Meet the Curator of "A Case for Wine" exhibit from the Art Institute of Chicago at Binny's

I have visited this exhibit at the Art Institute twice already.  It spans many eras in art from ancient times to present.  I am particularly interested in the tapestries, bedspreads, book covers and wallpaper of the Arts & Crafts movement, most of which came out of the William Morris Company.  The depictions from this particular gallery are mostly grape and harvest motifs and only allude to wine, but interesting nonetheless.  The exhibit is up until September 20th.

I just read that the curator of the exhibit, Christopher Monkhouse, will be giving a presentation at Binny's in the South Loop on Wednesday, September 9th from 6-7:30p.  The presentation pairs anecdotal information about pieces of art from the exhibit with a tasting of wines from Terrazas de los Andes and Casa Lapostolle.  The Pairing of Wine with Art event is free with a Binny's card and attendees will receive a discount on admission to the Art Institute.  Reservations are required. (312-768-4400 or southloop@binnys.com)

2009 Locavore Challenge

The Green City Market is sponsoring a Locavore Challenge for Chicagoans to commit to eating locally grown and produced foods for two weeks.  The challenge begins September 9th and runs through September 24th.  Details can be found at the Green City Market or on their website http://www.chicagogreencitymarket.org/programs/program.asp?id=6

A number of restaurants, including Table 52, the Bristol and North Pond, are joining the cause by offering a locavore menu during the challenge.  Some are also sponsoring special events and donating $1 of each locavore dish to support Green City Market.

Goose Island and Slow Food Chicago - Pig Roast 2009

Paul Kahan from Publican and Blackbird can do no wrong, so this must be good!  Sounds like a good time and tickets are still available at http://www.slowfoodchicago.org/index.php/2009/08/26/pig-roast/

Local pork prepared by local chefs and Goose Island Beer on Sunday, August 30th at Goose Island Brewery (the real one on Fulton!) from 3-7p for $55 a person.

Beerbin.com

I love this new site (http://www.beerbin.com/) that shows where you can:

a) enter the name of the bar of your choice (in Chicago) and get a listing of beers served there
or
b) enter the name of the beer of your choice and get a listing of bars (in Chicago) that serve it


When the new flagship Whole Foods in Lincoln Park opened with a beer bar in place, a friend was lucky enough to happen upon Three Floyd's Banana Split Weizenbock.  By the time Dan and I got there to try it, they were all sold out and had no idea if they were getting more.  Enter Beerbin.com. 


It didn't actually help me find this particular beer, but I had fun trying.  When I entered "Banana" into the search field for beers, Wells Banana Bread Beer autopopulated.  This provided a few minutes of entertainment as I typed in random words to find what unusual beers might appear.  FYI...Wells Banana Bread Beer is found at Kroll's in the South Loop.  I definitely think I will be relying heavily on Beerbin.com in the future, probably more for making bar choices than anything else.

Another note on Right Brain Brewery

I didn't write much about my favorite beers at Right Brain Brewery and they had quite a selection to choose from.  If pressed, I would say I found the Scarsborough Fair (Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme) to be the most unusual and memorable - probably my favorite, though I couldn't drink it all day long.  The guy at Right Brain told me people either love it or hate it.  I would be one of those that loves it and could think of other purposes for it in cooking, too...like a reduction!?  But you have to be careful reducing beer, because the hops flavors become more intense.  It would be interesting to reduce it to a sauce though.  For best all around beer, my favorite was Ethel the Frog, which is a slightly hoppy copper ale.  This was Dan's favorite and the favorite of the bartender/brewerytender, too:)  Again, the list there is ever changing, so I think it is the kind of place I would be stopping in constantly if I lived closer than 5 hours away from Traverse City.

Top Chef Masters Winning Menu at Topolobampo

If you love Rick Bayless, like me, and you love Bravo!, like me, I am sure that this isn't news to you. However, I was so excited to find out that after winning Top Chef Masters on Bravo!, Rick Bayless is presenting his winning menu from the season finale at Topolobampo until October 10th. Now good luck getting reservations. I haven't had any yet:)

Also, I think it was kismet that on the day after Rick's big win, I was strolling through Barbara's Bookstore in the basement of Macy's on State Street and there on the bargain books table was the 20th Anniversary Edition of Authentic Mexico for half price! I am loving this book, because it gives you history of the food and reads like a real book...not just a cookbook.

On the topic of Rick Bayless, there is a recipe from Xoco for Mexican Tortas with Black Beans and Chorizo in this month's Food and Wine Magazine in the article "Simple Acts of Sandwich Genius."

www.foodandwine.com/recipes/mexican-tortas-with-black-beans-and-chorizo

Half Acre Beer Company in Lincoln Square

Chicago desperately needs a more local beer scene. We are so close to Michigan, which is brimming with beer in every corner of the state and Illinois seems sorely lacking in contrast. I do love Goose Island and I am ecstatic with Metropolitan Brewery (the two coolest people, Tracy and Doug Hurst, run this place! Look out for them at local beer festivals and make a point to speak to them). I love Three Floyds, though technically in Indiana, and I love Two Brothers, too. I still need to make a trip out to Flossmore Station to case my vote here.

