"chicago dining" news and stories

I'm probably mistaken, but I feel like tea sommeliers must be some of the nicest people around. The Chicago Sun-Times profiles Bou Chu, the tea sommelier at the NoMI restaurant in the Park Hyatt Hotel. The best part of the story is the sidebar: Chou's recommendations for pairing teas with certain foods like hot dogs and lobster.

Once again, it's time for the World Wide Food (WWF) Smackdown - a totally unscientific, wholly biased and completely personal, opinionated, non-blind taste test between some Chicago places I tried on a recent trip and relatively similar places in LA. If you've been following along, you know Chicago is up 2 to 1 for both Rick Bayless' kicking the Too Hot tamales' butts, and PJ Clarke's beer battered vegetables stomping all over Finn McCool's calamari. LA's one point comes from Pink's, though they might have to surrender that point since Portillo's just opened in Orange County.

Today, beef sandwiches go head to head in a battle of epicurean European proportions. The West Coast offers Philippe's in downtown LA, the home of the original French Dip, and the Midwest doesn't hold back with Italian beef from Mr. Beef in Chicago.