Couple of quick items: is there a statute of limitations on restaurant names? Depends on how well remembered one is, we guess. Curtis Duffy tells Kevin Pang at the Trib that the name for his new West Loop spot will be Grace— as in the quality he’s aiming for in his dishes: “You look at the definition of ‘grace,’ and it represented the food I was doing at the time… It’s about this pursuit of gracefulness, elegance, simplicity.” Pang doesn’t mention, but several people quickly did on Twitter, that Grace was another restaurant in Chicago not that long ago (though it seems a long time ago, the way our scene changes)— a pioneer on the same West Randolph corridor that Duffy is now joining. Ted Cizma opened a restaurant named for his daughter Grace in 1999; amusingly, he named it for her and not his other daughter, because… that name was taken; there already was an Elaine’s in town. (She eventually got a namesake spot in Naperville.) Cizma was named a Food & Wine Best New Chef in 2000; his Grace closed sometime in the early 2000s.
• Your first chance at the next Baconfest comes today at noon, when VIP tickets go on sale. What do VIP tickets get you? An hour to wander the bacon-themed excitement at the UIC Forum free of the hoi polloi, that is, before the doors open to regular ticketholders. There are only 75 150 VIP tickets for each April 4th session— lunch (11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.) or dinner (5:30 to 9 p.m.), so go here at noon sharp and be ready to click fast.
