Tasty Chicago

This food blog experience has really opened my eyes to the genius that’s often hiding within regular folks. Take for instance this blog called the Burrito Bracket. It’s done by a resident of Wicker Park who has decided to have a “tournament” pitting 19 top burrito places in the neighborhood against each other.

The championship comes up in a few weeks so you better start paying attention. At this point, there is one more match-up in the Elite Eight before we get down to the final four. Here are the pairings with all of the match-ups and a link to the review.

My favorite post thus far is titled The Burrito Spectrum. The only point of the post was to espouse a certain theory on the burrito, which I found refreshing and informative. This fellow Nate got in my kitchen and really shook things up. He explains the burrito by taking his readers on a trip from the taco to the sandwich. It’s groundbreaking stuff and has given me several new terms that I plan on using in everyday life.

Nate, you rock! Keep it up.

Here are a couple of dudes that care about food. Two guys just traveling around town looking for good burgers. Check it out at the Chicago Burger Project.

It’s based on the Time Out article about the top burgers in town. Nat and Adam have motored through a bunch of the burgers. It’s great stuff. They have a ton of great pix and they dig far deeper than I do.

They started back in March at That’s-a-Burger and have been banging through three or four burgers a month. They don’t mess around. Keep it up Nat and Adam.

This guy Sean Parnell has been to a lot of bars, and he writes passionately about them. You can read his take on about 250 bars at The Chicago Bar Project.

These reviews are very involved. Parnell seems to have an endless capacity to write pages and pages on the food, atmosphere, beer selection, and clientele at all of the bars he visits. He seems like a regular dude with a boatload to say.

I have a lot of work to do tonight, but I don’t think much of it’s going to get done because I have a bunch of bar reviews to read through. Keep it up Sean.

Do you ever read the Newcity free mag? It comes out on Thursdays I think, about the same time as the Reader and The Onion. Well, if you like to read about Chicago restaurants, laugh your ass off, and have some serious discussions about Chicago-related food topics, then you need to go to the food and drink section of Newcity right now.

The main food writer, Michael Nagrant, mixes a warped sense of humor with a large reservoir of food knowledge. His articles are always relevant, very funny, and highly approachable for a foodie-hater like myself.

Just take a read on his last two articles and decide for yourself. Check out his tirade on the new wine legislation for Illinois. He mixes in some light political research with one of his food obsessions. Or how about this one about chain restaurants; he has a dirty little secret that will surprise you.

I don’t see a subscribe-to link or anything like that, so it’s not really a blog that you can stay updated on (I don’t understand why they’re leaving this on the table), so you have to stop back occasionally. I religiously grab the Newcity every week so maybe I’ll post links to his best articles as I come across them.