The historic James Beard Award-winning seafood restaurant on the South Side of Chicago closed temporarily after a fire on Nov. 21.

“We had an electrical fire,” said Mark Kotlick, president of the family-owned takeout business in the South Deering neighborhood, perhaps best known for its smoked fish and fried shrimp. The fire broke out around 1 p.m., but no one was injured. “We had a mass response from the fire department, about a block away from us, with 10 firetrucks, 40 or 50 firemen, and they were able to save the structure, but pretty much the entire interior and all the equipment was destroyed.”

The smokehouse itself, however, was not touched.

“It’s kind of funny when you put a fire into a building and it stays OK,” Kotlick said. “But yeah, that little structure’s been with us for close to 100 years now.”

The smokehouse still stands just outside the restaurant, next to the 95th Street bridge overlooking the Calumet River, across from the new kitchen door.

“Everything’s new,” Kotlick said about the interior. “We had 100-year-old walk-ins, with wooden doors and wooden walls, and now I’ve got the new energy-efficient stainless steel walk-in coolers.”

They did not expand, though, and there’s still no seating inside.

“Because we own the building, but not the land,” he added. “So we cannot expand on the footprint of the building.” They did conform to Chicago building codes, including compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act for accessibility.

On the other side of the building, the iconic signage has been restored by artist Casey King, who also re-created the menu boards inside.

“And he did it to a tee,” Kotlick said. “You wouldn’t know the difference.”

Calumet Fisheries received its first food deliveries in six months on Friday. Manager Javier Magallanes fired up the smokehouse with their traditional oak logs to smoke shrimp, then smoked fish early on Saturday.

Breaded shrimp, frog legs, smelt, oysters and scallops were waiting to be fried to order, Kotlick added.

There were picnic tables on the smokehouse and bridge side.

“People really enjoy that instead of going into their cars,” Kotlick said. “Or throwing a blanket over on the grassy area, or bringing chairs, or I always recommend going to Calumet Park, which is two minutes away just over the bridge to look at Lake Michigan.”

Calumet Fisheries reopened to the public at 9 a.m. Saturday.

“We’ve kind of been on our COVID hours,” Kotlick said. “We were closing at 7 in the evening, but now we’ll stay open till 9:45 at night. And we think it’s time to do that.”

What did he think he’d do when he walked back in with everything back up and running?

“Well, I’ll probably cry,” he said, his voice breaking. “A lot of things got damaged. And I’m not even sure if our James Beard award is clean enough to put out.”

“And our prized Anthony Bourdain poster that he signed for us,” he added. “Where he wrote down ‘Keep doing what you’re doing.’” (Full disclosure, I appeared with the late chef and author at Calumet Fisheries in the Chicago episode of his television series “Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations” on the Travel Channel.

What wasn’t damaged in the fire was the Honorary Carlos Rosas Drive street sign in front of the store. Rosas was the manager and beloved as the Calumet Fisheries ambassador who died at 41 after six weeks of hospitalization from complications related to COVID-19 in 2020.

“That’s still up and shining away,” Kotlick said.

It’s been a stressful six months, he added. They had about 15 employees at the time of the fire, and 10 have come back.

The store originally opened in 1928.

“And in 1948, my grandfather purchased it for my dad, Sid Kotlick, and my uncle, Leonard Toll, to run the store, have a business and provide for their families.” They had framed photos hanging of his father and uncle with employees who worked with his family for 30, 40 and 50 years.

What did Mark Kotlick plan to have first?

“I’ve thought about that,” he said. “I asked Javi, can you ask our vendors if they can get some chubs? Wouldn’t that be unbelievable to have that for the opening? But we’re not.”

Chubs are the golden smoked fish that were once their bestseller, but scarce now, so he has different plans.

“I’m gonna throw a couple of shrimp in, a couple scallops in, some smelts and I like our calamari,” Kotlick said. “So I’ll do a little seafood buffet for myself.”

3259 E. 95th St., 773-933-9855, calumetfisheries.com

lchu@chicagotribune.com

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The small, corner shop sits in the Roscoe Village neighborhood. The space was previously a Starbucks, but originally the building was a tied house. The Schlitz Brewing Co. built the tavern in 1903.

A signature globe can still be seen at the top of the designated landmark. The symbol seems fitting above the bakery exploring borders both global and personal.

The ham and cheese croissant has become the bestselling item since the shop opened last May despite the baker’s own lament.

“I call it a failure in editing,” Cheng said, laughing quietly. “Because it just has all my ideas thrown in there.”

Those ideas begin with a buttery and brilliant croissant dough made with rye flour by Janie’s Mill. The organic artisan grain farm and stone-ground miller is located in the tiny rural village of Ashkum, about a two-hour drive south of the city. Its flours have become prized by prestigious professionals as well as home bakers.

“So rye flour helps with the ham and cheese and rye kind of idea,” the baker said. “And inside it has a bechamel with mustard, sort of like a croque monsieur.” You may know the croque monsieur as the French ham and cheese sandwich that’s ideally served hot and crunchy, but has more variations than there are cafes in France.

Cheng folds ham and Gruyere cheese inside his rye dough before baking and finishing with a housemade everything mix.

“Everything you’d find on an everything bagel,” he said. “And then it just bakes together very well, moist and hammy and cheesy.”

It is in fact a stunning pastry. Long and elegant, golden and crisp, with a lacy cheese skirt barely showing. It’s distinctly Cheng’s style, a minimalist story hinting at hours spent at delis and cafes and farms.

“My favorite item is the buckwheat kouign-amann,” said the baker, who breaks the usual chef’s silence on favoritism. The kouign-amann is a French pastry that’s often a suspension of caramelized sugar and butter.

“For this croissant dough we add buckwheat flour,” he added. The flour adds an elusive flavor somewhere between earthy and the sea. “And I paired it with a black sesame filling from my childhood.” From tangyuan, the Chinese warm glutinous rice dumplings served in barely sweetened soup.

“The two flavors just sort of meld together,” Cheng said. “And I feel like it kind of symbolizes where I’m at as a baker right now.”

He’s a baker who confidently takes two creations on opposite ends of the culinary spectrum, and honors them in one complex pastry that crackles and chews, and makes me wonder where he came from.

His parents moved from Hong Kong to Cleveland in the ’70s. He grew up mostly in the suburbs, working in his family’s restaurant, then moved to Chicago in 1995 to go to graduate school for computer graphics. But he decided to start baking instead and went to the now-closed Cooking Hospitality Institute of Chicago.

“And then I found a job at Bittersweet Pastry Shop,” Cheng said. “I quit cooking school because I was just learning so much more at Bittersweet.” He worked there on and off for about five years, and at a couple of different restaurants.

“Then I took a 14-year hiatus,” the baker said. “Because I didn’t quite understand how to balance work life and real life.”

He worked as a video game design artist at a company where everyone loved him because he would bring trays and trays of brownies, cookies and other things he was working on.

“My parents were very happy with me those 14 years,” Cheng said.

But he wanted to go back to the kitchen to bake professionally.

“My reentry was learning breads at Floriole, still hands down my favorite bakery in Chicago,” the baker said. Then he helped open the Starbucks Reserve Roastery in 2019, where he learned to understand the technical challenges of scheduling and production. After that, he worked at Hewn bakery in Evanston. “And then I opened up this place.”

The specialty croissants have recently become the fan-favorite sweets in the petite pastry case. There’s a striking pistachio yuzu and a luxurious strawberry rose with shattering layers that reveal delicately tart and intoxicating floral flavors. But they mark a departure from the shop’s original intent.

“I started this place as a serious contemplation and meditation on grains and the role of pastries,” Cheng said. Now he’s thinking more about what items will keep his customers coming back, all while maintaining his own standards and minimalist style.

It’s harder to appreciate the simple beauty of his radiant house croissant, made with heirloom Turkey Red whole wheat flour from Janie’s Mill. Especially when compared with its chocolate-almond croissant cousin, made with deep, dark cocoa-infused spelt dough rolled around a silky Valrhona couverture.

The Bunny-O, his jumbo rabbit-shaped sandwich-cookie hops easily across social media as an adorable nod to the Oreo, but far more tender like a whoopie pie. The Hunny Bunny, the house cinnamon roll, hides a lovely pull-apart bake under a glorious honey glaze. The carrot cake at Sweet Rabbit, however, may be the most handsome of all at the moment topped by precise dollops of cream cheese frosting and studded with green pepitas.

The Danish highlights seasonal fruit, petals of rhubarb on one of my two visits, over a cloud of that cream cheese, embraced by laminated challah pastry.

A banana spelt and a blueberry crumble muffin are really more tea cakes, or elevated muffin tops. Even the coffeecake swipes a classic with a dramatic cinnamon swirl.

And then there are the impeccable classic cookies — from a chunky chocolate chip to gorgeous gluten-free chocolate buckwheat to a loaded vegan oatmeal raisin walnut — that will have you contemplating their transportive power in our culture.

The breakfast sandwiches, made with Cheng’s take on Chinese pineapple buns, hold egg, chile crunch, pimento cheese and an optional sausage patty.

“I wanted to mix a little bit of my culture with the Chinese chile crunch, which we make ourselves, and the pimento cheese that my husband, Tim, grew up eating,” the baker said.

The breakfast sandwiches are soft, sweet and savory, a gentle meal designed to grab and go. I do wish there was a bit more chile crunch and pimento cheese available, even if just to order extra on the side.

They’re subtle, perhaps too much so, as are the purple ube Ho Ho’s rolled around coconut mochi buttercream, the Morning Cardi-O croissant buns with green cardamom, and the current savory squares with a spinach artichoke dip filling.

What’s not subtle is the house sourdough bread, made with the Turkey Red flour. Get the loaf sliced to order, then stop whatever you’re doing and take a bite. Marvel at the magic of microscopic crispy bits of the crust giving in to the tug to the heart of the crumb.

