June 2018
Backstage Pass
Off-Script
How Mayfest made Dillo Day 2018 come to life p.5
The queer environmentalism of ‘Call Me By Your Name’ p.10
Paul’s Drag Race
Open Tab
An NU student’s twists and turns to finding a new identity p.8
The Lucky Platter offers elevated comfort food p.14
A P RI L 1 4 – AU G UST 5, 2018
H A N K
W I L L I S
T H O M A S :
UNBRANDED Images: Hank Willis Thomas, The natives will get restless, 1976/2015 [detail], 2015, and Bleach and Glow, 1975/2008 [detail], 2008. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. Funding for this exhibition has been provided by the David C. & Sarajean Ruttenberg Arts Foundation, the Robert Mapplethrope Foundation, and the Illinois Arts Council Program.
AWARDS $150 - 1st Place $100 - 2nd Place $75 - 3rd Place $50 - Hon. Ment. the kay krieghbaum memorial
PHOTOGRAPHIC CONTEST Submission Deadline: Thu, June 14, 2018
Presented by Students Publishing Company in memory of Northwestern alum Kay Krieghbaum (1946-1969), whose dedication to photojournalism inspired this event.
E-mail spc-compshop@northwestern.edu for rules and entry forms, or stop by Students Publishing Company on the third floor of Norris.
THE MONTHLY Contents
Backstage Pass
How Mayfest made Dillo Day 2018 come to life
Paul’s Drag Race
A Northwestern student’s twists and turns to finding a new identity
Off-Script
The queer environmentalism of ‘Call Me By Your Name’
Open Tab
The Lucky Platter offers elevated comfort food
05 08 10 14
Staff of The Monthly Issue 12
Stavros Agorakis Monthly Editor
Ruiqi Chen Designer
Jane Recker Assistant Monthly Editor
Carmen Fernandez Madeleine Fernando Alex Schwartz Writers
Cover photo: Source: Michael Fulton, page 3 photo: Source: Mayfest
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The Voices of Dillo I was on Twitter, making my way through tired entertainment puff pieces and stale Trump memes, when the Lollapalooza lineup was announced. Parsing through the poster, I fawned over the headlining artists, wishing I was spending this summer not at work, but surrounded by screaming Chicagoans while Bruno Mars, Arctic Monkeys and The Weeknd took the stage. While the first tweets I saw shared my excitement for what seemed to be a fire lineup, the further down I went, the more the tone shifted — obviously the drama lurks in the darkest depths of the platform. I stumbled on a series of tweets criticizing the lineup for being too “dude-heavy,” accompanied by a graphic of the Lolla poster with the male artists omitted. The visualization was striking. Female performers appeared only in medium or small fonts, with the biggest female name preceded by 15 male-led acts. According to Upworthy, only 13 of the 85 bands performing at the festival are fronted by women, and few solo female artists will make an appearance at the event. This is an issue that hits close to home, too. Of the five artists and bands Mayfest has booked to take on the main stage on Dillo Day, only one is a woman: TOKiMONSTA, featured on this Monthly’s cover. The call for female artists in music lineups is by no means new. In fact, it has been repeatedly raised as a hot button topic by columnists at The Daily Northwestern and national publications alike, with writers describing the need for more positive female role models. Gender representation in music may be one of the few issues the entertainment industry has yet to tackle, and that may be because critics and audiences — who follow as many male as female artists — don’t consider it “an issue” just yet. My well-curated, impeccably titled Spotify playlists are dominated by female artists from across the globe in genres ranging from pop to indie to rock. My brother — and everyone else — always seems to whack me for singing off-key because my baritone can never hit female artists’ high notes. While my music selections might be heavily seasoned with quality female power ballads, the inclusion of women in music festivals is starkly different from my personal taste. It’s taken Coachella serious efforts to shake off its “Brochella” vibe, and few women hold major positions behind the scenes at music festivals and in music production. Industry insiders attribute this gender gap to music festivals’ overall culture, saying they are unfriendly places for women and members of the LGBTQ community, who, more often than not, are harassed in varying degrees. These same insiders are taking strides to improve on that, like the Pitchfork Music Festival’s recently established zero-tolerance harassment policy. While it’s great to see established institutions striving for progress, actual change will only come about through support at the local level. I’d be lying if I said I won’t attend Dillo Day, or pledged to only visit the WNUR stage, which is considerably more diverse. But I will be excitedly bopping to TOKiMONSTA’s beats and fervently screaming every explicit lyric along with CupcakKe. Having these female powerhouses this year is a start, but in Mayfest’s future attempts to book artists for Northwestern’s largest student gathering, I hope even more thought is put into making sure 50 percent of our student body can see themselves represented on the mainstage.
