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If you go for Chicago pizza - I wouldn't, because it's filling and you have plans for dinner, but if you do - then I recommend Giordano's (for stuffed double-crust pizza; 730 N. Rush St., 312-951-0747) or Gino's East (for single-crust pan pizza; 162 E. Superior St, 312-266-3337) because both are closer to your hotel than Due. Call ahead so you don't have to wait 30-45 minutes for your pizza to bake. A couple of good nearby lunch places that are nicer sitdown places but won't break the bank are Bistro 110 and Cafe Spiaggia, the downscale cousin of the fine dining Spaggia. Websites for both are here. If I've got dinner plans, I prefer to eat breakfast or brunch rather than lunch. One good place for that, not far from your hotel is Kitsch'n River North. They get busy on weekends, especially Sunday. For a more sumptuous breakfast or Sunday brunch, NoMi, the upscale restaurant in the Park Hyatt, serves both, and you can peruse their menus on their website. But if you REALLY want to do the quintessential everyday Chicago breakfast, nowhere is more famous than Lou Mitchell's (565 W. Jackson Blvd., 312-939-3111). It's on the west side of the Loop near Union Station, so you'll need to take a cab. This place is a big commuter hangout, with more crowds on weekdays than on the weekend.

Actually, the problem with opening a restaurant in Prospect Heights is that there are MANY excellent restaurants nearby, including many that are not chains (although it depends on exactly how you define "chain"). In Wheeling (right next door), you have: Le Francais - Legendary single-location restaurant now run by Roland Liccioni of Carlos Pete Miller's - Second (and only other) location of the well-regarded Evanston steakhouse Tramonto's Steak and Seafood and Osteria di Tramonto - Two new steakhouse and Italian restaurants opened by Rick Tramonto of Tru Bob Chinn's - Original location (of two) of the seafood restaurant (formerly one of the highest-grossing single-location restaurants in the country prior to opening their second location in Kenosha) And just to the east you have Northbrook with many more restaurants, and to the west you have Arlington Heights, also with many more restaurants, including the always-wonderful Le Titi de Paris, a single-location longtime French favorite. As you can see, the area around Prospect Heights is actually chock full of restaurants, and it doesn't even have many of the chains, aside from the fast-food category. If you're looking for a place with lots of chain restaurants, you would be better off pointing to Schaumburg, Naperville, or Gurnee.

True. It's also worth noting that people going to restaurants in the suburbs expect amenities. I am thinking specifically of parking, which means land and maintenance costs. This is one more factor in the higher cost in the suburbs than in the city (in addition to the price or rental rates for indoor square footage).

I'm very familiar with most of those cities - not with their groceries, but with their restaurants - and I have quite the opposite opinion of them. Granted, you would expect fewer restaurants (in any category) in a smaller city than in a large one, just due to sheer size. But Milwaukee has a very impressive array of restaurants, everything from fine dining to ethnic cuisine etc, despite being only about a fifth the size of Chicago (1.7 million vs 9.5 million people); at least one of their restaurants (Sanford) would be among the very best in Chicago if it were located here. Even Toledo has a fairly decent restaurant roster for a city of its smaller size (600,000). Iowa City, if anything, has MORE than I would expect. I am not as familiar with Minneapolis but my impression from reading about them here and on Chowhound is that they, too, have an excellent restaurant scene. Saginaw is tiny, and you wouldn't expect to find anything really excellent, but even in small towns and rural areas, you can find some great places, as anyone who has been to Tapawingo and Rowe Inn in Ellsworth, Michigan, or to Margaux and Biro in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, or to Chez Francois in Vermilion, Ohio, can testify. I think one other factor in such comments is that many people are reporting based on old information. In other words, people grow up in one place, and move to another place, and they'll say "the groceries and restaurants where I live now are so much better than where I used to live". The reason? Thanks to growing interest in food, grocery and restaurant options are steadily improving everywhere around the country. If you have formed your opinion of a place's offerings based on being there five or even three years ago, your knowledge is probably obsolete. Think of the restaurants and grocers that have opened just within the past 3-5 years where you live now and you probably realize how rapidly things change. I can tell you that if I had to name the top restaurants in cities I'm familiar with, both large and small, at least a third are less than three years old.