“Sweet Rabbit has two meanings,” Cheng said. One was inspired by his focus on fast service for sweet pastries, and the other is a slice of his sourdough bread. “It looks like it has a nice ear, kind of like our logo.

I might add that his menu seems to multiply like rabbits with about 26 different items per day.

“I should scale back just a little bit,” the baker said, laughing quietly. “But they’re all my kids and I can’t get rid of any of them.”

He also does wholesale for four locations of the Heritage Bikes & Coffee group. His pastries are also available in a little coffee shop called The Lost Hours in Edgewater, which is owned by a distant cousin of his husband.

That’s about 2,000 items total per week. He works about 80 hours a week with just one kitchen helper and a dishwasher in the back of the house. Mike is his front of the house guy, who only has one person to help on Saturdays. Service is surprisingly smooth at the counter service shop with lines that can suddenly surge out the door even early on a Wednesday. Dogs wait patiently out front or take a big stretch on the patio out back when weather permits.

The baker is living his dream career after overcoming years of challenges, not just in the kitchen.

“Growing up gay and Asian as a Chinese kid in the ’80s was very different than it is now,” Cheng said. “But I had a good group of friends in high school.” They worked summers at a gay-owned and -operated catering company. “And it was staffed full of bright, vivid, loud-as-life flamboyant gay people who were positive role models.”

He found comfort in that kitchen, and now he’s trying to foster the same support in his space too.

And his parents have come around.

“They’ve been to the bakery and can see what I’ve been trying to do,” the baker said. “So it’s very nice.”

Sweet Rabbit Bakery

2159 W. Belmont Ave.

sweet-rabbit.com

Open: Wednesday to Friday 7 a.m to 2 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 8 a.m to 3 p.m. Closed Monday and Tuesday.

Prices: $4 (Bunny-O cookie), $4.75 (buckwheat kouign-amann), $5.50 (ham and cheese croissant), $5.75 (pistachio yuzu and strawberry rose croissants, each), $7 (egg breakfast sandwich), $4.75 (black sesame latte)

Noise: Conversation-friendly

Accessibility: Wheelchair accessible with restrooms on single level

Tribune rating: Excellent, three stars

Ratings key: Four stars, outstanding; three stars, excellent; two stars, very good; one star, good; no stars, unsatisfactory. Meals are paid for by the Tribune.

lchu@chicagotribune.com

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Chicagoans know to savor any and all bouts of warm, sunny weather. Parks and beaches are a natural draw, but so are restaurants and bars with outdoor seating, where we can laugh with a drink in one hand and a fork in the other amid peaceful vistas or vibrant cityscapes.

But where to snag a coveted chair? To help you out, the Tribune food team’s guide for outdoor patios contains spots where you can read or work for a spell, places with after-work happy hours to treat your team, plus patios fit for date night.

Alfresco your future afternoons away with our list below:

Scroll the map to see where you can find the best patios in Chicago. Click on a marker to see more information about that location.

A rooftop patio: Raised in the Loop

Take in skyscrapers and Chicago River vistas at the Renaissance Chicago Downtown Hotel’s Raised, where a patio three stories above street level makes fending off the corporate crowd and tourists worth the toil. While sometimes downtown bars skimp on flavor and service for million-dollar views, neither was sacrificed on my recent weeknight visit. Choose from cushioned couches or high-top tables to dine on shared snacks from the new California-inspired summer menu from chef Oliver Melgar, like crunchy-savory ahi tuna tacos with wonton taco shells and avocado mousse, or crispy Taiwanese popcorn chicken with sweet chili sauce. Drinks like a jammy bourbon and red wine concoction or a creamsicle-like mocktail with orange juice and vanilla syrup are the perfect complement to a night out in a city with such stunning views. — Lauryn Azu

1 W. Upper Wacker Drive, 312-795-3308, raisedbarchicago.com

Other rooftop patios: Gene’s Sausage Shop and Delicatessen in Lincoln Square, Tavern on the Point in Edison Park, Twisted Spoke in West Town, Open Outcry Brewing Co. in Morgan Park

A newly opened patio: Goose Island Salt Shed Pub in West Town

Goose Island Salt Shed Pub started pouring drinks May 3. Founded by John Hall in 1988 on Clybourn Avenue in Lincoln Park, the Chicago brewery closed that original location in December and moved to its new home right next to the Salt Shed. The new pub’s patio looks out onto the river and downtown skyline, and has tables with umbrellas and couches to lounge on. Treat yourself to snacks such as pretzels with beer cheese and mustard or fill up on larger meals such as a smash burger with fries. And yes, you can visit the pub without a ticket to see a show. — Kayla Samoy

1221 W. Blackhawk St., 312-915-0071, gooseisland.com

Other new patios: 101 Club in Streeterville, Casa Chi in Streeterville, Maxwell’s Trading in the West Loop, Kindling in the Loop

A patio to sip coffee and send emails: Beatrix Fulton Market in the West Loop

I usually do my cafe writing cramped in a poorly lit corner, rotating like a sunflower to the nearest open window. Beatrix is a wonderful alternative. There’s flexibility, abundant space and a motivating amount of lovely green plants at the Lettuce Entertain You restaurant, bakery and cafe. You could start your morning on the comfy patio couches with a coffee, move into the shaded indoor/outdoor area with a pastry as the heat rises and then grab brunch with colleagues under umbrellas on the restaurant side. The main attraction (besides the free WiFi) is the cafe and bakery with a gorgeous display case of visually sumptuous baked goods. Beatrix’s pastry counter also opens as early as 7 a.m. and the restaurant closes at 9 p.m. at the earliest. — Ahmed Ali Akbar

834 W. Fulton Market, 312-733-0370, beatrixrestaurants.com/beatrix/fulton-market

Other patios to sip coffee and send emails: Build Coffee in Woodlawn, Dark Matter Osmium in Lakeview, Afro Joe’s Coffee and Tea in Beverly, Cafe 53 in Hyde Park

A patio with an after-work happy hour: Nicky’s of Beverly in Beverly

Soak up the sun after work underneath blues-themed murals on stacked shipping containers at this recently redesigned South Side restaurant that has been serving Chicago classics like pizza puffs for two decades. A three-hour happy hour Mondays through Fridays includes deals on beer, wine and craft cocktails, including a delicious watermelon basil vodka smash from mixologist Lizzy Benner. Situated on a bustling stretch of Western Avenue, Nicky’s family-friendly patio is perfect for casual hangouts and people-watching, and its cozy fire pits will keep you warm after the sun sets. — L.A.

10500 S. Western Ave., 773-233-3072, nickysofbeverly.com 

Other patios with happy hours: Franklin Tap in the Loop (all day, rotating specials), Diego in West Town (Tuesday through Friday 4-6 p.m., Sunday 6 p.m.-midnight), Pilsen Yards in Pilsen (Wednesday through Friday 3-5:30 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 3-4:30 p.m.), Bixi Beer in Logan Square (Sunday and Wednesday through Friday 3-5 p.m.)

A patio that’s dog-friendly with Chicago-style flavor: Justice of the Pies in Avalon Park

If your dog needs a little more space for that big stretch while you’re dining out and enjoying some favorite Chicago-style flavors, then my dog Kōl gives his big paws up to the patio at Justice of the Pies. Chef and owner Maya-Camille Broussard — and her chocolate goldendoodle Milo — clearly had comfort and style in mind when designing the bakery she opened just last year that’s accessible inside and out. You can easily move the lightweight metal chairs to make space for your pup. Then get some sweet and savory treats, including the seasonal Pie La Mode, a cup filled with warm peaches, a salted caramel sauce, vanilla soft serve ice cream and a whole slice of her salted caramel peach pie. The pie is one of Broussard’s signature flavors that goes back to her earliest days at the farmers market on Daley Plaza. — Louisa Chu

8655 S. Blackstone Ave., justiceofthepies.com

Other patios that are dog-friendly with Chicago-style flavor: The Wiener’s Circle in Lincoln Park (char dog), Johnnie’s Beef in Elmwood Park (combo sausage and beef), Bungalow by Middle Brow in Logan Square (Tavern Tuesday veg supreme), Sweet Rabbit Bakery in Roscoe Village (seasonal fruit danish)

A patio for date night: Volo Restaurant Wine Bar in Roscoe Village

Impress your date with an intimate night out dining on flatbreads and charcuterie boards in cozy outdoor cabanas at Volo Restaurant Wine Bar, all underneath twinkling lights once the sun sets. A sizable wine menu features flights of rose on Wednesdays and selections from New Zealand, France and Spain. Pair your bubbly with chef-partner Stephen Dunne’s spring menu including croque-monsieur with ham, gruyere and tender greens, and finish the meal the romantic way with a decadent chocolate mousse. Summer weather calls for spritzes too, and Volo’s six prosecco-based spritzes are $7 during happy hour. — L.A.

2008 W. Roscoe St., 773-348-4600, volorestaurant.com

Other patios fit for date night: Gemini in Lincoln Park, The Hi-Low in Humboldt Park, Kubo in Lake View, Chez Joël in Little Italy

A patio with activities to keep you entertained: Central Park Bar in Avondale

If you’re looking to engage in some friendly competition while relaxing with a beverage, Central Park Bar in the Avondale neighborhood is one of my favorite spots thanks to its bumper pool table. Not nearly as prolific of a bar offering as the standard pool table, bumper pool tables are smaller with built-in obstacles that change up the game. There’s bingo on Mondays, trivia on Tuesdays and crafting events on Wednesdays from June to August, so there’s plenty to do. The bar offers a few prepackaged snacks provided by Beautiful Rind Chicago, but you can bring in food, so grab a poke bowl from Poke Okie just down the street. — K.S.

