Seek Magazine by Kate Fenoglio

S pri ng 201 4

Q U A R T E R LY T R AV E L M A G A Z I N E

SEEK Excerpts of the most exquisite locations around the United States CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

NIKON POWER TO ASTONISH INSPIRED PERFORMANCE IN A SIZE T H AT K E E P S Y O U S H O O T I N G

CONTENTS

About 8 Eat Away 12 Transportation 18 Local Eyes 24 Architecture 38 Art & Culture 42 Photos 46 Hotels 50 Save vs. Splurge 62 Public Art 64 Street Festivals 68 4

Eat Away Where are the best places to enjoy delicious, unique food and drink only in Chicago, Illinois?

Pork Belly Sopes

Soho House Chicago Brown Bag

Crio is a Latin American restaurant serving dinner and brunch. Each fried masa base is soaked in lime and topped with a layer of black beans, chunky cuts of richly marinated pork belly, a heap of caramelized red onions and queso fresco.

Because the vaunted chicken breast, buoyed by the health-conscious as a sensible protein, has traditionally been void of taste and acknowledged as a meat of last resort.

Sourced from Lake Superior, the whitefish is marinated in lemon vinaigrette, shallots, lemon juice, dill and dijon mustard. Also serves wine and craft beer.

I can’t count how many times I’ve been asked about Chicago celebrities. Who are they? Where do they hang out? Where do they shop? The answer is simple: We don’t have celebrities; we have chefs. For a city that’s used to being overlooked, Chicago is experiencing a Renaissance that’s put it on the map as a destination rather than a layover. Having lived here for all of my adult life (and grown up in the Chicago suburbs), I think it’s an obvious choice for a visit. Let me get this out of the way: Chicago is a cultural Mecca. We’ve got the Art Institute, some of the country’s finest architecture, and myriad immigrant communities. But I’m here to tell you about the food. Food is how Chicago defines itself — and how Chicagoans define themselves as a result. The city is bound by a love and appreciation for eating; the community is tightly knit and deeply rooted in authenticity. Most importantly, we’re nice. We welcome newcomers — especially if they feed us well. I know you already know about our white-hot restaurants and superstar chefs: Grant Achatz and his flagship restaurant, Alinea, and Top Chef winner Stephanie Izard and Girl and the Goat. I’m focusing on smaller places tucked into neighborhoods delivering cuisine just as fine as fine dining.

. “Food is how Chicago defines itself — and how Chicagoans define themselves as a result.” . We’ve got the Art Institute, some of the country’s finest architecture, and myriad immigrant communities. But I’m here to tell you about the food. Food is how Chicago defines itself — and how Chicagoans

define themselves as a result. The city is bound by a love and appreciation for eating; the community is tightly knit and deeply rooted in authenticity. Most importantly, we’re nice. We welcome newcomers — especially if they feed us well. I know you already know about our white-hot restaurants and superstar chefs: Grant Achatz and his flagship restaurant, Alinea, and Top Chef winner Stephanie Izard and Girl and the Goat. I’m focusing on smaller places tucked into neighborhoods delivering cuisine just as fine as fine dining. I can’t count how many times I’ve been asked about Chicago celebrities. Who are they? Where do they hang out? Where do they shop? The answer is simple: We don’t have celebrities; we have chefs. I know you already know about our white-hot restaurants and superstar chefs: Grant Achatz and his flagship restaurant, Alinea, and Top Chef winner Stephanie Izard and Girl and the Goat. I’m focusing on smaller places tucked into neighborhoods delivering cuisine just as fine as fine dining.

Telegraph Wine

Girl and the Goat

Urban Belly

It’s hard to score a table at Telegraph Wine Bar, but if you either plan ahead or get very lucky, you’ll be treated to seasonally driven small plates paired with knock-out-by-theglass Old World wines in a rustic-chic space.

The menu sweeps from the adventurous -- woodfired pig face -- to the familiar -roasted duck -and, as is implied by the name, the menu is heavy on goat. Yes, you can choose from goat empanadas, goat confit and goat liver mousse.

Urban Belly helmed by Chef Bill Kim, who was born in South Korea and educated in the best kitchens in America, lives up to the sizzle. Try the soba noodles topped with fat scallops or the phobased ramen that’s fortified with pork belly.