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— by Madeleine Fernando
Photo: Colin Boyle/Daily Senior Staffer
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I
t’s hard to close down the Northwestern libraries. They’re open in freezing temperatures, low-grade blizzards and pouring rain. Only one thing has proven effective in regularly shutting them down: Dillo Day. Tour guides may tell you it’s because University President Morton Schapiro loves the annual music festival so much, but any NU student knows it’s because it’s the one day of the year to close the books and hit the beach guilt-free. This Saturday, the Lakefill will swarm with students and their visitors in anticipation of some of the chillest acts the event has seen in recent years. With an eclectic combination of Daniel Caesar’s suave slow jams, Young the Giant’s powerful angsty tunes and Whitney’s melancholic thoughtful ballads, students will
be more likely to lay blankets on the grass and soak in the sun than drunkenly headbang to the music in front of the stage. Though Dillo takes over the Lakefill for just a single day every spring, planning the festival is a year-long affair, said Mayfest co-chair Keaton Sullivan. Sullivan, a Weinberg senior, said as soon as one Dillo wraps, planning for the next one begins. The board for the next year is chosen during the spring, and Mayfest — which is made up of roughly 80 students — immediately starts brainstorming about how to improve the festival for the coming year. The concerts committee is the first to jump on its planning game: It starts getting price quotes for artists by summer, and is compiling lists of available artists by fall, Sullivan said.
Photos: Source: Daily file photo by Jeremy Yu and Justin Barbin Photography
After soliciting student feedback and using their own knowledge of the music scene, committee members make the ultimate decision in choosing who will play Dillo. Other committees are involved with financing the event, promoting artists on campus and building corporate and university relations, said Weinberg senior Andrew Hunter, Mayfest’s other co-chair. This year, Sullivan said Mayfest’s concerts committee focused on bringing artists that appealed to diverse musical tastes and creating a lineup with “heavy-hitting acts” across many styles, he said. “There aren’t any acts this year that we think are filler acts,” Sullivan said. “Each one is going to put on an amazing performance and really satisfy an artistic need on campus for that genre.” McCormick junior Sarah Wong, Mayfest’s co-director of promotions, said the committee sought out artists known for their engaging live performances. While the chosen artists may not be as well-known across campus, she said, they appeal widely to the fans of their respective genres. “TOKiMONSTA isn’t maybe heard across all of campus because not everyone listens to electronic music,” Wong said. “But the people who know electronic music dig her and they think she’s great and they’re going to have a good time.”
