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Within a mile or two??? Within a mile or two, there are over a thousand restaurants (literally - and no, I am not exaggerating), many of which are excellent. Here are some great restaurants within a few blocks walk of your hotel (under 5 minutes), starting with the closest; click on the name to go to their website (in some cases, the restaurant website is part of the website of the hotel where they are located): Heaven on Seven (Cajun, Rush St location) David Burke's Primehouse (steakhouse) Joe's (steakhouse) Pizzeria Uno and Pizzeria Due (deep-dish pizza) Shaw's (seafood) Vong's (Thai) Avenues (fine dining) Shanghai Terrace (upscale Chinese) The Lobby* (contemporary American) Giordano's (deep-dish "stuffed" pizza, Rush St location) Rockit (American) NoMI (fine dining) Brasserie Jo (French bistro) Also note that our local Restaurant Week promotion (special 3-course menus for $22 lunch, $32 dinner) has been extended through this Friday, so you'll be able to take advantage of it if you go to participating restaurants on Friday. More details here. Most of our nicer restaurants accept reservations on Opentable. * If you're a chocolate lover, you might be interested in the Chocolate Bar. On Friday and Saturday evenings, 8-11 pm, the Lobby has an all-you-can-eat buffet of 40-50 chocolate desserts in smallish portion sizes so you can try a lot of them. Not cheap, around $32.

What's Ippudo?

Bell's various beers are currently available throughout Chicagoland. If you need to find a convenient location for either Sam's or Binny's, you can find one on their websites: Sam's Binny's Both chains have an extensive assortment of beers as well as hard liquor, but are best known for their wines. Their wines are viewable and searchable on their websites, too.

It's been a couple of years since my last dinner there, but everything was spectacular - the food, the view, the service (best I have ever observed anywhere), etc. Definitely still one of the very best restaurants in Chicago, with Joho at the top of his game. Actually, the free certificates from LEY are good for their high-end restaurants (Everest, L2O, TRU, Joe's), but only on Sundays, Mondays, and Tuesdays.

Plans have been announced for Restaurant Week 2009, as noted in an article in yesterday's Chicago Tribune. There are actually two different groups of restaurants with Restaurant Week events for three different weeks. February 20-27, over 130 restaurants will be participating in the Restaurant Week sponsored by the Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau. During this period, these restaurants will be offering special prices for three-course meals, usually on a special, limited menu for the promotion. Most restaurants are participating in the promotion for both lunch ($22) and dinner ($32), although a few are doing so only for lunch, and a few only for dinner. Some have their special Restaurant Week menu posted on their website, and I'm sure more will do so between now and the actual week of the promotion. January 25-30 and February 1-6, the 14 restaurants comprising Chicago Originals, an organization of independent restaurants, will be running a similar promotion, with three-course lunches ($24.09) and dinners ($29.09). Some restaurants will throw in a bottle of wine for an additional $20.09. Make your reservations early, as this is a popular promotion. Last year there were some complaints here on eG about the restaurants which participated, that they did not include the dozen or so very top restaurants in the city, places like Alinea, Charlie Trotter's, etc. (People were outraged they couldn't get a $300 dinner for $32! ) This year, there are two high-end entries participating: Seasons (lunch and dinner) and NoMI (lunch). Beyond our temples of haute cuisine, the next tier of Chicago's restaurants, our "casual fine dining" restaurants, is well represented; some of our very best such restaurants are participating in these two promotions. In addition to the very fine dining Seasons and NoMI, the tourism bureau's promotion includes Aria, Atwood Cafe, Bistro 110, Brasserie Jo, Cafe des Architectes, Cafe Spiaggia, Carnivale, Coco Pazzo, David Burke's Primehouse, Fulton's on the River, La Sardine, Le Colonial, the Lobby, Merlo on Maple, Naha, one sixtyblue, Pane Caldo, Park Grill, Quartino, Rhapsody, Roy's, Seasons, Topolobampo, and most of the steakhouses. The independent group includes Bella Bacino's in LaGrange, Cafe Central in Highland Park, Cafe Matou, Hemmingway's Bistro in Oak Park, Kiki's Bistro, Mundial Cocina Mestiza, Oceanique in Evanston, and Sweets and Savories. These are all excellent restaurants and worth visiting! One caveat - This promotion represents a greater bargain at some restaurants than at others; in particular, a few restaurants offer other promotions that may represent similar savings, and this is usually noted on their websites.

