May 3, 2017 | The Food Issue by South Side Weekly

2 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

Â¬ MAY 3, 2017

IN CHICAGO

SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY The South Side Weekly is an independent nonprofit newsprint magazine written for and about neighborhoods on the South Side of Chicago. We publish in-depth coverage of the arts and issues of public interest alongside oral histories, poetry, fiction, interviews, and artwork from local photographers and illustrators. The South Side Weekly is dedicated to supporting cultural and civic engagement on the South Side and to providing educational opportunities for developing journalists, writers, and artists. Volume 4, Issue 28 Editor-in-Chief Hafsa Razi Managing Editors Julia Aizuss, Andrew Koski Director of Staff Support Baci Weiler Deputy Editor Olivia Stovicek Senior Editor Emeline Posner Politics Editor Adia Robinson Music Editor Austin Brown Stage & Screen Editor Nicole Bond Visual Arts Editor Roderick Sawyer Editors-at-Large Maha Ahmed, Christian Belanger, Jake Bittle, Mari Cohen, Jonathan Hogeback, Ellie Mejía Contributing Editors Maddie Anderson, Maria Babich, Mira Chauhan, Bridget Newsham, Adam Przybyl, Carrie Smith, Sam Stecklow, Margaret Tazioli, Yunhan Wen Video Editor Lucia Ahrensdorf Radio Producers Andrew Koski, Lewis Page Social Media Editors Emily Lipstein, Bridget Newsham, Sam Stecklow Visuals Editor Ellen Hao Deputy Visuals Editor Jasmin Liang Photography Editor Jason Schumer Layout Editor Baci Weiler Staff Writers: Sara Cohen, Christopher Good, Rachel Kim, Ashvini Kartik-Narayan, Michal Kranz, Anne Li, Michael Wasney Fact Checkers: Eleanore Catolico, Sam Joyce, Rachel Kim, Adam Przybyl, Hafsa Razi, Carrie Smith, Tiffany Wang, Baci Weiler Staff Photographers: Denise Naim, Jason Schumer, Luke Sironski-White Staff Illustrators: Zelda Galewsky, Natalie Gonzalez, Courtney Kendrick, Turtel Onli, Raziel Puma, Lizzie Smith Data Visualization: Jasmine Mithani Webmaster

Sofia Wyetzner

Publisher

Harry Backlund

The paper is produced by an all-volunteer editorial staff and seeks contributions from across the city. We distribute each Wednesday in the fall, winter, and spring. Over the summer we publish every other week. Send submissions, story ideas, comments, or questions to editor@southsideweekly.com or mail to: South Side Weekly 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Chicago, IL 60637 For advertising inquiries, contact: (773) 234-5388 or advertising@southsideweekly.com

Cover illustration by Tyler Nickell

A week’s worth of developing stories, odd events, and signs of the times, culled from the desks, inboxes, and wandering eyes of the editors

BBB to CC It is difficult to know exactly how one should feel upon learning that Mayor Emanuel’s third CPS CEO, Barbara Byrd-Bennett, has been sentenced to four and a half years in a prison nicknamed Camp Cupcake, which the government refers to as Federal Prison Camp Alderson. (As many have noted, Martha Stewart served her time there, potentially taking any number of self-improvement sessions offered—from Cosmetology to Brisk Walking to the yoga classes that Stewart reportedly started at the prison camp.) On the one hand, Byrd-Bennett appears to have recognized the error of her ways, somewhat: through sobs, she told federal district judge Edmond Chang that running CPS was much more difficult than she expected, according to DNAinfo, somewhat echoing President Trump on healthcare reform. On the other, her emails about what she planned to do with her kickback money from the $23 million worth of contracts for largely inadequate principal “training”—“tuition to pay and casinos to visit (: ”—ring quite loudly when considering the financial hoops the district is jumping through at the moment, self-imposed as many of them may be. If only the person who hired her was more concerned with adequate education across the entire city as he is with paying out millions to consultancies and mentorship programs. A Grocery Store for Woodlawn On Monday, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that a new Jewel-Osco grocery store would come next year to Woodlawn, at 61st and Cottage Grove. This may have been even bigger news than the Obama library for neighborhood residents, who have long hoped for another full-service grocery store in addition to the Aldi at 66th and Cottage Grove. The planned 48,000-square-foot store (with drivethru pharmacy) is part of the city’s efforts to eradicate food deserts and was possible only after continuous public investment in housing, transportation, infrastructure, and more. “I’ve always said, if we put public investments in, the private sector will see them as a major economic engine for growth,” Rahm told the Sun-Times. The opening of the store is, by all means, an attempt to revitalize the community. According to DNAinfo, tax incentives such as TIFs were not pursued by DL3, one of the developers of the grocery store, to fund the construction. The long-term impact of this new project, however, especially combined with that of the Obama library, requires more observation and evaluation, since the last thing residents want to see is the gentrification and dislocation that so often follows the launch of a “revitalization plan.” The Oldest Bar in Chicago, Schaller’s Pump, is Now Closed Schaller’s Pump, the oldest bar in Chicago, closed its doors on Sunday, April 30, 136 years after George Schaller began operating the family-owned bar in Bridgeport in 1881. George worked alongside his son (also named George) serving food and drinks to White Sox fans, politicians, and neighborhood regulars alike; even members of the Daley family frequented the bar. The second George Schaller eventually passed the ownership down to his son, Jack, during the 1960s. Jack ran the bar for decades with the help of his children, including Kim Shinnick. When Jack passed away last May—along with the senior citizen exemptions that gave the bar a tax break— Shinnick and the family continued to run Schaller’s. Schinnick was reached for comment in the bar’s final days, but declined to give details to the Sun-Times. As the bar closed Saturday night, locals packed in to get their last drinks. CPS’s Groundhog Day Mayor Rahm Emanuel has seen his own shadow, and Chicago Public Schools will be getting three weeks of school in June after all. Last Friday, a Cook County judge ruled against the district in a lawsuit against the state, charging Governor Bruce Rauner with discriminatory funding practices against the city’s minority students. Prior to the ruling, Emanuel and CPS CEO Forrest Claypool warned that without a favorable outcome to the lawsuit, public schools in Chicago might have to close two weeks early, on June 1, in order to accommodate a $130 million budget hole, and pay a $719 million bill to the Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund. But the city reversed course on Friday—school will remain in session until June 20. Was a shortened school year ever even on the table? According to an analysis by WBEZ, there are several ways CPS can stay open without money from the state—borrowing more money, making a partial or delayed pension payment, or pulling money from the city’s tax increment financing (TIF) districts. But most of these alternatives would put the district deeper in debt or reliant on temporary funding. These are the terrible, actual options facing Chicago students. It’s time for the district to confront them, instead of making empty threats.

SSW Radio soundcloud.com/south-side-weekly-radio WHPK 88.5 FM Tuesdays, 3pm–4pm

Email Edition southsideweekly.com/email

Support the Weekly southsideweekly.com/donate

MAY 3, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 3

THE FOOD ISSUE Over the last several months, the Weekly has dispatched writers to explore the long-lived and fledgling culinary institutions of the South Side, from Calumet’s beloved bridge-side fish stand to a newly opened Bronzeville taco shop, from sprouting vegetable gardens to well-worn restaurant booths. The resulting stories are ones that record the resonances of tradition embedded in the new, and innovation embedded in the old. One writer writes about the “renaissance” of regional Chinese cooking in Bridgeport, while another reports on how houses of worship are incorporating urban agriculture into long-standing food justice projects. A third traces the legacy of the late Jolyn Robichaux of Baldwin Ice Cream by interviewing a younger generation of Black entrepreneurs shaped by Robichaux’s persistence as much as by Baldwin’s hearty ice cream cones. We harbor no illusions that in this, our second-ever Food Issue, the Weekly has done anything more than trace out a slightly broader swath of the vibrant and complex cultural network that is the South Side foodscape. Think of the articles, illustrations, and interviews that follow as a second round of samplings—stories which we are grateful to our neighbors for sharing with us, and which we are proud in turn to share with you.

19 16 5

journey to the west: chinese restaurants in bridgeport

They’re building the small corners of Bridgeport that they can call home, and with each day and each dish, slowly reshaping a neighborhood. isabelle lim.......................................5

18 22

tradition in the kitchen

“When are you going to do the next class?” michael wasney................................8

16 20

italian done right

“What’d I tell you,” she said. “Better than family.” bridget gamble..............................10 cultivating faith in food

Several garden plots at a time. michael wasney..............................12 20

hopping around the breweries

All the information you need about the South Side’s very own craft beer. south side weekly..........................14 around the south side in three drinks

Ginger, nuts, and “iced tea” emeline posner...............................16 calumet fisheries

In an era of health food, Calumet Fisheries is devoid of pretension—no seating, no bathroom, no credit cards, no nonsense. christopher good..........................17 peachy perfect

The success isn’t effortless. Peach’s menu items are purposefully crafted, diverging from the standard diner fare. lewis page........................................18 not your mother’s tamales

“I mean, most people love nachos. So why not pop a tamale right on top of there?” maria babich...................................19 the varied veganism of the south side

Three vegan restaurateurs discuss their origins and aims. michelle gan..................................20 an unlikely love story

FEATURE REVIEW INTERVIEW PROFILE

4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ MAY 3, 2017

“Love is what this community needs more of.” mira chauhan.................................22 breaking the freezer barrier

“I just want to continue the legacy that she laid down.” rachel kim......................................23

FEATURE Jack Chen & Wang Chen Hai, Northern City.

Journey to the West: Chinese Restaurants in Bridgeport

LUKE SIRONSKI-WHITE

New eateries redefine ‘Chinese food’ in Chicago with regional offerings BY ISABELLE LIM

hen Jimmy Li first moved to Bridgeport in 1984, he was one of the few Asian immigrants to live in the neighborhood. Over seventysix percent of residents at the time were white, twenty percent identified as Hispanic or Latino, and less than one percent were African-American. The Asian population was all but unaccounted for by authorities

until the 1990 census, which reported that they constituted 16 percent of the population. “Growing up in Bridgeport, there used to be not much to do. There used to be [Naponiello’s] bowling at 26th...but bowling was usually full so we’d go and play at the arcade. Asians are very good with games,” Li says laughing, “So we usually dominated the arcades.”

