Gilt Bar

Chef Fabio Viviani is one of those people whose first name defines him — Fabio: Italian immigrant, "Top Chef" contestant and all around TV personality, restaurateur, cookbook author and culinary heart-throb. Charmingly accented, carefully unshaven,...

You start to learn things about Chicago after living here a while. RedEye staff members feel we'd be ignoring our civic duty by not clueing you in on some of the best tips and tricks we've acquired over our collective years. Call them ... Chicago hacks?...

Hubbard Street holds the unofficial title of the most bustling strip in River North, but it's neighbor one block to the south, Kinzie Street, is gaining momentum. Classics such as Keefer's and Harry Caray's have been holding court on Kinzie for more...

Zagat, publishers of the reader-review based Zagat Guides, has released its second-annual “30 Under 30” list of Chicagoans in the restaurant and hospitality business. The list, intended to recognize up-and-coming talents rather than...

A roundup of restaurants reviewed in 2012 by critic Phil Vettel. Acadia ✭✭✭ 1639 S. Wabash Ave., 312-360-9500. Ryan McCaskey's gamble to place a luxury restaurant in the South Loop is, so far, paying off. People are crowding into...

When it comes to adventures in dining and drinking, Chicago definitely delivered this year. Hot chefs expanded their empires with new restaurants. New words made their way into our nightlife vocabulary. And, of course, there were doughnuts. And pie. And...

Cupcakes are cool. But doughnuts are hot. A handful of new and relatively new shops are producing the kind of high-quality, limited-quantity, chef-driven doughnuts that truly can be called artisanal products. Much as cupcake specialists revolutionized...

There are at least three things you can count on at every Brendan Sodikoff restaurant. There will be a retro-cool, dimly lit atmosphere. There will be bread; roasted bone marrow with toast is a menu given. And there will be great soap in the restroom....

I don't know if teachers still do this, but at the end of each school year, I was handed a summer reading list, a sheet of required and optional books that would prepare students for the coming school year. (I still owe a measure of revenge to the teacher...

The Lady Gaga sightings have continued in Chicago. Gaga was spotted outside her Gold Coast hotel Sunday one week after she was seen having dinner with boyfriend Taylor Kinney, who is in the city filming the pilot for Dick Wolf’s “Chicago...

The first time I had steak tartare was at Maude's Liquor Bar. Hardly a late bloomer when it comes to the wonder of raw beef and runny egg  -- I was only 24. But if it hadn't been for the drinks, the crushing crowd at the bar, the desperate rush for late...

Sprout 1417 W. Fullerton Ave. 773-348-0706 Rating: !!!! (out of 4) Already hot Brunch hours: 10:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Sunday Reservations: Recommended After Dale Levitski got the boot on “Top Chef All-Stars,” which wrapped Wednesday on Bravo,...