If you've never been there, you should be aware that the facade is totally nondescript and not labeled. You can walk right past it and not know that it's there. The entrance is disguised (so as to emulate an old-time speakeasy) and looks like a plain panel of plywood, IIRC. So make sure you have the address, and don't worry if you don't see it; it's there. If you go to the Chicago Cultural Center, go see the newly-restored Louis C. Tiffany stained glass dome inside. The Art Institute has a lot of famous paintings. Perhaps the best known is Grant Wood's American Gothic. Right next to the Cultural Center and the Art Institute is our new Millennium Park. It won't take a lot of time, but I consider it a "must see"; its sights include "the Bean", the Cloud Gate sculpture whose shiny stainless steel exterior has the appearance of that legume; the Frank Gehry-designed bandshell pavilion and bridge; and the Crown Fountain with its obelisks depicting the faces of ordinary Chicagoans.

Later this month, WTTW, the biggest public television station in Chicago, will be broadcasting the "lost" episode from 2001 of the restaurant review program "Check, Please!". Each episode features three reviewers of three restaurants, one chosen by each of them. In this particular episode, which has never aired, President-elect Obama is one of the reviewers, and the restaurants include Dixie Kitchen in Hyde Park, his choice. A more complete story on the upcoming airings is in the Chicago Examiner; click here.

Well, they all offer different kinds of foods! If you love the idea of vegetables as the star, then Green Zebra is a great place. If you like the idea of Latin fusion, then DeLaCosta is a great choice. (And its location near your hotel also makes it a nice backup if you plan to go elsewhere, then find that there's a blizzard or bitter cold that particular night.) one sixtyblue is a great choice for contemporary American - although there are other such choices too, including some that are closer to your hotel (Aigre Doux, MK); North Pond is also worth considering, for its setting as well as its food. There are no bad choices here; it just depends on what you're looking for. How about Frontera Grill for creative provincial Mexican food? They serve brunch on Saturdays, and you can walk there from your hotel. And I'm sure you're familiar with Rick Bayless's accomplishments. Just keep in mind that they don't accept reservations (they do, but in extremely limited quantities, and keep most of the dining room for walk-ins) so you'll want to get there early or accept the possibility of a longish wait to be seated. Those are too numerous to mention, and depend on your preferences for anything from art museums, to natural history museums, to zoos, to... you name it, we've got it. The website for the Convention and Visitors Bureau is choosechicago.com. Feel free to ask more questions, and enjoy your visit!

For a light lunch in the area, go to Fox & Obel. This is Chicago's premier upscale gourmet grocery store, and it's located just two very short blocks from the hotel. They sell the very best meats, fresh seafood, prepared foods, baked goods (terrific cinnamon swirl rolls, bran muffins, breads and pastries), etc. They have excellent premade sandwiches. Even better, in the rear of the store is a cafe where you can get anything from a cup of coffee to a sandwich or salad to an entire lunch or dinner, cooked to order. The atmosphere is your basic coffeehouse but the food is divine. Also recommended if you're looking for breakfast near your hotel. For Saturday lunch, some of the best high-end restaurants are open for lunch, including NoMi and Seasons, and also some of the steakhouses (Capital Grille, Saloon). For less expensive fine dining options, Bistro 110 is not too far away, for French bistro food. Other choices are Shaw's Crab House (seafood), Coco Pazzo Cafe (Italian), and Gino's East (deep-dish pizza). All of these are open for lunch and all are walking distance from the W at 644 N. Lake Shore Drive (assuming it's not a blizzard or below zero degrees). For dinner the next night, one sixtyblue has been very good - in fact, my very favorite casual fine dining restaurant in the entire city - but they changed executive chefs a few months ago and I haven't been there since then. Initial reports from others under the new Chef Michael McDonald have been positive. So I can't vouch for it personally but it appears to remain an excellent choice. When you say Lincoln Park, I am guessing that perhaps you are referring to North Pond, the restaurant located in the park itself (not just in the surrounding neighborhood of the same name)? If so, that's an excellent choice too. The setting, in the renovated former skaters warming house with the city skyline towering over the opposite shore of its namesake pond, is exquisite, and the contemporary cuisine from James Beard Award-nominated Chef Bruce Sherman is excellent. I would NOT recommend Moto after dining at Alinea. The two places are just too similar, both specializing in unusual ingredients and techniques under the umbrella of molecular gastronomy. I recommend instead doing something a bit more different from Alinea. Along the same lines of casual contemporary American cuisine as one sixtyblue and North Pond, other excellent choices include Aigre Doux, Sweets and Savories, and a whole bunch more. And there are other kinds of food, too - everything from Italian (Coco Pazzo Cafe, Cafe Spiaggia), to French bistros (Bistro 110, Kiki's, La Sardine), to upscale ethnic restaurants (DeLaCosta for Latin fusion right near your hotel, Vermilion for Indian-Latin, Vong's Thai Kitchen for Thai, Shanghai Terrace for Chinese, Le Colonial for Vietnamese), to neighborhood ethnic restaurants (not many downtown near the W but a few), to, well, just about anything you can think of. So if there is some particular kind of food you'd like for the other dinner, let us know and we can make recommendations! So those are some ideas. If you need more information or more specific suggestions for any of these categories, or if you have any other questions about dining here, please feel free to ask and we'll try to help. Enjoy your visit!