Weinberg senior Ben Zimmermann, Mayfest’s co-executive producer, said he thinks this year’s Dillo Day has the most diverse lineup yet — not just in terms of musical talent, but also what each of the acts stand for as individuals and musicians. Zimmermann pointed to Joey Bada$$’s music, which discusses the country’s political and social issues; TOKiMONSTA’s “inspiring story” overcoming a brain disease and rising to become a well-known DJ in the industry; and Young the Giant, who has written songs about some of its members’ experiences as immigrants. In an interview with Rolling Stone in 2016, Young the Giant frontman Sameer Gadhia described the group as a “personally political band.” “We have the platform and an open line of dialogue with our fans, some of whom are completely unaware of the racial struggles in America, or the racial struggles that we deal with on a personal level,” Gadhia said. “The thing about music is that it really can bring people together, and that’s what we hope to do.” Weinberg freshman Nikol Kralimarkova said she is looking forward to her first Dillo, especially getting to take in the atmosphere and spend time among friends. While she wasn’t familiar with all of this year’s performers, Kralimarkova said she is
happy with the lineup. “I’m pretty excited to hear all of them,” she said. “What I’ve heard from older students here is that the lineup is (usually) pretty lit, but this time it seems very chill and that’s the type of music that I like.” For Bienen senior Chelsea Holmes, the artists matter less to her than the day itself. Reflecting back on her four years, Holmes recounted her memories at Dillo: the time it was canceled her freshman year, when she heard The Mowgli’s live her sophomore year and just enjoying time out on the Lakefill. Dillo Day, she said, is one day that brings the undergraduate community together. “It’s definitely been a marker throughout my time here and something that I think I’ll always remember, regardless of who the artists are,” Holmes said. “It’s more just about spending the time with your friends and whatever shenanigans end up transpiring, you know?” Hunter, who has been involved in Mayfest for the last four years, said the organization is “always growing” and looking to improve. After Dillo Day, members debrief the festival and talk about different ways it can get better. Hunter said people often come with “laundry lists” of ideas, and every year the event improves significantly. “Dillo Day is supposed to be the best day of the year,” he said. “We take that very seriously.”◊
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A Northwestern student’s twists and turns to finding a new identity — by Jane Recker
B
ienen fourth-year Paul Hunter enters the room wearing black pants and a plain black shirt, looking like any other guy in his early 20s. Well, except for the purple eyebrows. Incongruous with his impeccably groomed stubble and wellshaped buzz cut, these brows clearly belong not to Hunter, but rather to his drag alter ego, Jessica Tour — a play on Juicy Couture. I assume that the plasticy purple substance is some kind of wax to help build up his brow to the thickness necessary for any drag queen. I couldn’t be more wrong. “It’s Elmer’s glue, actually,” he told me. “My natural brows are too low for me to do any kind of dramatic makeup, so I glue them down and draw on brows higher on my forehead.” I realize then how little I know about what it takes to be a drag queen. But then again, neither did Hunter just a few years ago. While today he’s enjoying a fast rise in the Chicago amateur drag scene, Hunter had zero drag aspirations growing up, and said he found the whole scene “icky.” Even the widely beloved “RuPaul’s Drag Race” didn’t evade Hunter’s scorn. “I tried to watch it a few years ago and I was like, ‘What the f--- is this nonsense,’” he said. “There were so many inside jokes and so much camp, and I was like, ‘I can’t.’” But a few years later, when he stumbled upon a group of friends watching the show, his tune changed. “This is the best thing on the earth,” he told himself. He began to follow the show, and put on makeup for fun on that year’s Halloween. At that time he still had no intentions of becoming a drag queen. That all changed at Northwestern. Hunter heard about Rainbow Alliance’s amateur show and decided to give it a shot. “I went down to T.J. Maxx and I found a pair of stripper heels and I thought, ‘Let’s do this thing,’” he said. Paul thought he did well in the show — well enough that his friends suggested he look into Chicago’s amateur drag scene. So, in his “Goodwill outfit and dollar store makeup,” Hunter went to go compete at Roscoe’s Tavern — a prominent drag club in Boystown — in what he thought would be a second-rate, easy pickings competition. He was sorely mistaken. Hunter said he now realizes that, when it comes to drag, “amateur”
Photo: Jane Recker/Daily Senior Staffer
