[NEWS BITES] Chef James Rigato cooking alongside Chicago's top chefs in charity wild mushroom dinner

There are only a few area chefs that could be considered rising stars in the greater culinary community outside of Detroit (and Michigan). None of them have risen as high or as quickly as Executive Chef James Rigato of the Root in White Lake. He's been featured in Food + Wine as a "Best New Chef: Great Lakes" finalist and on an episode of the Cooking Channel's "America's Best Bites." He's been the subject of constant local buzz for making the far-flung suburb of White Lake a dining destination for his rustic local fare, including winning the title "Restaurant of the Year" from the Detroit Free Press in 2012.

Today James is heading out to Chicago to cook alongside some of the biggest names in the industry. After catching the attention of Paul Virant (Vie) at CRUSH Grand Rapids, the two have visited each other's restaurants and forged a professional bond. Paul invited James to participate in this event, which features several high-profile Chicago chefs preparing a variety of dishes with wild mushrooms at a charity dinner (including Bill Kim and Paul Kahan). James is the only Michigan chef involved.

For this dinner, James is preparing:

Local Prosciutto Wrapped Escolar. Cauliflower and Black Summer Truffle Mousse. U.P.-Foraged Chanterelles and Michigan Sweet Corn Saute. Pickled Wax Beans. 12 Year Aged Balsamic. 

James considers this another positive step forward towards bridging Chicago's and Michigan's culinary styles. He is honored to be included in this event. "This is seriously so humbling and exciting for me," he says. "These guys are at the top of their game and weight class."

Here's more information about tonight's event from a press release:

The Root Restaurant and Bar is proud to announce that executive chef James Rigato will be featured at the Wild Mushroom Dinner at Vie in Western Springs, Ill. on Thursday, Sept. 5. Led by Vie executive chef/owner and cookbook author Paul Virant, the six-course dinner will bring together the culinary talents of Rigato and Chicago-based chefs Johnny Andres of Telegraph; Paul Kahan of Blackbird, Avec and The Publican; Bill Kim of Urbanbelly and Belly Shack; and pastry chef Elissa Narow of Vie and Perennial Virant. Each chef will create a dish highlighting the star ingredient, wild mushrooms. In attendance will be Joe McFarland, a mushroom expert and author of Edible Wild Mushrooms of Illinois and Surrounding States. The cost of the dinner with wine pairings is $145 per person, plus tax and gratuity. A portion of the proceeds will benefit the Multiple Sclerosis National Research Institute. For more information, call 248-698-2400.

The Root Restaurant and Bar is located at 340 Town Center Blvd. and is open for lunch and dinner Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. and Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. The restaurant features hand-made, from scratch, chef-driven cuisine with a commitment to seasonality and sustainable sourcing. For reservations or for more information, call 248-698-2400, visit www.therootrestaurant.com or follow on Facebook.

[HuffPo] 10 Terribly Overrated Destinations (And Where To Travel Instead)

EID Co-Founder David Landsel wrote this little gem that has been blowing up the Detroit Internet all week. Sometimes he and I just sit around and talk about how overrated Chicago is, good "for the Midwest" at best and then not even nearly as interesting as some other Rust Belt cities. Now he has said it for a national audience. Enjoy.

#7 Chicago Spend a little time in the Windy City and you'll come to know a people obsessed with the answer to a question nobody else has ever asked: "Is Chicago a world class city?" As a former local, I can help. The answer is no. Chicago is a handsome, reasonably entertaining provincial capital. This used to be enough for Chicagoans, but then it wasn't, leading to a period of time, beginning around the turn of the new century, during which all manner of foolishness -- from baffling things built by celebrity architects to a slew of obnoxious restaurants -- was unleashed upon the city. Suddenly, everything was pretty much the same, except now it was way more expensive. Yes, the city has some iconic cultural institutions and that beautiful lakefront. But look too far past the glittering Potemkin village at Chicago's center and you'll find yourself near or at the bottom of a sad pile of poor to average.

