Chicago has a vibrant food scene with new restaurants and concepts constantly popping up. But how do you continue to stay relevant when your restaurant has been around for nearly a decade? Case in point: the Fifty/50. The sports bar was one of the first of its kind on Wicker Park?s Division St. and has…
When we last visited Kizuki Ramen at the end of winter, it was their first night of service. Though Kizuki Ramen & Izakaya is a chain spanning from Japan to the Pacific Northwest, they were breaking in a new staff, trying to get the whole menu together, and concerned about opening their first Midwestern location.…
Emporium Arcade Bar fuses retro with modern in a harmoniously entertaining way. Some of you may have been born slightly too late to remember the days when arcades were a place that you wanted to go almost as badly as you wanted to go to Disney World (those commercials filling the tube television were very…
Division Street in Wicker Park is rich in bar food, but if you just want a quick bite on your way home from work your options are pretty limited and pretty greasy. Thankfully, there?s MAK: Modern Asian Kitchen. MAK is a fast casual, counter-service restaurant specializing in healthy Asian fusion made with locally-sourced vegetables and…
A few years ago, most Chicagoans probably thought of ramen as the cheap microwave noodles they ate in college, but now the city is obsessed with the Japanese noodle-soup dish. The latest contender for best ramen bowl in the city is Kizuki Ramen & Izakaya in Wicker Park. What separates Kizuki Ramen & Izakaya from…
5411 Empanadas is one of the fastest growing restaurant groups in the city. Named after the international dialing code for Buenos Aires, the group first opened in 2009 with a quality product and making deliveries to local Chicago businesses. That led to an incredibly successful food truck and their first physical location, which opened in…
Chicago is a lot more than hot dogs and deep dish pizza, proof of which is the city?s growing love for Southern cooking and barbecue. Evidence of this is Carriage House, which serves modern low country Southern food to Wicker Park at 1700 W. Division Street. We were invited out to Carriage House on a…
During a recent trip to New York City, I walked by multiple meatball-focused restaurants and now Mondo Meatball has come to Chicago?s Wicker Park. Are we in the midst of a meatball revolution? These are not just your classic Italian meatballs, either. Mondo Meatball gives you a crazy amount of choices in a casual atmosphere.…
Since opening in 2009, Bucktown / Wicker Park?s Birchwood Kitchen has become a very popular neighborhood brunch staple thanks to their use of fresh, local ingredients and comforting take on American cuisine. Towards the end of the last year, Birchwood made the transition from counter to table service and expanded their dinner hours giving them…
