Features

Best New Restaurants
by Dennis Ray Wheaton and Anne Spiselman
Our reviewers’ search for this year’s best new restaurants turned up 20 entries at the top of their game, four new-wave fast-food joints, and a culinary traffic jam on Randolph Street.

White Heat
by Jonathan Eig
After more than two decades of affirmative action, Chicago’s fire department remains a white bastion. Even so, the white firefighters claim they’re being discriminated against. And they are burning with anger.

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
by Ted Allen
Actor John Mahoney is a nice guy most of the time, even when he’s cutting up with the cast of the hit TV series Frasier. But this spring he returns to the stage to reinvent a crank in a classic.

Art Ache
by Marc Spiegler
The Museum of Contemporary Art has been plagued by staff defections, a troublesome board, and growing competition from the Art Institute. Becoming a topnotch museum wasn’t supposed to be this hard.

Running with Walker
by Robert Hughes
The discovery of a catastrophic problem in a child can be a devastating shock, but once Walker was diagnosed with autism, his parents were determined to fight for his future. A father shares his son’s story.

Departments

Letters

Contributors

Frontlines
The rap on Harry Belafonte: how Michael Jordan rules Wall Street; more

Style Sheet
by Stacy Wallace-Albert
Students with designs on the future; greens that keep on going

Stage & Screen
by Penelope Mesic
Artistic director Brian Russell plays Daddy dearest the American way.

Real Lives
by Marcia Froelke Coburn
Birds of a feather – girl-meets-boy mating games at the zoo

Reporter
by James Ylisela Jr.
A civic panel is questioning the police investigation of the 1993 Palatine murders.

Travel
by Susan Kaye
Once just winter havens, Colorado’s high-country resorts are luring summer travelers.

Sullivan’s Travels
by Terry Sullivan
Tom McNeal loves woodland creatures of all stripes – dead, stuffed, and posed just so.