Photo: Kristine Sherred

CorePower Yoga

Regardless of whatever misgivings you might have about supporting a corporate yoga company, there’s no denying the advantage of having seven—soon-to-be-eight—studios located throughout the city, each with almost a dozen classes each day. Regardless of where you plan to get your next drink, there’s somewhere nearby that gets you a yoga high and yoga bod beforehand—no excuses. But the CorePower mecca is the South Loop studio: As you search for a drishti (gazing point) in tree pose, you can choose to focus on an element of Chicago’s downtown skyline, which the fifth-floor studio showcases through its large windows.

CorePower Yoga
12 West Maple, (312)266-9642
1704 North Milwaukee, (773)227-9642
945 West George, (773)862-9642
corepoweryoga.com

 Audience choice: (tie)
Bikram Yoga Chicago
47 West Polk, (312)922-9642
1344 North Milwaukee, (773)395-9150
2736A North Clark, (773)348-9642
105f.com
and
CorePower Yoga

Best of Chicago 2011

Burt’s Place

He may have started (and then sold) Pequod’s years ago, but it’s Burt’s own Place that turns the conversation of pizza, well, deep. Not every pizza maker knows how to acutely place a pan-sized sausage patty in the middle of the pie, nor do they have the exact combination for caramelizing the crust. Then again, it is the humble digs of Burt’s Place that has us dining in instead of taking out. Flanked by ham radios, vintage newspaper clippings and vinyl seats in a Morton Grove two-flat, Burt and his wife make guests feel at home. Just do like you would with your mother-in-law and call ahead.

Burt’s Place
8541 Ferris, Morton Grove
(847)965-7997

Audience choice:
Lou Malnati’s
805 South State, (312)786-1000
3859 West Ogden, (773)762-0800
439 North Wells, (312)828-9800
1120 North State, (312)725-7777
958 West Wrightwood, (773)832-4030
1850 Sherman, Evanston, (847)328-5400
loumalnatis.com

Best of Chicago 2011

Johnnie’s Beef

Chicago is packed with places that have Italian Beef on their menu, but only a handful serve sandwiches worthy of the name. And of these Johnnie’s reigns supreme. The beef is tasty, the bread crust crunchy, the juice flavorful. Johnnie’s fries are just greasy enough to round out the meal. The ambiance at Johnnie’s is wonderful, too. In a world full of places that pretend to be what they are not, Johnnie’s remains true to its original design: enter in the east, wait in line, give your order to the crabby, overworked guy behind the counter, pay your money and a few moments later you are handed your food by another crabby, overworked guy and ushered out the west door. Spartan picnic benches are provided for those who prefer to dine on the premises.

Johnnie’s Beef
7500 West North, Elmwood Park
(708)452-6000

Audience choice:
Portillo’s
100 West Ontario
(312)587-8910
portillos.com

Best of Chicago 2011

Bistro Bordeaux

They love to celebrate at Bistro Bordeaux in Evanston. Owner Pascal Berthoumieux, a Bordeaux native, demonstrates how to open  Champagne with a knife and wine without a corkscrew through videos uploaded to YouTube. And they have lots to celebrate. Earlier this year, L20 vet Johnny Besch came to helm the kitchen as executive chef from his last, sunnier post working under famed chef Alain Ducasse at MiX on the Beach in Vieques Island, Puerto Rico. The restaurant regularly finds other reasons to raise a glass, including on Earth Day, when they host an annual sword-tap-on-the-shoulder of all things green. A “wild spring bounty” menu this past April 22 featured chilled watercress soup, ramps and peas. While Besch may change up his Earth Day 2012 menu, the unique ambiance on which Berthoumieux perennially insists will be repeated. For Earth Day dinner, unnatural light is turned off completely in the dining room and hundreds of small glass balls are hung from the ceiling with fishing line. Because the lines can not be easily seen, the balls appear to be floating in air. Each “floating” ball seems to be holding its own tea light, like Earth Day vigil attendees, each one clutching a candle. “It looks like a room full of floating orbs of light,” Pascal says proudly.

Bistro Bordeaux
618 Church, Evanston
(847)424-1483
lebistrobordeaux.com

Best of Chicago 2011

Pearl Jam Twenty at Alpine Valley

While most bands issue a greatest-hits compilation for their twentieth anniversary, Pearl Jam put together a coffee-table book, a documentary helmed by Cameron Crowe and a two-day festival. (Okay, they issued a CD too.) Set at Alpine Valley over Labor Day weekend, Vedder and crew invited their best pals (Queens of the Stone Age, the Strokes, Mudhoney) to open each day while PJ played more than two hours of rarities and fan favorites each night. Best moment? Guest star Chris Cornell joining the band for the era-defining Temple of the Dog number “Hunger Strike.” If only Jared Leto and Claire Danes could have been there, the crowds could have been the first to experience time travel.

