Check out this slideshow at the New York Times’ site about the home of the film director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day). It is every bit as jawdroppingly stupid as his last few movies (10,000 B.C., The Day After Tomorrow, Godzilla), though in a much more pretentious, Sprockets-y way. Really, you will have to see it to believe it.

Bull-Eh-Dias! is a Spanish tapas restaurant named, apparently, for a mispelling or mispronunciation of “bulerias,” which D. Hammond says is a flamenco rhythm. All I know is, it doesn’t have the most awkward and inappropriate name on Southport, because that prize has already been sewn up by La Poupée, which may mean “The Doll” in French, but which reduced my sons to hysterics (“They called their restaurant The Poopy!”)

You can tell Bull-Eh-Dias is a tapas restaurant because, like Cafe Ba-Ba-Reeba! and Azucar! it ends in an exclamation point. Helen at Menu Pages had sage words on this topic the other day:

we also would like to say, as an aside, that we deeply deeply love the Broadway musical punctuation in [Cafe Ba-Ba-Reeba!’s] name, and the inferred obliviousness on the part of whoever came up with it to the fact that it is the dumbest thing ever

More interesting to me was the fact that it turns out to occupy the space that was one of my early Chicago foodie revelations. As Tony Soprano said, “Remember when is the lowest form of conversation,” but I’ll just indulge in it long enough to note that when I moved here in ’88 and saw a promotion at The Music Box for a long-forgotten restaurant down the street called Chezz Chazz, I felt like I had done something so big city cool, finding an edgy neighborhood place not in the guidebooks and trying it myself. A couple of years later the same space was Tamales, run by John Terczak (whose brother Dennis had the much-acclaimed Sole Mio on Armitage), and I had pumpkin tamales there, the very concept of which expanded my Mexican food mind substantially.

Now it’s 15 or even 20 years later and Southport isn’t the frontier, it’s a Trixie and Chad neighborhood. This doesn’t promise much for the Tapas joint with the goofy name. But if no great revelation, Spanish food-wise, Bull-Eh-Dias! managed to pull off a bunch of by now fairly standard items with reasonable success for a reasonable price. Patatas bravas came with a weak tomato sauce, but a bright and searingly garlicky mayo. Grilled chorizo tasted like the real thing that we ate at Maceiras in Madrid, and was satisfying. A tortilla was poor, mainly because it was freshly cooked— so it tasted like an omelet (clearly the sitting out on the bar under plastic wrap is an essential part of its comfy deliciousness); but grilled calamari, tossed with some sauteed onion, was quite nice. Bacon-wrapped, goat cheese stuffed dates were delectable if not quite as good as ones I’ve had elsewhere (including the surprisingly decent Twist Tapas, even further inside the Trixie Nexus).

There’s one exceptional Spanish restaurant in town now, Mercat a la Planxa, and everything else exists on a plane well below it, but that’s not to say that at its modest pricepoint and with its easygoing vibe, a place like Bull-Eh-Dias isn’t perfectly capable of giving you a satisfying meal which will, from time to time, vaguely remind you of meals actually eaten in Spain.

Bull-Eh-Dias Tapas Bar
3651 N. Southport, Chicago
(773) 404-2855

Retroactively declared #1 in my 50 new restaurants challenge.

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P.S. As this thread on LTHForum approached the point of going to its second page having said nothing about woodburning barbecue but a vast amount about whether “Chicago” commonly includes or excludes the suburbs (and how incensed suburbanites should get about this kind of city snob slur), I posted the image below:

With Chowhound-like alacrity, my bon snarque was quickly pulled. Look forward to many more, fascinating revelations on this topic. Meanwhile, if there’s anyone who actually wants to try a new, good woodsmoked barbecue place conveniently located to the north side of Chicago, I suggest this one. So far, it has gone unnoticed on LTHForum, which is, simply, a damned shame.

P.S. Different animal, same sentiment.

One of the more popular things a few years back at Green City Market were the hamburgers made from farmer-vendor meat and grilled by cooks from Campagnola/Bistro Campagne. Eventually, though, Campagnola chef Michael Altenberg shut down the burger operation in order to concentrate on the opening of Crust.

