Latest news with #Chicagoan
Eater
4 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Eater
Burrito Beach Marks 30 Years With Limited Edition Burritos From a Power-Packed Chef Lineup
is the James Beard Award-winning regional editor for Eater's Midwest region, and in charge of coverage in Chicago, Detroit, and the Twin Cities. He's a native Chicagoan and has been with Eater since 2014. Homegrown restaurant chains don't often last three decades in Chicago, but that's the milestone Burrito Beach will celebrate this summer. The quick-service chain — with seven locations in places like Lincoln Park and inside Northwestern Memorial Hospital's food court — has endured, giving Chicagoans options that cover a variety of dietary needs. Over those 30 years, Burrito Beach CEO and founder Greg Schulson has seen Chicago's understanding of Mexican food grow as he witnessed the rise of local chefs who proved to Midwesterners that there was more to Mexican food than just burritos and tacos. Burrito Beach's first location opened in 1995 at Lake and Dearborn, and it started as an assembly-line wrap concept. Though Chicago has a large Mexican community, chains often defined what Mexican food was to many outsiders. Chicago knows names like Pepe's and Chi-Chi's, but more casual options, like Taco Bell and Chipotle, which was founded in 1993, cast long shadows. Burrito Beach debuted with an emphasis on wraps, tiptoeing around using the word 'burrito,' a word with very specific connotation to locals in the '90s. Late-night lines routinely formed after the bars closed at places like Taco Burrito Palace No. 2, and recent college grads expected gut bombs with 'burritos as big as your head' from dives like La Bamba. 'I came up with this idea of, sort of this gourmet burrito concept that kind of took, like the spices and the flavors of Mexico and sort of the creativity of California, and we put them together,' Schulson says. 'And that was effectively what a wrap was back then.' As Americans began folding Mexican cuisine into everyday life rather than treating burritos and tacos as specialty items, Schulson says Burrito Beach ditched the wraps and embraced being a 'Mexican grill,' which served affordable food with better ingredients: 'We really do cooking at our restaurants,' Schulson says. '...I don't think a lot of our competitors necessarily do.' Affordability is especially important now, even as Trump's tariffs threaten to increase prices: 'No one wants to pay $17 for a burrito,' Schulson adds. This 2002 photo featured an all-star lineup of chefs who collaborated with Burrito Beach. Burrito Beach would also collaborate in 2002 with local chefs on limited-edition items. Chefs like Publican chef Paul Kahan and Spring chef Shawn McLain crafted their own burritos. To mark the 30th anniversary, Kahan is again teaming up with Burrito Beach, along with Thattu chef Margaret Pak and Parachute chef Beverly Kim (see below). Proceeds will benefit a charity of the chefs' choice, and the promotions go from August through January. Burrito Beach's recipes come from David Schy, a former corporate chef with Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises who worked under legendary chef Jean Banchet as a cook at Le Francais in suburban Wheeling. He's come up with ideas like a current special, a fried fish taco inspired by a Chicago dog. Somedays they'll offer barbecue beef or Buffalo chicken. Schulson, a native of suburban Glencoe, is a past chairman of the Illinois Restaurant Association. He's aware of dining trends and news. He indirectly mentions a 2017 story out of Portland, Oregon, when a pair of white women closed their burrito shop after they bragged about stealing recipes from Mexican women. The story drew cries of cultural appropriation, and that's something Schulson is sensitive toward. 'We're not pretending to be something we're not,' Schulson says, noting items like a Buffalo chicken bowl are far from traditional. 'I grew up loving Mexican food… I could eat this food every day. I'm not Mexican, but it doesn't mean I don't love the food, it doesn't mean I don't care about doing it right.' Chef Paul Kahan's spicy steak burrito with marinated sirloin steak, Guajillo chile sauce, white rice, black beans, pico de gallo, pickled red onions, and whole cilantro. Burrito Beach/Kristen Mendiola Media Thattu chef Margaret Pak's burrito with masala Kashmiri chile char-grilled chicken, tamarind-date chutney, garlic confit raita, white rice, cilantro slaw, and pickled red onions. Chef Beverly Kim's bibimbap steak burrito with thin-sliced bulgogi, kimchi fried rice, chipotle-gochujang, marinated cabbage, and pickled red onions. Burrito Beach/Kristen Mendiola Media Burrito Beach 30th Anniversary Celebrity Chef Burritos Starting in August, Burrito Beach will celebrate 30 years with special limited-time-only burritos from Paul Kahan, Margaret Pak, and Beverly Kim. For Kahan, the One Off Hospitality co-founder, it represents a return as he was a part of a collaboration back in 1993. Pak, chef and owner at Thattu in Avondale, will follow. Pak's connection comes through her love of Ketch On Fire, a spicy ketchup brand in which Greg Schulson and chef David Schy are partners. Pak's first food job was with the brand, and it grew out of passion; she caught the company's attention after maintaining an unauthorized fan page. Parachute HiFi's Beverly Kim rounds out the chef lineup. Kim lacks a direct connection to the brand, but Schulson and company have long been fans of Kim's Michelin-starred Korean American food. See details of the three burritos below. Proceeds will benefit a charity of the chef's choice Paul Kahan's spicy steak burrito, available from Monday, August 4, through the end of September. Margaret Pak's masala chicken burrito, available from October through November. Beverly Kim's bibimbap steak burrito, available from December through January.
