WBEZ 91.5 Chicago

The fifth annual Chicago Restaurant Week kicks off at lunch today, but it's not actually a week; it's 10 days, and officially ends next Sunday, February 26 at dinner. Some restaurants extend until the end of the month, this leap year, the 29th.

But it can be a love/hate relationship, with both diners and restaurants, and sometimes a battle for reservations—and in some cases, no reservations at all.

Here's the deal: restaurants offer special $22 lunch menus and/or $33 or $44 dinner menus. But it's wise to confirm if the Restaurant Week menu is being offered during your desired dining time. The special menus may not be available on certain days or certain meal times—like Sunday brunch for example.

Any restaurant in the greater Chicagoland area could participate, and this year more than 262 restaurants are in (despite what the official list looks like it says; Café 28 is listed twice).

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Fat Thursday or Tłusty Czwartek. Fat Tuesday or Mardi Gras. No matter what you call them, Chicago is the only city in the world that widely celebrates Pączki/Paczki Day on both days. A pączek is the jelly doughnut's Polish cousin with a richer, eggy pastry, but only modestly filled. Paczki (POONCH-kee) can be found here year-round, but some bakeries only offer old world fillings like prune or rose hip jam this Thursday and/or Tuesday, along with new world favorites like strawberries and cream. And in our world, there's even a paczki-eating contest that still needs eaters on Saturday.

Wednesday, February 15

The Journey of a Sweet Leaf: In Search of Plant Originated Sweeteners at the Garfield Park Conservatory will be led by "plant taxonomist and economic botanist, Dr. D. Doel Soejarto ("Doel"), who is best known for his more than 40 years of plant exploration work, covering more than 20 countries."

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I'm a sucker for limited edition food. Make it heart-shaped, and I'm a hopeless fool. If it's one or two of my favorite pizzas in the world, I'll plan my life around it.

Because pizza, reminds us of all that once was good — and that could be again.

Chicago is home to some of the best restaurants in the world right now, and even on Valentine's Day or especially on holidays like today they step up to the plate and knock it out of the park, whether or not they're serving special prix fixe menus à deux. 

But pizza is meant for sharing — or at least it is here. And that's how it differs from our other iconic foods. Our pizza selflessly adapts in form and function to a day of love, beyond romantic love. Try to imagine: a heart-shaped hot dog or Italian beef?

Above, you see my Valentine's Day 2011 heart-shaped pizza from Barnaby's of Northbrook.

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Food trucks and cup holders—not concept cars or hybrids—dominated car talk among food-focused attendees at the Chicago Auto Show 2012 media preview days and First Look for Charity event last night.

Nissan customized an NV2500 van as The Southern Mac & Cheese Truck just for this show. A Nissan rep showed me the model's notable features for use as a food truck: a high roof that can accomodate someone standing up to six-foot two; straight, drill-able sides for more efficient, customizable storage and use; and an engine moved forward to allow more leg room for driver and passenger, as well as work room by removing the bulky box up front, known among van experts as "the dog house".

Please note that the truck did serve mac and cheese during the media preview days only. There will be no mac and cheese served at Nissan during the public show days.

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Wednesday, February 8

Next: elBulli opens, and runs through May 27, 2012 only. The first course will be El Bulli's 2004 "caipirnha-nitro con concentrado de estragón" (liquid nitrogen Caipirnha with tarragon concentrate). Hey I made that when I staged there that year! Then and there it started with a big bowl of limes and bunches of tarragon; then hand-muddled juice, sugar, and cachaça were frozen with liquid nitrogen at the table; and served with a touch of intense tarragon, extracted by centrifuge. The liquid nitrogen freezes the highly alcoholic cocktail to a Mario's Italian ice texture. The insulated table-side bowl always came back to me—and yes, I drank the leftovers.

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In downtown Sendai, the biggest city hit by the earthquake and tsunami last year, you can't see any signs of the destruction that my cabbie said hit every single street corner. Unless you look closely.

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After a cold, snowy, early morning visit to the Kesennuma fish market yesterday—and a quick breakfast including onsen egg and natto—I visited an artisanal sake brewery. After fish, sake is the next biggest business in town. But like fishing here, sake-making is more than business, it's family.

To get to the tiny Kakuboshi brewery, you take the two-lane main road by the water—which I learned seems perpetually at high tide because the land here actually dropped over two feet. The snow's covered everything, so it looks like a picturesque port town, with mountains in back, but turn up the hill to the brewery, and you see buildings that don't seem to make sense: narrow, free-standing, random.

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