I learned today, though, that Sunday Dinner/Eat Green Foods (which I’ve never paid that much attention to and am not entirely sure what they offer) is cooking up burgers again. They’re a real Green City collaboration, too— Bennison’s makes the buns, Brunkow cheese is on top, the meat is Heartland’s terrific Piedmontese beef, and there are some greens on it which I assume did not come from Costco. Being a GCM special, it’s expensive— $9 for the cheeseburger, $8 for the hamburger, both of them kind of on the small side (if fat)— but it is, in the immortal words of Samuel Jackson, a real tasty burger! Certainly more satisfying to me than the not-all-that-exciting Epic burger. And you can’t argue with how directly your princely sum is being shared among the real producers without any middlemen, at least.

There’s a report on LTHForum this morning that stores in the same block as Sun Wah BBQ, subject of my current podcast, have burned.  Sun Wah seems to be fine, however.

One of the things that really struck me after getting involved with LTHForum is how common restaurant fires are.  Khan BBQ, Sabri Nehari, Chuck’s, Hot Doug’s, City Noor, Sabatino’s— all popular places which closed at some point due to a fire.  Fortunately all but City Noor bounced back sooner or later, usually expanding, but it’s an unavoidable fact that the restaurants we love are ephemeral.  Go to one today; it might not be there tomorrow!

In other news, the TribStew is the next media outlet to check out my find, P&P BBQ Soul Food. They liked it!

Mil-Walk-A-Thon, April 2004.

I don’t pay much attention to eGullet, nothing against it but I never had the urge to lavish even more of my time on a different food chat board when I was already spending vast amounts of time helping run one, LTHForum. It would have been sort of like learning both WordPerfect and WordStar, back in the day. So I was fairly floored today to run across this mention of an event being planned at eGullet. One LTHForum moderator was plugging it, another was in fact the planner— of a weekend-long orgy of dining to which literally dozens of people were coming from out of town to dine and drink at multiple restaurants.

I don’t fault Ronnie Suburban for planning something with his old eGullet buds, far from it. And indeed I assume the original announcement was made long before he took on any official duties at LTHForum. Nevertheless it drives home a thought that has been floating half-formed in my head for a while, which is that the social aspect which was the primary cause of LTHForum’s existence seems to have just about died out there. (Short history: Chicago Chowhound users tended to get together socially, unlike most other Chowhound boards; Chowhound management discouraged this because it might lead to broadening of laser focus; eventually harassed-feeling Chicago users started board of our own where getting together at places we were talking about was a feature, not a bug.)

Pulaski-thon, May 2004.

It’s great that this is going on for eGulleteers. But where are the LTHForum events to which comparable organizational effort is being devoted? (There is the annual picnic, which will recur around Labor Day.  But where are the new ones, the ones that don’t have inertia and Cathy2 behind them?) One of the big attractions for so long of LTHForum was the frequent array of events to which total strangers were invited to come and introduce themselves to the broader group. This could be anything from casual lunches to planned dinners to the epic “Thons” I’m commemorating with these photos, in which a dozen or two LTHers, group slowly morphing as the hours passed, would minutely examine some stretch of the city and wind up eating a little something at, literally, a dozen or more places in one day. It was a huge part of what built the community and kept it civil and made it stand out from the various other places (Yelp, say) where one could certainly express one’s opinion to likeminded folks online, but never expect to make friends or have lunch with them.

There are still some events on the board— even ones planned by LTHForum moderators; David Hammond is planning a Maxwell Street tour this weekend, highly recommended, for instance. And there’s a dinner here, a dinner there. But where are the lunches thrown together in a fit of enthusiasm to hurriedly check out this or that new discovery?  Is there really institutional support for the events people plan? Do the heavy hitters sign up and show up to set an example and encourage the shy to come out and join the fun? Not that I see.

The lavish, ambitiously planned and extremely well-attended eGullet event stands in striking contrast to an LTHForum which seems… too pooped to party? Perhaps. I’d love to see you prove me wrong, LTHForum. They were good times, just look at the pictures.