2924 N. Central Park Ave., 773-698-6063, centralparkbarchicago.com

Other patios with activities: Park and Field in Logan Square (bocce ball), Kaiser Tiger in West Loop (bocce ball and bags), Parson’s in Logan Square (pingpong), District Brew Yards in West Town (board games)

Big screen or home stream, takeout or dine-in, Tribune writers are here to steer you toward your next great experience. Sign up for your free weekly Eat. Watch. Do. newsletter here.

That’s surprising since the new Italian establishment is run by Lettuce Entertain You. The biggest restaurant group in the city made the chef a partner in the concept.

Funke is perhaps best known for his restaurants in the Los Angeles area where he’s based. Their celebrity diners include everyone from Michelle Obama to Beyoncé.

Here, the fledgling business features a bar and restaurant on the second floor of the St. Regis Chicago luxury hotel in the Lakeshore East neighborhood. Bar Tre Dita opened in February, and the restaurant followed a month later in March.

Funke said when he initially talked about Tre Dita with Lettuce co-founder Rich Melman, and his son and president of the restaurant group, R.J. Melman, they talked about a Tuscan steakhouse. Because Tuscany celebrates beef and so does Chicago, the chef said. Then they realized they wanted a Tuscan experience. There just so happens to be quite a bit of beef on the menu, he added, but there are far more pastas and antipasti on the menu than there is beef.

Especially pastas. There’s a signature Funke pasta lab as you walk toward the restaurant.

“All of my restaurants, whether they’re in L.A. or Las Vegas or Chicago, the through line is always pasta,” Funke said. “Sometimes a bowl of pasta is a bowl of pasta and that’s OK. But what I seek is the connection between the pasta maker and the diner.”

If you look through the glass of the pasta lab, he added, and you see a maker rolling dough, putting their heart and soul into repetition after repetition, you’ll never look at that pasta the same.

“When people come in, they’re eating like they’re gonna die tomorrow,” said Funke, because reservations are difficult to get. “They’re really ordering as much on the menu as possible.”

To say that reservations are hard to come by is an understatement. The restaurant is open seven days a week, but for dinner only. Reservations are released seven days in advance, and book up fast. You can call and find more seats though.

You can also order from the restaurant menu on the expansive bar side despite what the website says.

The restaurant’s intention is about sharing, the chef said, and the conviviality of Italian dining.

Funke may be a maestro of pasta, but his schiacciata bianca has become a must-order item, and it’s designed for sharing. The menu describes it as a Tuscan focaccia. But it’s not like any of the flatbreads you’ll find around town, or the attributed region of Italy.

The chef has said his schiacciata is light and airy, the texture of a freshly fried doughnut. That won’t prepare you for what appears as a golden dimpled cake, glowing with extra virgin olive oil, served ceremoniously on a silver cake stand and a white doily. Showered with fragrant rosemary crisps, bejeweled with sea salt crystals and sliced in pillowy quarters, it’s lighter than the lightest yeasted doughnut you’ve ever imagined.

“Schiacciata in Tuscany and my schiacciata in Tre Dita are two very, very different things,” Funke said.

Not just at Tre Dita, but his other restaurants too, he added, where it’s called sfincione. In 2010, Funke had a sfincione at Panificio Graziano in the center of Palermo in Sicily that would obsess him for years.

“It just absolutely floored me,” the chef said. “The flavor was similar to what you would find in a pizzeria, like a Sicilian slice or even Detroit-style pizza, and not terribly dissimilar to Chicago deep dish in thickness.”

As you probably know, we have more than one Chicago-style deep dish. He means something similar to a pan pizza, where the crust is thick yet light. Not the deep dish pizza where the crust is high, but thin like a pie crust.

“So when I got back to the states, I started tinkering and tinkering and tinkering,” Funke said. “And with the help of a pastry chef, Zairah Molina, we came up with this formula. And it’s taken on very few iterations since then.”

The schiacciata rossa, topped with tomato sauce and feathery fluffs of cheese, could carry the crown of a new Chicago-style deep dish, with familiar flavors captured on a cloud.

At Tre Dita, Funke had to work with an actual doughnut chef, co-founder of Do-Rite Donuts Francis Brennan, because the weather and the humidity varies so much in Chicago, compared with Funke’s restaurants around L.A. and in Las Vegas.

“We did the same thing for the pasta lab,” he added. They had to adjust the humidity controls and formulas for all pastas made behind the window.

That includes the pici, spaghetti’s thicker Tuscan cousin, tossed with cacio e pepe.

“It’s a rowdy noodle, isn’t it?” Funke asked.

It is! When I tried to twirl a single strand, it uncoiled repeatedly. I wished I’d brought chopsticks to the noodle fight. It’s best eaten strand by strand, “Lady and the Tramp” style.

Cacio e pepe is abundantly black pepper heavy and piquant from the pecorino, the chef said.

“But then you fold in this textural aspect and they’re all fighting for dominance,” Funke said. “And it’s just this experience in your mouth. Like what is going on? I love that it’s so rowdy. And I think it pairs just spectacularly with that condimento.”

As the first of all 10 pastas I ordered in two visits, I initially thought the pici was a prelude to what’s become known as his controversial pasta cooking style.

The late Los Angeles Times restaurant critic Jonathan Gold wrote in 2017, “The ultrafirm texture is definitely his house style — you could interpret it as an extreme interpretation of what Italians call ‘al dente,’ cooked to provide resistance to the tooth …”

And current L.A. Times critic Bill Addison wrote in 2022, “The hill Funke will forever die on concerns the texture he feels pasta should be cooked: two shades firmer than al dente …”

But his pasta is different in Chicago. I wondered, has that style evolved and literally softened?

“It absolutely has,” Funke said. Al dente is on a spectrum, he added, and it’s also very subjective. “What is considered al chiodo in Rome is like super crazy hard to everybody else.”

The gnudi di spinaci, gnocchi’s tender Tuscan cousin, infused green with spinach and earthy with wild mushrooms, is quiet yet complex, holding pure comfort and contentment. The tortelli di taleggio e patate, essentially ravioli stuffed with Yukon gold potato and cheese, is a labor-intensive pasta that will have you appreciating its maker, especially when the tiny pillows are slipped in a pool of butter and sage. The rigatoncini all’arrabbiata, garnished with a slender red chile pepper, delivers the heat in an elemental tomato sauce coating the bowl of chunky tubes.

The rigatoni con guanciale e pomodorini, the pasta a bit bigger than its spicy sibling, looks so similar until a bite reveals exquisitely crispy bits of cured pork cheek. The spaghetti alle vongole seems to be more pristine Manila clams than the pasta we probably think we know best. The pappardelle con ragù d’anatra, similarly highlights the rich shredded duck ragù over the wide ribbons of pasta. The lasagne bastarde though, is a celebration of the extraordinary spinach green pasta sheets, a nod to Funke’s Italian pasta maestra, Alessandra Spisni, made with chestnut flour, but served over pesto genovese and finished with Sicilian pine nuts, so somewhat Tuscan, but thoroughly delicious.

The tagliatelle al ragù and linguine al limone though seemed too soft. Was that the chef’s intention?

Yes, for several reasons.

“It’s basically impossible to cook al dente fresh noodles, like tagliatelle,” Funke said. “It should be soft and supple.”

He tries to focus on how they cook pasta in Italy, but also how we eat it in Chicago.

“Before, I was a horse with blinders on,” Funke said. “And I did not care about what people thought about how undercooked the pasta was, because I drew a hard line.”

The tagliatelle al ragù took me back to a favorite childhood Chinese dish, because that dish was more about tender pork than the pasta.

“And this is not a pasta that lives in the Instagram age,” the chef said. “If you stopped to take a picture of it, you’re doing yourself a disservice to that pasta.”

What can pause for pictures is the tiramisu classica by pastry chef Juan Gutiérrez, but it’s simply the classic dessert. The Tre Dita gattò though, with chocolate wrapped around devil’s food cake and dark chocolate mousse, had a pile of dark cherries clumped on the plate.

Finish with a striking slice of torta della nonna that’s so light it rivals gelato, and the baci al limone, chewy and bright lemon almond bites, which Funke said were his favorite cookies and understandably so.

For drinks, get the refreshing Tre cocktail mixed with Piùcinque Italian gin, or the wonderfully woodsy Dita cocktail made with Cappelletti sfumato rhubarb amaro.

I considered ordering the 42-ounce, 60-day aged, three-fingers-thick namesake porterhouse, but clearly you don’t need a $290 steak to have a good time. When I asked my server which cut was most popular, he said without hesitation the tagliata di manzo. It’s a boneless 8-ounce ribeye cap. All the steaks are cooked over the live wood fire grill and sliced in the kitchen. My tagliata was correctly cooked and served with a generous side of arugula salad, but strangely seemed to have gone nowhere near wood nor fire.

The restaurant space itself, despite the soaring windows, is long and narrow. It feels crowded with too many big tables that sat empty while smaller parties sat shoulder to shoulder. Service was well-intentioned, but so rushed.

And then there were the restrooms, often an indicator of hospitality. Avoid the singles by the bar with locks so unclear that I walked in on someone for a moment. The main restrooms behind the restaurant had working locks but were littered with plastic water bottles. You may want to go downstairs to the lobby restrooms managed by the hotel.

Funke has made Tre Dita the house of pasta, and he’s not always home, but clearly that can work. When I went, the legendary chef Jean Joho, formerly of Everest and now a partner, was at the pass. I hope this young restaurant rises to those heights, with the pasta maestro as an older chef mentoring that pass or another someday.

Tre Dita

401 E. Wacker Drive (in The St Regis Chicago hotel, 2nd floor)

treditarestaurant.com

Open: Restaurant daily 5 to 9:30 p.m. Bar Sunday to Thursday 4 to 10 p.m., cocktails until midnight; Friday and Saturday to 11 p.m., cocktails until 1 a.m.