Bingo! It's all about the money, big surprise huh? People who invest (in)/open franchise restaurants are primarily motivated by profit, plain and simple. Franchise restaurants generally operate at significantly higher profit levels than independents. The economy of scale thing. Independents usually have more esoteric motivations, love of food, love of people, satisfaction of the id. Unfortunately these are not "bankable" assets. ← It might not be ALL about the money. If I wanted to open a restaurant, it seems to me it would be a lot more WORK (not just money) to do all the development on all the recipes, and decide on all the equipment needed, and decor, and computer systems, and advertising, etc, than to open an additional location of a chain in which all of those items are already provided and done for you. (If you don't have the experience to do all the development in all those areas, you may have the additional problem of hiring people with the experience level needed.) I am not in the restaurant business, and I know some people here are, so I don't claim to have their expertise. But I can only guess that a lot of the development work is already done when opening an additional location of an existing restaurant than when starting from scratch.

As of last week, I was told "the first week in March".

Many people want an elegant and sophisticated chocolate experience, but prefer to deal with vendors who not only provide that kind of experience, but also are happy to answer reasonable questions about their products, rather than those who refuse to do so.

I just heard back from Love in Disguise, which I mentioned above. They told me that the chocolates in their Cocoa Sutra collection, and in their truffles, are eight to the pound. So their 24-piece Cocoa Sutra collection ($48), and their 24-piece Signature Truffles collection ($45), weigh three pounds each. So their chocolates are $15-16 per pound. This points out exactly why weight is important; each piece from Love in Disguise is huge, weighing almost six times as much as each piece from the Chocolate Box. Particularly when you're ordering from a website, you have absolutely no idea how big the chocolates are unless you know their weight.

Yes, the suburbs and small towns on both coasts are as full of chains - and, for the most part, the SAME chains - as those in the Midwest. Whatever the reasons, the prominence of chain restaurants in the suburbs, and particularly in those suburbs that have been most recently developed, is a nationwide phenomenon, not unique to any one part of the country. Snobs in New York and California dismiss dishes in that way because they've probably never been to the Midwest (at least, not lately) and have no idea how good our ethnic and fine dining cuisine is. Pure arrogance probably plays a role as well; I've heard plenty of people on both coasts say some of the stupidest, most ignorant things about the Midwest (e.g. "Of course our city gets better produce than you do, because we have a farmer's market"). It happens all the time. Which is one more reason I'm glad I live here and not there.

Stuffed pizza from Giordano's or Bacino's! Call ahead because the pizza takes 30-45 minutes to bake. I don't know if they're open Saturdays. There's one location of Giordano's three blocks east of the station, and another four blocks west: Giordano's 223 W. Jackson Blvd. (312) 583-9400 815 W. Van Buren St. (312) 421-1221 www.giordanos.com I'm not as familiar with Bacino's pizza but I've heard it's good and there's one even closer to the station than Giordano's: Bacino's 118 S Clinton (312) 277-1100 www.bacinos.com You also have all the Greek places in Greek Town, also four blocks west of the station: Santorini's, Greek Islands, etc. See this topic for comparisons.

With the Vintages collection running you $2,080 per lb, it will be hard to top that pricing. ← FWIW, in each of the examples above where I calculated prices per pound for Chicago-area chocolatiers, I tried to price the largest item available ("the most charitable approach", which assigns to Noka the $309 figure, not $2,080). I assume that Consumer Reports did the same. Thanks for the post - I read the article in your link and found it fascinating, not only for the information about NoKa, but for the information about other fine chocolatiers!