Chicago Tribune
15 hours ago
- Business
- Chicago Tribune
Editorial: Gov. Pritzker needs to veto this pension bill. Chicago can't afford it.
Memo to Springfield: Chicago is broke. Gov. JB Pritzker has a bill on his desk that would sweeten pension benefits for Chicago's police and firefighters hired in 2011 or later, to the tune of $60 million more out of the city budget in 2027 alone and more than $11 billion over the next three decades, according to the city's own projections. The measure passed unanimously in both chambers at the end of the spring session, allowing for next to no debate and, astoundingly, was supported by every Chicago House member and senator. At the time of the bill's passage, we wrote that the entire Chicago delegation had effectively had voted to increase property taxes on their constituents. Property taxes, of course, are the main means municipalities have of financing their pension obligations to their workers. Interestingly, the governor acknowledged the conundrum last week. Asked about the bill, he said, 'One thing to consider, of course, is the finances of the city of Chicago. How will they pay for it?' The other important consideration, he said, was ensuring Chicago's first responders are 'well taken care of.' We're glad to see Pritzker explicitly state why he's mulling whether to veto despite the strange prospect of rejecting legislation that passed without a single dissenting vote. By asking rhetorically if Chicago can 'pay for it,' the governor has answered his own question. Of course Chicago can't pay for it. The police and fire pension funds have a mere 25% of the assets needed to meet their current and future obligations as it stands. Since we wrote about this measure in June, the city has estimated what it would do for its woefully underfunded first-responder funds. That percentage would drop to an almost unfathomably low 18%. To those who say it's nonsensical to veto a bill with such overwhelming support, remember that GOP lawmakers mainly went along because of the Chicago delegation's unanimous backing and the fact that only Chicagoans' taxes would be affected. All the Chicago Democrats who voted yes could justify reversing their positions by saying (truthfully) they didn't have the city's projections on just how much these changes would cost taxpayers. Chicago taxpayers already are chewing their nails wondering how the city will plug a 2026 budget deficit exceeding $1 billion. The following year looks even worse. Pritzker already tossed an $80 million hot potato in Chicago's lap with his 2023 initiative to phase out the state's 1% tax on groceries, the proceeds of which had been distributed to municipalities. More than 200 municipalities have approved their own 1% grocery taxes, as the state allows them to do. Mayor Brandon Johnson wants the City Council to do the same for Chicago, which must happen by a state-set deadline of Oct. 1. There are no guarantees, given Johnson's fraught relationship with the council and Chicagoan's understandable resistance to tax hikes of any sort, that aldermen will do as he wishes. Meanwhile, this pension time bomb would cost the city nearly as much as repeal of the grocery tax and in the future will cost far more. Speaking of the mayor, while he has spoken tepidly against this bill, he ought to be forcefully urging Pritzker to veto it and Chicago lawmakers to vote to sustain that veto, despite their earlier support of the measure. The city essentially has been missing in action on this issue, and Johnson apparently is struggling to balance his political brand as an ardent union backer with his duty to Chicago taxpayers. This is no time for such timidity. At this stage, it's worth laying out the origins of this bill. In 2010, in a bid to reform Illinois' public-sector pensions, the state created a second tier of beneficiaries hired in 2011 and thereafter — so-called Tier 2 workers — whose retirement payouts were to be substantially less than the overly generous benefits of existing employees and retirees that had gotten Illinois so deeply in pension debt. Six years ago, Pritzker signed into law sweetened pension benefits for Tier 2 cops and firefighters in Illinois outside of Chicago as part of a consolidation of downstate police and fire pension funds. Ever since, Chicago police and fire unions have argued their Tier 2 workers ought to get the same treatment. In addition, proponents cite concerns that the benefits for Tier 2 workers don't rise to the level of Social Security benefits, which would violate federal law. This page has been consistent on the issue of Tier 2 pension benefits and Social Security. State policymakers should do no more than ensure they are compliant with the law and rebuff union efforts to use the Social Security argument in effect to do away with Tier 2 and pension reform altogether. As much as we appreciate and rely on Chicago's first responders, everyone who went to work for the Police or Fire departments after 2010 knew — or should have known — what their retirement benefits were. In a perfect world, their pensions would be equivalent to those earned by their counterparts outside the city. We don't live in that world. Far from it. Mayor Johnson, you should advocate for your city's beleaguered taxpayers and call on Gov. Pritzker and Chicago's Springfield delegation to do the right thing. And, Governor, adding to Chicago's fiscal crisis hurts the whole state. Whether the mayor asks or not, veto the bill.
