Mining The Media: Best Of The Past Week’s Food Sections

This is an unusual turn of events, but in addition to Tribune and TOC, we’re going to catch up with the Sun-Times from Monday and the Reader from last Friday. No one ever said summer would be easy. Actually, people say that a lot, but they’re all self-delusional. Anyhoo, here’s the best article from each section, according to our carefully shrouded metrics (these are, by the way, in no particular order):

Kevin Pang, Tribune, Would you like nostalgia with that?

No we would not, thank you very much. The article is about people yearning for fast food items from their past, including children who request that relatives go on multiple-hour journeys to secure some mediocre mass-produced sandwich from a branch they’ve never been to of a chain that doesn’t care a whit about its individual customers. Actual good food cannot be replicated on such a scale, leading us to the logical conclusion that the nation is addicted to proprietary food additives. If you’re going to be “nostalgic” for your drug habit, at least be honest about it.

That said, we have personally driven to the Chick-fil-A in Racine that’s referenced in this article in order to try one of their chicken sandwiches, and once drove over 350 miles round trip to go to a Machine Shed in Davenport. Neither restaurant was particularly good, but that was scarcely the point of our adventuring.

Lisa Donovan, Sun-Times, Mulberries are fine for eating, but wash first!

So mulberries are in season, and where do you get them? Not Dominick’s, not your local farmer’s market, but instead, from trees around the city! Yes, they grow on trees in our various parks, and yes, they’re edible, but for the love of the FDA, please wash them before you eat them! They’re covered in soot and pesticides, at the very least, and will not be ready for your creme fraiche until they’re been run under the tap for a minute.

Nicholas Day, Reader, Chicago Ale House

We like this review of Chicago Ale House the best of the three Reader reviews that came out last Friday not only because it’s the only one for which we currently have a menu, but also because it’s the most unabashed excoriation of the restaurant in question. And it is especially easy and enjoyable to excoriate a middling bar with middling bar food. We appreciate the construction, “disappointingly bland, a waste of a deep fryer,” used to demolish some subpar chicken strips. Oh well; no one who will go to this place reads the internet anyway.

Rod O’Connor, TOC, Dog days of summer

TOC probably has the best section overall these week, since there were several articles other than this one that we would have liked to talk about, but that would defy the convention we set up at the beginning, and the one thing we do well is stick to our guns. The article is about Chicago hot dogs; specifically, and audaciously, about which one is the best between half a dozen notable options. Hint: the winner is Superdawg Drive-In, which doesn’t even serve Vienna beef. For shame!

Would you like nostalgia with that? [Tribune]

Machine Shed [Official Site]

Mulberries are fine for eating, but wash first! [Sun-Times]

The Master’s Mole, a Taste of the Andes, and the Old Something for Everyone Problem [Reader]

Chicago Ale House [MenuPages]

Dog days of summer [TOC]

Superdawg Drive-In [MenuPages]
Superdawg Drive-In [Official Site]

[Photo: Mulberries hiding from the sun, Vol-au-Vent/flickr]

Tags:

Mining The Media: Best Of The Past Week’s Food Sections