Instead, try
Go to Detroit. It's more honest. Also, there's a great art museum, a proper public market, some of the country's best architecture, the music scene is fun, the food scene is better than it has been in ages and the beer is better and much cheaper. Everything's cheaper. Also: Detroiters are friendly -- Chicagoans are just polite. There's a big difference.

Read more.

Chicago's Cafe des Architectes and My Cardinal Rule of Restaurant Dining

I would like to share with you today my cardinal rule of restaurant dining: food in restaurants should not be difficult to eat. If it cannot easily be cut apart, chewed apart, portioned into reasonable-sized bites utilizing the cutlery at my disposal, picked up as a finger food and bitten into reasonable-sized portions without half of it landing on or around my plate, slid onto a fork, stabbed onto a fork, or in any other reasonable and passingly polite way transferred from YOUR plate to MY mouth, you should not be serving it in your restaurant. Fine dining is already intimidating enough for a lot of people - what's proper etiquette? which fork do I use first? what's the proper way of ordering? how can I not make an ass out of myself in front of this waiter who just greeted me in French and told me he would be my "emissary" to the restaurant for the evening? Really, all these rules of decorum - whether real or simply perceived by the insecure diner - can be daunting, but once you get past all that -- past ordering the wine (oh thank god there's a bin number and I don't have to try to pronounce it!!!), past ordering the entree ("What's 'ratatouille'???" "I don't know, I never saw the movie!"), and are finally at the point of being able to relax and enjoy yourself, your mono-lingual fumbling through the Fratalianish menu comfortably behind you, the last thing you expect to encounter is having to fumble with your food. But too often chefs get a little too stuck on visual presentation and fail to account for any practicality in the act of actually EATING it.

Take for example the "Pintxos" at Cafe des Architectes in Chicago. "Pintxos" is French for "tapas" which is Spanish for "small plates" which is American Bougie for "appetizers." Basically the pintxos menu is a small plates menu, served daily from 4 to 7 p.m. and only available at "Le Bar" (that's what it's called, srsly). The pintxos is a combination of toppings - think chorizo with crushed tomatoes, Manchego with black olives - served on crostini. At only $5 each, they're a wonderful and inexpensive way to sample a number of different items. I always prefer going this route since I like to be able to taste more for less, especially without having to lock into an expensive entree I may or may not even enjoy and will probably get sick of eating after just a few bites. I get bored with food easily. Unless it's cheese.

And yes, I also ordered the cheese plate while I was there.


I selected the asparagus + goat cheese and the beef tenderloin + roquefort pintxos. The presentation was lovely: two large crostini piled high with thinly-sliced asparagus/sliced tenderloin and crumbled goat/roquefort cheese, diced tomatoes, greens, held together (but not really) with a toothpick on a plate EXACTLY big enough to fit the two crostini. So cute! So clever!

How the fuck do I eat it?

At this point in your meal you are intractable ... you've already come this far, after all. You're not about to let it all come crashing down around some damn crostini. With steely determination you grab your fork and butter knife and begin sawing into this pretty dish. The crostini cannot - WILL NOT - be cut. It is toasted but still chewy; as you saw back and forth the only thing you succeed in doing is knocking all of the toppings off of it, which ultimately means they end up all AROUND the plate because the plate is *just* big enough to fit them in the first place. With dedication you decide to pick the crostini up and eat it as finger food - it's only a few bites, really; this seems perfectly appropriate. But alas, the toppings are piled too high and are too unstable--no sooner do you attempt one bite than half of the tiny artfully diced tomatoes end up on your plate, in your lap, on your chest, in your cupped hand and all over your fingers. Pretty much everywhere but your mouth, really. Then one of the large gobs of goat cheese plops onto your phone as you still have the crostini raised to your mouth with which you are trying to gently pull and shake the loose toppings in the greatest danger of going over thereby coaxing them down your gullet, then the crostini itself gives in and the whole bloody mess ends up in deconstructed piles on and around your plate, and despite this place having the word "architect" in the name you're pretty sure it wasn't meant as a Derrida reference.

You are undeterred. It is now a matter of principal.

