Penny Pollack

A Tale of Two Pizzas
La Madia (59 W. Grand Ave.; 312-329-0400), a long-awaited contemporary pizzeria, opened on October 17th; four days later and three blocks away, Pizzeria Via Stato (620 N. State St.; 312-337-6634) fired up its new Wood Stone oven and baked its first Roman-style pizza. So how do these two River North competitors stack up? La Madia’s crust has great personality—tender chewy, an eense of salt, and lots of soul. Via Stato’s is no slouch, however, with its lighter-than-air blistered collar and crackery texture. Topping for topping, La Madia’s artichokes were light on flavor but the...</p? Read more

Window Treatment
“The South Side is hurting for restaurants,” says Dan McGee, a Chicago native who has worked in kitchens from Peru to Switzerland (and Charlie Trotter’s in between). So McGee repurposed his former Whittingham’s Gourmet Market as a 44-seat American restaurant called Dan McGee (330 W. Lincoln Hwy., Frankfort; 815-469-7750). The polished room is by Tom Nahabedian (who designed Naha for his cousin Carrie Nahabedian), and McGee’s menu has some interesting twists, like grilled halibut served on Asiago mashed potatoes with mushroom-shrimp compote. And that window that looks into the kitchen? “I wanted to see what was going on in the dining room, but the kitchen is so bright and the dining room is dark—I’m looking at...

C Food
Little by little, it seems every culinary star has begun setting his sights on Chicago. The latest is Marcus Samuelsson, the highly celebrated chef at New York's Aquavit and Riingo, who announced his intention to open C House, a casual seafood restaurant in Streeterville's Affinia Hotel (formerly the Fitzpatrick; 166 E. Superior St.), in March. "Chicago is an unbelievable food town," says Samuelsson, 36. "And I want to be part of that." C House's menu will be full of crowd pleasers such as whole snapper for two, wild salmon, a lobster club sandwich, and a salmon burger—Samuelsson calls it "simplistic food built on great ingredients," which may be a generic sound bite, but when a chef this talented says it, we take note. Look for an open kitchen in the dining room's center to focus on small dishes, and rooftop seating to follow next summer...

Jacky’s Back
In January, Jacky Pluton, who flirted with four stars at Pluton a couple of years back, plans to open a traditional brasserie called Haussmann in the space that once housed MK North and Brasserie T (305 S. Happ Rd.; Northfield). “It will be a Chicago brasserie with Parisian flair,” says Pluton. “Some very rustic dishes, but some dishes will have more of a 2008 feel. We will do a lot of tableside, from rib eye for two to Dover sole to roasted chicken for two. And every day, we will have a baked fish in clay.” The restaurant, named for Baron Haussmann (a 19th-century French legend who rebuilt Paris under Napoleon III), is the latest attempt to succeed in a familiar address. “I think it is one of the best spaces in the North Shore,” says Pluton. “No one took advantage of it before. And I will be honest: I think...