Eater
a day ago
- Business
- Eater
A Taco Bar With Michelin-Starred Muscle Heads to Grosse Pointe Woods
is the James Beard Award-winning regional editor for Eater's Midwest region, and in charge of coverage in Chicago, Detroit, and the Twin Cities. He's a native Chicagoan and has been with Eater since 2014. The team behind Lola's Taco Bar knows they're not reinventing the wheel. A fast-casual restaurant serving tacos and cocktails isn't new to metro Detroit. However, the four folks behind the new Grosse Pointe Woods restaurant, slated to open in September, have worked at big-time restaurants in Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia, accruing more than 100 years of experience, including time spent at Michelin-starred restaurants like Alinea in Chicago and Rebelle in New York. With all that talent, it shouldn't be surprising that they're serving a taco with rotisserie chicken. Branden McRill says his crew discovered a proprietary rotisserie system left in the kitchen by the previous tenant, Boston Market. It was chef Brandon Zarb's idea to offer up the special, along with warm tortillas, pickled veggies, and guacamole as a family combo. It's this type of thinking that will make Lola's stand apart from other taco spots in metro Detroit, McRill says. While the restaurant is primarily counter service, customers will get check-ins from staff, leaving open the option to add drinks or more food to a ticket while seated without engaging a QR code. 'We're going to use fresh-squeezed lime juice and good tequila,' McRill adds. 'We'll also make an affordable margarita.' Accessibility is a key ingredient for McRill. The plan is to open multiple locations serving al pastor tacos shaved from a trompo. Lola's will offer vegan and vegetarian options, and build-your-own bowls and burritos. They're still debating on what tortillas to use; McRill says they're leaning toward flour. Each of the four main team members brings a unique skillset, says McRill, a native of Grosse Point who has cooked around the country. He met his life partner, Mel Fuechtmann in 2012 while working at Pearl and Ash in New York City. Fuechtmann was also general manager at Rebelle. McRill and Zarb met while in Chicago, where they both worked with Paul Kahan's One Off Hospitality Group. Though they weren't colleagues, they knew each other. They became reacquainted through social media, with McRill scrolling his Instagram feed and looking at Zarb's food pictures. Zarb helped launch Chicago's influential Big Star taco bar, and was also a chef at Working Class Outlaws restaurants Public House, which closed earlier this year, and Imperial (the latter of which is also a cocktail and taco bar). Like Big Star, they'll offer a patio with room for 24. McRill says there'll be room for 50 inside. Design firm AvroKO is working on the project, collaborating with Tury Design. Finally, Niko Moschouris brings experience in scaling restaurants, opening several Subway locations. He's also a member of the board of directors at the Detroit Wing Co. and Beyond Juicery + Eatery. McRill hopes Lola's can debut after Labor Day. Check back later for more info. Lola's Taco Bar, 20195 Mack Avenue in Grosse Point, planned for an early September opening.