Surely there MUST be some way of eating this. So now you determine that you must first eat the majority of the toppings off the crostini THEN eat the crostini with just a few sparse toppings on it as finger food because CLEARLY you cannot pick up the whole thing nor can you cut it into manageable pieces for ease of edibility. I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. So you pick up your fork and resolutely begin eating the individual toppings. Until you get to the thinly-sliced asparagus. Which is too long to be slid onto the fork, and too thin and slippery to be stabbed onto the fork, and too ungainly to be picked up crostini-and-all and consumed as wholly without the fork.


You start to panic. The diced tomatoes are everywhere. It looks like a four-year-old child ate at your place setting. You've stained your shirt, soiled the table linens and the napkin on your lap which thank GOD you remembered to put there or else you'd have to buy a new pair of jeans for the remainder of your stay in Chicago, your food is all over your face and fingers and you STILL haven't figured out just how in the holy hell you're supposed to eat these things and you're humiliated because you KNOW the entire staff has seen your struggle and are probably laughing to themselves about it and you think to yourself, THIS is the fine dining experience??? You're convinced it's you; that you're doing something wrong and that everyone else is effortless and graceful in the way they delicately eat these dishes.

I am not a delicate person. Most often I'm a bear with a bullhorn in a china shop full of anthropophobics with sensitive hearing. I'm loud and messy and clumsy. I prefer paper plates over china, licking my fingers clean over wiping them on linens, and eating with my hands over using utensils pretty much always. (I'm not sure how I got this gig as a food writer either. Moving along.) If there is something to be spilled, stained, dropped, knocked off a plate, flung from a plate due to a utensil malfunction, etc., I will be the person who makes it happen. So I understand what's it's like; I do. You don't have to be ashamed anymore! Much as I loathe restaurants that try to sell me on the idea of preparing and cooking my own food at three times the cost of me just doing it at home and having to cut my own salad greens, I ***HATE*** not being able to actually EAT the food I order because it's just too damn difficult to maneuver.

It always makes me think of my days in retail, may I starve and die a thousand deaths before returning to that realm. We would receive new visual directives, like extensive window changes that required 10-ft ladders, fishing line, wooden planks, 5-ft decals, 8-ft foam boards, 2 boxes of straight pins, a roll of packing tape, industrial-strength double-sided tape, 14-ft banners, 27 mannequins each wearing 3 layers of clothing and heavily accessorized, beaded chandeliers and added track lighting we had to install ourselves (go ahead: ask me about my last trip to the emergency room that resulted in 11 stitches), and we would be allocated less than $40 in payroll (or approximately one manager and one part-time minimum-wage associate working two hours each) to implement the directive. And all these times I would wonder, has anyone on the corporate visual team ever actually TRIED to set this within the same set of restrictions in personnel, time, and professional skill sets as they expect us to be able to do? Much like I wondered that I also wonder if some of the chefs in these high-profile kitchens ever try to eat some of their more visually striking creations with a plain old fork and knife.

They tasted great, BTW. Not trying to diminish that. Once I was able to Cirque du Soleil them into my mouth, that is.


All of that being said - and it was quite a mouthful! AY-OOOO! - I feel bad that Cafe des Architectes has to take the brunt of my wrath regarding challenging cuisine. It's not just them. It's actually a very fine restaurant with a clever and inventive French-inspired menu and really wonderful staff (Lisa at "Le Bar" was absolutely lovely: very engaging, clearly able to read her customers well, gave a great wine recommendation - the whole staff seemed excellent in this regard). I came here to try their Chicago Restaurant Week lunch menu, which sounded rather exceptional in a sea of some 200+ rather average-sounding menus. But being the perennially tardy person that I am, I missed the lunch menu and wasn't as excited about the dinner option, so I opted for the pintxos and, naturally, the French cheese plate with Brie de Meaux, Langres, Crottin Maitre Seguin, mango chutney, an OUTSTANDING balsamic reduction, candied walnuts, and crusty breads. The glass of Pascal Jolivet Sancerre Sauvignon Blanc I had to pair was absolutely delightful, and at $19 for a glass I could have bought a whole bottle AND a king-sized candy bar at Costco! Yes, my biggest gripe about this place specifically was the outlandishly overpriced wine list (see: Ravenswood Zinfandel, $14; Cakebread Cellars Merlot, $19...per glass).