Prices: $11 (schiacciata bianca), $27 (pici cacio e pepe), $36 (gnudi di spinaci), $42 (tagliatelle al ragù), $76 (tagliata di manzo), $19 (tiramisù classica), $26 (Tre cocktail)

Noise: Conversation-friendly

Accessibility: Wheelchair accessible by elevator with restrooms on single level

Tribune rating: Very good to excellent, two and a half stars

Ratings key: Four stars, outstanding; three stars, excellent; two stars, very good; one star, good; no stars, unsatisfactory. Meals are paid for by the Tribune.

lchu@chicagotribune.com

Big screen or home stream, takeout or dine-in, Tribune writers are here to steer you toward your next great experience. Sign up for your free weekly Eat. Watch. Do. newsletter here.

After all, the Gangnam District in Seoul was made famous by “Gangnam Style,” the global hit song and music video by South Korean rapper Psy.

The space’s transformation took a while, but it was worth the wait.

Gangnam Food Hall serves fantastical Asian American Chicagoan food and drinks with surprising style and substance.

Despite its name, it is, in fact, not Korean. Even though there’s a bulgogi steak burrito stuffed with kimchi fried rice. Nor is it a food hall with various vendors.

“Gangnam Food Hall is a mix of things I truly love,” said Kenny Yang. The designer and restaurateur owns all seven stalls and Gangnam Market, the attached grocery store. He held a grand opening weekend for the food hall last December.

Yang may be best known for his Strings Ramen shops. The food hall, however, offers far more of his favorite foods.

“Ramen, tacos, sushi and breakfast sandwiches,” he said. “Growing up in Chicago, I was influenced by every culture.”

That includes his own as a Chinese immigrant kid.

Yang does have a business partner with one of the food hall stalls, he said. Matthew Chiu is the namesake and co-owner of Matt Bakes, a micro bakery. His parents founded Chiu Quon, the oldest bakery in Chinatown. He took over the family business with his sister Joyce Chiu.

At Matt Bakes, the best-selling item has become not the classic Portuguese egg tart, but their take on the 554 from Seven Treasures.

They grew up in Chinatown going to the now-closed restaurant a lot, Yang said. He added that former owner Ben Au is a good friend of Chiu, and had no problem with them making the 554. It was once simply char siu and fried eggs over steamed rice drizzled with soy sauce.

At Matt Bakes, the 554 is very different. Like the food hall, it’s intense with a neon glow. Thick cut chunks of char siu and sunny side up eggs cover a bed of garlic jasmine rice, with tiny concentrated cups of dark soy sauce and tart pickled vegetables on the side.

I was curious about why they made a Gangnam-style 554.

“People like pork belly with a little bit of fattiness now,” Yang said. “We use the shoulder and neck instead of the lean pork loin.”

They also use fruit juice to marinate the meat instead of a traditional sauce, then sous vide and slow bake instead of fire roasting, he said. They even bake garlic dry to make a powder that’s mixed into the rice, he added.

Speaking of rice, what’s behind the name Workout Rice, another food hall stall? One of the featured items is gyudon, the Japanese beef and rice bowl, theirs made with thinly sliced braised wagyu.

“Just because I’ve worked out all my life,” Yang said laughing. “I was on the basketball team, baseball team and swim team.”

He was born in Guangdong Province in China, moved to Chicago at 11 years old with his father, and grew up in Bridgeport, but went to grade school in Chinatown.

“And then I went to Harper High School by Ford City,” said Yang, followed by the University of Illinois at Chicago. “After I graduated from UIC, I went back to Asia.”

“I was working in Japan for about four, five years,” he said, at a design firm, which kept hours until around 10 p.m. every night. “The only thing open on my street then was a little shop with an old guy doing ramen.”

The older man saw that the young Yang liked his ramen and asked if he’d like to help at the shop.

“‘Oh, I would love to,’” the new student said to his teacher. “So every day after work, I worked there from around 10 p.m. to about 3 a.m.”

The shop master specialized in tonkotsu ramen, prized for its broth made with pork bones.

“But after a while he starts showing me chicken ramen and beef ramen,” Yang said. “Like anything could be ramen.”

And turkey is one of his favorite proteins. So Yang eventually worked on his turkey ramen for a year or two before having his friends taste-test it.

“Seven Faced Bird is such a weird name,” he said of another food hall stall. “But it actually means turkey in Japanese.”

The fan-favorite item there is the spicy miso turkey ramen. I had wondered if he used turkey, from the broth to char siu, to accommodate religious restrictions on pork.

“I just love turkey,” he said. “I think it’s like a better tasting chicken.”

Speaking of chicken, a Hainanese chicken rice bowl special (buy one, get one for 50% off) back at Workout Rice is such a good deal. It’s like the Costco rotisserie chicken loss leader of the food hall. Yang said they don’t make any money on the special, but he offers the discount to get more people to eat another of his favorite foods. It takes hours to make the poached chicken and golden rice.

And it takes extra effort to make coconut milk at Stringria Coffee and Tea Bar.

“That’s my bubble milk tea shop,” Yang said. They use fresh coconuts from the market for his daily coffee drink. “I just go in and order my hot coconut latte in the morning, but most people like it ice cold.”

There’s no dish of greens at the food hall yet. Even though the produce section at the market offers a solid selection. Recently that included Chinese broccoli, which was great quality and on sale at a price that rivaled Chinatown.

Greens are coming to the food hall, Yang said. It was a matter of finding the right cooks to work under chef Ryan Cai. He’s worked at the Strings Ramen shops for 10 years, and trained as a master chef in Shanghai, Yang said.

When asked about the Gangnam name, he said it was indeed inspired by the district in Seoul. But Yang chose the name for its international influence, and its translation meaning south of the river. The market and food hall are south of the North Branch of the Chicago River. It’s personal and poetic, but a bit confusing.

As is trying to find your way inside. Look for tiny red signs outside the apartment building. You get free parking for 90 minutes in the garage with a validation.

At the market, follow the neon lights to the wonderful whimsical world of the food hall.

Here are all seven stalls at the Gangnam Food Hall with what to get, and skip. Stringria stands at the entrance, where you should get a drink first, even if it’s just a cup of free fruit-infused water. Then head to the back and start at Matt Bakes. Work your way around to each stall. And yes, you’ll probably hear in your head, “Oppa Gangnam style.”

Stringria Coffee and Tea Bar

Get the coconut latte with house-made coconut milk, hot like Yang or lightly iced, which I loved with its strong and smooth espresso flavor. The brown sugar boba was also absolutely perfect, with impeccable tapioca pearls, made-to-order half-sweet with soy milk (an additional charge). The friendly staff behind the counter are such bubble tea pros. They said the watermelon jasmine tea with coconut milk crystal boba is popular too, but I say skip it, and those hard konjac pearls, for something else on the extensive menu.

Matt Bakes

Get the chicken sando, a golden fried chicken thigh with crunchy pickle coins, sweet and spicy zing sauce plus aioli in a thick and toasted custom Chinese pineapple bun. Or try its cousin, a pork chop sandwich, like a katsu sando (not bone-in Maxwell Street style), also in a pineapple bao. The 554, iconic with its char siu and two fried eggs on rice, had barbecue pork that was just too tough on my tasting, so you may want to skip it and honor the memory of Seven Treasures.

Gangnam Taco

Get the bulgogi steak burrito, fat and stuffed with thinly sliced beef, kimchi fried rice, a gochujang mayo sauce and more. Somehow it remains extraordinarily restrained and elegant. The skilled staff behind the counter said the bulgogi bibimbap was another top dish, and for good reason. It’s a classic bowl, but with a fried egg and that gochujang mayo. Skip the taste of three signature tacos with beef, pork and chicken, a super salty mess that gets lost in translation.

Workout Rice

Get the gyudon, or better yet the three toppings combo donburi with the same sliced wagyu plus beef chunks and tender tongue, all on rice with braised daikon and a side of miso soup. And remember the Hainanese chicken rice deal (buy one, get one at 50% off), Mom Chu’s new favorite, for the silky deboned, skin-on bird, but we do wish the seasoned rice was fattier.

Seven Faced Bird Ramen

Get the spicy shrimp yakisoba, which is not that spicy, made with stir-fried ramen noodles and topped with fluttering bonito flakes. Try the spicy miso turkey ramen if you really love turkey, also not so spicy, but I’m not convinced that it’s the better bird. It is a deal at less than $9 plus tax and tip, especially finished with turkey char siu. Skip the deep-fried turkey wonton, six poorly wrapped dumplings filled with shrimp too.

Market Sushi

Get the salmon Dragon Roll that’s just lovely, topped with Norwegian salmon and avocado, rolled with imitation crab and cucumber. Skip the Godzilla roll, a deep-fried kaiju with salmon, white tuna, red snapper, eel, cream cheese, avocado, jalapeno and topped with masago, eel sauce, spicy mayo and scallions. And forget about the Fire Dragon Roll, baked with shrimp tempura and cream cheese, and topped with salmon, white tuna and too much sauce.

Market Bar

You can get a refreshing Japanese whisky highball, or a few signature cocktails including a Yuzu 75, which you can sip at the bar or throughout the food hall and market. Let’s hope they add nonalcoholic drinks beyond spirit-free cans and bottles too.

This May, to celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, four stalls at Gangnam Food Hall will take turns offering 30% off everything: Mondays at Matt Bakes, Tuesdays at Gangnam Taco, Wednesdays at Workout Rice and Thursdays at Seven Faced Bird Ramen. 

Gangnam Food Hall

1001 W. Chicago Ave.

gangnammarketusa.com

Open: Stringria Coffee and Tea Bar weekdays from 9:30 a.m., weekends from 8:30 a.m., daily to 8:30 p.m.; Matt Bakes daily 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Gangnam Taco and Workout Rice daily 11 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.; Seven Faced Bird Ramen daily 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Market Sushi and Market Bar daily 10 a.m. to 8:45 p.m.