only refers to the fact that the queens are competing for prizes; they are not given a paycheck. The queens themselves, he said, are professionals to the core. Hunter’s friend Gayla Genda, a fellow drag performer, said she met Hunter at this competition. “I think there’s one night in every drag queen’s life when they look around and think, ‘I have got to step my pussy up; people around me are clearly better than me,’” she said. “That night at Roscoe’s, that was (his) moment of realizing that.” After that night, Hunter said he began to dedicate more time and effort to his drag, eventually even winning a competition at Roscoe’s. He estimates he’s performed 20 times in the span of 14 weeks, an exhausting schedule when you think about the volatile combination of sky-high stilettos, three-hour makeup routines and full performances of Top 40 songs with intermittent backflips. And, on top of that, Jessica is incredibly giving. “When I’m dressing up as Jessica Tour, I can unashamedly be that people pleaser that has caused me a lot of issues in the real world,” Hunter said. As a naturally giving person, he said he’s struggled when he doesn’t feel the help he gives is reciprocated. But, he said, “when I’m Jessica, I figure this is 5 percent of my life, I can just bend over backwards for people and tell them that they’re beautiful.” Even more impressive is that Hunter is keeping up this hectic schedule as a full-time vocal performance student at Northwestern. While Paul loves drag, it’s his work as a choral performer that he said is his true passion. “Choral singing is my absolute joy,” he said. “There are choir works where I feel crappy singing my tenor part, but the work as a whole is amazing. I love that you can cover each other’s backs and highlight each other’s strengths, and the human element of collaboration.” Hunter’s voice professor, Kurt Hansen, said Hunter’s enthusiasm for choral music is clear to see. “I’ve seen him in choral concerts,” he said. “It’s very obvious when somebody is in their element and loving it, and he does. He’s a really good, solid person, and I know he cares very deeply. That comes across in his music-making.”
While Hunter said he is “flourishing” at Northwestern, the road hasn’t always been easy. He dropped out of Wheaton College after two and a half years due to mental health issues and alcoholism — ironic, he said, given that the main purpose of drag shows is to help bars sell alcohol. While working in cosmetics at Nordstrom, where he picked up a lot of his makeup skills, he auditioned for Northwestern — his dream school — as he thought he had nothing to lose. Since coming here, Hunter has been sober for nearly a year and a half, and has performed in the school operas and with NU’s top choir. Pursuing classical music at Northwestern seems only natural for Hunter. His mother attended NU to study flute performance and met his father, a clarinetist, when playing with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago. They started Hunter with the piano when he was three. “I don’t ever remember starting music. It was just always with me, and I hated it,” he said. The piano was a burden until his early teens, when he discovered jazz. He entered Wheaton College as a piano major, but quickly realized that pianists’ required four to five hours of practice a day didn’t mesh well with his sociable personality. Hunter had enjoyed performing with various choirs in high school, so he transferred to the voice studio at Wheaton and hasn’t looked back. It’s not every day you meet a religious drag queen, but Hunter’s conversations are peppered with “thank you Lord” and references to his strong church community. “Religious is a loaded term, but I’m certainly a Christ-follower and that’s been an integral part of my entire existence,” he said. This part of his identity has led him to an unconventional drag persona. “Drag queens, they drink a lot, and they experiment with drugs, and, you know, the whole sex life is kind of a thing,” he said. “For me, none of those things are really flourishing in my life, intentionally.” Hunter doesn’t feel his drag and his religious beliefs are mutually exclusive. “It’s the same thing if you’re a popular musician or a classical musician,” he said. “This is something I’m doing, and me doing it doesn’t mean I’m turning my back on everything I believe in. It’s performance art.” ◊
9
Off Script: The queer environmentalism of ‘Call Me By Your Name’
I
finally got around to seeing “Call Me by Your Name” a couple weeks ago. It was the first time in a while that I really felt something while watching a movie. Since then, I’ve watched it two more times — I even shelled out $15 to buy it on iTunes, which I never do — and I just can’t seem to stop thinking about it. I wouldn’t consider myself a film buff, and I’m not usually one to devote myself so wholly to movies. So why am I so obsessed with this one? It’s a genuinely good movie: visually stunning,
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beautiful soundtrack and great writing and acting. But there are plenty of other good movies. What makes “Call Me by Your Name” so special to me is how unique its story is. It speaks volumes to my identity not only as a queer person, but also as an environmentalist. It may seem a little out of left field to characterize this movie as a work of queer environmentalism (also known as queer ecology). The concept is about more than just identifying non-human homosexual behavior in the animal
