Bar Toma

Mother's Day is a little more than a week away, so if you haven't made brunch/dinner plans, it's time to get cracking. Here are a few suggestions to get you started. Allium. Mother's Day brunch seatings from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Expansive buffet with...

Review: Siena Tavern 51 W. Kinzie St. 312-595-1322 Rating: 3 (out of four) Off to a good start Fabio Viviani was a fan favorite on the fifth season of "Top Chef," but since then, I've seen his charming grin and Italian accent all over the place. There...

Chicago Restaurant Week ends Sunday, but a few dozen restaurants will extend their $22 lunch, $33 and/or $44 dinner offers for a few more days, or more. This will be the fifth straight year this has happened; Chicago restaurants, happy with the extra...

What you hold in your hands is our favorite issue of the year. We get to revisit our sauce-stained notebooks and offer raised glasses to the restaurants and chefs we felt best defined Chicago's dining scene these past 12 months. This marks our third...

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

If only it were so easy to pithily proclaim 2012 as the Year of the (fill-in-the-blank). But there's really no one thread that neatly ties together the Chicago restaurant scene these last 12 months. A restaurant that put Chicago on the culinary map 25...

I have this problem. I made more New Year's Eve reservations than I can use. More than 100 of them, actually. Which is why, for the 12th straight year (and the 17th time in the past 19 years), I'll be giving them away to nimble-fingered readers who ask....

Balena. Pastry chef Amanda Rockman updates the classic affogato (espresso and gelato) combo by adding two plump, cinnamon-sugar-dusted doughnuts to the mix, cleverly re-establishing the coffee-and-doughnuts connection. $8. 1633 N. Halsted St., 312-867-...

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

Bar Toma 110 E. Pearson St. 312-266-3110 Rating: !!! (out of four) Off to a good start The scene: Spiaggia chef Tony Mantuano’s new Italian bar and eatery in the old Bistro 110 space just off Michigan Avenue is a good enough reason for locals to...