Prices: $4.95 (iced coconut latte at Stringria Coffee and Tea Bar), $8.37 (spicy miso turkey ramen at Seven Faced Bird Ramen), $11.95 (salmon Dragon Roll at Market Sushi), $12.95 (bulgogi steak burrito at Gangnam Taco), $12.95 (Hainanese chicken rice bowl at Workout Rice), $14.88 (554 at Matt Bakes).

Noise: Conversation-friendly

Accessibility: Wheelchair accessible with restrooms on single level

Tribune rating: Excellent, three stars

Ratings key: Four stars, outstanding; three stars, excellent; two stars, very good; one star, good; no stars, unsatisfactory. Meals are paid for by the Tribune.

lchu@chicagotribune.com

Big screen or home stream, takeout or dine-in, Tribune writers are here to steer you toward your next great experience. Sign up for your free weekly Eat. Watch. Do. newsletter here.

Umaga Bakehouse celebrated its grand opening with lines out the door and sold-out shelves in the Mayfair neighborhood on April 20.

Kissel and Robert Fagaragan had to close their debut business for a day just to bake. The owners, who are wife and husband, didn’t expect the crowds.

“We couldn’t even fill up our shelves,” Kissel Fagaragan said. She’s the general manager, and he’s the head baker. Every time racks came out, she said, customers bought out all the hot baked goods.

That’s despite the bakery section inside Seafood City Supermarket just across the parking lot, and two bakeries in its shopping center. But the new shop is different.

Umaga Bakehouse is the reimagined Filipino bakery, Fagaragan said. They wanted to modernize the mom-and-pop shop bakery, she added, but still keep it traditional while not just making everything ube.

The couple wanted to keep it to their roots in the Philippines, she said, especially with their ensaymada. The delicately sweet and lightly savory baked brioche pastry is traditionally topped with grated white cheese and a dusting of sugar.

“That was one of the very first items my husband made in the lab, our home kitchen,” Fagaragan said. She had asked him to recreate the ensaymada that family brought back from the Philippines. He finally came up with their recipe, she said, that’s pillowy and buttery.

Their classic ensaymada has become a must-order item since their first pop-up held just last December at Side Practice Coffee. They considered critiques from friends and family, including their daughter’s friends’ parents. An almond ensaymada has also emerged as a fan favorite among their different flavors.

Pandesal, though, is their daily staple bread, finished in fine bread crumbs.

“That’s the No. 1 go-to for any Filipino,” Fagaragan said.

The couple met working at a bakery, but he was a cleaner then, not a baker, even though his father once had a bakery back in the Philippines.

“His dad, he just opened a shop in his own home,” she said about the former mini-mart in front of her husband’s childhood home that sold bread. That was so different from her childhood in California.

But she came up with the name for their bakery. Umaga means morning in Tagalog, one of the major languages spoken in the Philippines.

“You want fresh bread in the morning when you come into a bakery,” Fagaragan said.

And their senorita bread was the bestseller during their grand opening.

The Spanish bread, she said, is a small soft, pillowy roll with melted butter. “We’re giving it to you hot in a box.” When you bite into it, she added, it tastes like a very light pandesal with sweet butter that melts in your mouth.

The senorita bread is sold by the dozen for $7.99.

Another hit was their Ilocos-style empanada.

“From my husband’s province in the Philippines,” Fagaragan said. It’s bigger than their other empanadas, and made with a rice flour wrapper, filled with housemade longanisa, egg and papaya before it’s fried crisp.

The ube horchata takes days to make and sold out too.

The couple had planned to open their bakery daily, but they’re closed on Mondays for now.

Meanwhile, they plan to add halo-halo soon, made with jackfruit and banana that they’ll cook in syrup and Milky Milky ice cream by a local Filipino American woman-owned business.

And look for online ordering in the next few weeks.

“We also have artwork in the store,” Fagaragan said. The pieces feature their different family provinces in the Philippines and regional specialties to come.

“It’s not just gonna be the typical Filipino food you can get anywhere else.”

4703 W. Foster Ave., 872-250-3565, instagram.com/umagabakehouse

More new and notable openings, in alphabetical order:

A Taste of the Philippines

Chef Kathy Vega Hardy moved her Filipino restaurant from a Chicago French Market stall to its own home. A Taste of the Philippines just opened with a ribbon-cutting event in the Jefferson Park neighborhood on April 19. Get breakfast lumpia filled with bacon, egg and cheese; lechon fried rice with pork belly; and ube chocolate chip cookies. Do note they’re only open on Fridays for dinner, and Saturdays for brunch and dinner for now.

5914 W. Lawrence Ave., 720-746-8880, atasteofthephilippines.com

Bar La Rue

DineAmic Hospitality has transformed a corner of a new Fulton Market tower into a flowery French restaurant. Bar La Rue said bienvenue on April 18. You’ll find a Royale with Cheese smash burger, also available “Provence style” served over Gruyère cheese fondue (which is not a thing in the South of France, mais ça va); Bougie Chicken Tenders with caviar; and cocktails bien sûr plus nonalcoholic drinks, including a rosemary lemon Enchanté.

820 W. Fulton St., 312-533-4607, barlarue.com

Cava

Wicker Park welcomed Chicago’s first Cava, the fast-casual and fast-growing Mediterranean chain restaurant April 25. Get your bowls and pitas with proteins such as harissa honey chicken and spicy lamb meatballs, along with a host of dressings and toppings. The brand also offers handcrafted juices and is famous for its cult-favorite pita chips and Crazy Feta dip. Look for a second location in Vernon Hills this summer.

1484 N. Milwaukee Ave., cava.com, 872-319-2016

El Puestito

Chef and owner Ricardo Rodríguez is on the road again with his seasonal Mexican food truck, the mobile incarnation of his former “Best Mexican Restaurant Hiding in a Grocery Store.” El Puestito parked in Belmont Gardens on March 11. Follow the aroma of their signature woodfire-grilled pollo asado, now available alongside new quesabirria tacos and birria ramen. Do note they’re usually only open on weekend nights for now.

4414 W. Diversey Ave., 312-522-7607, lpuestito.com

Electric Funeral Bar

Jackalope Coffee & Tea House owners John Almonte and January Overton are “putting the fun in funeral.” Electric Funeral Bar began visitations in Bridgeport on April 10. They’re “dying to meet you” with their Electric Funeral cocktail (mixed with bright blue curaçao), The Grim & Tonic and The Morgue-arita, across the street from the new Ramova Grill and Taproom.

3529 S. Halsted St., instagram.com/electricfuneralbar

Migos Fine Foods

Chef Brian Jupiter and his Frontier restaurant chef de cuisine Azazi Morsi have teamed up to bring halal fried chicken and tacos to the Northwest Side. Migos Fine Foods started sizzling in the Portage Park neighborhood on April 5. Order fried chicken wings with buttermilk biscuits, lamb barbacoa tacos with harissa tzatziki and beignet sticks fried to order.

5044 W. Montrose Ave., 872-946-7015, migoschicago.com

Professor Pizza Old Town

Pizzaiolo Tony Scardino just debuted his first dine-in pizzeria. Professor Pizza started slicing in Old Town on April 12. Get his stunning deluxe sausage and peppers with whipped ricotta on a cracker-thin tavern-style crust, a wedge salad with pepperoni and green goddess dressing, plus a Sunday night-only dinner with spaghetti meatballs.

1610 N. Wells St., 312-471-0400, professor.pizza

Swadesi Cafe

Indienne chef Sujan Sarkar and culinary director Sahil Sethi have partnered again on a new project, an Indian coffee shop. Swadesi Cafe began brewing in the West Loop on March 26. Sip on masala chai, possibly paired with a butter chicken croissant or a samosa chaat croissant with tamarind and mint.

328 S. Jefferson St., 708-553-6350, swadesicafe.com

In closing news:

Foxtrot and Dom’s Kitchen & Market, the luxury convenience and grocery stores with cafes, abruptly shut down all locations across Chicago and the country on April 23.

Cafe Selmarie, the beloved restaurant in the Lincoln Square neighborhood that marked its 40th anniversary last September with an announcement that owner Birgit Kobayashi would be retiring, finally closed on April 27.

Tribune editor Lauryn Azu contributed to this story.

Know of a Chicago-area restaurant or bar that’s new and notable? Email food critic Louisa Chu at lchu@chicagotribune.com.

Big screen or home stream, takeout or dine-in, Tribune writers are here to steer you toward your next great experience. Sign up for your free weekly Eat. Watch. Do. newsletter here.

In other words, a box of Cheerios can run you $6 and it’s time to cut back. Your wallet will thank you for finding deals and readjusting your shopping, even as inflation is expected to level out.

The name of the game? Comparing price per unit as well as between stores and brands. Getting deals also involves a good amount of planning. Chicago neighborhoods are home to various specialty grocers worth traveling to: If you can wait, you can get a good price on staples while you’re making a trip for specialty items from your local market.

Costco, Aldi and Trader Joe’s sometimes offer good prices, but typically, when you compare by price-per-ounce, freshness or quality, they fail to beat a local Chicago business or specialty market by some other measure. So rather than buying blindly at the big boxes, I note where I can find cheaper prices on some of my staples and wait until I’m making the trip anyway.

Note: I do go to Costco to pick up Bachan’s barbecue sauce and Kewpie mayo, which have a competitive price per ounce (and a larger size!). I also think their milk and egg prices are more stable. But buying in bulk also means things going bad and wasted money!

Here are a few items that Tribune writers and editors return to that are good deals.

— Ahmed Ali Akbar

Chicken “saddle legs” from Farm City Meat ($1.19 a pound, purchased March 31)

I spent almost a year and a half without a solid halal butcher, which was a shame because I frequently host guests who only eat zabiha halal meat and I also like to cook goat pulao.

