Tag Archive
Seitan with Soul
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. »
Rise and Swing: Jazz brunch on the South Side
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... »
Arias in the Area: The South Shore Opera Company brings a new sound to the neighborhood
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... »
Best of the South Side 2009: South Shore and Woodlawn
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... »
Top (Secret) Chef
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... »
The Unforgettable Firemen: Two new museums will commemorate the Chicago Fire Department’s past
“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... »
Best of the South Side 2008: South Shore
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... »
From the Ground Up: Grass Roots Art helps South Side artists grow
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... »