Li, originally from the Canton region in China, moved to the neighborhood at the age of two with his family, and still lives there today. He recalls navigating the streets as a child, and the less-than-friendly encounters that he experienced being visibly Chinese. “We played at McGuane Park, but sometimes we get picked on and they push us off the court,” he recalls. “The bullying was

mostly racial in nature, which was why we hung out at Chinatown a lot.” Now, Li lives in a very different Bridgeport. The neighborhood has undergone dramatic demographic shifts in the last two decades, moving from a traditionally white European space to one where the largest ethnic population is, according to census categories, “Asian”—an entire continent encapsulated in a single label—but, in reality, mostly Chinese. Regardless, the changing composition of the neighborhood is apparent, especially in the storefronts centered on South Halsted Street. It’s at the northern most end of Halsted near 26th Street, about three blocks away from McGuane Park where Li used to play basketball as a child, that his new restaurant, Taipei Café, is located. It’s part of a growing crop of Chinese restaurants that have emerged in Bridgeport, offering more diverse food options when it comes to Chinese cuisine. Taipei Café, which opened in January this year, is only one of a handful of places in the city offering food from the island-nation of Taiwan. Taiwan is best known for its innovative street food that’s served from vendors at its many night markets. It’s the kind of casual cuisine that Li has sought to emulate at his café. “Taiwanese cuisine is almost like Spanish tapas. For someone who doesn’t know Taiwanese cuisine, side dishes are its main thing...and noodles are [also] the main thing,” Li says. “Stir-fried dishes and entrees are actually not popular in Taiwan, because [in] Taiwan, all the stores are very small. They have hawker stalls that sell street food a lot... so our first menu is mostly side dishes, mostly snacks.” Li co-owns the restaurant with at least five other people, some of whom are Taiwanese. Before they opened it, they traveled to Taiwan and methodically ate their way through four different cities (including Taipei), trying to get a broad sense of what dishes were most popular in the country and would work best at their soon-to-be-opened restaurant. They were also trying to hire chefs from the country itself to helm the new venture. “To start, we wanted [to be] authentic. We didn’t want a Taiwanese place that serves beef and broccoli, or orange chicken. Some of the partners wanted to serve that because it’s [a] very popular dish in Chicago right? Orange chicken, and beef and broccoli. But the food culture is changing. Everybody wants authentic things. They just don’t want MAY 3, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

LUKE SIRONSKI-WHITE

generic.” Instead, what Li and his team of chefs have on the menu are Taiwanese favorites, ranging from popular street food to hearty home-style dishes: oyster omelet, a starchy mixture of eggs and fresh oysters topped with coriander and a sweet-sour orange sauce; crispy fried chicken dusted with plum powder; braised pork over rice served with pickled radish and cabbage; spicy beef noodle soup topped with scallions; and pork belly buns served Taiwanese style, with crushed peanuts and pickled mustard greens falling off the plate. And then there’s dessert. The restaurant serves Taiwanese shaved ice, a dessert made from shaving thin layers off a frozen block of flavored milk, piling those shavings on a plate, and then topping it with a variety of fresh fruit, sauces, beans, and more, depending on the particular flavor that’s ordered. Its texture is like aerated ice cream. So far, the restaurant has stuck to its guns, keeping as close to authentic Taiwanese cuisine as it can, but Li recognizes its attitude has to be flexible for the business to survive. “We try to cater also to the Chicago people, and Bridgeport has a lot of families. 6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ MAY 3, 2017

It’s family-oriented right? A lot of good schools here, so it’s family-oriented. It’s not like Roscoe Village or the West Loop where there’s only couples. So we want to incorporate some entrees in our next menu,” he says. He talks about ramping up the menu to make it more family-friendly for Bridgeport residents, but draws the line at altering the kind of cuisine that’s served. “There are Caucasians who come in and ask if we serve fried rice or beef and broccoli,” he says. When asked what he says in response, he laughs and replies, “[We say] we don’t have that.” It’s unsurprising that Chinese food in America is still spoken of in terms of dishes like orange chicken and chow mein. American-Chinese cuisine, first invented by nineteenth century Chinese immigrants who came to work in the mining and railroad industries, was developed by adapting Chinese regional cuisines to American tastes. Because most early Chinese immigrants were from Cantonese-speaking regions of China, early American-Chinese cuisine was characterized by Cantonese or Cantonesederived food. This particular Southern region of China, centered on Guangdong province,

thus grew synonymous with “Chinese food” in general, though restaurants like Li’s Taipei Café, and, just down Halsted Street, Northern City, are part of a wave of new establishments changing that view, introducing variety to what we know of as “Chinese” food. Owned by partners Jack Chen and Wang Chen Hai, Northern City on 31st and Halsted specializes in, as its name suggests, Northern-style Chinese cooking. It’s one of three restaurants in Bridgeport, including Potsticker House and Homestyle Taste, offering the regional style. Wang, who is originally from Liaoning province in the North of China, tells me that he first arrived in America in 1999, though he didn’t immediately settle in Bridgeport. “I was in the south of Illinois, near where the border crosses with Kentucky, Missouri and Indiana. It was a little town there, but still in Illinois state. I was working at a restaurant owned by a Vietnamese-Chinese person, and even though it was called Chinese food, it was mostly geared towards American tastes. I worked there for seven years, and only moved to Chicago in 2006,” Wang says. He explains that in the early 2000s, restaurants in Chinatown in Chicago were still predominantly Cantonese—dim sum

joints serving dumplings and steamed buns in wicker baskets, and restaurants displaying their roast meats in the shop front window, while featuring double-boiled soups and rice congee on their menu. There simply wasn’t a place for Northern Chinese food, nor any interest in it. “Back then, there just weren’t that many Northeastern Chinese immigrants. And those that were in America didn’t have the means to open a restaurant,” Wang says. In just ten years, however, that seems to have changed significantly. For Jimmy Li especially, a Cantonese-Chinese immigrant, the shift in the kind of Chinese immigrants that are now moving to the Chinatown and Bridgeport areas is apparent. “There are more Mandarin-speaking people now. Usually, mostly, it was Cantonese...and they’re all shifting west, because old Chinatown is overpopulated, and there are only so many buildings in Chinatown. So they’re all moving west, so [the] McKinley and Brighton Park area. And housing is a lot cheaper over there. It’s much more affordable,” Li says. Wang is part of this newer Mandarinspeaking wave of Chinese immigrants that Li speaks of, representing and asserting a different kind of Chinese cuisine and culture, and expanding notions of what it means to be “Asian” or “Chinese” in Chicago. When he finally made the move to the city, it was to work as a chef at a restaurant in Chinatown— one that, finally, served Northeastern food. The region’s cuisine, as Wang describes it, is one that has its basis in adaptation. He tells me that there isn’t really one cohesive notion of what Northeastern cuisine is, but is rather, one that takes from the tradition of braised foods from Shandong province and incorporates local ingredients and methods of cooking. The region of China that Wang hails and cooks from is geographically sandwiched by Russia and North Korea, and lies just east of Inner Mongolia—fertile ground for a cross-cultural cuisine to develop. The climate of harsh winters meant that Northeastern food grew to rely heavily on preserved foods; pickled vegetables like cabbage and braised meats that are cooled, stored, and ready to eat throughout the winter. Wang introduces two quintessentially Northeastern Chinese dishes that the restaurant serves: stewed chicken with mellea mushrooms and blood sausage pork belly soup. The former would be an otherwise generic dish were it not for the golden-yellow fungus that’s used. The mellea mushroom,

FEATURE

Wang explains, is found in the mountainous wilderness of the three Northeastern provinces. “It’s entirely wild. Black fungus, shiitake mushrooms, other fresh mushrooms…they can all be grown. This kind of mushroom, the mellea mushroom, can’t. It has a history,” Wang says. But because the mushroom isn’t sold in America, Wang has had to resort to importing them directly from China to continue serving the dish at his restaurant. In fact, the problem of finding ingredients for his Northeastern cooking, comparable to what he remembers from back home, has been a constant challenge. Wang launches into a lament about the quality of pork and beef when asked about buying ingredients in Chicago. The fragrance of the meat, he says, just doesn’t compare to what he used to find in China. And as for the vegetables, he says, “I mean, the cucumbers, American cucumbers look like they’re fine, but when you eat them, the texture is different than what we have in China.” To remedy the situation, he prepares dishes with authentic Northeastern cooking techniques, and he makes a significant number of secondary ingredients like the blood sausage, dumplings, and all bread items by hand. He’s particularly proud of his blood sausage production, claiming that Northern City is the only restaurant in Chicago to make and serve this particular variety of Northern Chinese sausage. “When Northerners kill the pig, we flavor the blood with spices and after cleaning the small intestines really thoroughly, we make this kind of blood sausage,” Wang explains. “They have it in New York, but in Chicago, it’s only me who’s making it. Not that other people can’t. They just aren’t doing it, because it’s not easy.” Above all, he says, what he’s trying to achieve with his Northeastern Chinese food is to preserve a taste of home. A lot of his customers are Northeastern Chinese people, some immigrants and some students from the nearby Illinois Institute of Technology. What they want when they enter the restaurant, he says, is food that tastes of the familiar. “Northeastern Chinese people like to eat Northeastern Chinese food. But you know, not just Northeastern people, but no matter who you are, you can’t escape missing that taste of home. So we try our best to recreate that taste, to keep that taste,” he says. While Li and Wang’s restaurants represent the increasingly varied homelands

