lean in to both Irish history and a great cocktail,” said O’Haire.

Those dishes will be on the menu for an extended period of time beyond this weekend. If you like Irish whisky, they’ve got nearly two dozen earthy, peaty options to choose from.

Here’s where you can go:

The Gage

24 S. Michigan Ave.

312-372-4243

A popular Middle Eastern restaurant group with more than 100 years in business has opened two locations in the Chicago area – one in Bridgeview and the other in Orland Park.

Whether you’re in the mood for a mixed grill or some of the creamiest hummus you’ve ever had, the compact menu from this well-known Jordanian chain has something for everyone. But unlike most franchises, this one actually prepares the food from scratch all day long.

The recipes for the spreads, salads and marinades have been around for more than 100 years. Hashem has been based in Jordan since the 1950s, and has expanded to the U.S. with a couple of branches, including a sleepy Orland Park strip mall next to a car dealership.

“We make hummus and falafel from scratch, and we follow the same recipe that we used in 1910. And we import all of the spices from the head office in Jordan,” said manager Rami Al-Jbour.

Falafel starts out as chickpeas, parsley and garlic, pushed through a giant grinder until coarse.

Then spices are added – the only obvious one is cumin, they’re not divulging the rest. One option is to have them stuffed with caramelized onions that have been seasoned with sumac. A quick dip in sesame seeds is also a unique touch, and the crispy spheres come with tahini for dipping.

Their hummus takes a lot longer, about 36 hours. Chickpeas are first blended until they’re as smooth as a milkshake.

“The best part of the hummus is the tahini paste. The quality of the tahini paste and the process that we make the hummus; and we make it twice a day,” he said.

To serve, they make a well, filling it with chickpeas and green chiles, then garnished with olive oil and sumac. It’s silky smooth and utterly delicious with warm pita.

There is also beef here, in the form of kebabs or lamb chops, but also shawarma. Cones of beef, lamb and chicken are hand-stacked each morning, after having been marinated overnight.

“We do that every day. In the morning the shawarma has to be ready every day at 8 in the morning, stacked, ready to be grilled in the revolving grill,” Jbour said.

You can add shawarma to a tortilla wrap, pita or sesame bun, choosing your fillings and condiments. They’ll get griddled – panini style – then cut into thin strips for easy eating, just like at the original store.

“It is considered an iconic, historic restaurant in the Middle East and in Jordan,” he said.

If you’re thinking about making a visit, the Orland Park location has a special after 4 p.m. everyday – two-for-one mixed grill.

Here’s where you can go:

Hashem

8600 W. 159^th St. #4B

Orland Park, IL 60462

833-454-5456

8723 S. Harlem Ave.,

Bridgeview 60455

NBC 5’s Food Guy Steve Dolinsky says three new French restaurants are all vying for your attention – some with splashy interiors while others are more down-to-earth.

Chicago has seen French waves before. Brasserie Jo and Brasserie T in the nineties. Paris Club and Maude’s Liquor Bar a decade or so later. Of course, Le Bouchon in Bucktown has been going strong for 30 years. Maybe the founder’s sons learned something from that; having recently opened their own place on the Near North Side.

Obélix is the culmination of an upbringing in the French restaurant business in Chicago. It nods to the past – note the hearty French onion soup with its Swiss cheese cap hiding croutons submerged in beef broth – yet it also looks to the future: those pink peppercorn macarons contain a date citrus jam surrounded by foie gras mousse. Instead of settling for a classic Lyonnaise salad with curly escarole, they bury it in duck confit that’s been preserved and cooked in its own fat, crowning it with a soft egg. Duck lovers should be advised there’s a 10-day dry-aged breast, lacquered, sliced and served next to a grilled Thai duck sausage set over a green papaya salad. Definitely not grand-père’s bistro.

In River North, Le Select is literally the newest restaurant in town, but also the only one where everyone looks good bathed in its sumptuous lighting.  Wilmette native Daniel Rose oversees the menu – he also oversees restaurants in Paris. L.A. and New York City. Sautéing green peppercorns, shallots and vinegar, along with cognac… plus heavy cream, he creates an indulgent sauce for a classic steak au poivre. Poached salmon is a show-stopper, with a choice of two sauces (shown here with the beurre blanc); it’s served with a few boiled potatoes and at 39 bucks, is the least expensive main dish.