The destruction caused by the Great Chicago Fire led to the largest building boom in the history of the nation. Tour some of the most historic hotels in the nation.

Historic Hotels W

ern (built by James Kinzie), the Miller House, and Mark Beaubien’s tavern, soon known as the Sauganash Hotel, arose at Wolf ’s Point at the fork of the Chicago River during 1829 and 1830. In 1831 Beaubien added a frame addition to his log building, establishing Chicago’s first hotel. Chicago’s first Tremont House followed in 1833, and, though modest, it was no doubt named for Boston’s remarkable Tremont House (1829).

hen Chicago was a small village in 1830, the American palace hotel ideal was literally being cast in stone on the eastern seaboard. Therefore, the typical developmental pattern of traveler accommodations that proceeded elsewhere from tavern to city inn and then, beginning in the 1820s, to luxury hotel took place in Chicago rapidly and on a large scale. The first three taverns, Caldwell’s Tavern (built by James Kinzie), the Miller House, and Mark Beaubien’s tavern, soon known as the Sauganash Hotel, arose at Wolf ’s Point at the fork of the Chicago River during 1829 and 1830. In 1831 Beaubien added a frame addition to his log building, establishing Chicago’s first hotel. Chicago’s first Tremont House followed in 1833, and, though modest, it was no doubt named for Boston’s remarkable Tremont House (1829). The Lake House opened in 1836 across the Chicago River from Ft. Dearborn near where the Wrigley Building stands today. It was an elegant three-story brick building costing $90,000, and it served as a center for social and political activity. During the mid-nineteenth century, the building, destruction, and rebuilding of hotels continued, fueled by fire and burgeoning development. The Tremont House, Briggs House, Palmer House, Sherman House, Adams House, Matteson House, Massasoit House, and Metropolitan House were among the pre1871 hotels that served the city in luxurious style. These five-, six-, and seven-story block masonry buildings offered amenities such as steam heat, gas lighting, elevators, French chefs, and elegant surroundings.

. Hotels like the Grand Pacific and the Palmer House not only served transient visitors but also appealed to wealthy permanent residents who found in the palace hotel a convenient way to set up trouble-free elegant households. .

The Tremont House in particular, rebuilt for the third time in 1850, retained its position for many years as the city’s leading hotel. Both Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln spoke from its balcony to crowdfilled streets below, and, in 1860, the hotel served as 10

the headquarters for the Illinois Republican Party as it campaigned for Lincoln’s presidential nomination. All of these hotels burned in the fire of 1871. The Palmer House had been open only for a few months. Another hotel, the Grand Pacific, had been open only a few days. The “Big Four” of the post-fire hotels included the Palmer House, the Grand Pacific, the Tremont, and the Sherman House. These buildings adopted the commercial palazzo style of architecture common to the grand hotel palaces of the East. All professed to be fireproof above all, but boasted grand lobbies, monumental staircases, elegant parlors, cafes, barber shops, bridal suites, dining rooms, ballrooms, promenades, hundreds of private bedrooms and baths, and the latest luxuries. Typical room charges ranged from $3.50 to $7 per day and included three to four meals. Guests incurred extra charges for private parlors, room service, fires in private fireplaces, and desserts taken to one’s room from the dinner table. Hotels like the Grand Pacific and the Palmer House not only served transient visitors but also appealed to wealthy permanent residents who found in the palace hotel a convenient way to set up trouble-free elegant households. Hotels such as these served as models for other hotel construction, particularly in smaller American cities, where a luxury hotel symbolized and celebrated capitalist bourgeois values. Chicago also became a center for the hotel industry with three of the major hotel trade journals publishing from the city. The architectural revolution that produced the skyscraper found its expression in Chicago’s luxury hotels. First among these was Adler and Sullivan’s Auditorium Building (1889), which featured a 400-room hotel in addition to the theater and 17-story office tower. A 400-room annex was added in anticipation of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exhibition. The LaSalle Hotel (1908–9), one of the first of the new hotels to locate in the Loop, soared 22 stories into the Chicago skyline and claimed 1,000 bedrooms. A Michigan Avenue hotel strip anchored by the nationally renowned Blackstone (1910) included the Congress (formerly the Auditorium Annex) and the Auditorium. These were soon challenged by hotel development in the prosperous North Michigan Avenue region, where the Drake (1918–20) and the Allerton (1923–4) offered quiet, elegant alternatives with a view of the lake. The economic boom and population growth of the 1920s and Chicago’s increasing attractiveness as a convention city led to a perceived shortfall in hotel rooms, remedied by the 2,000-room Morrison Hotel and the newest rendition of the Palmer House, a Holabird & Roche creation built in 1923–25

