Essential Chef Blogs

Sharon and I continue our search for a great lunchtime meal, this time by visiting food trucks on the University of Chicago campus. Lined up on two adjacent streets -- University Avenue and Ellis Avenue around 58th street -- are about ten food trucks, offering everything from pizza, to tacos, to rice bowls, to classic sandwiches. We decid...

​ Having tasted the classics – the cubano, the croque monsier, the banh mi - Sharon and I decided to see what is happening on the cutting edge of sandwich making. But how to get a handle on such a broad topic? Every neighborhood has a couple of sandwich shops. Our solution – we picked one street in Chicago – Milwaukee Avenue- and visited four shops...

I love Chicago's many ethnic neighborhoods, where you can drive a half hour from your home and feel like you are in another country. That is how Sharon and I felt as we spent a pleasant afternoon on Devon Avenue, tasting samosas. We were often the only native English speakers at the places we visited.So what is the difference between a samosa and a...

Empanadas are delicious, filled pastry snacks and an essential element of Latin American cuisine.They are either baked or fried.We sampled both types and we always preferred the fried, of course.French fries aren't the #1 vegetable in America for nothing.And the fried may even be more authentic.We were told that fried empanadas were t...

Ah the French. How do they take a humble toasted ham and cheese sandwich and elevate it to new gastronomic heights? By adding béchamel sauce, bien sûr. By the way, "croque" means crunchy, which is what you want to hear, when you bite into your croque monsieur. The quality of the bread, the ham, and the cheese – typically gruyère – make or break thi...

Cocktails! David Farris will soon be authoring an exciting new blog topic. Bar hop with David as he samples and recommends spirits and suggests cocktail recipes. Drink up.

Having just returned from a wonderful three week vacation in Vietnam, I wanted to recapture some of the tastes of the country. French bread and pastry skills were introduced by the French during Vietnam's colonial era. The tradition continues in the form of croissants and baguettes which can be found everywhere.If you are ever in Hue, I highly reco...

I’ve loved Cuban sandwiches ever since I had a great one on the U.S. Virgin Island of St. John at Rhumb Lines (http://www.rhumblinesstjohn.com/).  The ideal Cuban has juicy pork, flavorful ham, melty swiss cheese, crunchy pickles, just the right amount of yellow mustard, and mayo, all encased in a soft Cuban bread and then grilled in a sandwich press. There’s a debate between Tampa and Miami as to who “invented” the Cuban.  Tampa claims it was the sandwich of choice back in the days of workers hand rolling Cuban cigars.  Miami begs to differ.  But, whatever the source, it has found its way around the U.S. for good reason.  A good one is delicious.

Senor Pan Cuban

Unfortunately I can’t get to Rhumb Lines often.  But Chicago is home to so many great sandwich shops that Sharon and I knew we could find a good substitute here.  We visited four spots and discovered two must haves: 

...

​Linda: It's 15 degrees on a very cold but sunny Chicago morning and we are off to taste scones. Scones are a sweet version of biscuits – made by cutting fat into flour, adding liquid, gently kneading, then baking. (Watch the lesson 1 video of biscuit making for how-to details.) We're looking for a scone with the perfect combination of crunch ...

"You are what you eat" certainly applies to oysters. Since oysters eat by extracting food from the water that filters through their shells, their taste is greatly affected by their living conditions. And since oysters must be kept alive from harvest to table, it supremely important to trust your oyster retailer. With that in mind,...

​Bennison's Bakeries. 1000 Davis Street, Evanston, IL Linda: This is our first stop of the day. The bakery is located at a busy intersection in Evanston. It's a small store front, and there was a line waiting to order most of the time that we are there. It does a mostly a take-out business not eat-in business. They have an amazing array of pas...

Linda: As American as apple pie….you are the apple of my eye….Eve unleashed all our problems by (allegedly) making Adam eat an apple…. Apples are an important fruit in America. But before this tasting, I had no idea there were so many apple varieties. You're lucky if you see a dozen in a grocery store. The apple farm we visited, T...

Linda: "Looks can be deceiving." When it comes to tomatoes, truer words were never spoke. Did you know that most store-bought tomatoes are picked well before they are ripe and then ripened using ethylene gas? So a red tomato isn't necessarily a sweet tomato. Ripening a tomato on the vine and picking it at the optimal moment is the best...

Max Sevier of Uncle John's BBQ, died on June 1, 2015.  His restaurant, Uncle John's, is closed. This is truly a tragedy -- his ribs and hot  links were delicious and he trained a lot of other really good rib masters. It was over 90 degrees in Chicago at the start of the Labor Day weekend and we were four souls looking for...

​Which tastes better: ice cream or gelato? Linda: I know, I know, that's like asking a mother "who's your favorite child?" Her response is "They are all my favorites". But our inquiring minds (and the heat of the summer) led us on our quest to see if we could taste the difference and which we preferred. My personal answer to the question is: g...

Does a $13.99 per pound pork chop taste better than a $4.29 per pound pork chop? Yes, but….. Linda: We got to wondering if the hype about naturally raised pork was just that, or if we could actually taste the difference between a standard grocery store pork chop and a fancy butcher shop chop. So we set off to buy and blind-taste-test four bone...

Linda: Meat, onions, cilantro, salsa, in a corn tortilla, served with a wedge of lime – a traditional, authentic Mexican taco. Not fancy, just delicious, if well prepared. Fortunately Chicago has a large Mexican population, so there are many, many taquerias to choose from. We were looking for places that have food that tastes home-made, like our gr...

Linda: I love pie. It reminds me of home, the aroma of apple pie baking in the oven, picking blackberries so mom could bake us a fresh blackberry pie. I think that pie is the homiest and most American of all desserts. And what better way to look toward summer than a pie crawl. We sampled ten pie slices over a four hour period, with the help of two ...

Linda: Today's our day to taste chocolates. We missed Valentines Day but it's not too late to think about chocolate for Easter. We decided to focus on chocolatiers that make small batches of chocolates by hand. We visited four stores in the Chicago area, all highly regarded for their chocolate creations. It was hard to be entirely scientific in our...

Sharon: Since it's almost Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras), we decided to sample some all-American, high fat pleasures, donuts. We visited four donut shops, all with strong local followings. At each one, we sampled a yeast-raised donut, a cake donut, and a cream-filled donut (which is also made with yeast). There are two basic types of donut dough: do...

Linda: Today we are off to sample pizzas. Since there are so many styles of pizzas and we only have limited stomach capacity, we needed to focus. And what better focus than on the classic, neopolitan-style pizza? I know we're in Chicago and Chicago is the home of deep dish pizza, but we'll save that crawl for another day. Naples, Italy is just...