You can also find listings of some of the places that are open and what they're offering on Metromix, the entertainment website of the Chicago Tribune: Christmas Eve Christmas Day Good bets (one or both days) include: High end - Avenues, L2O, NoMI, TRU, Seasons, and Sixteen Mid-priced - Salpicon, the Lobby, Cafe des Architectes, Bistro 110, Coco Pazzo, David Burke's Primehouse, MK, and most of the steakhouses

Gee, Alex, as much as I love the first two, the menus for the other three sound great too. Maybe we can get together again at one of them when I come back to GR some time in the new year!

Warrenville is 45-50 miles west of Chicago, so it's no wonder that city bakeries might not deliver there! I have seen recommendations posted on another food website for the following three bakers in the Warrenville-Naperville area (click on names to view their websites and contact info): 1. Rose Petals Cakery (Naperville) - makes custom cakes including cupcakes, no physical store (which may mean they are more likely to offer delivery) 2. Cakes Plus (Naperville) - website says they offer delivery, and a photo of football and baseball cupcakes is on their website 3. Sweet P Sweets (Naperville) - another baker with no physical store, post says they deliver, no cupcakes shown on website Naperville is right next to Warrenville, so all of these places are within a few miles of Warrenville. No need to have anything delivered all the way from the city!!! I have not used any of them myself. HTH

Yup. That's good advice. The Metromix website is here. The listings are searchable; for a search on New Year's Eve listings, click here. The listings are constantly updated, and seem to get a lot more comprehensive about two weeks before a holiday. Opentable also has listings for special arrangements for restaurants which accept reservations there. Right now they only show Thanksgiving arrangements, but they will probably show specials for Christmas and New Year's Eve starting a few weeks from now.

Alinea is closed at that time for holiday break anyway.Chicago has all the usual food attractions, from high-end food (even with Alinea closed, we still have Avenues, Everest, Charlie Trotter's, and tru), to casual fine dining (Aigre Doux and dozens more), to ethnic (just about every ethnicity, plus combinations like Latin fusion, pan-Asian, and even Indian-Latin), to our delicious deep-dish pizza and other local specialties.

Just out of curiosity - what can a restaurant do about such a group, other than not accepting such a large reservation? Once they're there and seated, how can they reduce the noise without insulting or upsetting the large group? I'm not trying to defend Moto; I'm just curious, trying to understand what option(s) they may have. That isn't ice cream. That is cole slaw, made by blending and freezing cabbage, then putting it through a machine to create the "strands" of cole slaw. So it's supposed to taste like cole slaw, with the sharp savory taste etc.