of a growing population in Chicago, it has been, and still is, painted in broad brushstrokes under a single continental category— “Asian”—in official national surveys and censuses. Armed with woks, plum powder, and blood sausage, however, these new styles of cooking are paving a culinary way for new notions of what “Chinese food” or “Asian food” is, and, perhaps more importantly, who “Chinese people” or “Asian people” are. For in addition to Taipei Café and Northern City, a number of even more varied restaurants serving everything from Korean barbecue, Northern Indian cuisine, and Thai food, have moved into the neighborhood. Bridgeport, where increasing numbers of storefronts now boast non-English signs, is perhaps a surprising neighborhood for such new understandings to take place, given its history. In the 1960s, neighborhood residents rioted and destroyed the property of two Black students who moved in up the street from where the Daley family house is, and in 1997, the beating of Lenard Clark, a 13-year-old African-American boy, by white teenagers from the neighborhood was the subject of outrage. The neighborhood was painted as one that was hostile to minorities, a bastion of white racism on the South Side, and yet, now, according to Li, the neighborhood’s shifting demographic is tangible on an everyday level. He talks again of McGuane Park and how it differs from the McGuane Park of his childhood. “When it’s 9 p.m. and you’re playing ball there and you feel safe, you know the community has become a lot better. When you were younger, playing ball at McGuane at 9pm [was] not a good thing. Because you can get robbed or get beat up there. But now it doesn’t happen there anymore,” he says. Yet, it’s important to keep in mind the distinct differences between ethnic minority communities in the neighborhood before Bridgeport is touted as an example of a successfully integrated and multicultural space. Because although the “Asian” population has seen significant increases in the last three decades or so, other minority populations like the African-American community remained less than three percent of the Bridgeport population even in 2014. Bridgeport’s growing diversity then, is of a very specific sort—it now seems to have a growing receptivity for Asian minorities, due in no small part to its proximity to the nearby Chinatown area, serving as an expected geographical overflow area for an “overpopulated” Chinatown, but also

Left: Jimmy Li, owner of Taipei Cafe. Right: Northern City master chef. LUKE SIRONSKI-WHITE

perhaps the more insidious belief of Asian minorities as a “model minority”. The “model minority” myth, which first came into public awareness in the mid-1950s and 60s, portrayed Asian minorities as “industrious, law-abiding citizens who kept their heads down and never complained,” according to Jeff Guo of the Washington Post. Their socio-economic success was often used as an argument against the fight for equality by other minorities, framed in terms of “If they can do it, why can’t you?” Besides the fact that such questions ignore deep-seated structural roots of racism that impede upward mobility for minorities, they also conceal a larger problem of racial inequality by focusing on the successes of one minority population If we read the gleaming storefronts in Bridgeport with their Chinese characters and believe that the neighborhood has now become an example of integrated diversity, we threaten to do the same. The new Asian-owned establishments that pepper the streets around South

Halsted may hint at larger cultural and demographic trends in Bridgeport. But ask Wang or Li about the abstract cultural stakes of their restaurants, and you’d be met with confusion. For Wang, his and fellow immigrants’ decision to settle down in Bridgeport was, and is, deeply personal. “People move because of their livelihood, they want a better quality of life for themselves. That’s all I can say. Because America, compared to other countries, the quality of life that people can have here is good,” he says. At the core of it, Bridgeport residents like Jimmy Li and Wang Chen Hai are carving out better lives for themselves in these new communities. In their kitchens and in their new restaurants, their daily labor—slicing, dicing, frying, boiling, steaming, serving, and so on—are the actions that sustain their presences in these neighborhoods. They’re building the small corners of Bridgeport that they can call home, and with each day and each dish, slowly reshaping a neighborhood. ¬ MAY 3, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

Tradition in the Kitchen

ANDREW KOSKI

The Ridgeland Block Club Association teaches healthy eating through African diasporic cuisine BY MICHAEL WASNEY

he kitchen of St. Ailbe’s Catholic Church, located in Calumet Heights, was filled on the evening of April 5, with people and smells. It smelled good, like something frying. That something was yuca root, prepared in olive oil with a dash of thyme and salt. Yuca, otherwise known as cassava, is a starchy tuber native to South America. When cooked in oil, however, its smell is more familiar—a lot like French fries, actually. It tastes like them too, but heartier and more flavorful. It was served, crispy and delicious, to a group of over a dozen onlookers. But this was just the 8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ MAY 3, 2017

appetizer of the night; they would leave St. Ailbe’s about an hour later having had a full three-course meal of traditional cuisine of the African diaspora. This was the second-to-last class of A Taste of African Heritage, a six-installment vegan cooking course designed by a Bostonbased nonprofit called Oldways. Ben Handy, founder and president of the the Ridgeland Block Club Association, initially found out about Oldways through his interest in the Mediterranean diet program created by the nonprofit in the 1990s. Later, when he learned about the Taste of African Heritage

program, which Oldways created in 2011, he and three other members of the block got certified to teach the six-class series. Many of their students were people they knew from outside of the classroom—neighbors from the Ridgeland area, Handy’s fellow parishioners at St. Ailbe’s, or both. Handy’s block club association represents four blocks on Ridgeland Avenue between 87th Place and 91st Street, just east of St. Ailbe’s. When I asked him what inspired him to bring the course to his neighborhood. he said the Ridgeland Block Club Association “[promotes] activities that further health

and wellness,” referencing the organization’s mission statement.“I thought that this cooking class would be a great way of introducing the neighbors and the neighborhood in general to some concepts that would help them live healthier lives, and better eating.” That’s exactly the kind of change Oldways intends to effect. “It really started with the idea of creating programs and educational resources to promote and advocate the health benefits of cultural traditions, and the so-called ‘old ways of eating,’” said Johnisha Levi, who is the coordinator of the organization’s African

FEATURE

ANDREW KOSKI

Heritage and Health program and one of Handy’s primary contacts at Oldways. She said the nonprofit’s African Heritage and Health program was launched with the intention of combatting “health disparities in the African-American community— the higher incidence of diabetes, and heart disease, and obesity-related diseases.” Until Handy reached out to them, Oldways’ presence in Chicago had grown “kind of stagnant,” as Levi put it, despite their intention to put down more roots there. “It is a city that is high on our list, and somewhere we’d like to have more of a presence,” she says. In that sense, Handy’s proposal to bring A Taste of African Heritage to his block club was providential, offering the organization an inroad into a city with rich and deeply rooted Black history. Handy is what Levi calls “a community gatekeeper,” a person she hopes will open new doors for Oldways in Chicago. Handy sees himself as something of a gatekeeper as well. “There are some people who, when they get information, they like to share it, or they’re the person who’s always introducing people to other people at the party... I see these classes as an opportunity to expose people to all kinds of different things,” he said. He’s been excited to share with those around him the benefits

of a diet derived from traditional African diasporic cuisine. Oldways says this diet can have significant positive health effects for those who undertake it: sixty-four percent of participants in their classes have lost weight over the duration of the course, while thirtythree percent have noted a decrease in blood pressure. But Handy is introducing his students to more than just a healthy diet. He intentionally mentions local stores and businesses where students can acquire the ingredients for Oldways’ recipes. La Fruteria, for example, is a market located about two miles east of St. Ailbe’s that specializes in the sale of Latin American, Caribbean, and African foods; another grocery store, Pete’s Produce on 87th and Harper, helped sponsor the class. Handy said he was excited to get Pete’s directly involved in the program because “just about everything that we made came from Pete’s.” He noted that some people have a tendency to avoid healthy cooking, because they think “the stuff is exotic, I’m not going to be able to find it, it’s going to take too much time.” With the Oldways course, he’s tried to help members of his block club think differently: “We have those options right here,” he says, “and I want people to take advantage of them.” The recipes themselves

are accessible as well, something appreciated by students like Jacqueline Kersey, who said she liked “the simplicity of the cooking and eating healthy.” Handy has also used the Taste of African Heritage course as a way to introduce his students to another food access nonprofit: Top Box Foods, a local organization started by Chris and Sheila Kennedy that seeks to mitigate food deserts in the Chicagoland area by delivering fresh produce to designated drop-off sites. By buying from the same suppliers as a chain store like Mariano’s but forgoing fancy packaging, Top Box passes on a discount of up to forty percent to the consumer. St. Ailbe’s serves as one of Top Box Foods’ drop-off sites, which is how Handy first heard about them; he invited Terry Hill, a volunteer and representative from the nonprofit, to attend the final Taste in African Heritage class session. Like Handy, Hill recognizes the importance of this type of educational programming, telling me he believes that “knowledge is power.” After the final class ended, attendees received a free box of produce from Top Box. There was an air of excitement surrounding the class—the students’ enthusiasm was infectious. Some connected the curriculum back to their own experiences

and backgrounds, which they were eager to share when Handy posed questions to the class. One student, Joan Crusor, said she enjoyed “how connected [the class] is to the cooking I grew up making with my mother and grandmother.” For her, the focus on heritage “brought back memories and gave new ways of eating and cooking.” Handy didn’t receive the same positive response when he initially proposed a vegan cooking class to his block club: “I wasn’t getting a lot of warm thumbs-up on Facebook when I was talking about the class.” But he persevered, with good results: “I was really pleasantly surprised to see how many people signed up for it, and how many people who didn’t get a chance to participate in this class were asking—when are you going to do the next class?” Handy can’t say yet when he’ll teach the class again, although he admitted that from the beginning, “I thought that if it went well, we might be able to do it again next year.” Due to Handy’s success, Oldways is now actively seeking to create a larger presence in Chicago, so much so that they wrote Chicago into their most recent grant from the WalMart Foundation, which funds A Taste of African Heritage around the country. Cities like Philadelphia, where Oldways classes run throughout the year, have already been factored into the Wal-Mart Foundation grant. Levi is unsure yet if Chicago will become a year-round home for Taste of African Heritage classes, but she tells me “it’s definitely a city that we’re working to grow in in the coming years.” Although Handy’s role in this growth is not yet certain, Levi says she wants to keep him involved in some capacity. “Ben is a dynamo, he’s so energetic and so well connected, that, for instance, we would love it if we could work with him to— because he’s experienced now in teaching the class—act as a trainer for future teachers.” She also expressed interest in sending a representative to the Ridgeland Block Club Association’s annual block party, which will take place this August. For his part, Handy is excited about where A Taste of African Heritage will lead him next, and still a little incredulous that it worked out so well. “Who knows what will develop around this,” he said. “And it’s because of some crazy guy on the South Side who had the idea that we’re going to do some cooking classes. Well, I’m not even vegan. So let’s do it!” ¬ Andrew Koski contributed reporting. MAY 3, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

