Last January, Yah’s Cuisine became the second vegan restaurant specializing in soul food to open on 75th Street. Located roughly three miles from its well-established predecessor, Soul Vegetarian East, Yah’s may be signaling the setting of a delicious South Side standard. If that be the case, consider me satisfied. Read the rest of this entry »

Senegalese musician Morikeba Kouyate sits in the sunny front window of Hyde Park’s Chant restaurant, his twenty one-stringed kora resting in his lap. He is taking a breather in between songs, which layer his high, strong voice over complex fingerwork on the gourd-and-stretched-skin instrument. In the expansive dining room, a few diners circle around the buffet table, where fresh fruit, French toast, and omelets-to-order are offered alongside Thai-style chicken and bottomless mimosas. It is the mid-afternoon, and the brunch rush has passed; Morikeba no longer has to compete with the clinking of silverware. Jazz and blues has, of course, a long and illustrious history on the South Side, and Chant’s musical brunches are well-attended, with outdoor tables crowding the sidewalk in warmer weather. But what do brunches with accompaniment say about Chicago’s jazz tradition today? Read the rest of this entry »

The South Shore Cultural Center lives a delightfully serendipitous existence of split artistic allegiance. On its west side, a bedlam of auto garages, chop suey joints, and conjoining railroad tracks perform an urban dance of crackling vitality. On its east side, swaying trees and rolling green grass intermingle with the soft sighs of Lake Michigan. The location is a juxtaposed oddity and confusion to the senses, but for the South Shore Opera Company of Chicago (SSOCC), this is home. Read the rest of this entry »

South of Hyde Park stretch two lakefront neighborhoods with very different histories. Woodlawn was once a prosperous neighborhood, helped along by the World’s Fair of 1893 and the El tracks that connected it to downtown. In the 1940s and ’50s, integration brought a sudden demographic shift, and after the 1968 riots that raged across the West Side, the remaining white-owned businesses decamped for the suburbs. The neighborhood’s further decline lead to a rash of insurance arsons in the ’70s and ’80s, and 63rd Street, once one of the city’s major retail corridors outside the Loop, became a patchwork of empty lots. Today it’s on an upwards trend, with new housing developments, University of Chicago campus buildings, and a new coffee lounge opening soon at 63rd and Woodlawn Avenue. Across 67th Street is South Shore, a middle-class neighborhood centered along 71st Street and blessed with two lakefront attractions, Rainbow Beach and the South Shore Cultural Center, a former country club bought by the Park District for public use. Read the rest of this entry »

Chef Efrain Cuevas started Clandestino about a year ago in order to provide a community-based, high-quality alternative to gourmet restaurant cuisine. The underground dining organization meets every few weeks to enjoy a themed menu, at a location that is disclosed only 48 hours before the actual event. This past weekend, Cuevas served five cheese-inspired courses to a crowd of 50 or so hungry guests in a beautiful multi-media exhibition space situated in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood. Read the rest of this entry »

“This is the city that burned down,” Bill Kugelman says bluntly when asked about the importance of a Chicago fire museum. The former president of the Chicago Firemen’s Union sees little official recognition of fire history in a city famous for rising out of the ashes of the 1871 blaze. But that is about to change. In the next year, two museums dedicated to fire service, the Fire Museum of Greater Chicago and the Chicago Fire Department African-American Firefighter Museum, are scheduled to open on the South Side. Read the rest of this entry »

South Shore has spent much of its history as a solidly middle-class neighborhood—which is not to say that the area has remained unchanged the entire time. Like many South Side neighborhoods, it saw an outburst of growth with the Columbian Exposition of 1893, and continued prosperity through the 1920s and ’30s, followed by white flight in the ’50s and an influx of lower income residents over the next few decades. Today, though, the area has rebounded from its economic hardship, with a middle- to upper-middle class African-American community fostering cafes, a cultural center, a beautiful beach and other locales and lively developments. Read the rest of this entry »

If not for the sign out front, Grass Roots Art would look like any other house on a residential street in South Shore. Inside, the atmosphere is similarly homey, with warm greetings waiting for each visitor at its entrance. However, the relative bareness of the building’s rooms reveals its function as a gallery: artwork has replaced the usual furniture. Local artists exhibit and discuss their work here, by appointment or at receptions like the one held last Saturday. Read the rest of this entry »