Eater
a day ago
- Business
- Eater
Chicago's First Dedicated Dosa Stall Is Closing
is the James Beard Award-winning regional editor for Eater's Midwest region, and in charge of coverage in Chicago, Detroit, and the Twin Cities. He's a native Chicagoan and has been with Eater since 2014. Chicago's first dedicated dosa stall, Art of Dosa, is closing after six years in the Loop. The vegan restaurant, which debuted six years ago in the former Revival Food Hall (now known as Sterling Food Hall), provided Downtown Chicago with a reliable quick-serve vegan option, which was especially valuable for office workers. The stall's last day is Friday, August 1, as Art of Dosa's Ravi Nagubadi and Sterling Food Hall's operators, STHRN Hospitality, weren't able to reach a lease extension. Nagubadi says he feels a mix of regret and frustration as this chapter closes. 'I feel we brought dosas up a new level,' Nagubadi says. For years, dosa has been available at Indian restaurants along Devon Avenue and other spots, but Nagubadi was the first to zero in on the item made of fermented batter that's naturally gluten-free. 'We did something special — we started this fast-casual dosa concept that nobody's really been able to get down,' he says. 'And it worked. It's just too bad that the pandemic happened and changed the trajectory of things.' COVID arrived in March 2020, four months after the opening, and sapped Nagubadi and company of the years of momentum he had built while being a regular on the festival circuit with appearances at events like Veggie Fest and Riot Fest. It was a tight operation, one that included his mother, Aruna. Pandemic policies crushed downtown traffic with the rise of work from home. Confusion erupted last year as rumors of the food hall's closure spread, but the result was a new management company arriving with a name change. Nagubadi says year-to-year sales were down 40 percent during a choppy transition. Nagubadi, an engineer by trade, invested about $400,000 into the stall to make it stand out among the food hall's options and to ensure consistency. But as food hall traffic snarled, he says he didn't get a chance to recoup those expenses. He says he carved out a good deal with Sterling's operators, STHRN Hospitality, one with a low commission. But it wasn't enough. Dosa, much to Nagubadi's chagrin, is often compared to a crepe. It comes in various forms — crispy or slightly chewy with stuffed with various ingredients. The most popular option is spiced (masala) potatoes. Nagubadi introduced creative vegan offerings, including a slightly spicy Buffalo wing-flavored soy protein; he grew up in Buffalo, New York. If folks wanted real heat, they could opt for a variety of gunpowder spices on the side. Dosa is a staple of South Indian cuisine, and Art of Dosa has been part of Chicago's education, leading to the current boom of restaurants, including spots like Trilokah in Lincoln Park, Mintza on Devon, and Thattu in Avondale. A rep from STHRN tells Eater that the Art of Dosa declined to extend its lease. In an email, STHRN also announced a pair of additions. Saffron Street, an Indian restaurant with a stall at From Here On, the food hall managed by Revival's old operators — 16' on Center — is on its way. Though it's not pure vegetarian like Art of Dosa, it could satisfy an itch for South Asian cuisine. The other news shouldn't be a huge surprise. The owners of Danke, an original tenant of Revival Food Hall, are opening a pizzeria. Matt Sussman, who runs a pair of Logan Square restaurants — Table, Donkey and Stick; and Bar Parisette — is a huge fan of pizza. In 2020, while pandemic policies shut down dining rooms, Table, Donkey and Stick began running takeout operations and selling a delicious Detroit-style pizza. A trio of pizza concepts has come and gone inside the food hall. It opened with Union Squared, a Chicago spinoff of the popular suburban Evanston spot. Steve Dolinsky, the former Hungry Hound and Food Guy, attempted to bring attention to his Pizza City USA venture with a slate of rotating vendors. Most recently, Dimo's Pizza set up shop. Last year, Revival Food Hall's founders, 16' on Center, departed the building as STHRN was brought on, and the venue was renamed. Sterling Food Hall has endured a precarious time for restaurants. In a downer, they were unable to bring over Umamicue, a Vietnamese-inspired smoked meats operation. Art of Dosa brought members of the South Asian and vegan communities together, and members of both parties have been vocal with their support. While the food hall bubble appears ruptured, Nagubadi isn't ruling out a comeback. But he needs a recharge: 'There will be a new chapter,' Nagubadi says. 'We just don't know when.' Art of Dosa at Sterling Food Hall, 125 S. Clark Street, closing on Friday, August 1
Chicago Tribune
5 days ago
- Business
- Chicago Tribune
Editorial: With a month to go before CPS must approve a budget, leaders' lack of seriousness is on display
