Save the kale flaxseed tofu stew for another night. Instead, head for Maxwell Street Depot and ask for extra onion garnish on that cheeseburger or polish sausage to fill your veggie quota. The organic-obsessed or calorie-conscious would be wise to venture to Depot only after numerous glasses of sulfite-free wine. They’ll have company: come twilight, after Bridgeport bars close and Sox games end, gaggles of tipsy friends gravitate like zombies towards Depot. And if your beef concerns “local” food, take comfort in Depot’s offering of polish sausages, fresh from Cicero Avenue. Read the rest of this entry »

There are any number of guides to Chicago’s culinary wonders. From the North Side’s Alinea to the North Side’s Charlie Trotter’s, Chicago is littered with four-star wonderlands. But these gourmet eateries share one weakness: they all close. And once they do, the South Side may have the upper hand. Some of the city’s tastiest—and greasiest—food can be found at its 24-hour cult spots, where night owls and frazzled waitstaffs burn the midnight oil in sleepless solidarity. To help wake you up to the nocturnal bounty around you, the Weekly presents our guide to food after dark on the South Side. Read the rest of this entry »

East 47th Street has had more closings than openings in recent years, but after a few exhausting months of preparation, Zaleski & Horvath MarketCafe opened last month to the delight of the neighborhood. Named after a couple of the owner’s grandparents, Z&H is a small storefront grocery with a deli counter and a few tables. Owners Tim and Karen Schau have lived in the nearby Washington Park neighborhood for eight years and were tired of leaving the area for everyday items, so Tim sold his part in 57th Street’s Istria Café in favor of a new project. They invited Sam and Jess Darrigrand to join them in opening the neighborhood grocery and café. Z&H has high expectations of itself, emphasizing locally produced foods, sustainability, and knowledgeable, neighborly service. The deli and café are outstanding enough to cultivate fans far beyond the borders of the neighborhood. Read the rest of this entry »

In the middle of “The Breakfast Club,” popular high school girl Claire (Molly Ringwald) is in Saturday detention and opens up an expensive looking Bento box filled with sushi for lunch. Judd Nelson’s “bad boy” character, John, looks disgusted and asks what she is eating. No longer is sushi a meal for popular and rich high school girls. Sushi has become one of the most popular Japanese exports to reach America. Although some say that it is hard to find good, quality sushi in the landlocked Midwest, that does not mean that there is a dearth of it, either. The sushi craze has reached the city of Chicago and most recently Hyde Park, where two new restaurants have recently opened on 53rd Street to compete with 55th Street’s Kikuya. Read the rest of this entry »

Every Wednesday and Saturday morning, Vicki Westerhoff drives out to the Green City Market in Lincoln Park from her farm, Genesis Growers, in St. Anne, Illinois, seventy miles south of Chicago. She arrives at the Green City Market just after the sun rises at 7am to sell her crops. In rain or shine, she brings a full truck of produce and dairy, and on a good day, drives back to St. Anne with an empty truck. On a bad day, though, Westerhoff might go back to her farm with nearly three-quarters of her load unsold. Even with bushels of leftover produce, fatigued from hours of standing out in the heat at the market, Westerhoff prepares for the next trip to the Green City Market in a few days. And what’s more, she has to figure out what to do with her surplus produce.

This market cycle, regulated by scheduled market days and unpredictable customer turnout, is what Westerhoff hopes to remove from her farm’s business structure. In a few years, she says, she hopes to “completely eliminate farmers’ markets” from the scope of her business. Read the rest of this entry »

When Persephone caught Hades with a nymph in his arms, she lost it. This little nymph, Menthe, was beaten and kicked by Persephone until she became a tiny green plant. Hades, not content to let things go, made the plant incredibly aromatic so that every time Persephone stepped upon the small plant she would be reminded of her foolish wrath.

Today the smell of mint reminds Chicagoans not of wrath, but of chocolate. Read the rest of this entry »

A new appetite is growing in Englewood. And at Sikia, the appetite only gets bigger with every dish served. As the restaurant outlet of the Washburne Culinary Institute of Kennedy-King College, Sikia gives its culinary students the opportunity to practice their skills in a real restaurant setting, creating a high-end dining experience on the South Side. Englewood, too often characterized by its high crime levels, is now home to the newly rebuilt Kennedy-King College, where students and recent WCI graduates are bringing a fresh taste to the area. Read the rest of this entry »

“Thank you for sixty years of support,” reads a white placard heading each table at Soul Queen, an all-you-can-eat soul food restaurant located at the intersection of 90th Street and Stony Island Ave. in the neighborhood of Calumet Heights. Soul Queen moved to its current location in 1975 and it seems that little has changed since then. The paint on Soul Queen’s hand-painted sign is chipped and faded. It reads “Soul food for all souls” and depicts the Soul Queen’s majestic profile, overlain with a calligraphic “S. Q.” Many of the light bulbs trimming parts of the sign are burned out or missing. Read the rest of this entry »