whose 25 stories housed 2,268 rooms and for a very short time held the record as the world’s largest hotel. This title soon passed to the Stevens Hotel (now the Chicago Hilton and Towers), developed by the Stevens family of the Illinois Life Insurance Company and owners of the LaSalle. Opened in 1927, the Stevens occupied an entire city block on Michigan Avenue between Seventh and Eighth Streets. Its 3,000 guest rooms and supporting facilities such as ballrooms, restaurants, retail shops, and meeting rooms were designed according to principles of mass production and retailing perfected for the hotel industry by E. M. Statler. The hotel’s size and unsurpassed convention facilities depended on continuing national prosperity for economic viability. The Great depression of the 1930s sent the Stevens into receivership, as it did for hundreds of other hotel properties across the nation. Chicago’s hotel boom had temporarily come to a halt.

. The architectural revolution that produced the skyscraper found its expression in Chicago’s luxury hotels. .

Chicago’s hotel industry continued to expand during the second half of the twentieth century. After World War II, the growth of automobile travel led to the emergence of dozens of new “motels” in the suburbs. Meanwhile, the rise of airplane travel created new clusters of hotels near O’Hare Airport. By the end of the 1980s, the suburbs contained about 14,000 motel and hotel rooms. But the days of the large downtown hotels were far from over. Starting in the late 1980s, there was a new boom in luxury hotel construction and renovation in downtown Chicago. Huge new edifices such as the Hotel Nikko, the Four Seasons, and the 1,200-room Sheraton and Cityfront Center boosted the city’s capacity to handle a large number of well-to-do business travelers and tourists. Chicago’s ability to attract and retain large national conventions—many of which were held at its enormous McCormick Place facility—fueled this expansion and helped the business of all the area’s hotels. As the twentieth century came to a close, there were roughly 75,000 hotel and motel rooms in the Chicago area, and more space was being added to handle the roughly 25 million

people a year who stayed as guests in and around the city. When Chicago was a small village in 1830, the American palace hotel ideal was literally being cast in stone on the eastern seaboard. Therefore, the typical developmental pattern of traveler accommodations that proceeded elsewhere from tavern to city inn and then, beginning in the 1820s, to luxury hotel took place in Chicago rapidly and on a large scale. The first three taverns, Caldwell’s Tavern (built by James Kinzie), the Miller House, and Mark Beaubien’s tavern, soon known as the Sauganash Hotel, arose at Wolf ’s Point at the fork of the Chicago River during 1829 and 1830. In 1831 Beaubien added a frame addition to his log building, establishing Chicago’s first hotel. Chicago’s first Tremont House followed in 1833, and, though modest, it was no doubt named for Boston’s remarkable Tremont House (1829). The Lake House opened in 1836 across the Chicago River from Ft. Dearborn near where the Wrigley Building stands today. It was an elegant three-story brick building costing $90,000, and it served as a center for social and political activity. During the mid-nineteenth century, the building, destruction, and rebuilding of hotels continued, fueled by fire and burgeoning development. The Tremont House, Briggs House, Palmer House, Sherman House, Adams House, Matteson House, Massasoit House, and Metropolitan House were among the pre-1871 hotels that served the city in luxurious style. These five-, six-, and seven-story block masonry buildings offered amenities such as steam heat, gas lighting, elevators, French chefs, and elegant surroundings. The Tremont House in particular, rebuilt for the third time in 1850, retained its position for many years as the city’s leading hotel. Both Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln spoke from its balcony to crowd-filled streets below, and, in 1860, the hotel served as the headquarters for the Illinois Republican Party as it campaigned for Lincoln’s presidential nomination. All of these hotels burned in the fire of 1871. The Palmer House had been open only for a few months. Another hotel, the Grand Pacific, had been open only a few days.

local eyes

See as the locals of Chicago, Illinois see. Find the events, locations, and unknown attractions that you wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t read about anywhere else.