It being located inside the ultra-sleek Sofitel Hotel, the decor is done in an edgy, dramatic art deco palette of red, black and white with a lot of play on geometric shapes and patterns seemingly echoed in the presentation of the dishes. Despite my above griping (come on, I NEVERRRRRRR get to do that anymore!), I did enjoy this place and would certainly visit again. Having not been to all the gastro-this-and-thats in Chicago I can still pretty comfortably say that I don't think this place is doing anything so terribly different than the others, but it is nonetheless an enjoyable meal. Check out their Restaurant Week lunch menu below to see for yourself why this place made my short list.

Café des Architectes
French | Lunch, Dinner
20 E. Chestnut St. | Chicago IL 60611
City-N.Michigan | 312 324-4000
Enjoy Executive Chef Greg Biggers' cuisine rooted in French culture showcasing products from Midwestern farmers at Cafe des Architectes. The restaurant is located in the fashionable Gold Coast neighborhood and is a modern restaurant with dramatic appointments created by interior designer Pierre-Yves Rochon. Vibrant colors, overstuffed chairs, sprawling banquettes and lamps that employ upside-down toques as lamp shades grab your attention. The carefully crafted interior's design serves as the perfect landscape for the approachable cuisine crafted from ingredients procured from local farmers. "Top Ten Chicago Restaurant," Chicago Sun-Times, 2009. 3 stars, Chicago magazine, Chicago Tribune. Open Daily. B: 6am-11:30am; Br (Sat. and Sun. only): 11:30am-5pm; L: 11:30am-5pm; D: 5pm-11pm. Reservations accepted for lunch and dinner only.Valet

RESTAURANT WEEK
February 18-27, 2011
Lunch Menu
$22

APPETIZERS
(choice of one)
Celery Root Velouté
truffles / micro salad / fresh herbs
Artichoke Salad
oven dried tomato / carrot mousse / lemon confit
Rillettes of Salmon
chives / crème fraiche / baguette croûton

ENTRÉES
(choice of one)
Shrimp Terrine
avocado / piquillo peppers / lemon
Grilled Red Mullet
dill / cider vinegar sabayon / spinach purée
Stuffed Leg of Lamb
ratatouille niçoise / winter spices / cardamom jus

DESSERTS
Pistachio Cream
chocolate coulis / iranian pistachios / crisp
Pineapple Soup
coconut sorbet / brunoise of exotic fruits / vanilla
Chocolat Moelleux
cakey / creamy / crunchy

Great Lake: Chicago's Best Pizza Made By Detroiters

Some people really like Chicago-style pizza. I do not. And, in case you've never ever read this blog before, I LOVE pizza. What's not to like, you ask? Well let me tell you: super-thick, super-dry crust stuffed full of consistently mediocre toppings slathered in pools of what can only be described as overdone marinara sauce -- which is really just NEVER good by its own nature, kind of like mayonnaise or ipecac -- equals a big fat steaming pile of FAIL.

I've had a historically ambivalent attitude towards Chicago. People like to talk about all the great shopping...as a long-time retail worker the thought of spending any of my free time utilizing "shopping" as a leisure activity makes me feel not unlike the way I do after a late-night bender: my head throbs, I find it difficult to bend my knees, and I'm more than a little nauseous. People talk about Navy Pier and the river...we have a river. Maybe you've noticed? It's kind of nice; you should check it out sometime. And people talk about the dining.

Chicago and Detroit have a lot in common. We're both Midwestern cities built around a river. We were both made rich by industrialization. But while Chicago was still little more than a meat-packing town, Detroit was flourishing as one of the richest cities in the country (circa late-1800s...throughout the first half of the 1900s we were THE richest city in the country). THEN Chicago hosted the World's Columbian Exposition (designed in large part by Frederick Law Olmsted who designed Belle Isle...seriously, you should go check out our river), and all of a sudden it was all "OOOOOHH, look at Chicago, we all love it now" and it's been that way ever since.