INTERVIEW

Italian Done Right

A conversation with Ignacio Bautista, owner of Gio’s in Bridgeport AS TOLD TO BRIDGET GAMBLE

gnacio Bautista is the owner of Gio’s, a casual Italian café and deli in Bridgeport known for their Sicilian dishes. Gio’s opened in 2001 after Ignacio and his nowretired business partner, Giovanni Liuzzo, alongside chef Victor Quezada, decided to take their combined four decades of Italian restaurant experience and open one of their own. Since opening, the restaurant has grown from four to sixteen tables and become a favorite for neighborhood locals and suburbanites alike. A family vibe is central to the Gio’s experience. As I sat down with Ignacio at a redcheckered table next to a freezer with pre-packed cups of gelato, a woman wearing a faux fur coat and red lipstick tapped him on the shoulder to say another customer had paid her tab. “What’d I tell you?” she said to him. “Better than family.” My partner, Gio, and I started, like everyone else, from the bottom. We worked in restaurants for the last twenty-eight years. We saw the opportunity to open up something very small like this and gave it a try. Prior to opening Gio’s in 2001, we worked these big places where it’s like 150 employees serving 1,000 meals a night. We were kind of tired of that. We wanted to open something simple, nothing fancy. Now we have fifteen to twenty people, half full-time and half part-time. We’ve been lucky because these servers have been here for years. We don’t have a lot of turnover. Our chef, Victor Quezada, has been with us since day one. 10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ MAY 3, 2017

BRIDGET GAMBLE

We want to make it very informal. We’re BYOB. We get a construction guy or a city worker and we make them comfortable and give them the same quality of food that we were serving at those big places. You want to go to a fancy place? Downtown there are thousands. But if you want to go to a nice place where you get nice food, you can enjoy it and feel comfortable, there are not many places. That was our idea—just to kind of relax and make some business. Of course, we’re not making the kind of profit that upscale restaurants make. But to make the food as good, or even better than them, that was the idea. It doesn’t matter how fancy it is or how great the service is—if people don’t like the food they’re not going to come back. Food is number one, service is number two, and the third would be flexibility. We have people who prefer the pasta, or potatoes, or risotto with their chicken Milanese. Maybe they don’t feel like eating potatoes today. Maybe they’re on a diet and they want broccoli. If you don’t make the food the way people like it, they can go somewhere else. This place used to be a small grocery store that had one or two tables with shelves in the middle. So we took over. We expanded the kitchen. We wanted to mix up

the groceries—sell fresh pasta, homemade sausage, made our homemade arancini and tiramisu—a few things that some places don’t make. We started with four tables and then we jumped to six. We built it up over three years, adding more and more and more. Our main goal was to make it more like a restaurant because that was our purpose. We kept the groceries because people love them. The challenge was that we were coming into an Italian neighborhood where most of these people are old-timers, born in Italy. They’re not second generation or third generation, they’re first generation. We’re coming into their neighborhood and making their food. You know there is going to be a lot of criticism because we’re not Italian. My partner was Italian, so we got a lot of help from him, but he wasn’t in the kitchen. We had to learn and listen to the people and take their advice. I remember one customer, like the second day we opened, he told us that our beef sandwich was the worst, the most terrible he’d ever had. But we had to learn from that. If he said that, it means we’re not doing it right. You have to take the challenge and improve the sandwich. If you can’t, then you’re in the wrong business. There are places that have been around for fifty years. I think we can do that too, but

we have to work every day and improve. Every year there are new things, new places, new restaurants, and more competition. We are using very traditional dishes and new places open and try different pastas like gluten-free, organic pastas. At one point we were saying that’s garbage, that’s weird, that’s ridiculous, but now we just adapt to the change. We are trying to add to our menu because people want more choices now. But the clientele we have now is great. It’s a unique thing. On Fridays, you will see every single table is from the neighborhood. At least ten out of the sixteen tables know each other and know who’s who. If their dinner takes one hour, it takes two hours before they leave and say hi to everyone. On Saturday, we don’t see just the neighborhood people. You will see people from the suburbs. I’m amazed people will drive over an hour, even two hours, just to have dinner here when they can go to tons of restaurants in the suburbs or the fanciest place downtown. I’m so thankful. The more crowded you see it, the more fun it is. ¬ Gio's Cafe and Deli, 2724 S. Lowe Ave. Monday-Thursday, 10am-9pm; FridaySaturday, 10am-9:30pm. (312) 225-6368. gioscafe.com

MAY 3, 2017 Â¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

Cultivating Faith in Food Religious institutions use urban agriculture to supplement food sources, social justice programs across the South Side BY MICHAEL WASNEY

wo long, drip-irrigated plant beds run parallel to the southernmost wall of KAM Isaiah Israel, a Reform synagogue that straddles the border between Hyde Park and Kenwood. Some sections of the two beds bear different varieties of kale and collard greens. Others are filled with what appear to be weeds but are actually a cover crop, storing up carbon and nitrogen in the soil for produce that will be planted in weeks to come. Over nine growing seasons, this garden, along with three others tended by volunteers of KAM Isaiah Israel (KAMII), has produced eleven tons of fruits and vegetables, which have been donated to hot meal kitchens and CHA senior-designated housing in the Hyde Park and Kenwood area. These gardens are a key facet of the synagogue’s Food Justice and Sustainability program, which seeks to mitigate food inequity in its community by contributing produce to existing social welfare programs in the area. Through the program, the synagogue also trains others—religious institutions and individuals alike—to emulate the KAMII model in their own neighborhoods. KAMII is not the only one doing this work; Faith in Place, a Chicago-based nonprofit, aims to “educate, connect, and advocate for healthier communities” by assisting houses of worship statewide to adopt more sustainable environmental practices. Both Faith in Place and KAMII are part of an interfaith movement in which religious institutions engage with urban agriculture. A single house of worship solving the food access crisis with a small plot of land, of course, is unrealistic. “Eleven tons of food... [is] not really a lot of food,” Robert Nevel, a congregant of KAMII and the founder of the Food Justice and Sustainability program, points out. But supplementing their growing program is a burgeoning educational model that, Nevel says, “allows us to expand our 12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ MAY 3, 2017

reach, and expand the work by helping train up folks to do this work.” He’s talking about KAMII’s MLK Food Justice and Sustainability Weekend and the Farm and Food Forest School, founded in 2010 and 2011, respectively, shortly following the establishment of their vegetable garden in 2009. Both are a collection of talks and workshops free and open to the public, and the primary means by which KAMII disseminates knowledge around urban agriculture. “We have hundreds of people come to the Martin Luther King Weekend, and they see what we do,” Nevel said. “And then they go start programs like ours.” Faith in Place also seeks to spread knowledge about the social justice potential behind urban agriculture. Veronica Kyle, Chicago outreach director for Faith in Place, told me that they “wanted to educate people to start to have this love affair with the idea that putting a seed in the ground can put something healthy on your dinner table.” But while KAMII runs their own pedagogical programs, Faith in Place provides houses of worship with a model—the Green Team model—with which to educate their congregations. Members of the Green Team are essentially congregants from a house of worship who receive training from Faith in Place before undertaking the mission to spread that knowledge to their fellow churchgoers. Faith in Place and KAMII’s educational models share some key components: namely, that they encourage other houses of worship to start programs that benefit their own local communities, and to do so in ways that complement existing food and social justice programs. KAM Isaiah Israel’s relationship with Kenwood United Church of Christ (KUCC)—a church located five blocks north of the synagogue—is an exemplar of their locally oriented model. KUCC has long been

engaged with food justice, having started their Feed the People hot meal program in 1983. KAMII began to donate much of their produce to KUCC’s soup kitchen during their first harvest eight years ago and have done so ever since. Nevel and his crew of volunteers later converted an unutilized plot of land directly to the west of the church into a vegetable garden, which they tend to this day along with their on-site plots. “One of the hallmarks of our program is that the food that’s harvested typically doesn’t travel more than a mile or a mile-anda-half from where it’s harvested,” Nevel told me. KAMII’s focus on locality is evident in the programming for their Farm and Food Forest School and MLK Weekend: “They can learn how to replicate them by coming to work with us, or by coming to the Martin Luther King Weekend, or by coming to Farm and Food Forest School, and they can go start a program like ours in their walking community.” Although Faith in Place operates on a statewide level, its programming has a similar focus on religious institutions’ local impacts. “For the most part, we meet places of worship who focus on food justice, where they are,” Kyle told me. “Whatever we can do to help them eradicate food injustices in their community.” Faith in Place does so by providing grants or gardening equipment, or by facilitating winter farmers’ markets at houses of worship, at which customers are able to use Link cards to buy produce. The resources they provide depend on the needs of the faith partners they work with, and what their faith partners have already managed to accomplish—many of whom, as Kyle reminds me, “have always played a part in social justice and food justice issues.” To date, Faith in Place has helped ten places of worship on the South Side to establish gardens, and has set up thirteen winter farmers’ markets among these and

more. They have worked closely with one church in particular, the Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC) in Roseland. TUCC started a vegetable garden on their own—the George Washington Carver Garden—in 2009, the same year that KAMII started theirs. Reverend Dr. Stacey Edwards-Dunn of TUCC told me that their growing operation arose from the needs of the local Roseland community. “We are in a food desert,” she said. “We do not have a grocery store that offers fresh fruits and vegetables.” (The nearest grocery stores are a mile or more away, placing Roseland within the category of food desert, as defined by the USDA.) Produce of the George Washington Carver Garden is dispensed in a variety of ways to Roseland residents: it’s either given out to congregants and community members, or sold via the farmers’ markets they host, which—like Faith in Place’s Winter Farmers’ Markets program—accept Illinois Link cards to ensure financial accessibility. Although TUCC began their garden and market independently, Faith in Place has collaborated with them to create more robust and far-reaching programming. The two organizations partnered to host the Green the Church Summit in 2015—a three-day conference focusing on how engagement with sustainable food and energy practices can help faith organizations better conditions in black communities. “Faith in Place has… been very instrumental in helping all of us to perpetuate the mission and the education around this,” Edwards-Dunn said. The Green the Church Summit is only a part of TUCC and Faith in Place’s collaboration around education and agriculture. “We are very intentional about educating our congregation around the importance of environmental justice, and food justice,” Edwards-Dunn said. “We have also educated and trained people in our