When can a budget crisis not fairly be called a crisis? Perhaps when the crisis is something that's been obviously coming for months, if not years, and demanded action long ago. Members of the Chicago Board of Education appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson, as well as the interim Chicago Public Schools CEO hired out of Johnson's administration, are calling for Gov. JB Pritzker to order a special session of the legislature to bail out a district facing what it says is a $734 million budget hole for the coming school year. The requests for the special session came this week, a little over a month before the Aug. 28 deadline for the school board to finalize its budget. Needless to say, there won't be a special session. Pritzker and the Democratic leaders of both the House and Senate have made it clear repeatedly that the state itself is tapped out and can't furnish hundreds of millions to bail out CPS. That school board President Sean Harden, who serves as the mayor's chief CPS mouthpiece, would seek a special session at this late stage is revealing of how unserious Johnson and his allies are about properly managing a system that by any measure is tremendously bloated. The time for legislative sessions, special or otherwise, was months and months ago. The mayor, in fact, didn't include a CPS bailout among his requests for help from Springfield in the past spring session — precisely because he knew it would go nowhere and might jeopardize his other asks. So, as Johnson has demanded in vain for over a year, Harden and other mayoral allies on the board once again are talking about taking on hundreds of millions more in high-priced debt just to get through the next school year without having to make meaningful budget cuts. And, unlike in the spring, when a minority of school board members took advantage of a supermajority requirement for budget amendments and rejected Harden's request for authority to go deeper into debt, this time around Harden needs only a simple majority to add more liabilities to the balance sheet of the nation's largest municipal junk-bond issuer. Meeting that threshold likely won't be a problem. Eleven of 21 board members are Johnson appointees. Of the 10 elected in November, seven consistently have resisted Johnson and Harden's reckless financial maneuvers to date. But that's not enough opposition to stop CPS from lurching substantially further toward insolvency if Harden and interim school Superintendent Macquline King choose that route. For CPS, there's a short-term issue and there's a long-term issue. Both should concern every Chicagoan. Over the longer haul, the district will have to consolidate a large number of schools and rationalize its workforce. As it stands, CPS is sized for a student population far larger than the 325,000 actually attending Chicago's public schools today. We will have more to say on that larger matter later. The short-term problem — next year's shortfall — can be addressed in part by forcing the city of Chicago to pay the $175 million Mayor Johnson has insisted CPS should shoulder for the Municipal Employees' Annuity and Benefit Fund, a pension fund serving nonteaching employees of CPS, as well as some workers for the city and other agencies. By state law, that pension plan is the city's obligation, but Johnson and his predecessor, Lori Lightfoot, strived to get CPS to take on some of the plan's funding responsibility. CPS did so in years when it was flush with federal pandemic cash, but refused to do so last year so that it could pay for teacher raises negotiated as part of a new four-year collective bargaining agreement. Given the district's financial strains, there's no good reason to float junk-rated debt to cover that cost now, especially when not obligated by law. So without the $175 million pension payment, the true deficit should be more like $559 million. That's not a small amount to cut, even in a budget well exceeding $9 billion. But, still. This predicament could be seen a mile away, and Johnson — backed by his former employer and erstwhile ally, the Chicago Teachers Union — has insisted since taking office on generous yearly raises for teachers who already are among the nation's highest-paid while also opposing the consolidation of any schools and associated job reductions. About a third of CPS schools are at less than half of student capacity, and many are at a third or lower. The CTU/Johnson strategy from the beginning has been to do next to nothing about a foreseeably dire budget situation — in fact, make it significantly worse — and wait until the crisis got so acute that the state or some other benefactor would swoop in to the rescue. That's fiscal and managerial malfeasance. Why should it be rewarded? Oh, yes. The children. Perhaps the most pernicious facet of this game-of-chicken strategizing is that hundreds of thousands of Chicago students rely on CPS, and the city's future depends in no small part on giving those kids a good education. By now, a majority of Chicagoans have caught on to CTU's true purpose, which is to bolster its membership ranks no matter how low CPS' student population drops. That doesn't stop union leaders, of course, from attempting to paint those who reject the never-ending requests for hundreds of millions or even billions in tax increases as cold-hearted opponents of educating Chicago's kids. But the rhetoric increasingly doesn't land, especially given how CTU's very own former organizer sits on the fifth floor. We feel terrible for the families who will bear the brunt of the likely cutbacks to come. But this challenging upcoming school year unfortunately is the price we will have to pay for epic mismanagement. Once they see no knight in shining armor coming to the rescue, these unserious people tasked with running our schools finally must take some accountability and begin the process of making difficult decisions about the future of CPS within the means available to support it.