The Chocolate Box and, so far, Love in Disguise. The trend I noticed is per-piece pricing, which is widespread. By itself, this wouldn't necessarily be a problem. But it opens the door to refusing to answer the question, and that is what I find deceptive. Incidentally, what's absolutely silly about refusing to answer the question is that the consumer can buy a few pieces and weigh them himself/herself, as I did with the ones from the Chocolate Box and as Consumer Reports did with the ones they bought. This is NOT proprietary/confidential information, like asking for the recipe might be.

There is a difference between a wrench and food. When you buy sugar to use for your chocolates, do you just buy a bag of sugar, or do you care whether it contains 5 pounds of sugar or 50 pounds of sugar? Apparently you didn't read my post carefully. I don't think it's deceptive marketing to sell them by the piece, either. But to refuse to answer the question, "About how many of them are in a pound?" strikes me as extremely deceptive. Can you honestly tell me that you don't know how much your finished chocolates typically weigh? Especially if you ship them as part of your business? Most of the chocolatiers I surveyed were happy to give me at least an approximation, i.e. "They vary in weight but there are typically around X to a pound" or "Our Y-piece box weighs around half a pound". I don't see why any vendor would refuse to answer such a question. More likely, maybe I'm happy to buy chocolates costing $40, or $60, or $80 per pound, as long as the artisan chocolatier is willing to answer a reasonable question about his product. I'll say it again. I have no objection to charging by the piece, or to charging different prices (either by the pound or by the piece) for different pieces. My objection is to refusing to divulge how many pieces are in a pound - and claiming not to know the answer. Again, I noted absolutely no antipathy towards those willing to spend $40 or $60 or $80 for a pound of chocolate (and if it's really, really good, I might be willing to do so myself). You will not find anything like that in what I wrote.

I mentioned that the eight chocolatiers listed by Consumer Reports are the ones they liked the best; all were all rated "excellent". They tried six others which they rated "very good", but which I didn't bother listing; Leonidas was among these, along with MarieBelle, Moonstruck, Chuao Chocolatier, Godiva, and See's.

Christopher Elbow www.elbowchocolates.com Price per pound: Unknown (priced by the piece, currently too late to try calling) Can't show a photo, their website is all Adobe Flash.

Here are photos from their various websites... Belgian Chocolatier Piron Love in Disguise of Chicago Chocolate Gourmet Sweet Endeavours Chocolates by Bernard Callebaut Canady le Chocolatier, Ltd. Vosges Chocolate Norman Love Confections Woodhouse Chocolate Jacques Torres Candinas John & Kira's La Maison du Chocolat Martines Fran's