FEATURE

JASON SCHUMER

congregation to have their own garden.” Faith in Place has helped to expand the educational potential of the George Washington Carver Garden by hosting part of their EcoAmbassador Youth Program there—their way of instilling the next generation with a green thumb. This has resulted in something of a ripple effect, according to Edwards-Dunn, wherein the practice of urban agriculture, as a means to supplement food from traditional sources, spreads outward from religious institutions. “You will find a number of people in the congregation who also have their own gardens...at their own homes,” she said. Twila Jones, a parishioner of St. Paul and the Redeemer, an episcopal church located in Hyde Park, observes a similar phenomenon. KAMII helped the congregants at St. Paul to start their own vegetable garden five years

ago. Like KAMII, St. Paul and the Redeemer donates its produce to a nearby social program, the St. Martin de Porres House of Hope shelter for women and children in Woodlawn. Since its second year, St. Paul’s operation has been completely run by parishioners like Jones. Jones herself is deeply involved with the garden project. Jones has noticed a swell in interest in urban gardening amongst individuals she knows. “I’m looking on Facebook, and a lot of my friends are doing the same thing, or thinking about it.” This is something she attributes to the educational opportunities made available through religious institutions. She attended KAMII’s MLK Weekend several years ago and left with a favorable impression. “It is a phenomenal community resource for those who just want to start a garden at home, even.”

Jones has a vegetable garden at her home in Avalon Park. It’s a practice which she hopes grows among members of her community, particularly in light of the scarcity of produce on the South Side—a “disturbing trend” that she’s noticed even in her own neighborhood. “We had a Save-A-Lot and ALDI in walking distance from my house, and they both closed in the past few years,” she told me. In Jones’s eyes, raising urban agriculture in esteem will require a change in thinking. “It is a mental shift, right? A lot of the aversion to agricultural and gardening I think is rooted in the fact that we [African Americans] were forced to do it for someone else for so long... But a lot of us are shifting to see it as a labor of love for our communities, and as a means of exercising self-reliance.” The concept of self-reliance cropped up with almost everyone I spoke to, particularly

when the subject turned to access to fresh food on the South Side. Veronica Kyle of Faith in Place, for one, is disillusioned with traditional means of obtaining food. “I don’t think we’re going to ever be comfortable again relying on a grocery store institution to be the only place we can get food. I don’t think that’s ever going to happen,” she said. “And you know what? It shouldn’t.” Kyle understands that urban agriculture is no panacea for food scarcity, and that there would be a long way to go before her vision is realized. “I don’t want to kid myself. It would take every house of worship and some, and every community and some, planting food,” she admitted. “But what this is, is selfempowerment. And it’s a start.” ¬

MAY 3, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

Hopping To It

Five Weekly contributors and beer-drinkers sat down in the office last week to sample a selection of beer from five South Side breweries BY SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

n May 20, twenty-four South Side breweries will be gathering for the first-ever South Side Craft Beer Fest, hosted at Baderbräu Brewing Company in the South Loop. To whet our appetites, we held a gathering of our own a month early. These five breweries are certainly not all our side of town has to offer—catch us at the inaugural fest paying our respects to Beverly’s Horse Thief Hollow, Back of the Yards’s Whiner Brewing, Pilsen’s Lo Rez, and more.

LAGUNITAS The Pilsen-based company is by far the largest craft brewery that we sampled from, with a nationwide distribution. They have a wide selection, but we wanted to try something a little more exciting than their standard Pilsner, IPA, or Little Sumpin’ Sumpin’ Ale (an editors’ favorite). 2607 W. 17th St. Wednesday–Sunday, 12pm–9pm; tours every day. (773) 522-2097. lagunitas. com CITRUSINENSIS PALE ALE 7.7% ABV 49 IBU Appearance: A little clear, a little golden. Not much to speak of here. Label: Textbook Lagunitas, but with distractingly clashing fonts. As for that name—frankly, we don’t get it. Our ideas: a creative misspelling of “citrusiness”; a play on telekinesis; connotations of early hominid fossils; an illness in ancient Greece. Smell: Hoppy, yes, but also skunky—like the haze above a concert; like our “L” stop in the evening; like the plant recently legalized for medical use in Illinois...there’s no getting around this. It smells like weed. Taste: The solid hops are a bit strange, even dirty, with a noticeable but surprisingly light citrus flavor and a bitter aftertaste. But as far as APAs go, it’s not bad. Drinkability: The skunkiness ruins it for us—we probably couldn’t take more than one. Opinion: The confusing name is ultimately more exciting than the drink itself, an unremarkable pale ale. Rating out of 100 (average score): 73

14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ MAY 3, 2017

BADERBRÄU According to their website, Baderbräu Brewing Company “was founded to revive Chicagoland’s original craft beer, a Czech-style pilsener.” Its founder Rob Sama, who got his start as a homebrewer while an undergrad at the UofC, tracked down the original recipe and yeast stain, and the Baderbräu pilsener was reborn. Check out their taproom, which opened last spring, to try all their brews. 2515 S. Wabash Ave. Monday–Wednesday, 3pm–11pm; Thursday–Saturday, 12pm–1am; Sunday, 12pm–11pm. (312) 890-2728. baderbrau.com SOUTH SOUTH SIDE PRIDE 4.8% ABV 16 IBU Appearance: Golden straw if you like it—or a little too yellow, like PBR, if you don’t. Label: Beautiful font and a great name make this theatrical can a welcome slice of Americana—kind of kitschy, but accessible. The label is a bit too removable, the can a bit too flimsy, but it feels like the right can to pass around in a Bridgeport bar before heading to a White Sox game. Smell: It’s not just “beer-flavored beer,” it’s beer-smelling beer. The scent of plain, light lager might be comforting— or just boring. Taste: Give yourself some credit, Baderbräu—your beer-flavored beer has a little more citrus than your standard lager. Pay attention to that second act, though—after the slight wheaty notes and the hop finish comes a somewhat metallic aftertaste. Drinkability: Very drinkable, very inoffensive; a six-pack would go down easy. Opinion: A decent lager to pair with a burger—and a sorely needed lime—on a summer day by the lake. The beautiful label gave us high hopes, but to call this beer the pride of the South Side is a stretch. The South Side is better than this beer. Rating out of 100: 64 HIGH NOON HEFEWEIZEN 4.9% ABV 10 IBU Appearance: Dark golden yellow with a nice thick head—a classic cloudy, unfiltered Weiss beer. Label: With a label that can be described only as “Wild West-themed rollercoaster ride,” High Noon’s kitschy Americana is less welcome than South Side Pride’s. This eyesore need not be a deal-breaker, though—just drink a few more of these. Smell: Definitely comparable to apple juice, but not overpowering—fresh, summery, and sweet. Taste: About as tasty as wheat beers can get, this light, refreshing beer starts smooth and finishes smooth with strong flavors of banana, apple, and bubblegum. It makes us feel like bubblegum does, too—happy. Drinkability: Supremely drinkable, this is the ideal beer to bring to a summer afternoon picnic at Promontory Point. You’ll knock back two in a row before you know it. Opinion: Nothing flashy or risky but undeniably delicious, High Noon Hefeweizen is a real crowd-pleaser. Just use a koozie so you don’t need to look at the label. Rating out of 100: 89

REVIEW

MARZ A self-described collective of brewers—although the Marz Community Brewing taproom is still in the works at the new brewery at 3630 S. Iron St., you can find their beers at Maria’s Packaged Goods and Community Bar, owned by Ed Marszewski, a co-founder of the collective. Marszewski describes Bridgeport, the home of his many ventures (including Lumpen Radio and Kimski, a Polish-Korean restaurant inside Maria’s), as a “community of the future.” 3315 S. Halsted St.; available at Maria’s Packaged Goods and Community Bar, 960 W. 31st St. Sunday, noon–2am; Monday–Friday, 3pm–2am; Saturday, noon–3am. (331) 2233226. marzbrewing.com JUNGLE JUNGLE BOOGIE BOOGIE 5.4% ABV 44 IBU Appearance: A deep, dark golden brown—almost amber, definitely alluring. Label: “Beautiful” is really the correct word for the floral patterning and sans serif fonts on display here. Graphic design good enough to base your beer-buying on. Smell: Strongly strawberry—maybe saccharine. Childhood nostalgia abounds: think strawberry syrup on ice cream, strawberry candies wrapped in cellophane, wild strawberry-picking. Taste: We’re grateful that the taste is more complex than the smell, but the fruity notes we loved are a bit lost among the hoppy bitterness, which overwhelms the promising hints of rooibos and strawberry. Drinkability: The aroma alone could keep us coming back for more, but this is a beer to sip slowly. The bitter aftertaste is paired with an enticing fruity after-aftertaste. Opinion: We want to love this creative, artful beer but can’t quite go all in. Imagining the possibilities makes its shortcomings all the more disappointing. Still, it’s worth buying a bottle or more. Rating out of 100: 78