This past weekend, I again visited Madison, to take my nephew out to dinner as well as to do the Fall Art Tour in towns west of town. This is my report. For dinner, we went to Fresco. This is a new restaurant from the Food Fight restaurant group. The menu is contemporary American. The restaurant is located on the rooftop of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, whose entrance you use to enter the restaurant. The setting is absolutely stunning, with classy contemporary décor and floor-to-ceiling windows, looking out at the museum's outdoor sculpture garden and a view of the tops of other buildings, including the State Capitol. We arrived at 7:00 pm on Friday and the restaurant was full, although no one was waiting. At 7:20, about half of the diners left; I assume there was a 7:30 performance at the Overture Center for the Performing Arts, which is around the corner from the museum and restaurant. Here's what I had, or tasted (fortunately, the menu on their website is current): - prince edward island mussels with coconut milk, lime, cilantro, jalapeño ($12) - fall beet salad with roasted beets, mixed greens, warm chevre, toasted walnut, bacon-cider vinaigrette ($8) - sweet corn chowder with alsum sweet corn, heirloom tomato, basil ($6) - kodiak island halibut with goat cheese mashed potato, sautéed asparagus, spring lemon beurre blanc ($25) - fresh seafood pasta with scallops, shrimp, mussels, halibut, salmon, sun-dried tomato, linguine, citrus-saffron broth ($24) - seared duck breast with grilled bok choy, yellow pepper, fingerling potato, button mushroom, citrus vinaigrette ($22) - buttermilk beignets with milk chocolate center, vanilla crème anglaise ($6) - honey-poached pear brulee with Gentle Breeze honey sauce, lemon whipped cream ($5) Everything I had was very good, not a clunker in the bunch; the seafood was fresh and everything was properly prepared and tasty. While saying that, I will also note that nothing really stood out as "WOW!!! Amazing!!!"... until the beignets arrived. Those were little bites of sheer bliss, hot out of the kitchen (watch out for dripping chocolate from the center!), even better than hot beignets at Café du Monde in New Orleans! Those were a "must have" if you go there and are looking for suggestions. All in all, I liked Fresco a lot! The food may not be quite as good as Harvest, but it's very good nonetheless. And there are a couple of distinct advantages: the exquisite setting and view, and the reasonable prices. (Our dinner check for three, including $19.50 for a couple of glasses of wine and tax but before tip, was $136.62.) Fresco is a welcome addition to the Madison dining scene and I look forward to returning at some point in the future. On Saturday morning, we went to Marigold Kitchen, which I'm sure all the locals have dined at. (I had not considered this for my previous visit because it was for a brunch on Sunday, when Marigold Kitchen is closed.) We arrived a bit before 9 a.m. on Saturday, and there was a line, about ten minutes until our order was taken; while we were there, the line shortened, then reached that same length again - not too bad for a weekend morning. Like everyone else, we waited in line, gave our order, and sat down. The food was quite good (we had their featured pumpkin pancakes, eggs, their spicy home fry potatoes). We then wandered to the square to check out the farmers market. We had heard about the farmers market, but hearing and seeing are too different things. It was quite impressive - perhaps the best farmers market I've seen. On our way back to Chicago, we again stopped in Madison for dinner. We wanted something a bit more casual and not as elaborate for dinner. We looked through the listings we had with us, and chose Pedro's Mexican Restaurant at their location on the east side. At first we were a bit concerned; when you walk in, sit down, and look at the menu, the restaurant screams "non-authentic chain Mexican". However, once we received our food, we understood why it is highly regarded in Madison. The food was good - not earth-shattering, not the best Mexican food ever, but quite good, better than it needs to be. I'm sure the bigger reason for its popularity is the value; for $8.99 each, we got the chile relleno platter, which included a beef chile relleno, a chicken enchilada, and a pork tamale, in huge portions. The fact that we were able to be seated immediately on a Saturday evening was an added bonus. So Pedro's was a great choice for our needs. There was one other food highlight on our trip. West of Madison, we stopped in Mount Horeb at the Mustard Museum. This is a great place for anyone who likes mustard. What I really loved was the store, more so than the "museum exhibits" of mustards and containers. They have a huge selection of mustards (also available on their website) and they are happy to serve you samples of any mustards you would like to try. Hope this information is helpful to those looking for food advice in Madison.

Fox & Obel is a little over a mile away, walking from your hotel. It's a great place, but not exactly convenient to where you're staying.

That's at the north end of North Michigan Avenue ("the Magnificent Mile") and just a few blocks from the Newberry Library that Alex mentioned. In the immediate vicinity (within a few blocks walk), great restaurants include (all are open for both lunch and dinner): Cafe Spiaggia, for mid-priced Italian food (this is the sister restaurant of Spiaggia, one of the finest restaurants in the city, only open for dinner); other nearby choices for Italian include Pane Caldo and Merlo on Maple Hugo's, for seafood Gibson's, for steaks; other nearby choices for steaks include Saloon and Morton's NoMI, one of the city's very finest restaurants and the only one of our "top tables" that is open for lunch too For authentic Chicago deep-dish pizza, you've got Giordano's on Rush for the double-crust "stuffed" style, and Pizano's on State for the single-crust "pan" style Bistro 110, French bistro Le Colonial, for Asian and Vietnamese cuisine