Both of these chocolate shops were featured in articles in the Chicago Tribune recently, so I decided to do a comparison between the two. As I started writing up my experiences, I realized that there are other high-end chocolate shops in the area and elsewhere that have been opening recently, so I decided to expand the scope of this topic to include information on many of those as well. First, it will immediately become obvious that none of these chocolates are inexpensive. If you are happy with chocolates from your local Fannie May or elsewhere for a fraction of the prices noted below, and you think it's silly to spend more, you are welcome to your opinion. I wrote this for those interested in hearing more about what else is out there. Before I go on, I would like to note that I have observed a very disturbing trend in the sale of high-end chocolates: more and more places are pricing their chocolates by the piece, rather than by the pound. IMO, places are doing this because - just using some typical numbers - chocolates don't SOUND as expensive when they're priced at $32 for a "16-piece collection" as when they're priced at $64 per pound. It's the same reason places sell items for $19.99 instead of $20.00. Now, I don't mind that places price their chocolates this way; that's just marketing. What I STRONGLY object to is that some places actually refuse to tell you how many pieces are in a pound. Product weight is basic information, and is how most foods are sold. Refusing to disclose it smacks of deception and subterfuge; it's one thing to make the price SOUND better, and quite another to refuse to provide basic information about how much product you're actually buying. I have a strong aversion to buying from places that engage in practices that strike me as deceptive. (Maybe others don't, and of course that is your opinion and you are welcome to spend your money wherever you see fit.) Moving on, here's what I've found. Belgian Chocolatier Piron I admit, I'm a longtime fan of Belgian Chocolatier Piron in Evanston. They make the chocolates in the back of the shop nearly every day, using techniques learned in Belgium and chocolate imported from Belgium. Their chocolates use relatively traditional flavors - hazelnuts (gianduja), raspberry, cognac, passionfruit, marzipan, pecans, chocolate truffles, mocha, etc, using white, milk, and dark chocolates - although they recently introduced a chocolate with chipotle chili pepper. In the store, you can pick out the individual items you want. IMHO, they are consistently delicious. Belgian Chocolatier Piron 509-A Main Street Evanston 60202 847-864-5504 www.belgchocpiron.com Chicago Tribune article: www.chicagotribune.com/features/food/chi-0702060359feb07,1,1494496.story Price per pound: $36 for their premier filled chocolates, $23 for nut barks Chocolate Box The other day I went to a new place, the Chocolate Box in Winnetka. They specialize in more exotic ingredients in their chocolates, such as herbs (e.g. basil) and spices (e.g. habanero peppers, anise). In the store, you can pick out the individual items you want. The Chocolate Box sells their chocolates only by the piece, not by the pound. They are $1.69 each, or you can buy boxes of various sizes. The largest size is 24 pieces for $36.00. I asked how many pieces there are to a pound and the person in the shop said she did not know. As noted above, the Chocolate Box gets a big THUMBS DOWN from me for this - both because (1) not disclosing this information strikes me as deception and (2) I really doubt that they don't know how much their product weighs. I bought three pieces of their chocolate, took them home, and weighed them on a postal scale. Based on their weight (1.1 ounces), there are 44 of their chocolates to a pound. As for taste, they taste very good, but there is an important difference between these and Piron's. Each of Piron's chocolates has a single flavor; their marzipan tastes like marzipan, the fruits de mer taste like hazelnut, the Grand Marnier tastes like... well, you get the idea. The chocolates at the Chocolate Box are entirely different. Each chocolate at the Chocolate Box is made from a combination of ingredients, including fruits, herbs, spices, etc. As a result, no single flavor predominates or is even necessarily identifiable. I bought three chocolates, and I know that the first ingredient listed in each of the three were pear, apricot, and white chocolate. However, when I got home, I could not tell which was which, because none of them