VICE With a rotating selection of drafts and year-round brewery favorites, we tried the Habitual Black IPA on bartender recommendation. If you’re hungry, try their jerky and or even BYOF (bring your own food), but definitely stay for the brews. 1454 S. Michigan Ave. Sunday, 2pm–9pm; Tuesday–Thursday, 4pm–11pm; Friday, 4pm– 1am; Saturday, 2pm–1am. (312) 291-9022. vicedistrictbrewing.com HABITUAL BLACK IPA 7% ABV 75 IBU Appearance: Black as the night, creamy head. Ready to give us a punch to the face. Label: We didn’t think it was possible, but this is too much Chicago in one: stars, skyline, police badge, and city name? Smell: Maple, dark chocolate, almost woody and smoked (it probably was not smoked). Taste: Starts simple, and builds slowly to a complex, bitter finish, one that will have you swearing you just downed a pound of the finest pitch-dark chocolate, with a little bit of sea salt. The malt and dark-roasted coffee notes remain consistent threads throughout. Drinkability: Though more drinkable than most dark beers, since it’s neither too sweet nor too chocolatey, this remains a beer for sipping. Do not overdo it; take it in small doses, like dark chocolate. Opinion: If you do not like dark beers, you will be impressed by but not drawn to this. If you do, feel free to wallow in its decadence. Rating out of 100: 85

PIRANHANAS 5.6% ABV 50 IBU Appearance: Golden, thick, and very cloudy. Label: Another reliably beautiful pattern from Marz—colorful and tropical, with a clever orange pattern. Smell: A hint of fresh citrus, if you strain for it—maybe all the effort was expended on Jungle Boogie. Taste: Considering what’s advertised, let’s call this a surprise. It actually has little to no hops flavor at first, and is quite wheaty and tart for a pale ale. After a period of bitterness, though, comes a sharp, tropical finish, and a soft, sun-soaked, citrusy aftertaste. Drinkability: The unremarkable nose makes it drinkable, but is it enjoyable? Its fruity aftertaste might get tiresome. Opinion: Unlike most beers, it’s heavy on the tail end, but the hop finish is unexceptional—just one of many interesting elements that comes together in an unappealing way. Put it in front of us, fine, but we won’t seek it out. Rating out of 100: 77 ILLUSTRATIONS BY ELLEN HAO

MOODY TONGUE Their Lemon Saison was the consensus favorite, but definitely check out the cozy taproom in Pilsen, adorned with steel, exposed wood, and fireplaces, to try all their rotating drafts. 2136 S. Peoria St. Sunday, noon–9pm; Monday, 5pm–10pm; Thursday, 5pm–11pm; Friday, 5pm–midnight; Saturday, noon–midnight. (312) 600-5111. moodytongue.com STEEPED EMPEROR’S LEMON SAISON 6.3% ABV NO IBU Appearance: Ordinary golden brown, with very little head. Label: Clean, subtle, slick—someone went to design school. The Y in Moody dives down into the U in Tongue to form a tongue. Is this deft illustration enough to save the label from sleek sterility? Smell: Wheat and sweet all the way through. Taste: Light, smooth, perfectly unobtrusive lemon notes. The wheatiness comes through strongly on the nose, and saison notes emerge on the back end for a classic, subtle, and satisfying finish that ties together the experience. Drinkability: Extremely drinkable, great for a summer barbecue—maybe surf and turf ? Opinion: Well-crafted—impeccable, even. Not just a casual drink; appreciate the work that went into its flavor profile. Rating out of 100: 91 MAY 3, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

REVIEW

Around the South Side in Three Drinks Spotlighting three notable beverages from Chinatown, South Chicago, and Hyde Park BY EMELINE POSNER

from Kung Fu Tea

from The Cove

If you can work your eyes down past the long list of boba drinks and milk teas on the menu of Kung Fu Tea in Chinatown, make sure they land on the Brown Sugar Ginger Tea. Listed under the easy-to-miss seasonal section at the bottom of the menu, the Brown Sugar Ginger Tea is a supremely satisfying fusion of sweetness and spice. Each sip of the hot tea is silky and sweet, with an inexplicable note of graham cracker (there are no graham crackers, just ginger, brown sugar, and water—I double-checked). This smooth taste is complemented by a bite of ginger, which lingers pleasantly at the back of your throat. Want an extra dose of sweet? Order it with boba. Perfect for a runny nose, a chilly day (however few of those may remain) or just because. Brown Sugar Ginger Tea, $4. Kung Fu Tea, 2126 S. Archer Ave, 2nd fl. Monday– Thursday, noon–midnight; Friday–Saturday, 11am–1am; Sunday, 11am–12am. Cash only. (312) 255-7331. kfteausa.com The copy paper pasted on the wall opposite the bar was advertising a drink called “South Side Iced Tea.” I’ve been curious about this boldly-named beverage long enough now to inquire about it one evening last week, as a friend and I were settling into The Cove’s red bar stools. I finally made the leap and ordered it when the bartender, Khalif Ball, told me that the drink was of his own creation. “I was fiddling around with whisky at home one night,” he recalled. “Sometimes it works, sometimes it’s a bust”—he laughed— “but this time I thought it worked out alright.” He brought in his concoction soon after to test it out with patrons, and found that it was a hit. It’s been on the menu ever since. Whereas the classic Long Island Iced Tea is made from equal parts vodka, tequila,

The horchata served at Restaurante Cocula is good and it is creamy. You can tell even before you take your first sip that it’s a touch thicker than normal; it has the opacity of milk, and the ice is served on the side. As with all horchatas, it seems, it pairs well with virtually everything on the menu, but stands just as well on its own. Have it to stay in a yellow plastic Pepsi cup at a booth by the window, or take it to go in a tall Styrofoam cup. Either way, you’ll be glad you did.

from Restaurante Cocula South Chicago

gin, rum, and triple sec, with a bit of coke— the end result a drink that some say tastes like iced tea—the Cove makes a whisky version. Brandon combines one and a half shots of whisky with one and a half shots of tequila and nine ounces of Rose’s lime juice, with splashes of moscato and coke to finish and a wedge of lime and of lemon perched atop the rim of the glass. Had I known beforehand that the Cove’s version contained a combination of whisky, tequila, and moscato, I probably wouldn’t have ordered it. (Full disclosure: I do not even like Long Island Iced Teas very much; in other words, I am not a good person to be reviewing this drink.) Nevertheless, it is pretty good. The whisky is a welcome substitution for rum, as is the moscato for triple sec, all in all saving the drink from the

Agua de Horchata, $1.25. Restaurante Cocula, 8847 S. Commercial Ave. (Other South Side locations: 4836 W. Cermak Rd., 2200 S. California Ave, 5241 S. Pulaski Rd.). Sunday–Thursday, 8am–midnight; Friday– Saturday, 8am–2am. (773) 374-3214. cocularestaurant.com

saccharine fate of the classic version. I don’t feel impaired after finishing my glass, like I might with a true Long Island, which is nice. There could even be more whisky, and maybe a touch less coke. The final two cents of an ambivalent iced tea drinker: the Cove’s South Side Iced Tea, with its whisky base and its pint-glass vessel, is a unique and overall positive addition to the big, wide, dark world of alcoholic iced tea variations. That said, at ten dollars a pop, I think I’ll be sticking with my regular beer and (very) occasional shot of Malört for the foreseeable future. South Side Iced Tea, $10. The Cove Lounge, 1750 E. 55th St. Sunday–Friday, 11am–2am; Saturday, 11am–3am. Cash only. (773) 6841013. thecovelounge.com ILLUSTRATIONS BY VANESSA BARAJAS

16 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ MAY 3, 2017

REVIEW

Calumet Fisheries A no-frills fishery endures the test of time BY CHRISTOPHER GOOD

ike some of the best restaurants, Calumet Fisheries is famous for being unassuming. It still sits where it has for the last seven decades, with the 95th Street bridge down the road and the scaffolding of the Chicago Skyway downriver. The surroundings have transformed over the years—the shack currently overlooks twin industrial silos—but the same words are emblazoned under the same red shingle roof, and the same fresh catches lie inside. In an era of health food, Calumet Fisheries is devoid of pretension—no seating, no bathroom, no credit cards, no nonsense. There’s conventional fare: shrimp, chips, scallops. And then there are the Calumet specialties: the catfish, the smelts, the frog legs. All the fish is freshly fried or smoked on site; it remains one of two places in the city permitted to smoke fish over a wood fire. Manager Carlos Rosas has been with Calumet Fisheries for twenty-one years—it was his first job. He tells me that business waxed and waned during his first few years. But after an upswing through the mid-2000s and a visit from Anthony Bourdain in 2009, the shack has become a local classic. It’s gotten writeups in Vice and Chicagoist, a James Beard award, and at some point, a Wikipedia article. Foodie trends might be fickle; news coverage comes and goes. But luckily for us, when it comes to Calumet Fisheries’s breaded fish, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHRISTOPHER GOOD

MAY 3, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17

REVIEW

Peachy Perfect

JASON SCHUMER

A quirky café in Bronzeville offers up their southern take on brunch BY LEWIS PAGE

he sun was shining brightly on the first morning I walked into to Peach’s, yet somehow the interior of the restaurant felt even sunnier. Ample windows let in light, the hostess smiled, and various shades of peach adorned the space. In celebration of Easter Sunday the following day, Peach’s hired Leon Rogers, a local DJ, to spin for the morning. The loud house music provided a festive atmosphere to the crowd; in a corner booth, a woman with a stroller next to her bounced her child on her knee while dancing in her seat. Peach’s Restaurant, a brunch and lunch spot on 47th and King, doesn’t always feel quite this festive (the DJ set, after all, is not a daily event), but it usually comes close. 18 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ MAY 3, 2017

Peach’s has crafted a consistently upbeat atmosphere—one that all but guarantees the languid ecstasy of a big breakfast on a sunny day. The success isn’t effortless. Peach’s menu items are purposefully crafted, diverging from standard diner fare. The menu emphasizes a southern heritage; the cheese grits are one of the most popular items. Buttery and smooth on their own, they go even better with shrimp, bacon, mushrooms, scallions, and a garlic cream sauce (a combo that goes by the deceptively simple title "Shrimp & Cheese Grits"). In keeping with the southern theme, you can also accompany a dish of buttery grits with collard greens and cornmeal-fried catfish.