47th-a-Thon, April 2006

The two weeks and a day I spent on jury duty at the Daley Center are the longest stretch I’ve done of daily work in the Loop since March First (or as they spelled it in those wacky dotcom days, marchFIRST, or as we sometimes anagramatized it, crramhFIST) blew up in late 2000. One thing that quickly became apparent is, the Loop’s choices are a LOT better than they were in my daily work day. I mean, even if you’re stuck eating lame sandwiches, there’s no way that Cosi isn’t a big improvement on Wall Street Deli or Subway. And since I was trying to go vegetarian part of the time— figuring I’d end up grabbing fast food for the kids too often in the evening— I found the choices there surprisingly decent. So here are my notes on things I grabbed in my relatively few moments away from courtroom 2811, the Daley Center:

Cosi— I hit this three times the first week. After having their tomato-and-mozzarella sandwich on Monday,I was kind of craving it the next day, it’s so simple and tasty despite the fact that the mozzarella is nothing special and fairly flavorless. The second time, though, I forced myself to try the pizza. It’s simple, that’s for sure, but somehow I wasn’t that wild about its mere mix of crushed tomatoes and cheese on Cosi bread; it was fresh and basic without making the jump to interesting. I went back Thursday or Friday, I forget, and had the tomato-and-mozz sandwich again. That was a mistake, never eat the same thing twice in one week, that’s just being boring. Anyway, Cosi isn’t free of plasticness, to be sure, but it’s pretty good and real for a sandwich chain.

Sopraffina— This was a real food alternative back in the day, and the grilled veggie sandwich was more imaginative and restauranty than Cosi’s, but I don’t know that I’d travel that far for it now, as I once did. Or maybe didn’t, I think I mainly only ate there when it was straight downstairs at the Amoco/Aon building.

McDonald’s— got dragged to the one in the Theater District one day. How can things not be fresh at lunchtime in the Loop? Yet a QP was dried out and lukewarm. Lame.

Lavazza— I got coffee a couple of days at this Italian coffee chain, but the one time I tried something for breakfast, a raisin roll kind of thing, it was way over the hill and dried out.

California Pizza Kitchen ASAP— their basic vegetarian pizza is really unimaginative, same things you’d find on a veggie pizza at Chuck E. Cheese— green pepper, black olive, onion, oh boy. I was splitting it with someone else or I would have tried to get something better.

Oasis— Did I dare go home again to the middle eastern restaurant I had eaten at at least weekly all through my Leo years (1991-5) and much of the rest of that decade? Knowing that it had just reopened in its old place, I had to, even as I suspected my tastebuds for middle eastern food had grown far more sophisticated in the interim. Well, they had, and I’m not going to claim Oasis is great ME food, but it’s not bad, and for the Loop, it’s a nice slice of ethnic realness that gets you away from the chains— just as it was in the 90s.

Caffe Baci— Grabbed coffee here a couple of times, too, and one time I had a pain aux chocolate that was first-rate, it really was. However, this place also has the concession for lunches brought in to people who can’t go out (such as juries on deliberations), and the stuff that was made to the county’s spec was pretty lousy, and didn’t make me want to check out lunch there on my own dime.

Indian Buffet— I can’t remember if this place had an actual name; I think it’s just an Indian buffet being offered by the 7-11 downstairs. Anyway, as noted in the LTHForum thread, there’s an assortment of entirely decent Indian food which you can get either by paying $10.99 to load up your plate, or $6.99 a pound. I went the former way because I couldn’t decide if Indian food would tend to be heavier than average.

Hannah’s Bretzels— I tried this well-liked upscale sandwich place once a year or so ago and wasn’t that excited by what I had. This time, though, I ordered a Spanish ham and cheese sandwich— and it was terrific, honestly, good enough to be considered for my ten best list, what with the flavorful jamon serrano, a sweet-citrusy spread and thin slices of onion that tasted like they’d been soaked in something (red wine vinegar?) All in all, a remarkably good sandwich for lunchtime in the Loop.

So I was at Green City Market today (have the quiche from Floriole Bakery— see below) and I soon filled up my LTHForum canvas bag. And wished I had another. Especially with plastic bags becoming this year’s foie gras, soon to be outlawed (in the absence of any other more pressing problems here in Shootcago).

Yeah, I could have found a bag anywhere. Whole Foods, even Jewel has them. But having a little money left over at Cafe Press from the sales of LTHForum swag, I had a better idea… make my own.

