Several years ago, a local real estate developer approached Chicago political legend Leon Despres and asked to honor him by naming a building after him. Worried about the possible fallout should problems crop up in the building, the former alderman and civil rights activist politely declined. But when a South...

I am the stick in the mud when I try a new restaurant. While friends busily pore over a new menu trying to make sense of inventive flavor combinations or exotic ingredients - and let's face it, this has gotten to be a far bigger task than it ever was...

While many of Chicago's leading chefs gathered this past weekend in Millennium Park to inaugurate Chicago's gourmet food and wine festival, restaurateur Charlie Trotter headed south to Orlando to help support another fledgling effort. Summoned earlier this year by the son of legendary French chef Paul Bocuse, Trotter's colleagues...

No one has probably compared Chicago pastry chef Jacquy Pfeiffer to composer Igor Stravinksy, former President Bill Clinton, or rock star Bob Dylan. But a small group of Chicagoans this week found out what they all have in common, at least according to legendary film makers D.A. Pennebaker...

If corn is king, as author Michael Pollan has told us in his popular Omnivore's Dilemma, then chef-turned-farmer Tracey Vowell is engaged in regicide. Ever since she left Rick Bayless' Chicago restaurants Frontera Grill and Topolabompo, where she was managing chef, Vowell has been "hijacking corn, a singular act...

Pastry chefs are not generally regarded as the muses of the culinary world. We're supposed to add grace notes to a meal, but the big thinking is supposed to come from the savory side of the house. Except, as I discovered recently, for a few like French pastry chef Christine...

If Chicago pastry lovers wonder why they brave the impossible parking situation to satisfy their sweet cravings at Dimitri Fayard's Lincoln Park pastry shop Vanille, it's probably because they suspected what an international panel of pastry chefs just confirmed at the recently concluded World Pastry Championship: this guy is...

Just when it began to look as if cable television's top rated food show had vanished from the streets of Chicago, Top Chef is wheeling a 48-foot semi-trailer with a full kitchen to the city that hosted its fourth and most recent season. I confess, as someone who has...

Most weekdays Dimitri Fayard arrives by 7 am at Vanille, his small French pastry shop in Lincoln Park. By 8:30 am, when his delivery truck leaves, he has to have tea pastries for the Drake Hotel ready to go. And by 10 am, when Fayard finishes filling his display...

If you've tried unsuccessfully to get a reservation at Spain's legendary El Bulli restaurant, dubbed by list makers as the best restaurant in the world, you're probably not alone. (It's only open six months a year.)

Now, however, you can stay in Chicago and still get a great...

Every week some 4,500 people amble through Chicago's Green City Market, some in search of a particularly pungent bunch of arugula, others simply admiring the cornucopia of fresh farm products available in the heart of Lincoln Park, and many just seeking a green refuge, with healthy snack potential and...