Michigan Avenue - Niche Media - Michigan Avenue magazine is a luxury lifestyle magazine centered around Chicago’s finest people, events, fashion, health & beauty, fine dining & more!
Issue link: http://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/109585
foodie fatigue FROM LIVE-BLOGGING EVERY MEAL TO WAITING THREE HOURS FOR A DOUGHNUT, CHICAGO GOURMANDS HAVE GONE OFF THE DEEP END. BY PAIGE WISER Onward! 144 ILLUSTRATION BY DANIEL O���LEARY T wenty years ago, eating in Chicago meant hot dogs, deep-dish, and Italian beef. Fine dining was for the highfalutin, and a youngster named Charlie Trotter was one of the only chefs in town aiming to raise the bar. Fast forward to 2013: A dozen stars of Top Chef and other foodiecentric TV shows operate out of Chicago, and diners order crispy pig face and smoky whipped fat back at Stephanie Izard���s Girl & the Goat without batting an eye. Simply put, the Windy City dining scene is one of the nation���s most exciting. But there���s a down side: The city���s foodie community is obsessed. Dine out with friends these days at your own peril because there���s likely to be someone at the table who won���t hesitate to slap away the hand of anyone who dares to dig in before each dish has been documented���first adjusting lighting and, if necessary, standing on the establishment���s wood-fired brick oven to photograph each morsel. These overeager foodies live-blog, tweet, Instagram, Yelp, Facebook, and, on special occasions, perhaps invite a roaming tattoo artist to the table to render their meal in full color on their person so that they may never forget a single moment of gastronomic ecstasy. Then and only then do they allow themselves or others to lift a fork. It doesn���t stop there. A growing number of Chicagoans spend their days incessantly refreshing Facebook in the hopes that a table at Next will open up. They wait in line at Doughnut Vault to devour the freshest buttermilk old-fashioneds possible, and for hours on Friday and Saturday afternoons at Hot Doug���s for duck fat fries with their blackened alligator sausage dog with foie-gras cherry dijonnaise. The table turnover at restaurants has ground to a halt as ordering entr��es has become an inquisition. Was the Mangalitsa pig raised on a local farm and only fed acorns for the last two months? Does that hamburger have the correct ratio of skirt steak, brisket, and New York Strip, or does it need to be recalibrated? Has the wine been grown on the same property as the olive oil? Our obsession with food shows no sign of slowing. The Sprinkles cupcake ATM on East Walton Street in the Gold Coast delivers gourmet sugar 24 hours a day (provided no one gets their hand stuck in it). On menus the words ���artisanal��� and ���organic��� are no longer the exception, they���re the rule. And it was recently reported that Chicagoans are raising a new breed of ���koodies������kid foodies���who get cranky when they can���t get a reservation at Acadia. In the early years AD, the historian Livy pointed to the celebrity status of cooks as the first sign of decay in the Roman empire (we doubt he would approve of pink pastry ATMs, either). If that���s the case, we���re in serious trouble. But make no mistake: Chicago���s foodie fascination is here to stay. Whether you refuse to participate or choose to join the gourmet paparazzi documenting every microgreen, every shaved truffle, every farm-raised chicken on a plate, one thing is certain: In this town, eating in peace is a thing of the past. On the bright side, though, it���s made dieting in Chicago as easy as shutting off your phone. After all, if you dine out and don���t post it to Facebook, the calories can���t possibly count. Bon app��tit! MA MICHIGANAVEMAG.COM 144_MA_BOB_AndFinally_Spring13.indd 144 2/8/13 1:53 PM