I don’t plan to pimp a full line of merchandise but this, at least, makes a lot of sense and is something useful. So now you too can be one of the very few cool cats carrying a Sky Full of Bacon bag to the farmer’s market. They’re $13.99, a whopping dollar goes to support your favorite HD podcast, to order one, click here.

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Anyway, Floriole Bakery. They don’t get as much attention as some of the other bakeries that pop up at Green City but I am always very happy with both sweet and savory stuff I get from them. Today it was a gooey custardy scrumptious quiche, about three times as tall as your usual quiche, full of goat cheese and tomatoes. And for a sweet, a thing called a cannele, called that because it’s made in a mold like a candle, a vanilla-flavored batter baked until it has a tough outside and a custardy interior. I heard the woman who was running the stand say that the owner has been working on it for a year, but the recipes were old and rather vague, and only recently has she felt like she reached the point where it worked. She was right, it does. Not bad for $7.50.

Okay, I’m not sure if anyone looks at this blog per se, it mainly exists to facilitate the videos, but if you happen to see this, I’d be interested in any feedback on the following.

Got a comment back from a local writer-editor person who basically said the Sun Wah video podcast was sort of interesting— but too long.

Now, I’m sure there are lots of people who will find 15 minutes on a Chinese restaurant too long… because they’d find two minutes on a Chinese restaurant too long. Fine, it’s not for them. But basically one of the things I’m trying to demonstrate here is that online video doesn’t have to be 54 seconds of online goofiness on YouTuber, that you can do things that have the feel and cohesiveness of a feature piece in a magazine, or a short story, or an NPR interview, in a sit-at-your-desk-and-watch-it setting.

For me, 15 somewhat methodical minutes on the family behind a Chinese restaurant is easier to take than the 22 minutes (plus commercials) that make up a typical food TV show, in the course of which we’d flit between five different places, cut every two seconds and get whiplash from the ADD camerawork. I find those kinds of TV shows much harder to sit through for very long than the videos I’ve made, but obviously they have some kind of audience which responds to that kind of pace or at least, once suckered in, is too dazzled by flashing bright colors to change the channel.

For me, I want to make things that let you go behind the scenes and really get to know a single place and the people involved— within the limitations of a 10 to 20 minute running length. Basically it’s an interview show, but with pictures. Of course, an audio podcast you can just have on in the background, so it’s okay if it runs on a bit; a video one has to be more focused and compelling minute to minute, because you’re sitting there looking at it. So where nobody would be bothered by a 30 minute audio podcast, I want to keep video short enough that it’s over before you’re tired of it, more in the 15 range.

But still, I refuse to let YouTube set the expectations for all video online; I’d rather have 1000 people watch something meaty (and that’s about what the first podcast has reached) than have 100,000 people watch something catchy but stupid I happened to make.

So what do you think about length, depth and the prospects for video online? And about the length and pace of the two Sky Full of Bacon podcasts to date?

A while back I posted about my son Myles’ adventures raising a lamb in 4-H, and posted a video of him working with his lamb Triska. Now here’s the rest of the story, as he takes Triska to the Lake County Fair for auction. It’s about 5-1/2 minutes long.

Triska Goes to the Fair from Michael Gebert on Vimeo.

Please note: The embedded version is reduced resolution/frame rate. To see it in its full HD glory, go here. (If video isn’t streaming properly, I find it helps to let it start, pause it, then wait for it all to load before playing.)

AND ANOTHER: Thanks, new MenuPages blogress Helen, too.

LATEST UPDATE: I just noticed this because I was on jury duty all day, followed by having a very large beer and watching TV duty, but Bill Daley linked to the new podcast at the Chi-Trib’s The Stew early this morning. Thanks, Bill!

Thank you, Gaper’s Block, for the double shout out for both the new podcast and the Maxim item.

UPDATE: And thanks to Mike Sula for revealing my diabolical plan as he links to both the new podcast below, and to my largest piece for the Reader ever, about a combination barbecue/soul food place I discovered while driving around one day. It’s called P&P BBQ Soul Food and it’s pretty darn good at both, not to mention interesting because of its owner— who’s blind. Read the whole thing here.