Show me a fourth generation family restaurant that traces its heritage back through several locations to the 1920s, and I’ll show you a restaurant that’s doing things right. That would be Kayrouz Cafe, and it should come as no surprise that the current generation is handling Covid safety with style and grace too.
“Our entire kitchen and wait staff have been fully vaccinated,” a sheet on the front door assures customers. There’s ample outdoor dining, with a half-dozen patio tables offering a significant boost to the tiny eatery’s interior seating. Continue reading Kayrouz Cafe does food and safety right→
If you’ve never wondered why so many Chinese restaurants use what appear to be very similar menus, you probably don’t get much Chinese takeout. The menus look alike, and the dishes are pretty much the same wherever you go.
What’s that about? It took me a lot of digging, but the often-reliable Internet finally led me to the secret: Most of the menus come from a group of printers packed into a few blocks in New York’s Chinatown, using newspaper-size printing presses to run hundreds of thousands of similar Chinese menus for the whole country!
Not that I’m worried about the Delta variant or anything – well, not too much. But it may have been a factor the other day in my decision to try takeout for the first time in a while. This is how I ended up at Starving Artist Café & Deli in Lyndon, which may be the best restaurant in town that I’ve hardly ever heard of. Continue reading Fill up on great sandwiches at Starving Artist→
One cloudy, stormy looking March afternoon last year, when lockdown had just begun and we all were starting to reckon with the scary reality that the pandemic was here to stay for a while, I got out and walked through a completely deserted Westport Village.
I walked up to the big windows at Wild Eggs and saw an eerie scene, chairs perched upside down on tables in the empty room, and a vacant expanse of empty parking lot reflected in the big plate glass windows.
It has been almost two years since a maintenance-related roof collapse abruptly closed four popular restaurants in the Gallerias at St. Matthews strip on Oechsli Avenue in St. Matthews.
The roof remains unrepaired, the building is up for sale, and litigation is pending. Under the added weight of the Covid-19 pandemic, each of the four eateries – Del Frisco’s, Havana Rumba, Charim Korean Restaurant, and Half Peach Bakery & Cafe – has struggled to deal with insurance and legal issues as they fought to recover and relocate. Continue reading We welcome Half Peach back after a rough spell→
If you’ve got a hankering for Chinese food, you can take comfort in this statistic: According to the trade journal Chinese Restaurant News, there were more than 43,000 independent Chinese restaurants in the United States in 2019.
The pandemic has surely seen closures, but still, that was triple the 13,443 U.S. McDonald’s locations in 2021. I’d much rather have a bowl of Jasmine Asian Bistro’s Sichuanese cucumber salad than a Big Mac anyway. Continue reading Jasmine Asian Bistro offers first-rate Chinese fare→
Spring is fully sprung, more than one-fifth of Americans are vaccinated, and the Cubs return home to Wrigley Field to play the Pirates on Friday, April 16. Wrigley Field? Now I want a Chicago-style hot dog. Continue reading Lonnie’s hot dogs deliver Chicago flavor→
I don’t normally go back to a place I’ve reviewed only a year or so ago, but I’m making an exception for BurgerIM. Why? Grace under pressure merits applause. Also, Indian food!
Here’s what I’m talking about: The owners, the husband-and-wife team of Nermal Raj and Veronica Michel, opened their doors in mid-March last year, just a few days before the pandemic shut down in-restaurant dining. Continue reading BurgerIm adds delicious Indian-flavor burgers→
