Raccoon may be regarded as a culinary throwback, but in Chicago it's played an accidental role in the city's worldwide reputation for futuristic fine dining—thanks to a local community dinner held nearly every year since 1927.
First, please let me address the elephant in the room, or raccoon—or coon. We are referring to the animal, not the offensive racial slur. While I've been the target of racism myself, I only realized recently that this particular word's modern meaning appears primarily hurtful. Evidently so much so that in Wednesday's Sun-Times Food Detective column, written by my friend David Hammond, the word never appears—though its subject is Saturday's 85th annual Coon Feed in Delafield, Wisc.
So yes, we're talking about a raccoon dinner, which you may find offensive anyway. But you shouldn't.