More budget-friendly options in Evanston at the new Le Tour, the product of a collaboration between two old friends who felt there was a need in the area.

“Mirador – my first restaurant – was opened in ’89 and that was French,” said owner Amy Morton. “We call ourselves ‘unconventionally French’ – Debbie’s take on modern French food with strong Moroccan influences.”

Debbie Gold runs the kitchen. She can go classic, like a roasted onion tarte featuring a flaky pastry base beneath onions that have been cooked down until sweet, plus white anchovy and briny black olives. There’s a crazy-good Moroccan eggplant and chickpea salad with tomatoes, preserved lemon and a slightly spicy harissa vinaigrette.

Harissa shows up again in a massive skillet of roasted mussels, also featuring white wine butter and paprika. Be sure to have enough crusty bread on hand for sopping. And perhaps the most French-Moroccan dish on the menu – a rustic chicken tagine with couscous, olives and preserved lemon. Morton says it’s quickly become the restaurant’s most popular dish.

“You know I never thought about the mix, but I figured it would be one of the top,” Morton said.

Le Tour also has a happy hour during the week. And back at Le Select, be sure to return for their upstairs bar, one of the most visually appealing bars in town.

Here’s where you can go:

Obélix

400 W. Huron

312-877-5348

Le Select

504 N. Wells St.

312-896-4504

Le Tour

625 Davis St., Evanston

224-999-7085

Also mentioned:

Le Bouchon

1958 N. Damen Ave.

773-862-6600

He says the kitchen treats the dishes – passed down over the generations – with the respect they deserve. Steve Dolinsky has the story.

Sitting down to a meal at Virtue in Hyde Park – which has become an incubator for interpretations of Southern food traditions brought here during the Great Migration – is like sitting down to dinner at grandma’s (if she was from the American South).

“Things that maybe our mothers and grandmothers did when we were growing up and didn’t necessarily understand why, and now we’re using a lot of those same techniques and doing research on why they were cooking the way they were cooking,” said executive chef Damarr Brown.

Chicken isn’t always fried. Neither is catfish, which gets blackened here.

“We think catfish has a really delicate, delicious flavor so we kind of wanted to highlight that and pair it with something like Carolina Gold rice…carrots and carrot puree that would nicely complement it,” he said.

Chef Erick Williams created the menu, but Brown is his day-to-day executive chef, collaborating on dishes.

“Fire a gumbo split and a biscuit…”

Flavors from New Orleans appear in gumbo, as well as fried green tomatoes topped with a creamy-rich shrimp remoulade. Instead of smothering pork chops or short ribs with thick gravies, they take a different approach to their short rib, which starts with glorious mashed potatoes housing a pool of creamed spinach.

“Then there’s a caramelized onion gravy, which most meat-and-potatoes are served with some sort of gravy. We take our time and cook it for several hours at a very low temperature. We check on it, we baby it,” said Brown.

Even carrot cake gets a revamp with crispy ginger and caramel sauce.

“Try to take a few twists and turns, where it might be a little more interesting, but it’s still very recognizable to the classic,” he said

There’s also a great bar, separate from the dining room, if you want to have a drink and a snack.

Here’s where you can go:

Virtue

1462 E. 53^rd St.

773-947-8831

NBC 5’s Food Guy Steve Dolinsky says there’s a legendary restaurant in Homewood, where they’ve been partying the last 50 years.

The Maple Tree Inn opened in 1974, moving from Beverly to Blue Island, then more recently, to larger digs in Homewood. But the mission has always been the same: bringing a taste of New Orleans to the Midwest.

Erich Wennberg loves sharing his passion for all things New Orleans with his customers. The Maple Tree Inn has been an institution for South Siders, going on 50 years. Even though this week is big, due to Fat Tuesday, the restaurant’s mission is year round.

“We want to bring a little bit of New Orleans up to Chicago. So my first trip to New Orleans I was amazed, fascinated, I fell in love, because my soul was filled because of everything in New Orleans,” said Wennberg.