Where will you be staying downtown? What's referred to as "downtown Chicago" spans a large area (roughly three miles from the Gold Coast to the South Loop). There are undoubtedly some great places within a short walk of your hotel, if you just let us know where it is. Any of the mapping websites (Mapquest, Google, etc) can give you a map of the entire city. Once we know where you're staying, we can give you close by suggestions that you can find on a more detailed map of the immediate vicinity of your hotel and nearby restaurants. I had never heard of the Fire Museum but according to their website, it sounds like they are in the process of moving. Apparently it was created to preserve memories of the parochial school fire here in 1958. If you're interested in seeing museum exhibits about the Chicago Fire in 1871, the Chicago Historical Society is on the near north side and its website is here. If you've never been here before (or even if you have), we have museums and attractions galore. The Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau has lots of information on its website at choosechicago.com.

While restaurants are opening and closing all the time, most of the recommendations here should still be current (even ones that are a year or two old). Remember, with literally thousands of places in and around downtown Chicago, it's impossible to mention every single place. If there is anything you're particularly interested in - specific places or types of food - let us know and we can help. Weather in mid-November is generally cool, with average daytime highs in the upper forties and overnight lows around freezing. Snow is unlikely although not unheard of; for the entire month of November, we average two inches of snow, and it tends to occur more towards the end of the month.

This past weekend I went on my annual pilgrimage to Grand Rapids. On Friday night, I ate at Red's on the River, in Rockford, northeast of GR. It was very good, with a contemporary American menu, and a nice view of the river. My favorite dish was the pear and stilton salad. On Saturday night, I joined Alex for dinner at Leo's, and I was once again reminded why I LOVE this restaurant so much. There's just something about it - I'm not sure whether it's the freshness of the fish, or the delicious preparations, or the unusually spacious (tables far, FAR apart) dining room with its elegant, contemporary decor - whatever it is, it is really a favorite of mine. My favorite dish this time was one whose name I forget (it's not on their current website menu - it had a name like a seafood hotpot or stockpot or something like that). It consisted of lobster, scallops, and filet fish in a cajun cream sauce, served over rice. This was FANTASTIC. What was really unusual about it was that the sauce was spicy and tasty, but didn't overpower the fish in it; the lobster chunks tasted like lobster, and the scallops tasted like scallops. Yum. Bloom has a website! Click here.