There are plenty of butchers on Devon Street and in other Muslim neighborhoods like Bridgeview, but it was difficult to choose one.

A tip led me to Farm City Meat and their ludicrously huge butcher counter. The manager said they get pretty good deals because they buy in bulk. They’re a bit of a hidden gem.

It’s quickly become my go-to place. I haven’t bought enough to comment on the quality, but the prices and range of specialty cuts of meat are astounding. I’m excited to try their goat ribs for $5 a pound. My aunt in Pakistan suggested it was one of the best cuts for pulao, but I could never find it. None of the goat options were above $7 a pound the last time I visited, which seems pretty competitive.

But the really surprising thing is that you can get chicken for $1.19 a pound if you buy unseparated dark meat. I haven’t seen prices like that since college. I’d recommend getting the skin taken off. More standard cuts like boneless thighs are more expensive per pound.

Local Muslims seem to know the deal is good here because I’ve seen people leave with 10, 20, 30 pounds of meat. They may even be supplying their restaurants or stocking up their freezers. I started to order extra meat to throw in my freezer for when halal-observant family visits.

There are other specialist options worth noting: You can get paya (trotters), beef shank and more varieties of halal steaks than I’ve seen. Lines can get very intense, so call ahead to prep your orders. While you’re there, you can also pick up some bread from all over the world: naan, injera, pita and more.

2255 W. Devon Ave., 773-274-2255

— A. A. 

Publican Quality Bread’s sourdough sliced loaf from wholesale buyers, including Gracias Maria ($7 a loaf, purchased April 5)

Tribune photo editor Marianne Mather was the first to inform me that Publican Quality Bread can be cheaper when not bought directly from the source. She had been picking it up from the Dill Pickle Food Co-op, starting at $8. I looked it up on their website and purchasing sourdough from PQB directly starts at $9 and some breads are nearly $12. A representative for Publican confirmed that they don’t set prices for their clients and they were aware it could be cheaper outside of their own bakery. Of course, bread at other stores could also be less fresh or a day old, compared with buying directly from the source.

When I first moved to Chicago, I was on the hunt for a wheaty daily driver. The prices for preservative-laden, plastic-bag bread were way too high to justify. Turano was one option and I still pick that up occasionally.

But when I’m spending more than $5 on a loaf, it better be versatile and fun to eat. Eventually, I settled on Publican’s sliced Spence Sourdough Pullman loaf picked up from Belli’s on Blue Island Avenue. Publican’s Greg Wade won the 2018 Outstanding Baker James Beard Award and it showed; the bread held up well in my fridge for longer than you’d think. Also, it’s very hefty and filling as a sandwich bread, griddled up on a pan and filled with toppings.

Since then, bread prices have skyrocketed. Belli’s is now Gracias Maria and they still stock it; I picked up a loaf of Publican bread there recently for $7. Dill Pickle Food Co-op still has their bread listed for $8-$9. At least in my experience, the sliced Publican sourdough lasts much longer than you’d think and takes well to being heated with oil and butter. I don’t have a toaster, but I bet that would be good too.

Dill Pickle Food Co-op, 2746 N. Milwaukee Ave., 773-252-2667, dillpickle.coop
Gracias Maria, 1850 S. Blue Island Ave., instagram.com/graciasmariapilsen 

— A. A. 

Pulmuone kimchi stew ramen from Joong Boo Market Warehouse ($5.95 for a 4-pack purchased April 5)

You probably know by now about the sashimi special at Joong Boo Market on Wednesdays and Fridays. The platters are available in Avondale, Glenview and the new store in Schaumburg. The price has gone up a bit, from $25 to $30, but it’s still a deal.

They’re not available at the Joong Boo Market Warehouse location in North Park, which celebrates its fourth anniversary in June. They don’t have a Snack Corner inside, or a Wang Mandoo stand outside either.

What they do have is a towering wall of Korean ramen.

That includes Pulmuone kimchi stew ramen, which just dropped about a month ago. The South Korean brand specializes in plant-based foods. Plus the new ramen flavor 4-pack is on sale for $5.95, normally $7.49, and nearly $17 on Amazon.

Look for the sale signs, not just on ramen, but throughout the store.

And at around 6 p.m. on weeknights, they mark down the prices on prepared food. It’s not buy one get one free anymore, but it’s still a good deal, even at full price. For example, if there are any kimchi-jeon, the kimchi pancakes labeled kimchi pizza, they go from $4.99 to $2.99 for a 10-pack of minis.

5800 N. Pulaski Road, 773-478-2550, joongboomarket.com

— Louisa Kung Liu Chu

Potatoes, oranges or apples from Jerry’s Fruit and Garden (49 cents a pound through April 24 )

Fruit is one of the hardest things to reliably find on sale and still in fresh, edible condition. Some staff members at the Tribune lamented the loss of Stanley’s, which closed in 2019. But one option, up in Niles, is Jerry’s, which has absolutely drool-worthy prices listed for fresh fruit: 49 cents a pound for anything seems wonderful these days.

Locally, I typically find good fruit prices at the Cermak Fresh Market on Cermak Road. Some highlights from last August (the last time I intentionally documented this) include 99 cents for a pound of strawberries, $1.29 for a pound of plum tomatoes and $1.49 for Michigan peaches.

Costco fruit prices are seemingly not competitive if you compare per ounce, but of course, they are reliably fresh. You get what you pay for!

7901 N. Milwaukee Ave., Niles, 847-967-1440, jerrysfruitandgarden.com

— A. A. 

Dark Matter Coffee from La Casa del Pueblo ($12 for a 12-ounce bag purchased April 17)

Specialty coffee is a luxury, sure, and it is pricey. You can buy Dark Matter Coffee starting at $19 for 12 ounces at Sleep Walk Chocolateria, the Pilsen location of the coffee brand near La Casa del Pueblo. Or strangely, you can go to La Casa del Pueblo and buy it starting at $12. At first, I thought I was getting ripped off; but when I asked Dark Matter how La Casa sells it for less, the barista was as confused as me.

A manager later told me something similar to Publican’s story: Dark Matter sells the beans wholesale to markets and they don’t set the price. The difference is the roast date: Typically at Dark Matter locations, you’re looking at a product that is at most two weeks from the roast date. At La Casa, it may be more like a month old, which for someone like me, who likes specialty coffee AND a deal, is perfectly fine.

The single-origin options are wonderful, but usually the priciest: $15 at La Casa del Pueblo (down from $22 direct from Dark Matter). The house blend, A Love Supreme, is $12 at Casa (down from $19), a price of only $1 an ounce. At any rate, that’s quite good for specialty coffee.

1810 S. Blue Island Ave., 312-421-4640
— A. A. 

Where do you find grocery deals? Email aakbar@chicagotribune.com with your tips. Be sure to tell us the date purchased, the price of the item and the price per ounce when applicable.

OKAY Cannabis and West Town Bakery in Wheeling is the first and only consumption lounge where you can have your cake balls and smoke cannabis too, all with a focus on craft.

Curiously, you can’t consume cannabis edibles from the dispensary in the lounge. That includes the outstanding chocolate bars by Mindy Segal, the James Beard Award-winning chef and owner of Mindy’s Bakery in Wicker Park.

And you can’t drink alcohol from the bar in the lounge, either. That includes the creative cocktails by beverage director Julieta Campos.

But you can have more than a dozen flavors of colossal cake balls, which do not have cannabis, by chef and partner Christopher Teixeira.

So how does the consumption lounge work?

First, you must be 21 or older to enter the dispensary or the lounge.

“We get a ton of people on their 21st birthday that come in with their parents,” said Scott Weiner, co-owner of OKAY Cannabis dispensaries, West Town Bakery and The Fifty/50 Restaurant Group. “It’s kind of funny, because the 21-year-olds will always pretend like they know a lot less.” Plenty of parents pretend they know less too, he added.

The friendly and patient staff will scan your ID at the door to the dispensary, a modern, colorful and bright Wonka-esque interior space.

If it’s your first time going into a dispensary or you don’t consume a lot or it’s your first time smoking in public, talk to the budtenders, said Weiner.

“Don’t feel like this is something you need to go online and spend all this time trying to understand,” he added. “Give them literally 30 seconds of your time. They’ve been looking for an opportunity to talk about their trade, what they’re passionate about, legally, for years. Like a sommelier loves to talk about wine, they love to talk about cannabis.”

Do note that if you purchase cannabis in the dispensary, you’ll pay by cash or debit, with ATMs on site. You don’t need to buy anything to enter the lounge, but you can’t bring your own cannabis.

And you need a reservation for the consumption lounge, or a host will check you in through OpenTable.

“We’re just trying to make sure that you haven’t been there smoking for four hours,” Weiner said. “Convincing OpenTable to put us on there was no easy feat.”

A staff member will walk you into the expansive connecting lounge. Sofa and table seating have a view of a Starbucks across the driveway and The Westin Chicago North Shore hotel rising high above the parking lot.

They’ll present two menus, one for smoking devices, and the other for food and drink.

“You may want to smoke in a bowl or a bubbler or a bong,” Weiner said. “We have all those different options.”

And you can use them for free in the lounge.

“We have some very expensive and very cool vapes and other smoking devices,” he added. “If you’re really trying to taste the terpenes, similar to what you might find in a wine, you need to consume at the right temperature. We have certain vapes where we can set it to exactly 130 degrees so you can get the exact flavor essence of the IC Collective, all the things that make it so special.”

IC Collective is an heirloom cannabis producer based in Cary.

You can actually order anything from the West Town Bakery menu in the lounge, except alcohol.

“At that point, our job is to just observe and see if we can be helpful,” Weiner said, but not quite like a restaurant experience. “You likely don’t want to be checked in on two minutes after your first hit.”