— by Alex Schwartz kingdom. Alex Johnson, in an essay for Orion Magazine, describes it as “enabling humans to imagine an infinite number of possible Natures.” Instead of calling queer behavior “against nature,” Johnson says we should begin to see it as part of nature. In “Call Me by Your Name,” there aren’t any bulldozers threatening to destroy treasured forests, droughts affecting crop yields or companies dumping toxic waste haphazardly near homes. Elio and Oliver, the teenager and
Photos: Source: Sony Classics
doctoral student whose courtship the movie follows, aren’t hugging trees or engaged in legal battles to protect wetlands. But there was something about their relationship, and its connection to nature, that intrigued me when I first watched it. One of the opening titles of “Call Me by Your Name” reads “Somewhere in northern Italy.” Where this story takes place specifically, we never truly find out. Initially, I was a little irked by this ambiguity; I thought not including the name of a real place disconnected the film from reality. But, as the movie ended, I realized location didn’t matter. “Somewhere in northern Italy” doesn’t disconnect the film from reality; it disconnects it from society, from any ties to a specific town or municipality. It isolates this place from the arbitrary social and political conventions that are normally superimposed on us in real life. All that’s left is a house, a town and the nature that surrounds it. Nature doesn’t just surround the setting of “Call Me by Your Name” — nature is the setting. There is perhaps more green in the shots of this movie than in any movie I’ve seen that isn’t an environmental documentary. Nature appears so often that it almost becomes a character itself, weaving in and out of the human love story. At a point, the boundary between nature and human blurs — and eventually fades. Elio and Oliver aren’t out camping every night or hiking through the backwoods. But nature is present in some of the most pivotal (and some of the queerest) scenes in the movie. Their first kiss — at the spring Elio calls his “spot” — is enveloped by nature. The two have left town, where Oliver (referring to queerness)
said they “can’t talk about those kinds of things,” and sought respite in the isolated spring. Once both of them stepped into the water, it seemed like they were truly alone in the grandest sense of the word. There, they could exist without consequence. Their kiss feels so natural and in place in this setting; there’s nothing scandalous about it. Several scenes later, their first night together is unaccompanied by any romantic music; the only soundtrack is the chirping of crickets and the wind rustling through the trees outside. The first thing they do early the next morning is swim. Nature is omnipresent, beckoning Elio and Oliver to live in it, to discover themselves, to be human. Elio’s father says it best at the end of the film: “When you least expect it, nature has cunning ways of finding our weakest spot.” Many movies dealing with queer relationships seem to paint them as forbidden love, as two people battling society to be with each other. There’s not much of that here, because society is perhaps more irrelevant in this movie than in any other. Elio’s family’s house is like its own little world where life is slowed down. They eat fresh fruit from their orchards, cook fish from the river
and spend most of their time outside. There’s not much concern for what’s happening beyond this idyllic place. I wondered if these scenes of environmental isolation were a form of escapism. In a sense, they are, but it’s what the characters escape to that makes “Call Me by Your Name” a subversive queer work. By being in nature, they are free from judgment and can focus on being human. As a result, queerness is depicted as part of nature. And so, “Call Me by Your Name” becomes more than just a love story. It becomes a radical depiction of queer people as exquisitely natural. Other LGBTQ movies have engaged in a similar style of storytelling, namely “Brokeback Mountain,” which highlighted an almost carnal version of queer love in nature. “Call Me by Your Name” brings that idea into the relatively more complex modern world, where consumer culture is so ingrained in the characters’ psyches. In a sense, it implies that we can live both sustainably and richly. It’s off the beaten path but not uncivilized — it is supremely paradisiacal. It seems to say: Live simply, and love greatly. I tend to make everything about the environment because I see the environment in everything. I see everything humans do as having some kind of derivation from or effect on nature. And “Call Me by Your Name” has made me realize that nature is where queer people exist most visibly, radically and unapologetically. ◊ Alex Schwartz is a Medill sophomore. He can be contacted at alexschwartz@u.northwestern.edu. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to opinion@dailynorthwestern.com. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.