I sometimes wonder how different things may have turned out had Detroit ever bothered to put a bid on that.

Chicago's okay. In current times it has clearly succeeded where Detroit has massively failed. Some of the neighborhood districts are pretty cool -- Wicker Park, Andersonville. But for the most part...meh, it's a'ight. One of the so-called "arguments" I hear fellow (and I wish I didn't even have to designate these people as such) "Detroiters" often make is that the dining scene is sooooo much better in Chicago. This proclammation also makes me feel not unlike the way I do after a late-night bender, but I'll save that rant for the company of the like-minded where it probably best belongs.

Much like Detroit, Chicago is primarily a blue-collar meat-and-potatoes kind of town. I still hear chefs claim that Detroit is still stuck in this mentality, but I actually disagree on that point--our old-school steakhouses have all but disappeared, and we've seen an uprising of boutique bistros and cross-cultural fusion fare that is worlds removed from the steakhouses of yore.

But NOW I digress. Yep--just now.

Chicago is still stuck in that old steakhouse mentality, which makes most of their dining kind of boring. Plus they tout that wretched pizza, and I think I've made it pretty clear how I feel about THAT. So, Chicago--what've you got for me? Impress me. I'm waiting.

Clearly I'm feeling a bit self-indulgent today; how's THAT for an intro?

Thanks to a hot tip provided to me by someone who should damn well know these things, I found my way to Great Lake Pizza. This in itself is no small accomplishment. Located at 1477 W. Balmoral Ave. in the Andersonville neighborhood, anyone staying in Chicago's downtown area must be prepared for a bit of a drive. I was committed to the idea, and so must you be. In more ways than one.

Great Lake doesn't exactly make it easy to visit their restaurant. In fact, I suspect that they actually want to deter you from visiting. They are only open 5:30-9:30pm Wednesdays - Saturdays. That's all. That's it. And with their 14-seat dining room -- 14 seats -- you've got to get there EARLY to get a table. And I mean EARLY. I got there around 4:30, not realizing they didn't open until 5:30 (Who??? Who does that??? On the weekend??? In Chicago???), and already there was a line. The four people in front of me then immersed me in their Great Lake lore: like stories from a bitter battlefield I heard of hour-long drives only to be turned away at 7:00pm because the restaurant was "filled for the rest of the night," and refusals to accommodate a family because the dining room was not equipped for children's seats, nor was there room for a stroller. If you've watched enough Seinfeld then you know where this is going.

At this point on my Chicago trip I was pretty much over the whole "waiting in line for food" thing. I don't even remember the last time I waited in line to eat before this; utterly ridiculous. Chicago, you have too many fucking people. However, you can keep them, because I like always being able to find a seat at my favorite places.

Anyway, I dipped out to make a booze run at the nearby In Fine Spirits wine shop (Great Lake is a B.Y.O.B. kind of place, which is one cool thing that Chicago does that Michigan's irrationally strict liquor laws does not allow), where I found a plethora of MICHIGAN beers! Ironically a lot of my favorite breweries are actually closer to Chicago than Detroit. Founders! New Holland! Oh happy day...Chicago, maybe you're not so bad after all!

By the time I got back (I may have hung around for a quick 6-bottle wine tasting) the line looked like that^.

Okay, seriously, it's 14 seats inside. This is what 14 seats look like when you can't do a panoramic view. Kind of cute, very simple. They serve water in carafes with plastic cups, the silverware is rolled in hand towels, and they charge a corking/disposal fee for any alcohol you bring in. They also have a selection of various randomness for sale (pasta sauce, a book on bacon, purses), which I can only assume is a small collection of "shit the owners like" which has really no practical or feasible commercial purpose. That right there sounds like a great way to run a business -- the whole ethos is reflected throughout the place.

