Entering Sweet Station, Chinatown Square’s newest Hong Kong café-chic restaurant, is like walking into a sleek, glossy 3-D rendering at a design contest. Complete with private flat-screen TVs beside most booths, custom design elements, and a stylish, young pan-Asian crowd, Sweet Station is the type of place one imagines Quentin Tarantino might have drawn inspiration from when designing Kill Bill’s Asian-candy-wrapper aesthetic set. Read the rest of this entry »

This time last year, the Weekly came out with its first guide to 24-hour restaurants on the South Side. In that issue, we covered classics like Izola’s, Depot, and the original Maxwell Street Polish stands. We’re back this year with a few more selections from the South Side nightscape. From the welcoming diners of Bridgeport and Pilsen to a dim sum restaurant in Chinatown to a fishery along the Chicago River, we present the second course of our after-dark dining manual. Read the rest of this entry »

Chicago’s Chinatown lacks the characteristic bustle and grit of a major city Chinatown. The streets are broad and the sidewalks are crowded more with tourists than with old women pushing carts of chickens and bruised greens. This Chinatown is young; it developed around the intersection of Cermak and Wentworth when a red light district collapsed in the 1920s, and didn’t receive a major wave of immigration until the ’50s and ’60s. Much of the commercial space in the neighborhood is in the rather unsightly 1980s Chinatown Square development north of the old red gate.

Chinatown is a busy South Side commercial district with a CTA Red Line stop near its center, so it’s a popular destination. Students beware: This popularity can be troublesome. Chinatown Square’s Lao Sze Chuan and Joy Yee’s are both worthwhile culinary destinations, but you will probably be seated in between your ex and that kid from your humanities class. Read the rest of this entry »

In general, Chinese restaurants put little stock in looking good, whatever the quality of the food they serve. Speaking with the sole (and vague) qualification of being Chinese myself, I suspect this is a simple reflection of the utilitarian preferences of Chinese diners, who seem to have an almost calculated disregard for such incidentals as décor, and judge a restaurant ultimately by what its kitchen produces. They are quite at peace feasting on the choicest morsels in the shabbiest surroundings. So it was that upon first entering Lao Shanghai one year ago, observing its white linen tablecloths on dark wooden tables, the generally subdued tones of its rather coherent furnishing scheme, even with muzak on the speakers, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Read the rest of this entry »

When the Austin hardcore punk band the Stains played their first Los Angeles show in 1981, they were dismayed at the presence of another Stains on the bill, bringing to three the number of hardcore punk bands with that name. When Dicks bassist Buxf Parrot suggested “Millions of Dead Cops,” the now-former Texas Stains took it and ran. After a five-year hiatus between 1995 and 2000, the band reformed with three of four original members, added a new bassist and guitarist, and hit the road anew. Fittingly, the dour self-declared anarchists play Reggies Rock Club this May Day, a few days before the 123rd anniversary of the Haymarket Riot. Read the rest of this entry »

Driving north on Canal Street near Chinatown, one is instinctively drawn to a towering sign that gleams yellow in the pale orange sky. It is not a pair of golden arches, but a rectangular display advertising Lawrence’s Fisheries, a beacon of light and a hub of activity in an otherwise deserted part of town on a Thursday night. Read the rest of this entry »

The lights are dim in Berlin’s B-Flat club. A single room painted in shades of gray extends indefinitely past the bar. Fifteen-page drink menus lean against cloudy glass candleholders on constellations of small round tables. Tonight, the chic middle-aged couples, students, and bohemian types are packed six to the square meter. Eight-euro cocktails traverse the room on trays like flying saucers. An outlandishly tall man, stooping from age and habit, climbs onto the stage. Attacking jazz standards with disarming energy and emotional intensity, the legendary experimental jazz pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach holds the crowd in rapt attention.

In Chicago, Schlippenbach would probably have trouble finding suitable venues. Read the rest of this entry »

Chicago’s Chinatown district has changed a substantial amount since the late 1800s and early 1900s, when the beginnings of a Chicago Chinatown were born. In the late 1800s, most of the Chinese immigrants in Chicago lived near Clark and Van Buren in downtown Chicago. However, Chinese-Americans faced substantial housing discrimination in Chicago, and established Chinatown as a safe haven Today, Chinatown continues to expand as a neighborhood, recently spilling over into the neighborhood of Bridgeport to the south. The hustle and bustle of the Chinatown neighborhood is hard to miss, as the streets of Chinatown are lined with hole-in-the-wall restaurants and delectable bakeries, frequently busy and serving a diverse group of customers. There is also no shortage of grocery stores and specialty stores. From its summer festivals to the countless number of gift shops, Chicago’s Chinatown may not be the biggest Chinatown in the country, but it certainly is one of the most vibrant. Read the rest of this entry »