Best of Chicago 2011

Izzy Kaplan’s Rub

Four parts sweet Hungarian paprika, two parts salt and one part garlic. That’s the recipe for one of the simplest, tastiest rubs for grilling meat, Izzy Kaplan’s Rub. Isidor “Izzy” Kaplan and his wife, both Holocaust survivors, migrated eventually to the Catskill Mountains from Eastern Europe after WWII. Kaplan, who had been a butcher before the war, set up a business as a meat vendor, flavoring meat with his colorful, tasty rub while grilling it to sell to tourists. His recipe was given new legs when his daughter, Evanston resident Esther Kaplan, revived it by contributing it to the expansive collection of recipes on The Spice House website. She tweaks the recipe when she uses it today. “Of the four parts paprika my father used, I now use three parts Hungarian sweet paprika and one part spicy paprika,” Kaplan says.

The Spice House
1512 North Wells
(312)274-0378
1941 Central Street, Evanston
(847)328-3711
thespicehouse.com

Best of Chicago 2011

The Bagel Restaurant & Deli

Hold the schmaltz! You can surely find items that could tempt the proudest vegetarian at The Bagel Restaurant & Deli in Skokie and Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood. (On Saturday nights only, look for short beef ribs, simmered overnight.) But owner Danny Wolf gives a non-traditional nod to those who pass on meat, offering a vegetarian option for tzimmes, a stewed vegetable side dish typically found on dinner tables during Jewish holidays like Rosh Hashanah or Sukkot. Traditional tzimmes recipes call for schmaltz, which is duck or chicken fat. The Bagel’s vegetarian option replaces schmaltz with vegetable oil. “It’s just as tasty,” Wolf says. It includes ingredients common in usual tzimmes recipes like carrots cut round to resemble gold coins, a symbol of a new year; sweet potatoes, prunes, cinnamon, brown sugar and a squeeze or two of lemon juice.

The Bagel Restaurant & Deli
3107 North Broadway
(773)477-0300
50 Old Orchard Center, Skokie
(847)677-0100
BagelRestaurant.com

Best of Chicago 2011

Chicago-Main Newsstand

If you’re just looking to snag your Wall Street Journal, do not pass go at the Chicago-Main Newsstand, the Evanston shop that is the Boardwalk of print publications. Sure you can find WSJ and your local dailies, but you can also find Rifle Firepower magazine, Royalty Monthly and Jane Austen Knits among the hot-off-the-press racks bursting with more than 5,000 international titles. A quick jaunt on the Purple Line over to Dempster and you’re at the magazine museum; just make sure to pack a lunch—we guarantee you’ll be there awhile.

Chicago-Main Newsstand
860 Chicago, Evanston
(847)425-8900
citynewsstand.com

Audience choice:
Quimby’s
1854 West North
(773)342-0910
quimbys.com

Best of Chicago 2011

TeaLula

Sheila Duda’s cute storefront, steps from the Park Ridge Metra station, is a real find for area leaf lovers. Its cubbyholed wall contains about 130 tea varieties, from estate-grown Chinese Keemuns and Taiwanese oolongs, to flavored blends such as Pomegranate Cranberry and vanilla-kissed Madagascar Fine Bourbon, to warming chais—what Duda calls “hibernation teas.” To assure quality, Duda tests constantly and limits her buying to a handful of trusted importers, who understand her goal: “to get as close to the garden as we can.” But what sets the shop apart is its tasting bar, where customers can sample any tea until they find their heart’s true brew. “We don’t want anyone to feel intimidated by tea,” says Duda. And it works—the cheery space is both family-friendly and connoisseur-congenial.

11 South Fairview, Park Ridge
(888)832-5852
tealula.com

Best of Chicago 2010

“Leon Golub: Live & Die Like a Lion?” at the Block Museum of Art

Though Leon Golub, who died in 2004, lived and worked outside of Chicago for most of his life, he is often claimed as a Chicago artist, having been born and educated here, and involved with the Monster Roster. So it was fitting that this survey of late works, organized by The Drawing Center, made its way to Chicago. The exhibition presented Golub’s departure from large-scale paintings to intimately small but still brazen in their subject matter. The Block complemented the traveling show with prints from Golub’s long career.

Northwestern University
40 Arts Circle Drive, Evanston
(847)491-4000
blockmuseum.northwestern.edu

Best of Chicago 2010