NU alum Michael Greif, of ‘Rent’ and ‘Dear Evan Hansen,’ discusses his journey from Northwestern to Broadway
A
l though Michael Greif (Communication ’81) may not be a household name for those who aren’t die-hard theater fans, many of the shows he’s directed have gone on to be some of the most iconic musicals in the history of Broadway, such
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— by Carmen Fernandez
as “Rent,” “Next to Normal” and, most recently, “Dear Evan Hansen” and “War Paint.” The fourtime Tony Award nominee and Northwestern alumnus stopped to discuss his career journey with The Daily. The responses have been edited for clarity.
The Daily Northwestern: What was your experience at Northwestern like?
as possible and making the characters as fully realized and fully flawed as humans really are.
Michael Greif: I started out as a theater major. I became a double major in theater in what was then called oral interpretation and is now called performance studies. When I was a freshman, I was selected to be part of an oral interpretation performance group which was called The Company. I met some lifelong friends who were part of that performance company, and I feel like the aesthetic of that group and also of the interpretation department in general really influenced how I see theater and how I make theater and how I direct plays and musicals, so it was very formative.
The Daily: What was the process of developing “Rent” to the point where it eventually would be on Broadway?
When I became a junior, I had the opportunity to direct in student-directed productions, and that’s when I began to feel most at home. I directed a production of “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (Are Dead)” when I was in the first term of my senior year that sort of felt like, “Oh, I could imagine wanting to do this for the rest of my life.” The Daily: What would you say your directorial aesthetic is? Greif: It was a real tribal approach. It was extremely collaborative, and it was a lot about communal storytelling, like much of the work of the oral interpretation department at that time. It extended to all kinds of literature — not only dramatic literature but it was the adaptation of non-fiction and fiction to the stage. The Daily: Does your directorial approach differ when you’re working on musicals rather than plays? Greif: The way in which I approach plays and musicals are very similar, it’s really just about understanding the tone that the writers are trying to achieve and finding a way of being a link between what the writers and composers are trying to communicate and what an audience gets to understand and fully experience. Musicals are wonderful because directors get to share a lot of responsibility with music directors and choreographers and scheduling is somewhat different, but I feel like the way in which I approach a Shakespeare play at the Delacorte and the way I approach a new musical are very similar just in terms of trying to clarify storytelling, making the story streamlined and as interesting Photos: Source: Matthew Murphy
Greif: Much of the aesthetic of the Broadway production was influenced by the workshop we did in 1994, and also the very modest budget we had in 1995 in preparing for production. A lot of that modesty certainly expressed beautifully a lot of the themes of the play itself about making something out of nothing, about the powers of transformation and imagination. It seemed very right that the presentation of the musical even in its fully realized form would be very theatrical and very abstract in its presentation and feel very much like a concert as well as a musical. The other very unique thing about “Rent,” of course, was Jonathan (Larson)’s death. No other experience has been like that because while we were celebrating our move to Broadway, we were also mourning Jonathan’s absence and the terrible irony of Jonathan not being able to share in the celebration and joy of the musical reaching a much wider audience.