In any case, I was so excited when I was driving down Lincoln Ave. last week and saw the new location for Half Acre Beer Co. Truth be told, I had my heart set on it popping up somewhere in West Town, as I often see the jeep parked around the Milwaukee/Grand Corridor. Regardless, it is good to see another brewery take root in the city. I know Half Acre has been around for awhile, but they used to brew outside of Chicago. I am not sure what is in store in this Lincoln Square location...a brewpub, I hope?!

Great Lakes Cider & Perry Festival

We learned about this great Autumn event when we were visiting Tandem Ciders in Leelanau County Michigan! I would like to try to make it to St. Johns for this tasting, since I love Uncle John's hard ciders (and now Tandem Ciders, too) and I always try to visit this orchard in the Fall. However, the German American Festival in Lincoln Square in Chicago is the same weekend and I love me my street festival food.

September 12-13th at Uncle John's Cider Mill in St. Johns Michigan

Sample Cider and Perry from around the Great Lakes and Canada paired with local foods. Tickets are $10-$25, depending on which events you plan to participate in and can be purchased at www.michiganvine.com

Annual Northern Michigan Wine Trail Trip - Day 2

We were really anxious to check out some of the businesses in the former Traverse City State Hospital (i.e. insane asylum), since the area wasn't fully occupied with business on our last trip. Most vineyards don't open until 11a or noon, so we started the day with a trip to Higher Grounds Trading Company. This fair trade and organic coffee business has been around for awhile, but we wanted to check out the new location.

The hospital was pretty and gothic and teeming with people, even early in the morning. Higher Grounds is located in one of the buildings behind the hospital that used to be the laundry building. The coffee was good and all the milk was local (only whole and skim), but I was dissapointed that they were out of creamer and skim milk and only had whole milk to offer that day. The coffee was good though and I enjoyed looking out on the grounds of the facility.

We headed next door to the Left Foot Charley winery, which sources it's grapes from several local vineyards. The wine list was pretty much entirely white, but all of the wines were crisp and nice. The 2008 Rose was very dry and crisp and happened to be the featured wine of the week (=$$ discount), so we purchased a bottle and moved on.

We have been dying to check out this new brewery in Traverse City called Right Brain Brewery. If you check out their beer list on the website you will see why...it is off the wall! They seem to be great experimenters and have 12 beers on tap on any given day. Some of the beers are pretty fun in terms of ingredients and names (Scarborough Fair had parsley, rosemary, sage, and thyme and was billed as "a great marinade" on the menu). The guy working there was extremely enthusiastic, helpful, and friendly and we did a sampler of a variety of the beers on the menu. I think we got to try almost every one. It was hit or miss in terms of what we liked, some were just ok, some were pretty good, but the fun was in sampling. One disappointment was that there were no IPAs or highly hoppy beers on the list. I was told they were too popular right now to keep on tap for long. It is definitely worth a stop and it should be noted that they sell growlers to go, in case you want to pick up some of the Scarborough Fair for a marinade. My husband is a home brewer and loved the ideas that they were putting into their beer here...very creative.

Now we had to get our bearings about us, so we stopped for lunch at North Peak Brewery. The food was good and we did a sample of the beers on tap. Though I am partial to pale ales, the Steelhead Red is my favorite here. I think our tasting suffered a bit from the heat on the patio, but from past experience, the beers are decent. They have been there forever, so they are doing something right.

We did some wine tasting on the Leelanau wine trail that afternoon, too, but after all the beer in the morning, we had to be pretty selective about where we went. L. Mawby is one of our favorite places in this area and is entirely sparkling wine. There is a huge variety to meet anyone's taste. One of our oddball favorites last year was their Redd. I have had sparkling reds before at Whole Foods and my understanding is that they are not all that popular anywhere except in Australia. We were lucky enough to find a wine shop in Chicago last year (Provence in Lincoln Square) that carried L. Mawby Redd, so we had some backstock. When we asked about it this year, we were so surprised to hear they no longer make it! I guess it is true that it just hasn't taken off in the U.S. The girl at the tasting room at L. Mawby said it just never really sold, but as soon as they pulled it from the list, they found a lot of people came in looking for it and seemed disappointed.

There were no other vineyards of particular note this year, but again, we really skimmed the list and left off many of our favorites (incluing Forty-Five North Vineyard and Winery, which was closed by the time we got there). We tried Circa Winery's tasting room, which is newly opened. The tasting room is very impressive in terms of decor and ambience and the staff was friendly. We will definitely make a stop at this tasting room a priority for our next trip. We bought a bottle of 2007 Requisite here made from Blaufrankisch - a German red grape also known as Lemberger. I saw this grape on the wine list at Shady Lane's Vineyard on this trip, also. I hadn't previously heard of it. Wikipedia tells me the grape is known as "the Pinot Noir of the East" because of it's spread and reputation in Eastern Europe.