tasted a lot like pear, or like apricot, or like white chocolate (and no, that one was not distinguishable by color, either). Maybe you like the blended flavors of their chocolates that result, or maybe you prefer chocolates with a stronger, individual flavor; that's strictly a matter of taste/opinion. Regardless of your preference, if you go to the Chocolate Box, my suggestion is that you take notes and write down the names and/or ingredients of the pieces you buy; that way, you will know which is which when you're eating them, and you'll be able to know which ones you want to buy again in the future. Chocolate Box 725 Elm St. Winnetka 60193 847-881-2844 (no website AFAIK) Price per pound: $65.45 (based on $36 for 24 pieces weighing 8.8 ounces) Chicago Tribune article: http://metromix.chicagotribune.com/localgu...0,6068661.story The Winner So, which of these two places "wins" my vote for the "best" chocolate? I think both places offer delicious, very high quality chocolates, but my personal preference is for Piron's chocolates because of the single taste ingredient in each chocolate, rather than the blends of unidentifiable ingredients in the Chocolate Box chocolates. Piron also gets my vote for value in addition to taste, since the Chocolate Box chocolates are almost twice the price per pound as the premier chocolates at Piron. And, again, the Chocolate Box gets brickbats for refusing to disclose their product weight. But Wait, There's More - Chicago There are other high-end chocolate places in the Chicago area and elsewhere, most of which I have not yet tried. Here is more information about some of them. The Tribune article which featured Piron (see link above) also featured three other places: Love in Disguise of Chicago 2010 W. Fulton St. Chicago 866-464-9866 www.loveindisguise.com Price per pound: Unknown. I just tried calling them and left a message asking about how many chocolates are in a pound; unless and until I hear back, they get a THUMBS DOWN. ($45 for 24 piece truffles, $48 for 24 piece "cocoa sutra" collection) Chocolate Gourmet 1635 W. Walnut St. Chicago 312-850-1051 www.chocolategourmet.com Price per pound: $35 or more. (I called to ask how much their chocolates weigh and they said they "think the 16-piece box of truffles weighs a pound or slightly under", in their words). Sweet Endeavours 1101 Tower Rd. Schaumburg 224-653-2700 www.chocolatines.com Price per pound: $64 (based on $32 for their "16-piece classic collection" which I called to ask about and they said weighs "around half a pound") Other chocolate shops that have appeared in the area recently include: Chocolates by Bernard Callebaut 1970 Tower Drive Glenview 847-998-9680 825 S. Waukegan Road C-3 Lake Forest IL 60045, 847-283-9927 www.bernard-callebaut.com Price per pound: $49.50 Canady le Chocolatier, Ltd. 824 South Wabash Ave. Chicago 60605 312-212-1270 www.canadylechocolatierchicago.com Price per pound: $33 (according to a 2005 article in the Tribune quoted on their website) Coco Rouge 1940 West Division Chicago 773-772-2626 www.cocorouge.com (They do not yet sell chocolates on their website, but they plan to do so in the near future.) Price per pound: $82-84 (I called and they said that they offer two 16-piece collections for $41 and $42, and each is half a pound.) Vosges Chocolate Chicago – Downtown 520 N. Michigan Avenue Chicago, IL 60611 312.644.9450 951 W. Armitage Chicago, IL 60614 773.296.9866 www.vosgeschocolate.com Price per pound: $73 (based on $73 for their 32-piece "exotic truffle collection", which they told me weighs one pound in response to an e-mail inquiry) But Wait, There's More - Internet By way of comparison, an article in the current (February) issue of Consumer Reports rated upscale chocolates available on the internet from many places (none of the above Chicago chocolatiers were included). They noted per-ounce prices in the article. The highest rated were these eight (the first three have more exotic ingredients like herbs and spices, while the other five are more conventional): Norman Love Confections www.normanloveconfections.com Price per pound: $74 Woodhouse Chocolate www.woodhousechocolate.com Price per pound: $69 Jacques Torres www.mrchocolate.com Price per pound: $48 Candinas www.candinas.com Price per pound: $42 John & Kira's www.johnandkiras.com Price per pound: $58 La Maison du Chocolat www.lamaisonduchocolat.com Price per pound: $67 Martines www.martineschocolates.com Price per pound: $59 Fran's www.franschocolates.com Price per pound: $56