The following is what I wrote down on Saturday, after my visit. I should add, however, that despite liking what I had there, I don't disagree with the negative comments posted in the blog in the Reader. We went to this today, and it's still going on tomorrow. From the standpoint of wines - you get to taste, oh, I'm guessing 400-500 wines from 100 vineyards, virtually no waiting, virtually unlimited tastes (the tickets say limit three tastes per wine, but there was no enforcement - but with that many wines, who would want more than three tastes anyway?). And they vary from cheap to uber-expensive. If you enjoy wines, this is an over-the-top experience. From the standpoint of foods - you get to taste foods from 15-20 restaurants. Most were exceptional (and there are now at least four restaurants I'm dying to go to). Some lines were lengthy by mid-afternoon, but even with those, it was only maybe a 5 minute wait. There was no wait anywhere when we arrived at 11:30. Oh, and what they do is, four restaurants at a time have set times assigned for the "chef's tasting area" and those rotate every couple hours; the rest of the restaurants are intermixed with the wineries/distributors/importers around the outside edge of the great lawn, and the big tents and groups of booths in the middle are virtually all wineries/distributors/importers. The food was almost buried in the wine - not that there was very little food, but rather, that there were so many booths with wine, the food didn't stand out much. But it was really very, very nice, for both food and wine. Here are the food offerings that I remember (which is pretty much all of them, unless I missed something)... Courtright's (in Willow Springs) had their own booth, serving samples of vanilla corn chowder. Excellent. Their new executive chef was there; he is just being introduced to the public, and was formerly at Le Bec Fin, the wonderful restaurant in Philadelphia. La Sardine was represented in the booth for the Alliance Francaise de Chicago, serving very good small onion tarts. Chaise Lounge (in Wicker Park) was serving delicious (and nice-sized!) crab cakes, as well as a nice salad of greens. This was one of my favorites! The Peninsula had a booth, and Chef Duffy was there. They were serving a tiny tiny TINY amuse which combined tapioca and a shard of lime and a crunchy shell and I forget what else. Very good and a nice combination of flavors, but it was so small... Think of eating a food item about the size of a dime. Did I say it was tiny? Pastoral (the cheese shops) had a booth, and one of their providers (a farm in Ohio) was represented there, serving cheese with dried fruit. Very good. Oil and Vinegar (the shop in Old Orchard, Skokie, that sells you-know-what) had a booth with samples of their stuff. Aria (in the Fairmont) had their own booth, serving shrimp dumplings that were wonderful, one of the top highlights! We chatted with the chef de cuisine, and decided to go there for my SO's next birthday (already made the res on opentable). The Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago / Cordon Bleu had a booth with a huge variety of things, including passed desserts (macaroons - my favorites! and truffles, etc) as well as savory items (salad with duck confit, foie gras cold terrine, etc). Fox and Obel had a booth with a few of their products, including a very nice hors d'oeuvre of a crisp of their raisin pecan bread with a dollop of cheese and a slice of pear - I spread a bit of their quince paste on it; and a few other small items, which I forget. Of course, a small booth can't do justice to Fox and Obel, but... Phil Stefano's 437 Rush served two different pastas, quite good. A Mano's booth was giving out their homemade ice cream (choice of flavors was vanilla, olive oil, or espresso). The chef's tasting booths rotate every couple hours according to a published schedule. There are four booths. While we were there (12:30-2:00), here's what they were serving: (1) Christophe David of NoMI was serving an absolutely divine dish of warm foie gras terrine over pine nut bostock. Bostock (don't worry, I had never heard the term either) is brioche soaked in tea, normally spread with almond cream; they substituted pine nuts for almonds and cut back a bit on the sweetness. And the size was ample, each one was a two-inch square, served on a tiny wooden tray. This was best in show in my book. And did I mention that you could go back as many times as you want? Not that I would do that more than once, of course. (2) Rick Moonen of RM Seafood (in Vegas) was serving some kind of fish ceviche (just okay). (3) Stephanie Izard of Top Chef and Scylla was serving a composed salad that included duck confit (okay). (4) Malika Ameen and Mohammed Islam of Aigre Doux were serving two kinds of cookies, a spiced chocolate chip cookie and a nut cookie (think round nut shortbread), both of which were good but Aigre Doux is capable of so much more, I feel that they missed an opportunity to show off their best stuff (e.g. no sticky toffee pudding!). So those were the foods that they had. Not exactly a huge number - not like Taste of Chicago, for example - but the quality was definitely there. Also, those chef tasting areas were certainly a highlight, so if there are particular chef(s) whose food you would like to try (or just that you would like to meet), you could plan your visit so you're there at their times. However, the number of food offerings really should be increased, if the organizers want to improve the event next year. For one thing, they should do away with the chef tasting areas, and invite those chefs to have their own booths for the duration of the event, not in two-hour shifts. They could double the number of food offerings by doing so, and this event really needed more. I really can't do justice to all the wine offerings - sorry! I'm really not much of a wine drinker. If you want to know the truth, I primarily drink dessert wines. However, I loved the ones I had there (an Illinois moscato, a Niagara ice wine, a British Columbia ice wine, and a wonderful vin santo). I didn't even bother much with champagnes or gewurztraminers, although they were there in abundance. Even for a non-wino like me, this was wonderful! But I should add, I've been to some of the best, grandest private wine tastings over the years, so I know what they're like, and this would not disappoint even the most avid wine connoisseur. I did not pay the extra cost to do the grand cru tastings or the seminars; all of the above is what I got for the basic $130 advance / $150 late per-day registration fee. Not inexpensive, but I was very satisfied. And anyone who really enjoys wines would be even more satisfied! Oh, and how it all works - when you enter, you receive a nice cloth tote bag (for your brochures), which contained a souvenir pin from the event, and you also received a very nice crystal wine glass, which you keep, and use for all your wine tastings during the event (booths had small dump pails and water bottles for them). Also a tag to wear proving your admission. Also, I think the exposure from this event makes it a must to any high-end chef in the area. You can serve small portions of one of your best dishes to people who are interested enough in food that they paid $150 to attend, which ought to be your target market. Look, I'm now dying to go to several of these restaurants and will do so soon, I'm sure. And those who don't spend all day long on LTH (which probably excludes anyone who has read this far in my post ) are exactly the ones chefs need the exposure to. No, I'm not affiliated with this event in any way - it's just a tip to those in the biz, knowing how it works (and knowing how important word of mouth is). One thing we hated was that the Monroe garage had jacked up their price for the weekend to $25. Grrr!!! Next time we'll take the el. It was rather warm and most of the time was spent out in the sun. I understand that tomorrow should be slightly cooler. I assume you can get tickets at the door - if this sounds like something you would enjoy, go!!! Oh, one more note (for next year)... I realized that buying the tickets in advance is a real risk, in terms of the weather. If it were pouring rain, this would not be so pleasant. Granted, most of the booths were inside tents, either individual tents or group tents, but still... So the weather is a risk you can avoid if you get tickets at the door, one you can't if you buy your tickets months in advance to take advantage of the price discount.