Finally, I will mention another new addition to the Leelanau Wine Trail this year - Tandem Ciders (also found on the self-guided foodie tour). I like hard cider in the autumn and I usually stop to pick some up at Uncle John's Cider Mill in St Johns when I am in Michigan. Tandem had a nice setup and the owner, who was previously a home brewer of beer himself, had a nice discussion with my husband about how making cider was more akin to wine than beer. He was a great guy and happy to talk to us about his business. The ciders are good...much more subtle than I am used, too. My favorite was the driest variety, but I believe the owner said the sweeter ciders on the list tend to be more popular. He also let us know about the Great Lakes Cider and Perry Festival taking place at Uncle John's Cider Mill on September 12th and 13th.

The final stop of the day was dinner at Jolly Pumpkin Brewery on the Mission Peninsula. The food here was very good. We had a buffalo sloppy joe (which wasn't very sloppy) and a pizza special with peppers and sausages. Both were great and I wished we had stopped here more frequently to eat and before all our energy had been spent on our grand tour. They also offered a sampling of a variety of beers (9 to be exact) from their brewery and North Peak. We also purchased a bottle of Maracaibo Especial and Oro de Calabazo to take home to Chicago with us.

Annual Northern Michigan Wine Trail Trip - Day 1

We just returned from our annual summer pilgrimage from Chicago to the beautiful Old Mission and Leelanau Peninsula wine trails. I was really excited for our trip this year, as it seems the rest of the world is starting to see what native Michiganders have always known - Michigan is heaven, for aesthetes and now for foodies, too!

I did my research before this trip and found that The Huffington Post ran a piece earlier in the summer entitled, "Traverse City, Michigan is a New Foodie Haven." I also found a printable self-guided foodie tour on the Traverse City area before our departure. Find both pieces below!

www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/30/traverse-city-michigan-is_n_223059.html

http://www.visittraversecity.com/self-guided-foodie-tour-254/

We always stay at the Inn at Chateau Grand Traverse. It is convenient and an excellent value. The inn provides a bottle of wine of your choice from their vineyard every evening. We like the 2006 Gamay Noir Reserve and opted for this each evening. The downside is that there is no food service on the premises, like there is at some of the other vineyard bed & breakfasts - Chateau Chantal and Blackstar Farms. They do, however, provide a fully stocked kitchen for self-service breakfast and beautiful views of the vineyard and the West Bay.

We started off the first day of our trip with a stop at Peninsula Cellars on Old Mission Peninsula. This particular vineyard has always been a favorite of mine, but there was nothing particularly impressive about the wine list for me this year. They did have a great value on 2006 Pinot Noir and Chardonnay sale (2 for $20), so we bought one of each.

Our next stop was our absolute favorite Michigan vineyard- Brys Estate. They offer the most knowledgable staff and the best wine. This was an exciting stop, as we learned that they were offering a 2007 Artisan Series of wines for sale and tasting. The artisan wines are unique in that they are unfiltered in the modern sense - using only gravity to filter out sediment. They were truly amazing wines (Chardonnay, Cab Franc, Merlot and Pinto Noir) and the guy who helped us with our tasting was kind enough to let us taste all of the regular non-artisan comparable varietals in tandem. Though all of Brys Estate wines are great, the comparison really made these artisan wines stand out. We picked up a bottle of regular 2007 Cab Franc and an 2007 Artisan Merlot. I would have purchased every single one of the Artisan wines, if I had a budget for them all. They were so exceptional, I can honestly say I have never tasted anything like them.

We stopped for lunch at the Peninsula Grill. We had a crab cake sandwich (very good) and a lobster slider (very ehh), along with a Shorts Brewery (Bellaire, MI) and a Right Brain Brewery (Traverse City) draft. Had I only known that Jolly Pumpkin Brewery now has an outpost of their original Dexter, MI location right on the Peninsula, we would have been there for lunch in a heartbeat, but that was info to be enjoyed for another day.

We made a stop at Bowers Harbor Vineyard, which seems consistently good year-after-year, and Chateau Chantal, which is at least consistently picturesque, before dinner at The Bowers Harbor Inn. We also stopped in to see the beautiful, modern tasting room at 2Lads Winery. They only had 3 wines this year (they had just sold out of the rose), but they are a very new vineyard and the views from the tasting room more than make up for the short wine list.

We eat at The Bowers Harbor Inn each year. I have been eating there since I was a kid and came up to visit with my family, so it is just a classic choice. I heard that when the Inn came under new ownership in 2006, the owners tried to amp up the menu. This may be the case, but since we always opt for the ever popular Whitefish Dip appetizer and Fish-in-a-bag entree that have been on the menu forever, it is hard to tell.

This year, we had a lambchop entree recommended by the waiter, in addition to our two standbys, and that was very good. In fact, it was probably better than the fish-in-a-bag this time. One day I will write to Bon Appetit and ask them to print the secret to that Whitefish Dip, since it is just the perfect appetizer....and then I will share it with everyone I know (keep your ears covered Bowers Harbor Proprietors).

In fact, the most interesting part of dinner that first evening was when we found out that the old casual restaurant affiliated with The Bowers Harbor Inn that had been called the Bowery has been changed to a Jolly Pumpkin Brewery outpost!