A reservation is for a maximum of two hours including a 30-minute cool down time.

Tuesdays tend to be the busiest nights, according to the staff when I visited, because of the weekly Baked Bingo, where the prizes include free weed.

So why can’t we consume cannabis edibles in the consumption lounge?

“Oftentimes edibles will take an hour to hit you,” said Weiner, and they don’t want you on the road then. “Or you feel nothing so you take five more and next thing we know, we got you climbing up the side of the walls having a panic attack.”

When I tried Mindy’s cannabis chocolate bars at home, a half piece of the exquisite dark almond toffee didn’t hit me until 90 minutes later, as the Mindy’s Edibles website warns. A mild buzz felt similar to a few sips of wine. The chocolate itself was a lovely chef’s reimagining of a Cadbury Caramello, with crisp dark chocolate around a silky caramel filling.

A whole piece of the caramelized chocolate marshmallow graham bar, however, hit me 45 minutes later and hard. The tiny stamp-size piece clearly exceeded my novice tolerance so much that I was dizzy and stumbling. The chocolate was delightful, though, as an abstract adult s’more.

In the consumption lounge, you can have the bestselling West Town Bakery cake balls. They’re huge and remarkably not too sweet, from the French toast, the most popular flavor in Wheeling, to the encrusted Andes mint, possibly my favorite.

You can also order the Commercial Park breakfast sandwich, with a delicious Co-op hot sauce aioli. And then there’s the Jean Banchet, a prosciutto and fig lunch sandwich, worthy of the late chef who made his restaurant Le Francais down Milwaukee Avenue a dining destination.

You can have the nonalcoholic Nutty Passion or Mr. Nice Guy drinks with an optional Flora Delta 8 infusion. The pistachio flavor of the former is a fan favorite, but I might pass on the benign delta-8 next time. You should probably skip the sliders, which were regrettably dry.

Hopefully, they’ll bring back the Wheelie this summer. That’s their take on the viral circular, stuffed Suprême croissant created by Lafayette Grand Café & Bakery in New York City. It’s still rare in Chicago, but last year only the Wheeling location offered the golden buttery pastry in seasonal flavors, including the beautiful blueberry that I had.

What have become bestsellers at the dispensary to partake in the lounge?

“The craft flower,” said Weiner, and IC Collective is one of their most popular brands. “Our Wheeling location sells more pre-rolls than our Evanston or West Town locations. And why? Because people can smoke there.”

Flower is the dried part of the cannabis plant that’s smoked, like tobacco leaves. Pre-rolls are pre-rolled marijuana cigarettes, commonly called joints.

And what’s that IC flower price?

“It changes based on the batches that come in,” said Weiner, typically between $45 and $60 for an eighth of an ounce. “It’s not the cheapest out there by any means.”

Tax adds to the final price. A Mindy’s cannabis chocolate bar is $24, but $32 with tax.

And speaking of pricey, how do they clean those expensive devices including one priced at $500?

They run some through their high-pressure dishwasher, Weiner said, but others can’t be machine-washed.

“And they have to be hand-washed,” he said. “Believe it or not, the most labor-intensive part of the job is cleaning the smoking devices.”

In a cannabis consumption lounge, there are no laws from the state’s health department that say what they have to have for cleanliness, he added, but there are laws that state your HVAC system must be separated from the rest of your building, and they installed a dedicated outdoor air system.

“It’s basically bringing in up to 6,000 gallons of fresh air from the outside in,” said Weiner, and the challenge in the lounge is actually not how clean the system is, but making sure it’s not too powerful with fans too loud to enjoy the music and ambiance.

“There’s also one other element to it,” he added, with the lounge in the same building as the family-friendly West Town Bakery. “We definitely don’t want people to smell cannabis if they’re not in the consumption lounge.”

“This is new to people,” he said. “You might’ve smoked cannabis seven days a week for the last 10 years. But there’s a very good chance that this is the first time you’ve smoked it publicly. And not in your family room or not in your backyard.”

Or not lost in a crowded concert. Or it’s been years since you smoked and you don’t know your tolerance with a new world of cannabis.

“Most people know how many drinks until they get buzzed,” Weiner said. “You know how many glasses of wine versus bourbon, but not a lot of people know how a vaporizer hits you differently than a pre-roll. And different levels of THC.” With a bottle of wine, he added, you can pretty much assume it’s going to be between 11% and 15% alcohol.

With cannabis, he said, some distillate are as high as 85% to 90% THC.

“There’s flower that comes in between 28% and 30%,” he added. “But then there’s stuff that’s 14%. And it’s not as self-evident.”

Meanwhile, 420 Day is coming up. The unofficial international holiday celebrates cannabis culture annually on April 20. Various origin stories say that the number comes from the time, 4:20 p.m., to start your cannabis consumption.

At the dispensary, bar, restaurant and consumption lounge, Jonathon Sawyer will host a High on the Hog pig roast event. He’s the James Beard Award-winning chef of Kindling, the open-fire restaurant in the building originally known as the Sears Tower.

“This place has a lot of firsts. It’s the first cannabis dispensary with a liquor license and a restaurant in the country,” Weiner said. “It’s also the first and only cannabis consumption lounge in the country with a full kitchen.”

And they’re still the only consumption lounge in Cook County.

It’s a lot of things to a lot of people, he said, but ultimately it’s a part of the community.

“And that’s what we’re really focusing on.”

OKAY Cannabis Dispensary / West Town Bakery

781 N. Milwaukee Ave., Wheeling

okaycannabis.com

847-305-4100

Open: Monday to Thursday 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., Saturday 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., Sunday 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Prices: $56 (IC Collective flower), $24 (Mindy’s cannabis chocolate bars), $14 (Jean Banchet sandwich), $12 (nonalcoholic drinks with Flora Delta 8), $2.50 to $2.95 (cake balls)

Noise: Conversation-friendly

Accessibility: Wheelchair accessible with restrooms on a single level

lchu@chicagotribune.com

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James Beard award-winning chefs, owners and spouses Johnny Clark and Beverly Kim just closed their original, critically acclaimed Korean American restaurant on March 23, after marking a decade this year as a global culinary destination.

So why did they close Parachute?

“We came to the conclusion that after 10 years, we feel really proud of what Parachute has done so far in the community and in Chicago’s dining scene,” Kim said. “And we feel ready for a new chapter, a new album, so to speak. Something that’s lively and fun and original.”

They hope to open the new high-fidelity music bar and restaurant by June or July in the same space in the Avondale neighborhood.

And they’re bringing bing bread back.

The golden crunchy crusted baked potato-inspired bread had been off the menu for years due to the labor-intensive process.

“It might be in limited quantities,” said Kim, who is Korean American. “But we thought it’d be fun to bring bing bread back.”

“The bing bread was something that put us over the edge coming back from the pandemic,” Clark said. “And it was like, we can’t center our whole restaurant around bing bread, because that’s going to eat up all of our labor dollars and time. And so we’re working on a way to bring it into this casual setting. If we make the food more casual and fun, then we can find the room to bring back bing bread.”

The new menu will be “a lot different” than the last menu, Clark said. “It’s gonna be a lot more simple. More affordable and accessible.”

“More eclectic,” Kim said. “Korean and American.”

To them, the bing bread was just one of the many dishes they’ve put out, she added.

“For other people, we realized it brings nostalgia,” Kim said. “And nostalgia is even bigger than the dish itself.”

Overall, the new menu prices will be lower than the last menu prices, but the price of the beloved bing bread has not been set.

“It might be more expensive than it used to be,” Clark said. But they listened to the requests for the bing bread and found a way to bring it back.

The couple still owns Anelya just down the street on Elston Avenue. The modern Ukrainian restaurant is named for Clark’s late grandmother. She was an immigrant from Ukraine, as are all the cooks in that kitchen.

Clark and Kim also founded The Abundance Setting, to serve mothers in the culinary industry, which won the Tribune Critics’ Choice Award for Best New Industry Resource in 2021.

“There have been so many depressing things in the past four years,” Clark said. “And this gives us an opportunity to put the fun back into what we do. Like how we started. With no awards, no pressure and nothing to lose.”

“Going through COVID, how many different iterations we had to do for takeout made us realize so much about ourselves as the Parachute brand,” Kim said.

They offered everything from Korean pizza to Korean fried chicken to more high-end Korean food.

Korean pizza will probably not return, but its Chicago cousin is in the works.

“A pizza puff,” said Kim.

The pizza puff is a deep-fried wrap with a curious origin story that was invented in the city.

“That gives you an idea of the playfulness of the menu,” Clark said.

So what will going to Parachute Hi-Fi be like?

“The high-fidelity new and vintage audio equipment will be front and center,” said Clark, who’s become a collector.

They will reoutfit the space, but not totally transform it.

“It’s our adaptation of what is happening in Seoul right now,” Clark said. In the capital city of South Korea, there’s everything from high-fidelity listening rooms to bars to cafes, he added, but they will be more focused on food and drink.

And drinks will play a bigger role on the new menu.

“Patbingsu might make an appearance as a cocktail instead of a dessert,” Clark said about the Korean shaved ice with sweet red beans. “Or it might change back and forth.”

Look for creative cocktails and wild wines as well.

“We’re gonna embrace a little bit of the weird here,” he added. ”The same goes with the wine, like embracing the weird, wild and funky wines.”

“This is gonna be a very walk-in friendly space,” Kim said. “So no reservations, come as you are. That’s kind of how we started Parachute.”

They have plans to build a Parachute Korean fine dining restaurant in The Loop, but declined to disclose details.

They’re focused on Parachute Hi-Fi.

“There’s gonna be opportunities to ball out, but this restaurant is centered around being casual,” she added laughing. “You might see me and John dancing. We might be dancing with you.”

“Music, beverage and food will play equal roles here,” Clark said.

