Maggie Hennessy

4 weeks ago | chicago.suntimes.com | Maggie Hennessy

Master tea-blender Rod Markus will pour hot water over just about anything edible. I learned this within moments of sitting down at Rare Tea Cellar, his Ravenswood laboratory stocked with unusual and hard-to-find ingredients. Markus steeped a Mallorca Melon tea blend of Spanish melon, pineapple, hibiscus and Seville orange with a few paper-thin slices of nutty cured jamón ibérico de Bellota, or acorn-fed ham from free-roaming Spanish pigs.

1 month ago | chicago.suntimes.com | Maggie Hennessy

Italian beef, Chicago-style hot dogs and deep-dish pizza are so omnipresent in Chicago’s cultural discourse, innumerably copied at restaurants here and beyond, it’s a wonder the city’s most iconic foods have yet to really invade the snack food aisle. That changed Tuesday, when Local Style Potato Chips — sporting bang-on flavor replicas of deep-dish pizza, Chicago-style hot dogs and Italian beef sandwiches — hit shelves at 15 local markets and delis.

1 month ago | wbez.org | Maggie Hennessy

Italian beef, Chicago-style hot dogs and deep-dish pizza are so omnipresent in Chicago’s cultural discourse, innumerably copied at restaurants here and beyond, it’s a wonder the city’s most iconic foods have yet to really invade the snack food aisle. That changed Tuesday, when Local Style Potato Chips — sporting bang-on flavor replicas of deep-dish pizza, Chicago-style hot dogs and Italian beef sandwiches — hit shelves at 15 local markets and delis.

1 month ago | chicago.suntimes.com | Maggie Hennessy

Valentine’s Day was shaping up to be a solid night for Peanut Park Trattoria, the three-year-old Italian restaurant in Little Italy. The holiday fell on a Friday, meaning most of the 134 parties who made reservations on OpenTable did so a month in advance. Just one customer called to cancel a few days before, citing an ill son. A handful backed out when OpenTable’s text reminder went out the day before. Even so, owner Dave Bonomi felt good.

1 month ago | wbez.org | Maggie Hennessy

Valentine’s Day was shaping up to be a solid night for Peanut Park Trattoria, the three-year-old Italian restaurant in Little Italy. The holiday fell on a Friday, meaning most of the 134 parties who made reservations on OpenTable did so a month in advance. Just one customer called to cancel a few days before, citing an ill son. A handful backed out when OpenTable’s text reminder went out the day before; even so, owner Dave Bonomi, who also owns the pizzeria Coalfire, felt good.