I've had both, and my comments apply to both. And also to New York style, fold from the edge type thin crust pizza. I'll eat them when someone else is choosing where we go, but given the choice, I choose any of the Chicago deep-dish places over them. Again, strictly a matter of taste (de gustibus non est disputandum).

Of course, Chicago pizza is very subjective, as all foods are. I've tried a lot of different pizzas, and my favorite is still Giordano's, for their stuffed, double-crust pizza. The body of the pizza has a nice balance between crust, cheese, tomatos, and added ingredients, and the edge crust is sublime. But some people leave that delicious edge crust over - go figure. I still go to Lou Malnati's at times for their single-crust pan pizza, which is also very good, and preferred by my SO to Giordano's. Recently we tried Pequod's for a change of pace. I didn't like it as much as Giordano's or Malnati's, because it has less emphasis on crust (to me, burnt cheese doesn't count as crust; crust is made from dough) and because the sauce was too strong in taste (theirs is like a tomato sauce you would put on spaghetti, rather than like canned tomatos), but my SO liked it more than the other two, primarily because of the sauce. As for thin crust pizza, I've had a lot of different kinds, and none of them really does it for me. Whereas the best deep-dish pizzas strike a harmonious balance among their ingredients to produce a wonderful dish, to me the thin-crust versions are little more than bruschetta, i.e. little more than a few ingredients placed ONTO a bread crust without a whole lot of thought, rather than a single, unified dish created from multiple ingredients.