Randolph Street Market Over 250 exhibitors and upwards of 10,000 visitors participate in the festival which is a popular weekend destination for Chicagoans and visitors to the city.[6] It is the largest market of its kind in the Midwest. The Randolph Street Market Festival offers buyers hundreds of boutique spaces presented by dealers, purveyors and designers from a multistate region. Shoppers find furnishings, vintage jewelry and fashions, and collectibles along with the recently added areas: the Vinyl Swap Meet, with rock, jazz, show-tunes, and other collectible records and albums.

Chicago’s craft beer scene has expanded so rapidly in the last five years that you would be hard-pressed to find a truly accurate list of every brewery in the city anywhere on the internet. There’s simply been too much rapid growth and turnover. Not every project to get its doors open has kept them open—one brewery opened commercially in 2013 and officially closed its doors and sold off its equipment later in the same year. And even if you could list every one, the new class of Chicago brewers challenges the conventions of commercial brewing project.There are guys like Spiteful Brewing, operating 2.5-barrel brewhouses barely larger than your garage-based homebrewing operation, and yet their beer is available as far away as Central Illinois. There are large homebrewing collectives you can hire to produce a beer for your wedding or party. There are beer-related projects for nearly any situation one can imagine, from the lowliest lawnmower beer to fusions between craft beer and gourmet cuisine. It’s a rough estimate, then, when I say I’ve counted about 29 “currently operational” brewing projects in Chicago today. That doesn’t include any of the half dozen or more that are preparing to open in

the near future. It sure as hell doesn’t include the suburbs— that would be adding another dozen breweries or more. So which places are truly indispensable? Where must craft beer-hungry tourists in Chicago visit while they’re in town? All is revealed in Paste’s Craft Beer Guide to Chicago. Chicago’s craft beer scene has expanded so rapidly in the last five years that you would be hard-pressed to find a truly accurate list of every brewery in the city anywhere on the internet. There’s simply been too much rapid growth and turnover. Not every project to get its doors open has kept them open—one brewery opened commercially in 2013 and officially closed its doors and sold off its equipment later in the same year. And even if you could list every one, the new class of Chicago brewers challenges the conventions of commercial brewing projects. There are guys like Spiteful Brewing, operating 2.5-barrel brewhouses barely larger than your garage-based homebrewing operation, and yet their beer is available as far away as Central Illinois. There are large homebrewing collectives you can hire to produce a beer for your wedding or party. There are beer-related projects for nearly any situation one can imagine,

from the lowliest lawnmower beer to fusions between craft beer and gourmet cuisine. It’s a rough estimate, then, when I say I’ve counted about 29 “currently operational” brewing projects in Chicago today. That doesn’t include any of the half dozen or more that are preparing to open in the near future. It sure as hell doesn’t include the suburbs— that would be adding another dozen breweries or more. So which places are truly dispensable? Where must craft beer-hungry tourists in Chicago visit while they’re in town? All is revealed in Paste’s Craft Beer Guide to Chicago. Chicago’s craft beer scene has expanded so rapidly in the last five years that you would be hard-pressed to find a truly accurate list of every brewery in the city anywhere on the internet. There’s simply been too much rapid growth and turnover. ment later in the same year. And even if you could list every one, the new class of Chicago brewers challenges the conventions of commercial brewing projects.

The best ways to get around Chicago, Illinois, from scenic routes to people in a rush.

transportation

On the first working days of 1988, there is a growing impression among riders who have cast their fates to the winter wind and the Chicago Transit Authority that they are having to wait too long in the former`s icy grip before getting onto the latter`s buses and trains. Arguably the one official CTA message that comes howling loudest with the Hawk only fans the ire of riders: This week the CTA has increased bus fares by a dime and monthly passes by $4. Rolling into 1988 on venerable parts and renewed resolutions to repair them, the CTA runs smack into an old nemesis: winter snowstorms and freezing temperatures that cause numerous rail and bus delays in the very first week of the new year. Statistically, the situation comes nowhere near the devastating blizzard of January, 1979, but the attitude building at bus stops and train platforms across the city isn`t all that different from those debacle days-CTA riders are irritated. Their work week is plagued with 44 consecutive hours of subzero temperatures, leaving them cursing under their frozen breaths as they wait and worry about how late their buses or trains will be and how those delays will affect them.

