Category: BiteClub

Willi’s Wine Bar isn’t new. It doesn’t have a maitre d’, a cheese cart or a celebrity chef. It’s inconvenient to get to and the whole “small plate” thing can add up to a damn fortune. But day after day, season after season, year after year, the cozy Santa Rosa bistro just keeps on cranking […]

Chilaquiles. It’s been called the Mexican hangover cure for its amazing restorative powers. I call it the cure for whatever’s gnawing at your craw. All the requisite mood/metabolism enhancers are present and accounted for here: Fried, spicy, cheesy and meat. Vegetables take an appropriately supportive role in the form of guacamole (yes!), a tomato wedge […]

Chas Langley isn’t one for formalities. Standing in the barebones kitchen of Honey Biscuits, he hollers, “Now, make sure you get the Styrofoam plate in that picture. That’s kind of my trademark.” “Uh, why?” I snap back with crumbs of sweet pastry (what he calls Fat Rascalz) flying from my mouth as I focus the […]

Local is the new organic. Meaning that buying tasty little organic kiwis from New Zealand is nice and all, but you’ve just helped destroy the ozone with god knows how much jet and diesel fuel getting it here. You cad, you. During the last weeks of April, locavores “activists who try to eat only foods […]

Five words: Phyllis’ Giant Burgers is open. Don’t miss: The cheese steak is a monster of a meal, with green peppers, onions and juicy, greasy meat on a fresh roll. Homemade milkshakes of every flavor and hue make it worth the subsequent coronary. And, of course, there are the burgers. But you knew that. Phyllis’ […]

I realize I’m coming to the party about three years too late. Postmodern cuisine–you know, that wacky food created with foam, lasers and the powdered essence of an extinct Chilean tree frog–has seen its star begin to fall into the centrifuge of weird gastronomic trends. Kind of like aspic. Or the whole resurgence of lettuce […]

Sausage is a religion in Chicago. And Hot Doug’s is the high altar where locals come to pray from 10:30am to 4pm daily in a steady stream of devotion. We all stand quietly, penitently in a growing line that snakes down the block outside the small suburban diner. Slowly, the line moves forward a person […]

Chicago in April is cold. As in an maybe 37 degrees and sleeting–in stark contrast to the lush, almost summer-like conditions I left in Sonoma County last week. Now granted, it was a little thick-headed, but thinking of spring back home, I actually asked someone if there were any good farm markets I could visit […]