“We’re just trying to create the most fun place in Chicago,” he added. “That’s just how it’s gonna be.”

Parachute Hi-Fi, 3500 N. Elston Ave., 872-204-7138, parachuterestaurant.com

lchu@chicagotribune.com

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I’m not so sure. It bears recognizing then that there’s a whole wide world of ramen, from instant noodles to traditional Japanese to modern interpretations.

And then there’s the intensely personal ramen at one restaurant in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago. Open since late last fall, there still seems to be a perpetual line outside. It’s a measure of the reputation within.

Akahoshi Ramen offers more than beautiful bowls by chef Mike Satinover, who’s exceeding his exacting standards by letting some go.

Satinover previously held sold-out pop-ups. This is his first business and he’s the sole owner. He reminds his staff daily of their mantra, “We serve ramen and not much else.”

But what remarkable ramen it is. There are only four ramens on the menu, with a fifth monthly special, two rice sides and a select beverage list.

“And that’s it,” Satinover said. “It’s a ramen shop.”

A shop where they make nearly everything in house, from glistening aromatic oil to custom crinkly curls.

“That’s what I stand for, I wanted to make everything in the restaurant,” the chef said. “The noodles, the soup, the chashu, the tare, the toppings.” You may know that tare, pronounced tah-reh, is the sauce or paste that’s the seasoning or soup base for ramen.

The lush Akahoshi miso, a study in gold and light, topped with tender pork chashu, has become the favorite by far, accounting for about half of all the ramen they sell.

“I’m not surprised and kind of intended it to be that way,” Satinover said. “It’s the one that is most closely tied to who I am.”

It’s reflective of his ramen journey, which began in Sapporo, the city on the northerly island of Hokkaido, Japan.

“I could talk about it forever,” said the chef when asked about how he builds his signature bowl. His miso ramen, he added, follows a Sapporo-style procedure with some chef’s license. First, they stir-fry bean sprouts with lard, salt and MSG to take in wok hei, the smoky breath of the wok. Then they sear an aromatic miso tare paste to bring out its depth and deglaze with a simple house-made chicken soup. That’s poured over the crinkly Sapporo-style noodles, aged several days for flavor and texture, and aromatic oil at the bottom of the bowl.

“The fat bubbles right up to the top” giving a shiny and frothy glow, he said.

They finish the bowl austerely with green onion and sliced chashu.

“Pork belly that’s been simmered in a delightful blend of soy sauce, mirin, sugar, salt, garlic and other seasonings, until it’s meltingly, quiveringly tender if I’ve done it correctly,” said Satinover laughing.  A few menma (fermented bamboo shoots) and the bean sprouts complete the bowl.

Two elements make his miso ramen different from what he’s had in Hokkaido.

The first is the miso blend in the tare, the chef said. Most ramen shops use a blend of white and red miso, but they also include hatcho miso at Akahoshi. “This miso is super dark. It’s almost like chocolate in color. And that is really, really bizarre to include in ramen.”

Secondly, in Hokkaido they use straight lard, Satinover said, whereas their lard has aromatic complexity from onion, ginger and garlic. “That’s super weird too,” he added. Modern ramen shops may also play with it, but classic shops in Sapporo are just using “heart-stopping amounts of lard.”

The lard creates a kind of a barrier and helps the soup retain its heat, the chef said, giving it a luxe appearance with a decadent feeling.

Ironically, he considers the fact that he makes his noodles, with their golden glorious bite, a minor difference.

The exquisite classic shoyu, with wavy noodles and pork chashu too, may be a surprise if you’re expecting a soy sauce-forward flavor. The translucent soup tastes like treasured memories of the clean open sea.

“That shoyu flavor is very Japanese,” said Satinover. “If you don’t like fish, this is not the dish for you.”

The chef, it should be noted, is not Japanese.

Akahoshi loosely translates to two Japanese characters, he said, which mean red and star. Red stars are symbolic of Sapporo. Chicago’s flag also has four red stars. Satinover chose his shop’s name to represent both cultures, and how he came to this point in his life.

He lived in Sapporo for a year. That’s where he first started “getting really crazy into ramen” 15 years ago. It’s also where miso ramen was invented, his favorite style.

When he came back, he began by making ramen only for friends and family.

“I didn’t initially have plans to open a restaurant,” the chef said. He was chasing nostalgia.

Satinover did his first pop-up in New York City at the now-closed Ramen Lab by Sun Noodle, the craft ramen company, in 2017.

When he came home, Derrick Tung of Paulie Gee’s in Chicago asked Satinover if he’d be willing to do a pop-up at Tung’s pizzeria in Logan Square.

“I distinctly remember being on the Wilson train platform,” Satinover said. “It was super cold and snowing.” He didn’t know what was going on, or that what would happen would change his life in ramen.

Perhaps most importantly, he’s making his own noodles to showcase the breadth and depth of ramen.

“It is extremely challenging and difficult,” he said. “And I’m probably getting back problems from it, but it gives me that flexibility.”

I’m so impressed by the distinct differences in the noodles, from the signature Sapporo to an unorthodox straight style in the March special Toyama Black. Most people would have been none the wiser with the same noodles in all the bowls.

“And a lot of ramen shops do that,” Satinover said. “But it feels really gratifying to be able to say we have five ramens on the menu and three different noodles.”

The stunning soupless tantanmen, inspired by Chinese dandanmian, uses thicker flat noodles. It’s a head-turning bowl, topped with fire engine red mala pork soboro. The Sichuanese spicing lends lovely numbing heat to the fried ground meat, tempered with nutty sesame paste and a bit of crisp bok choy.

The aburasoba, another soupless ramen, also uses the thicker noodles. Topped with chopped chashu, plus fried garlic and shallots, it’s an excellent textural bowl that highlights the irresistible chewy noodles. But it’s subtle in a collection that explores extremes.

How did Satinover choose aburasoba as one of his four core styles on the menu?

On the one hand, he just really likes it, the chef said. On the other hand, it’s sort of a business move made with 40 pounds of pork belly a day.

“There are going to be pieces that you really can’t serve as a slice,” he said. But it’s delicious stuff that you can chop up and toss it with garlic lard and seasoning, he added. “And then it’s pretty tasty tossed with some noodles.”

Or rice, in the terrific chashu bowl. That does pale in comparison with the ikura bowl, a specialty of Hokkaido, smothered in luminous cured salmon roe. The Koshihikari short-grain white rice imported from Japan was a touch dry to my taste on two visits.

“I am not Rice Lord,” said Satinover laughing. He’s perhaps best known to some as Ramen Lord, his username on Reddit, the online network of communities and obsessions. “We’re still kind of figuring that out.”

They’re also still figuring out some small service issues. When you arrive at the restaurant, if you have reservations, released Mondays at noon, then you can skip the line. About half the seats are available for walk-ins. But that’s unclear at the door and in the minimalist dining room.

Satinover works behind the chef’s counter in the open kitchen next to the bar area, where they mix bright yuzu highball cocktails and offer the Hitachino Nest yuzu ginger nonalcoholic lager as a sophisticated, nonalcoholic pairing alongside beer, sake, wine and sodas.

A communal table stretches down the middle of the room with booths along a wall and a few stools in the window overlooking California Avenue.

A discreet sign at the door, and a few more chopstick holders on the tables with napkins, would go a long way with a friendly staff that seemed overwhelmed at times. But these are early days for the restaurant and Satinover, an owner who’s thoughtful and intentional about more than the food.

“I’m very proud of the fact that for the most part, we don’t throw any food away,” said the chef. “Like when an egg breaks then my team eats it for staff meal.”

And that leads us to the egg question. Why doesn’t he include an ajitama egg with any of his ramen? The soft yolked egg marinated for days is available as an extra topping for $2.

“There’s a couple of reasons. One, I always felt like eggs were add-ons when you go to a ramen shop in Japan,” Satinover said. “And we just spend a lot of time peeling eggs. I want to make sure that my team is compensated well for that labor.”

It’s a delightful extra, he added, but it is extra.

“There is unfortunately this business element of it too,” Satinover said. “We’re already expensive, and I want people to be able to afford it.”

But $19 for a ramen bowl is not expensive for what it is, in the same sense that a great plate of house-made pasta is priced at $20, $30 or more than $40.

“People say, oh, the egg should be free,” Satinover said. “I would say the egg is arguably the most labor-intensive process in our restaurant. I have a person who spends two to three hours every day, boiling, peeling and marinating eggs. It’s half of their job.”

For just one component.

“This is back-of-the-house stuff that I don’t think a lot of people really know,” said Satinover. “But my staff are very well compensated at the restaurant. Everybody who’s full-time has health care right now. And that’s because we do stupid stuff like charging for an egg.”

He understands there’s something about 20 bucks for a bowl of ramen that’s unsettling for people right now. But in addition to the extraordinary work, it’s a huge meal at that price.

“I frankly feel like if you can finish a full bowl of ramen and you’re still hungry, I don’t feel like I haven’t done the job,” he said laughing.

Akahoshi Ramen

2340 N. California Ave.

akahoshiramen.com

Open: Tuesday to Saturday 5 to 9 p.m.

Prices: $19 (Akahoshi miso), $18.50 (classic shoyu), $18 (soupless tantanmen and aburasoba), $15 (ikura rice bowl), $11 (yuzu highball), $2 (ajitama egg)

Noise: Conversation-friendly

Accessibility: Wheelchair accessible with restrooms on single level

Tribune rating: Excellent, three stars

Ratings key: Four stars, outstanding; three stars, excellent; two stars, very good; one star, good; no stars, unsatisfactory. Meals are paid for by the Tribune.

lchu@chicagotribune.com

Big screen or home stream, takeout or dine-in, Tribune writers are here to steer you toward your next great experience. Sign up for your free weekly Eat. Watch. Do. newsletter here.