Home to some of the world’s most prestigious museums, Chicago, Illinois, offers a culturally rich experience unlike any other. The Field Museum of Natural History, located in Chicago, Illinois, USA, is one of the largest natural history museums in the world. The museum maintains its status as a premier natural history museum through the size and quality of its educational and scientific programs, as well as due to its extensive scientific specimen and artifact collections. The diverse, high quality permanent exhibitions, which attract up to 2 million visitors annually, range from the earliest fossils to past and current cultures from around the world to interactive programming demonstrating today’s urgent conservation needs.

The Museum of Science and Industry (MSI) is located in Chicago, Illinois, USA in Jackson Park, in the Hyde Park neighborhood between Lake Michigan and The University of Chicago. It is housed in the former Palace of Fine Arts from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Initially endowed by Julius Rosenwald, the Sears, Roebuck and Company president and philanthropist, it was supported by the Commercial Club of Chicago and opened in 1933 during the Century of Progress Exposition.

Field Museum of Natural History

Museum of Contemporary Art

Museum of Science and Industry

The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago is a contemporary art museum near Water Tower Place in downtown Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is one of the world’s largest contemporary art venues. The museum’s collection is composed of thousands of objects of Post-World War II visual art. The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago is a contemporary art museum near Water Tower Place in downtown Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States.

For those with a taste for nostalgia, there are several shows devoted to postwar rebellions and experimentation. The German group Zero, which aimed to transform art in the 1950s and ’60s, is featured at the Guggenheim; a celebration of Sixties radicalism organized by the artist and guest curator Nicolás Dumit Estéve is at el Museo del Barrio; while a taste of art that sprang from the urban upheavals roiling New York, Los Angeles and Chicago in the ’60s and ’70s can be found at the Art Institute of Chicago. Or you might consider starting with something that — for all its strangeness — could be seen as the fountainhead of nearly all the other

cultural largess on display this season: “Assyria to Iberia at the Dawn of the Classical Age” at the Met. Internationalism and cultural exchanges are watchwords of our age, but the original globalization occurred more than 3,000 years ago when ancient kingdoms began trading and traveling across the Mediterranean. Ideas and materials, art and technology were carried in ship hulls and by caravans that journeyed across what today comprises Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Syria and part of Turkey. This commercial traffic not only helped animate the longdead civilizations of the first millennium B.C. but serve as the

wellspring of our own culture. “Assyria to Iberia” offers glimpses into this enormously inventive, transitional period when iron began to replace bronze as the primary material used for weapons and tools and the first alphabet spread through the Mediterranean world.

n the first working days of 1988, there is a growing impression among riders who have cast their fates to the winter wind and the Chicago Transit Authority that they are having to wait too long in the former`s icy grip before getting onto the latter`s buses and trains. Arguably the one official CTA message that comes howling loudest with the Hawk only fans the ire of riders: This week the CTA has increased bus fares by a dime and monthly passes by $4. Rolling into 1988 on venerable parts and renewed resolutions to repair them, the CTA runs smack into an old nemesis: winter snowstorms and freezing temperatures that cause numerous rail and bus delays in the very first week of the new year. Statistically, the situation comes nowhere near the devastating blizzard of January, 1979, but the attitude building at bus stops and train platforms across the city isn`t all that different from those debacle days-CTA riders are irritated. Their work week is plagued with 44 consecutive hours of subzero temperatures, leaving them cursing under their frozen breaths as they wait and worry about how late their buses or trains will be and how those delays will affect them. The Art Group’s mission includes designing public art, enhancing individual artistic skills and expression, educating professional artists concerning issues of public art, and building community appreciation with respect to the benefits of public art creation.The Group’s board of directors includes artists and community leaders. It provides artistic leadership and professional management to public and private organizations in the creation of art. The organization is centered around an elected group of “Core Artists,” who have previously worked on or led its projects. Its “Senior Artists Circle” is an invitation only group that recognizes prominent public artists. The Group also promotes the restoration of artwork.

The Chicago Public Art Collection includes more than 700 works of art exhibited in over 150 municipal facilities around the city, such as police stations, libraries, and CTA stations.