moving experiences when fans have reached out to you and told you that your show really inspired them? Greif: I will say that the one thing that is deeply moving to me is hearing from contemporary composers and playwrights what effect “Rent” has had on them. People who I currently collaborate with and whose work I admire enormously — like Benj Pasek and Justin Paul and Lin-Manuel Miranda — have all at different times said to me and shared with me what “Rent” meant to them. That’s been tremendously, tremendously moving and meaningful to me, and sometimes young directors will recognize me and tell me that I’ve been inspirational to them or I’ve shown them a different way of telling stories. I certainly continue to hope that my work continues to inspire and interest young artists. ◊
The Daily: Do you often identify with characters within your works or themes within your works? Greif: You know, something very wonderful happens as you get older and you begin to identify with different kinds of characters. When I first directed “Rent,” I identified very much with those young people who were looking for meaning within their lives or mourning the untimely deaths of loved ones in their lives. By the time I did “Next to Normal,” I was a parent and I really understood what the parents were going through in that musical, and while I remembered and cherished those young people in that musical, I found myself identifying much more with the parental generation. And certainly when I began to work on “Dear Evan Hansen,” I sort of adopted and was given the role of “he who understands what the grown ups might be thinking.” The Daily: Have you had any particularly
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The Lucky Platter offers comfort food with a twist
I
t’s Saturday morning. You wake up with a throbbing headache, an inhuman thirst for water and a vague sense of shame about what happened last night. As you chug Gatorade and attempt to find pants in the swaths of dirty clothing covering your floor, your memory starts the slow, painful crawl through the festivities of last evening. Your off-key screechy rendition of “Love on Top,” telling your roommate Kristin how you really feel about her heinous new haircut, trying to crowdsurf in a crowd of four people (that’s where the mystery bruises came from) and finally getting up the
nerve to ask out your lab partner … in front of his girlfriend. You need to find some comfort food to soak up the alcohol and regret, and you need to do it away from the judging eyes of other Northwestern students. You need to go to The Lucky Platter. Located just off Chicago Avenue and Main Street, it’s a bit of a trek from NU’s campus, but if you put on some sunglasses and pretend you’re not dead inside, the journey is well worth it. The cheery diner has a modern 1950s aesthetic, resplendent with paintings of horses and the Kennedys adorning the walls. An airborne tin fish and colorful paper lanterns provide some whimsy, and crystalline light fixtures with colander bases add a dash of kitsch. The patrons range from young families to older couples and everyone in between. Everyone, that is, except Northwestern students. Looking around the room, the cozy restaurant seems completely free of familiar faces. What greater gift is there to the hangover than that of an oasis of comfort food and coffee, free from the burden of uninvited small talk? The diner’s menu is perfect for a jägerbomb-battered body with a refined palate. The Lucky Platter takes your grandma’s greatest hits and adds a modern flourish.
— by Jane Recker Selections range from sourdough pancakes to crab cake eggs benedict. While most menu items have some kind of unexpected ingredient added to them, there’s nothing too shocking to the taste buds: this is comfort food at its most elevated. Take, for instance, the diner’s French toast. Made with a raisin brioche and coated in cornflakes, there was a surprising savoriness with a hint of salt from the cornflakes that helped balance the dark and mellow sweetness of the raisins and the saccharine sharpness from the strawberries. Where French toasts in other diners can become nothing more than sugary syrup transporters, this creation had its own personality while staying true to the core expectations of a patron ordering the dish. The same goes for the fried green tomato benedict. Tied together by the creamy, eggy essence of any good benedict, the dish balanced an unanticipated contrast between the acidity of the tomatoes and the buttery sweetness of the toasted cornbread base. It’s not only a delightful twist on a classic brunch staple, it’s also a rare vegetarian option for the dish. With most brunch options offered for under $10, The Lucky Platter is the place to go to eat away your sadness without breaking the bank. While it may not heal your mystery bruises or repair your soiled reputation, this lively diner can certainly give you a charming atmosphere to run away from your problems and sate your appetite.◊
You will receive compensation of $25 after you complete your visit.
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