Duck meat is another of the menu’s characteristic southern excesses. On my first visit to Peach’s, the daily specials included the “duck hunt,” a shredded duck sandwich with blueberry barbeque sauce on a brioche bun. The duck was, of course, rich, but the combination of blueberry and barbeque was where the dish shone. Cooked blueberries occasionally surfaced in the sandwich, and their sour sweetness made a pleasant mix with the tang of the barbeque sauce. But duck at Peach’s doesn’t just make a rare appearance in a special; you can swap out your average breakfast meats for duck bacon for only $1.50 more. Looking for something a little lighter? Try the turkey bacon, or maybe the wild-caught salmon, which graces the

menu in a few notable dishes. According to manager Tilila Wade, the salmon croquettes are one of the restaurant’s best-known items (they come with cheese grits). Along with the salmon croquettes, the duck bowl and the biscuits and gravy are among the dishes that make it under the “favorites” heading on the menu. To me, the duck bowl sounded the most enticing: strips of duck bacon mixed with sweet peppers, onions, spinach, roasted potatoes, and melted cheddar. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite stand up to the decadence of the blueberry duck sandwich. The duck bacon was less rich than I expected, and was mostly overwhelmed by the well-spiced potatoes, which were a little dry. The same complaint couldn’t be leveled

INTERVIEW

at the biscuits and gravy; drenched in chicken and onion gravy, the biscuits were moist through and through. Somehow, the gravy managed to be rich but not overwhelming, balanced between savory chicken sausage morsels and a slight spicy kick from the sliced jalapeños. Some of the sides couldn’t live up to the glory of the main dishes. Though the fried green tomatoes that came with a daily special of fried chicken and gravy were crisp, tart, and satisfying, the cornbread was just all right—like the biscuit that I ordered on the side on my first visit, the cornbread wasn’t as moist as it could have been. However, on my second trip, the biscuits in the biscuits and gravy were so flaky and buttery that I’ll chalk the one mediocre biscuit up to a bad batch. The name and the logo (a picture of the eponymous young girl, Peach) are prominently displayed throughout the restaurant, and the peach theme is evident everywhere you look. Not only do the wait staff all wear matching Peach’s t-shirts, but one of the coffee options is even called “Peach’s Coffee.” This isn’t just a bland house blend—it’s actually peach-flavored. Though perhaps a bit of a gimmick, its flavor is decidedly inoffensive; a toosyrupy smell gives way to a surprisingly subtle taste. A mix of colorful artwork and slogans adorn the walls. In block letters on a chalkboard, a Julia Child quote is written: “The only time to eat diet food is while you’re waiting for the steak! To cook!” On another wall: “I woke up like this...Hungry!” The eclectic decorations and art, along with the booths and the large, open dining area, create a space that strikes a balance between cafeteria, diner, and trendy coffee shop. How could another trip to Peach’s live up to my first? On my second visit, I was desensitized to the décor that I had at first found so striking, and DJ Leon Rogers was notably absent. I wasn’t in awe. Instead, I felt comfortable; I could see myself coming back often. Apparently, I’m not alone. When I asked Wade, a manager, if many of the customers were regulars, she replied, “The majority of our customers are regulars. Hopefully now you’ll be one too.” ¬ Peach's Restaurant, 4652 S. King Dr. Daily 7am-3pm. (773) 966-5801. peachson47th.com

Not Your Mother’s Tamales A conversation with Jeni Wahl, co-founder of Dia De Los Tamales in Pilsen BY MARIA BABICH

he revolutionary tamales of Dia De Los Tamales, located on 939 W. 18th St. in Pilsen, are the brainchild of Jeni and Sam Wahl and their partner and headchef Keith Carlson. Born and raised in Miami, Florida, Jeni has been greatly influenced by her Cuban heritage; it informs the culture of food both at the restaurant and the group’s catering business, Get Off The Couch Catering. Could you tell me a little about yourself and the origin of Dia De Los Tamales? I started Dia De Los Tamales and Get Off The Couch Catering events with two other business partners, my husband, Sam, and our partner Keith. We all have different backgrounds in regards to what we bring to the table. I have more of a sales and marketing background. Keith is an executive chief. Sam has a hotel and hospitality background. But we all kind of do a little bit of everything. I used to host a lot of events. Sam and I met in the music business. So Get Off The Couch Catering started by us doing a lot of backstage and catering for touring bands and musicians that we met throughout the years. When we decided to build out our catering kitchen, we wanted a storefront of something that would be fun, a little different—a fun twist on something—and we went through different ideas. I am more of a party host, so people were more familiar with what I cook even though I don’t have a professional culinary background. A lot of the recipes you’ll see here in the shop are my grandmother’s Cuban recipes. So we came up with this concept to have something cultural to kind of lean on, as a base, as a foundation, but also something we could kind of leap from and also create fun twists on that original idea.

Where did the Nachomale and the other nontraditional tamale ideas come from? When it comes to the tamales itself, the buffalo chicken was kind of our first venture off the traditional path. We were like: "Well, if you can do red sauce and chicken, and green sauce and chicken, then why not buffalo sauce and chicken?" We played and played with it until we felt we got it right. Once we got that right and felt like we got the true essence of the buffalo chicken flavor coming out in it, that’s when we started jumping to some of the other ideas like Chicago Beef and Juicy Lucy, etc. I think the nachomale was just kind of a progression of that. I mean, most people love nachos. So why not pop a tamale right on top of there? We sell nachomales at festivals like crazy because people at festivals often times just eat once during the day and use that to kind of curb their alcohol consumption. It’s a good filler-upper. Do you offer vegan and vegetarian options? Something that is important to us—even though I’m telling you that we’re porkcentric because we have a big pig in our logo—is also keeping our vegetarian and vegan crowd happy. I find that, especially at festivals and stuff like that, it’s really hard for someone who is vegan to find something other than fries, fried mushrooms, or funnel cake to eat that is actually like food—that isn’t deep-fried and a side dish. A nachomale for example: we can do the chips; we can do the black beans. Our Cuban black beans are vegan. Instead of cheese sauce, we can do the fricassee—our warm tomato and garlic sauce—that we put on tamales. Then we can do a black bean and corn tamale which is vegan, and with red or green salsa on top,

and you’ve got a giant meal that isn’t just like a side dish with no color or vegetables in it—something that has multiple layers of flavor to it. I think people appreciate that. Would you call these gourmet tamales? We call them revolutionary tamales because I think artisanal or artisan is kind of five years ago at this point, and it’s a little overused. Gourmet, I like, but I think revolutionary defines it really well. So, that’s my go-to: revolutionary tamales. Do you have a motto or mission statement for the restaurant? Our motto I would say—we’re more people-oriented than anything else. I’m really about just making people happy, and I know Sam and Keith feel the same way. It’s about community. It’s about having great employees—a good team of people. Without good people nothing exists. It’s not the type of food. It’s not what we’re serving. It is how we serve it and the energy and the heart that goes into that. If you could give a message to our readers, what would it be? We’re a little family-owned business and we want to make people happy. It’s all about the experience. Come and enjoy our beautiful patio—we have a fifty-seat patio. And keep your eye out for us this summer! You’ll be seeing us, this summer, in more places than you have in the past. ¬ Dia De Los Tamales, 939 W. 18th St. Sunday-Thursday, 11am-9pm; FridaySaturday, 11am-10pm. (312) 496-3057. diadelostamales.com MAY 3, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 19

The Varied Veganism of the South Side Business owners sustain a vegan movement with a focus on access and education BY MICHELLE GAN JASMIN LIANG

hat Majani Catering is opening a South Shore brick-and-mortar restaurant in May after just four years of successful operations shows the tradition of veganism on the South Side remains alive and well. Along with Tsadakeeyah Emmanuel, Majani’s proprietor, Camilla Alfred and Gabrielle Darvassy also own and manage vegan food institutions in South Shore and Hyde Park. Each of these South Side residents possess similar but distinct visions centered on healthy and clean eating, and each see their restaurants as feeding more than just the stomach but also the brain, body, and soul. The Weekly spoke with Emmanuel, Alfred, and Darvassy to talk about their institutions, origins, and hopes for the future.

Camilla Alfred of Good Foods Health Center Camilla Alfred is the owner of Good Foods Health Center, a vegan deli and health food store in South Shore. She has been running Good Foods for more than twenty-five years and has moved various times to accommodate the growth of her business. Good Foods grew out of Alfred’s interest in naturopathy, an alternative 20 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ MAY 3, 2017

medical practice that discourages modern medical techniques, such as surgery, vaccination, or medication, in favor of “noninvasive” techniques, which proponents call natural practices or self-healing. Dr. Alvenia Fulton, who ran a natural healing institute in Englewood, introduced Alfred to naturopathic medicine while she was sick, and Alfred was inspired to open her own place in order to share her newfound notions of healthy living—which, for her, now included veganism—with a wider community. After completing her studies to become a naturopathic practitioner, Alfred felt prepared to manage a health foods store that promoted overall wellness. Alfred notes that prior to running Good Foods, she worked as a caretaker. “Helping people was something I always wanted to do,” she said. She first opened Good Foods on 75th and Cottage Grove, and has since expanded her business to a larger location in South Shore, on 73rd between Jeffrey and Euclid. Her dishes include vegan pies in flavors like blueberry and apple cream cheese, vegan whoopie pies, strawberry apple pear ginseng smoothies, vegan burgers, and vegan corned beef sandwiches. She also sells alternative natural health products such as fermented ginger kombucha, electric alkaline whole foods, and detox cleanses.