The daily menu is posted on the wall. Those are your options. That's all. That's it. Don't you DARE try to order a pepperoni pizza, or God save your ever-loving soul, supreme. These are your only options: 1, 2, and 3. If you look closely, you'll see that you are given the choice of adding certain items to certain pizzas. I tried the tomato, homemade mozzarella, aged Dante cheese and herbs PLUS the cremini mushrooms.

I did not order this correctly.

When you walk in, you must line up single-file at the cash register. If you have someone with you, he/she is responsible for securing you a seat, should you be so lucky as to find a table open. The dining room consists of 3 2-tops and one 8-top, making communal-style seating pretty much your only option (unless you get there at 4:30 in the afternoon and wait in line for an hour). You then sidle up to the register when it is your turn. You will know it is your turn because owner Lydia Esparza will look up and glare at you. At this point you must open your mouth and place your order. Do not stutter. Speak loudly and clearly. ANNUNCIATE. When I sort of stammer over the "plus cremini mushrooms" part, I get a terse "What.", but not like a "What" like an "I didn't hear you, can you repeat that?" -- a "What" like a "I goddamn well heard you but I'm going to make you say it again so you will learn to speak more clearly next time." "PLUS CREMINI MUSHROOMS" (SIR YES SIR!). I then present my credit card as a form of payment, a Visa logo being the intangible representation of money which can be exchanged for goods and services.

This was not the right time to do this.

Lydia looks at the card. Then looks at me like I might possibly ACTUALLY be the most ignorant and irritating person who has ever walked the face of the planet EVER, and that by just having to acknowledge my existence she is putting herself out greatly. "You don't pay until you get the pizza," she says through gritted teeth as she glares at her next victim.

"Oh. I'm. Sorry." I slinked off to my hard-won seat, scolded and ashamed.

Then I took this picture (above). Lydia was not happy about this. I received a glare so almighty it made the unused eggs in my ovaries uncomfortable. I slowly put the camera down, bowed my head quietly and put my hands in my lap. No pizza for you, one year.

But despite my most obvious blunders, the pizza came. And OH did it. Piping hot. Fresh, gooey cheese. Decadent cremini mushrooms (one of my favorite varietals, if mushrooms can be called such). Delicate tomato sauce -- as in TOMATO, as in fresh, ripe, red and juicy tomatoes plucked and diced, NOT marinara sauce, nonono. And a crust that must surely have been made with the touch of a god.

What Lydia Esparza (along with her husband, co-owner and co-chef Nick Lessins) may lack in tableside manner she more than makes up for with her dough. That whole coal-burning-oven, brich-oven, stone-oven craze that's happening in the pizza world right now? Pshaw. Lydia and Nick scoff at your stinking stones and bricks and coal. This is all done in a gas oven baby, and at 650 degrees F. They use more than one kind of flour...and that's about all anyone seems to know. But that crust...thick on the outside with a delicate crispness, though still tender and chewy to the tear, and dough-soft on the inside where it cradles the exquisite toppings (all either made in-house or sourced locally, with all of their suppliers listed on the menu board)...this may just be one of the most divine pizza crusts I have ever experienced. No wonder Alan Richman named it Number One Pizza in the Country. My heart will always lie with Supino Pizzeria, but this was other-wordly.

And of course, it takes a Detroiter. Nick and Lydia are Detroit transplants, she from the city and he from the suburbs. So while this may appear to be a win for Chicago, I consider it to really be a win for Detroit. That's right, folks: it took two Detroiters to show Chicago how pizza should be done.

Some things people might not like: Limited hours, limited seating, high prices ($19-23 for a 14'', and that's the only size they come in, that's all, that's it), limited options, no alcohol, and the Soup Nazi takes your order. (Full disclosure: she did warm up a bit as the meal progressed, even smiling at me at one point. I suppose we all have bad days--I was rarely a ray of sunshine when a customer would yell "EXCOOOOSE ME!" from across the store and I would spin around and say "YEAH." with a grimace.) But for pizza lovers...TRUE pizza lovers...this place is worth a pilgrimage.

Just try not to make eye contact.