An absinthe rinse and a skilled bartender indicate your Sazerac will be expertly made – appropriate garnish and all. The food, meanwhile, is a direct result of Wennberg’s relationship with his suppliers.

“Most of them are in Louisiana,” he said.

Several dishes, like the jambalaya, begin with the Holy Trinity.

“Celery, onions, peppers then we add garlic,” said Wennberg.

In this case, there’s also chicken, shrimp, crawfish and andouille sausage.

“Our andouille sausage we actually make in-house,” said Wennberg.

A scoop of dirty rice adds subtle heat, and the dish is as filling as it is colorful.

“Old School New Orleans dishes: jambalaya, blackened redfish etouffee…”

Crowned with vinegary greens, it’s as good as anything you’ll find in the Big Easy. They do take a slightly different approach with their barbecued shrimp.

“Shrimp and grits – ours is called hickory buttered barbecue shrimp, over jalapeno cheddar cheese grits – we do a lot of our own smoked meats, we do hickory smoked barbecued ribs, we have a double-cut pork chop on now,” he said.

Dessert is a good idea, especially if you want to share.

“Banana custard crème brulee, and then there’s a banana bread pudding on top of that, and then we have a caramelized praline sauce that goes on top that, it’s really, really nice. Helps me maintain my girlish figure,” said Wennberg.

Reservations are recommended, and you can bet they’ll be busy leading up to Fat Tuesday, but every day at the Maple Tree Inn is a little bit of Mardi Gras.

Here’s where you can go:

Maple Tree Inn

18849 Dixie Hwy., Homewood

708-388-3461

While NBC 5’s Food Guy Steve Dolinsky usually ignores made-up food holidays, he can’t resist an opportunity to talk about pizza.

So he’s going deep this week, with a pair of next generation, deep pan pizzas, in celebration of National Pizza Day.

As Chicagoans know, old school joints like My Pi and Lou Malnati’s do deep-dish. They push their crusts up along the walls, baking beneath cheese then toppings and sauce, but the resulting crust is usually flaky. But George Bumbaris’ namesake deep dish shop in Edgewater, he thought, why not do something a little different than traditional deep-dish.

“It’s a biscuit dough. It’s really not a bread dough,” said Bumbaris, owner of George’s Deep Dish.

“And I saw in Greece how they were doing it on a bread called lagana, which is similar to focaccia, and I decided, let me try this route.”

The dough has an all-natural starter and ferments a couple of days. Then, when he’s ready to bake, he takes the following step:

“I let it sit and proof for a few hours, punch it down with my fist and spread it out. We lay down the cheese, lay the sauce down, sprinkle it with some Romano and then whatever other toppings,” he said.

Long fermention creates a pizza with structure.

“You can lift it up and hold it just like any great slice,” said Bumbaris.

A mile away, at Milly’s Pizza in the Pan, Robert Maleski is a one-man operation. Even though he grew up eating Barnaby’s thin crust, a trip to Burt’s in Morton Grove changed his life. He’s been obsessed with that deep pan pizza ever since.

“It has a nice separation between the dough and then there’s a nice frico crust all the way around – caramelized cheese,” said Milly’s owner, Robert Maleski.

His finished pies tend to be more chewy in the middle, crisp on the edge, but at the end of the day, not that deep; certainly not as deep as a stuffed pie, which is another story for another time.

“Traditional deep dish, the dough is more flaky, it’s not risen as much as our pizza is. This is kind of rising for about three hours. So you get a nice crunch on the bottom and a nice fluff in the middle as well,” said Maleski.

Another next-generation deep-pan exists at Lefty’s, with locations in Wilmette and Highland Park. It’s also patterned after the original Burt’s from Morton Grove.

Here’s where you can go:

George’s Deep Dish

6221 N. Clark St.

773-801-1551

Milly’s Pizza in the Pan

1005 W. Argyle St.

224-656-4732

Lefty’s Pizza Kitchen

1156 Central Ave., Wilmette

847-920-5401

600 Central Ave., Highland Park

847-926-7194