Books on display at a private event at the Chicago Club.

My book is here! Tuesday was the official release date, and also the date of the launch party, held at LouLou by Lula. Big thanks to Jason Hammel and everyone from Lula/LouLou who helped make it happen; to Steve Dolinsky, who did a terrific job running a 30-40 minute Q&A, both his own questions and a few from the audience; to Kevin Hickey, who sent along some Duck Dogs to augment the canapes from Lula; and to about 60 people who showed up, from old friends to a couple of restaurant folks to a bunch of readers of my newsletter.

Anyway, it was a really nice event (Friend of Fooditor Rebecca Fyffe posted some nice pics from it here), and I sold and signed a bunch of books.  But we had some left over which I signed for the bookstore to have inventory, so if you want one, head over to City Lit Books, just a few doors south of Lula, and you’ll find them there. Or you can order from them to have a signed copy shipped. I just popped over there and signed some more on Friday.

Q&A at the LouLou launch party.

On to more publicity! Another nice print piece, by Daniel Hautzinger at WTTW, talks about the long span of continuity between restaurant people in Chicago:

Charlie Trotter’s eponymous Lincoln Park restaurant was one of the most famous and influential in America. But when we first meet Trotter in The Chicago Way: An Oral History of Chicago Dining, a new book by longtime food reporter Michael Gebert, he’s a high schooler dining at The Bakery before his prom. Kevin Boehm is one of the most successful restaurateurs in Chicago, with The Girl & the Goat, Boka, and Momotaro among the many spots he has opened with his partner Rob Katz under the name Boka – but his first appearance in the book is as a young man who has the wine list from Gordon faxed to him in order to precisely plan out a tight budget; he and his girlfriend go to Chicago just to have this one meal.

“I wanted to introduce everybody at their early point and follow them through,” says Gebert.

So far it’s mostly been print pieces plus my morning show appearances last week, but the podcast attention is beginning—exciting for me to get a chance to talk at greater length. First up was with David Manilow (who’s interviewed in the book about Check, Please!), a really good half hour conversation that includes him talking about reacting to reading himself quoted by someone else. Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to link directly to it, but look for The Dining Table in your podcast app and then scroll to episode 151, “The Tastemakers Who Define Chicago Dining.”

And I returned to a favorite program I’ve been on several times before—Outside the Loop with Mike Stephen. Our ten-minute chat ran early Saturday morning on WGN Radio; now you can go here to catch up with it.

That’s all for this week, but more to come!

Signing books!