I saw Chef Duffy at the Pen's booth at Chicago Gourmet over the weekend. I also took a look at their menu. The menu still only mentions the main ingredients of each dish, without describing preparation techniques. The 4 course is $75, the 9 course is $115, and the 15 course is $145, if I recall correctly.

Yes, since I ordered them on a Thursday night. And they were fresh and decent, one of the few highlights of a dinner that otherwise ranged from disappointing to dreadful. Here's what I wrote about it at the time: We decided to try Siam's House for dinner tonight. As it turns out, we were generally disappointed in our meal. The pleasant waitress took our order. She asked how spicy we liked everything, and we told her how we like it (medium, fairly hot but not burn-your-head-off hot). As it turns out, everything was prepared with the specified level of hotness. Kudos for that. We started with a drink. My SO had a Singha, and I had the cha yen (Thai iced tea). This was not one of the better cha yens I've had; it was way too sweet and syrupy (cha yen is normally sweet, but not this sweet) without the characteristic smoky tea flavor to offset the sweetness. The first dish was great. We had the satay gai (chicken satay), and it was excellent. Plump, juicy, flavorful, with a nice char on the outside, served with lots of peanut sauce and lots of sliced cucumber (enough that we did plenty of cucumber dipping after we finished the satay). And, unlike every other Thai place on the planet (or so it seems), they serve an even number of skewers, six. Not that that aspect is a big deal, it's not; it's just more of a curiosity than anything else. Unfortunately, that was the best dish of the meal, and it was followed by the worst. The next item was the tom kha gai (soup made of chicken, galanga, lemongrass, coconut milk, etc). When it arrived at the table, there was a thick pool of rather disgusting orange oil floating on top. I was able to use my skimming skills to remove as much of the oil as I could. Even aside from the excess oil, though, the soup itself was, well, just not very good. The taste was too bland; it was reasonably spicy, as noted above, but other than that, there was just not that strong a taste to the broth, making it rather dishwatery. Granted, not every place (not even TAC Quick, IMHO) has tom kha gai as good as Thai Sookdee, my favorite, but this is the first time in ages that we have left over any tom kha gai, anywhere. 'nuff said. We had two mains. One was a daily special of basil mussels with chili paste. This dish was very good. The mussels tasted fresh, and the relatively small amount of sauce was nice and tasty. The second was less successful. This was panang gai (chicken curry). This too was excessively oily, although the oil was somewhat blended with the sauce, rather than sitting on top. Like the soup, the dish itself was a bit on the bland side - again, reasonably spicy, but not that tasty. Also, FWIW, the amount of liquid sauce in this dish was huge - not really a big plus or minus, but there was 4-5 times as much sauce as most other Thai places serve, even though panang normally comes with a fair amount of sauce. They didn't have khao niaow mamuang (mango with sticky rice), either on the menu or otherwise (we asked) so we skipped dessert. How would I rate Siam's House overall? I like to rate restaurants on the following scale: 4 stars - Wow, Incredible (worth traveling long distances to dine) 3 stars - Very Good (worth recommending to others) 2 stars - Just Okay (worth visiting if you're in the neighborhood) 1 star - Disappointing, seriously flawed (worth forgetting) 0 stars - Dreadful (worth warning others away) On this scale, I would give Siam's House 1 star. By way of comparison, Thai Sookdee in Evanston, my current favorite Thai place in the Chicago area, rates 3 stars, as does Thai Pavilion 2 in Skokie; TAC Quick in Chicago gets 2.5 stars; and the other eight or so Thai places in Evanston and Skokie all get 1-2 stars, as do another four or so Thai places I've tried on the north side in the past couple of years.

I would add North Pond, as much for its exquisite, unique setting as for Chef Sherman's cuisine.