Thanks for the report and the photos! A couple of quick comments... A word of caution for the frugal gourmet... don't go to Alinea. That's due to Chicago's recently-passed (and widely-criticized) municipal ordinance, which bans the sale of foie gras. Some restaurants are figuring out ways to give it away to diners, which is apparently legal.

Thanks. I'll try to stop there the next time I'm in Iowa City. (Not that I go there often; I was there last year for the first time in my life. We ate at Linn St. Cafe, and enjoyed it.) You might want to ask your webmaster to contact Google to correct their records. When I did a search on "Devotay Iowa City" the first item showed your restaurant's correct street address and phone number, but the wrong web address (dot com instead of the new dot net address). I just sent them a note, too.

You can drive from Andersonville to the Gold Coast in 15 minutes, outside the two hours from 6:45 to 8:45 a.m., on 95+ percent of the days of the year. This is all excellent advice.

Tonight three of us had dinner at Aigre Doux. I wanted to go there after reading rave reviews in the Tribune and Reader (see links below). Could it possibly live up to the hype? As it turns out, it exceeded my highest expectations! I was a bit hesitant about going there because I had not seen their entire menu. Most upscale restaurants make their menu (or a representative sample thereof) available on their websites, but Aigre Doux has not done so yet. (Remember, they have only been open for four weeks.) So the only hint of what was on their menu was the dishes mentioned in the reviews. Not to worry! I made my reservations yesterday for an early (5:30) seating tonight. Gotta love opentable.com when it comes to checking availability for the restaurants listed there! At 4:00 pm today, they called to confirm. So far, so good. We arrived at the restaurant fifteen minutes early. Fortunately, meter parking on the street was easy to find at that hour, so we didn't bother with the valet parking. No sign was visible on the outside of the restaurant (at least, none that I noticed), but look for the wood paneling on the facade. The restaurant was mostly empty at that hour, but by the time we left at 7:30, the place was packed, including people waiting up front. Most diners were attired "business casual"; I estimate that 50-60 percent of the men had neither jacket nor tie, 30-40 percent had a jacket but no tie, and 5-10 percent had both jacket and tie. I only saw one person, a young woman, wearing blue jeans. The decor was very nice, with high ceilings and modern fixtures. The lighting was better on one side of the room with smaller tables and a plethora of pendant fixtures above them, than on the other side of the room with booths, where we sat, with illumination provided by indirect lighting behind hanging mirrors. They turned the indirect lighting up a bit and it helped, but it was still somewhat dark. Our server, Rich, came by and brought menus, took our drink orders, and told us he would be back shortly to tell us the nightly specials. Very smooth and professional. We ordered, and were served our drinks. The busboy brought the bread and butter to the table. The bread (focaccia) was excellent, with an airy texture and slightly crispy cheese on top. The butter had a touch we had not seen before: it was lightly covered with crystals of cracked salt on top. It worked beautifully, adding a nice taste and texture to the bread. We had three appetizers. One was Prince Edward mussels ($12), served with diced butternut squash and a broth lightly flavored with coconut, curry, and spicy pepper (flavorings often found in Thai food). It was WONDERFUL. It was actually on the menu as an entree, but when I asked our server about the portion size and its suitability as an entree (I've always seen mussels as an appetizer, not an entree), he immediately suggested that we might be better off having it as an appetizer (half portion, half price), because its rather strong flavor combined with the larger portion size could be a bit overwhelming. It turned out that he was absolutely right on this, and also on all the other advice he provided during the meal. Rich was an excellent server. In fact, the entire staff was absolutely professional but also friendly; you would never guess that this place had only been open for four weeks. Another appetizer was the artichoke soup with sauteed bay scallops pictured in the Reader review ($11). It was excellent. The third appetizer was a seared ahi tuna served with citrus fruit ($12); although this is something I don't eat, my companion said it was excellent also. We had three entrees, and two of them were daily specials not on the printed menu. The regular menu item was the rack of lamb with truffled grits and fennel ($34). This was the best rack of lamb I have ever eaten. The consistency was as tender as the most tender filet mignon - melt in your mouth! But wait, there's more. One daily special was a sauteed skate wing, served with fingerling potatos, a bit of minced Meyer lemon rind served next to the skate, and spinach ($26). It was very fresh with a very tender, moist texture. A tiny bit of the lemon rind made an excellent topping for each bite of skate. It, too, was WONDERFUL. (Do you see a pattern here? ) The other daily special was a grilled prime rib of beef, served with mustard spaetzle that was cooked so that it had a slightly crunchy texture to it ($34). I hate to repeat myself, but this dish was WONDERFUL, too. Desserts... ah! Could they possibly stand up to a meal which was so outstanding up to this point? Indeed they could! One dessert was called the "chocolate malted" ($10). No, it was not a drink; the name of the dish refers to the flavorings of the custard dessert, which was the consistency of creme brulee and served in a similar dish, although without the flamed sugar coating. It had a spoonful of chantilly creme (possibly flavored with creme fraiche?) on top, as well as a crispy strip of chocolate. WONDERFUL. Dessert winner number one. Another dessert was creme fraiche panna cotta ($10), served with a pineapple sauce. Light, airy, delicate, and totally delicious. Dessert winner number two. The third dessert was the "sticky toffee pudding" ($10) mentioned in both reviews. It was not at all what I expected. For some reason, based on the name, I was picturing a pudding the consistency of your standard chocolate pudding, with crunchy pieces of toffee in it, but this was not at all what this dessert was like. This was more of a horizontal slab of cake soaked with a sweet syrup (think of the texture of baba au rhum and you're on the right track). Served with a small scoop of ice cream with a slight tang to it (possibly the Devonshire cream ice cream mentioned in the review, or else creme fraiche ice cream, I forget) and some wedges of citrus fruit, with the same sweet toffee-flavored sauce over it. As good as all the dishes were, this is the one I can't get out of my mind now, a few hours later. If any one dish we had was worth saying "DON'T MISS THIS", this is it. Dessert winner number three. With a bottle of Schuetz zinfandel ($42), two glasses of Kracher beerenauslese ($12 each), a coffee and an iced tea, the total was $97/person including tip. I've said this before, and I'll say it again. I've dined at many of the most highly regarded restaurants in the Chicago area and elsewhere. They are almost always GOOD, with tasty food and attentive service. For me, the difference between GOOD and GREAT is, at a great restaurant, every single dish, every single bite, is an absolute delight, so delicious that it makes you roll your eyes and swoon. There are very, very few places that I would consider GREAT. I am happy to add Aigre Doux to the very short list of such Chicago-area places I've been (along with Michael, One Sixty Blue, Everest, and Oceanique - although there are many highly-regarded restaurants where I have not been, and I am not claiming that these are the only such places in the area). If I am lucky, I rate maybe one dinner a year this good. Maybe in 2007 I'll return to Aigre Doux so I can double my average for the year. Aigre Doux 230 West Kinzie Street (across the street from the Merchandise Mart) Chicago 312-329-9400 Restaurant website Chicago Tribune/Metromix review Chicago Reader review

Actually, quite a few top-tier restaurants are open on Mondays, including: One Sixtyblue, NoMi, Seasons, Aigre Doux, Ambria, Bistro 110, Butter, Custom House, Fulton's on the River, Joe's, Kiki's Bistro, Le Lan, Marche, Meritage, MK, Mon Ami Gabi, Osteria di Tramonto, Shaw's, Sola, Sweets and Savories, Tru, Va Pensiero, Vermilion, Vie, and most of the steakhouses. (Can you tell where I started looking up names from a quick check on opentable.com? ) Granted, many others are closed, but Monday in Chicago is hardly a culinary wasteland.

We can (and usually do) do better than that. Then again, we never hear about it when the biggest restaurant news of the week in some other city is that an outpost of a Chicago restaurant will be opening there.