“I want children to learn how to prepare foods they grow themselves and share the foods with their family members,” Alfred said. Her commitment to promoting holistic health and clean living in the community, especially among children, has only grown over time. Good Foods has been working the land of the community garden across the street from them for the past six years, enlisting volunteers and paid help through partnerships with the University of Illinois, After School Matters, the Put Illinois to Work program, and Father Michael Pfleger. Alfred’s goal for Good Foods going forward is to hold classes on food preparation that emphasize the importance of eating and thinking healthy. They also aim to grow the community garden and reach more kids in the community. Currently, a number of youth volunteer and work in the garden. Good Foods Health Center, 1966 E. 73rd St. Monday–Friday, 11am–7pm. (773) 420-3832.

Gabrielle Darvassy of B’Gabs Goodies Gabrielle Darvassy also turned to veganism because of an illness. “I needed to fuel myself,” she said. She is now

the owner of B’Gabs Goodies, a vegan restaurant located on 57th Street in Hyde Park. B’Gabs’ brand of veganism is unique, according to Darvassy: “We don’t just do vegan. We do no gluten, no soy...There are other vegan restaurants around, and other vegetarian restaurants around. But almost all of them include some type of alternative meat in their product line, like seitan, seat, or tempeh. We don’t do that because our belief is that isn’t the best thing for your body.” Like Alfred, she started B’Gabs Goodies in a different location, in Woodlawn, on 61st Street and Blackstone Avenue. “I intentionally started in a food desert,” Darvassy said. “All kinds of people want to eat healthy. That became quickly apparent in Woodlawn.” She said that she designed her price structure to be reasonable, reflecting her dedication to making clean, healthy food accessible. The cost of an entrée ranges from $6 to $12. At her first location in Woodlawn, B’Gabs exclusively produced raw food, meaning that nothing was cooked. Once she was ready for expansion, she considered spaces in Hyde Park, Oak Park, and potentially Lake Park or Lincoln Park. Hyde Park won, and Darvassy attributes that to its community. “[Hyde Park] is our own community. I had the desire to continue to serve people who look like myself.”

FEATURE

With the move to Hyde Park in 2014, B’Gabs expanded into the realm of cooked foods, like tamales, curried lentils, and Peruvian black beans. The space they were considering already contained cooking equipment, which Darvassy interpreted as a sign she was making the right choice. While Darvassy has always aimed to promote clean eating and healthy living, she is quick to emphasize that she is not trying to proselytize. “My goal and mission has never been to convert people into raw food or vegan food,” she said. “My goal has always been to have people eat cleanly. Over the years, I have discovered that everyone’s definition of clean eating is different.” For Darvassy, clean eating involves taking chemicals out of the food, using local vendors, and utilizing local produce as best as one can in a state with a six-month growing season. Her personal relationships with farmers and vendors prove integral to B’Gabs’ operations. Darvassy supports all small businesses, regardless of whether or not they serve meat. She says, “If someone is cooking for you with the intention of love, without the intention of harm, you can’t deny the passion that’s coming from that. There’s no negativity coming from me about how people feed other people.” B’Gabs has earned a reputation as a space of health, partially because they sell herbs, essential oils, and other types of alternative health products. Because of that, people often come in with medical questions. Darvassy said that she decided to have a physician meet with ill clients about selecting food for their condition instead of offering medical advice without the proper training. What started out as a physician referral has grown into an external consultation group of medical professionals to satisfy the needs of “those who are coming in who need to do something quickly to help themselves,” as Darvassy puts it. More than a restaurant known for its chipotle burger or its smashed potato bowl, Darvassy seeks to cultivate B’Gabs as a place of nurturing and healing. “I don’t want to be, and I don’t think we are, the average restaurant,” she said. “I want a space where people feel like they can come in and sit for as long as they want, or grab their food and go, and feel invited. I want a space where people feel like they can take a pause in their day.” As she identified challenges that exist for B’Gabs as well as veganism more generally, Darvassy discussed the

consequences of neighborhood changes in Hyde Park over the last couple of years. She thinks developers’ investment in making 53rd Street a major thoroughfare in the neighborhood has affected business. “The infrastructure that has been put up [on 53rd Street] has basically been there to put people in a corridor,” she said. “Some businesses thrive based on their physical location, and that’s a very important factor. Every business that’s not in that corridor will see far less traffic.” B’Gabs’ location on the South Side also brings challenges; Darvassy said that a vegan restaurant on the North Side experiences more traffic by virtue of its location. Yet she does not regret her decision to move into Hyde Park and has worked to overcome those obstacles. “This is our community, this is where we live, and we just wanted to support our community,” she said. “But the majority of our clientele is not from Hyde Park.” Some of her customers come from other areas like Old Town, South Shore, and even Harvey. Darvassy hopes to continue educating people about healthy food, especially in what she calls a very “meat-based city.” She said, “Even with my current customer base, most people aren’t exclusively vegan. I like to use the term vegan-sympathetic.” B’Gabs’ Goodies, 1450 E. 57th Street. Tuesday– Thursday, 10am–12am; Friday–Saturday, 10am–1am. (773) 256-1000. bgabsgoodies.com

Tsadakeeyah Emmanuel of Majani Catering Like Darvassy and Alfred, Tsadakeeyah Emmanuel wants to find an audience for veganism in his wider community. Emmanuel is a vegan chef who spent seven years working at Soul Vegetarian Restaurant in Atlanta and Chicago. He now runs a vegan catering service, Majani, with his wife Nasya who works as its pastry chef. After four years of managing Majani Catering, and three years before that catering independently, Emmanuel will be opening a brick-and-mortar restaurant in South Shore on 71st and Exchange in May. Majani, which means “leaves” in Swahili, will feature what Emmanuel describes as “Africancentered comfort food.” His dishes include Moroccan stew, collard greens, cornbread, and black-eyed pea fritters. Having practiced veganism for the last

thirty-six years, Emmanuel believes deeply in the effects of health consciousness. In opening a brick-and-mortar site for Majani, he hopes to make the healthy food he cooks accessible to the community. “I want to prove our model, that in this kind of neighborhood you can open up a vegan restaurant and have it be successful,” Emmanuel said. “I do think, irrespective of your income, people will go out of their way to eat a healthy meal. You just have to provide the service. People assume because you’re low-income that you can’t afford to spend the money on your health.” Emmanuel speaks extensively about the importance of sourcing fresh and local as much as possible. “I think knowing your farmer is important, more than labeling it organic,” he said. He partners with local growers within the city limits such as Growing Home, Sweet Pea & Friends, and Windy City Greens. Majani also partners with a community garden, the South Merrill Community Garden. Emmanuel volunteers with this garden run by the nonprofit NeighborSpace. His experiences with the garden have reaffirmed his commitment to providing a space where community members can learn about healthy eating options. “We did a couple of food giveaways at the garden,” he said. “We had zucchini and yellow squash, and a lot of people didn’t know what zucchini was. So even if you gave it to them, they wouldn’t know how to prepare it. Bridging that gap is something [Majani is] committed to.” This mission to inform the community about healthy eating and veganism influenced Emmanuel’s decision to open a physical restaurant instead of just catering. “We were comfortable doing a catering business, but there are only so many people you can affect when you’re catering,” Emmanuel said. “We wanted to make more of an impact. We wanted to open a restaurant so we could engage with folks on a daily basis about healthy eating options.” Emmanuel’s goal of reaching a wider audience shows even in the tiny details of his restaurant: on a counter near the cash register rests a stack of African American Vegan Starter Guides—a publication that includes recipes, interviews with professionals, and nutritional information. ¬ Majani Restaurant, 7167 S. Exchange Ave. Hours TBA.

MAY 3, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 21

LEGACY

Breaking the Freezer Barrier Remembering Jolyn Robichaux and Baldwin Ice Cream BY RACHEL KIM

n late February, Jolyn Robichaux, former president of the historic South Side company Baldwin Ice Cream, passed away at 88 years old. Born and raised in Cairo, Illinois, Jolyn Robichaux studied at both Fisk University and Chicago State University before getting hired at the National Labor Relations Board. Around that time, she met Joseph Robichaux, whom she married in 1952. Joseph Robichaux worked under thenMayor Richard Daley and served as the 21st Ward Democratic committeeman and a Cook County jury commissioner. During this time, Jolyn became the first Black employee of Betty Crocker, and is also said to have been the first Black woman to do product demonstrations for the company. She would go on to become the president of Baldwin Ice Cream, a Black-owned ice cream parlor chain on the South Side. Originally named Seven Links Ice Cream, Baldwin Ice Cream was opened in 1921 by seven postal workers at 53rd and State. According to Robichaux herself in a 1991 interview with the Tribune, the lines to get into the store would snake around the block, mainly because the servers wouldn’t weigh each serving and would just serve as much as the cone could hold. The company eventually changed its name to Service Links Ice Cream Company and expanded to seven locations across the South Side during the 1940s, before being bought out and renamed in 1946 by one of the seven original founders, Kit Baldwin. Baldwin began selling the company’s ice cream in local grocery stores, and Baldwin Ice Cream eventually became a staple of Black owned grocery stores and family dinner tables across the South Side. Cheryl Rodgers, who was born and raised in Hyde Park, remembers visiting the Baldwin Ice Cream parlor in the sixties.

22 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ MAY 3, 2017

She would walk into the small store on 49th and Cottage Grove, the bell chiming above her, and order a huge hand-packed cone. Rodgers also frequented the parlor on 46th and Indiana, where every Friday night she would order chocolate and vanilla in a cone. Her grandfather, whose favorite flavor was black walnut, ordered ice cream by the gallon, which came hand-packed in a little white box. “Their ice cream just seemed to be more homemade,” she noted. “It was rich. And you always knew it was good stuff, even back then, because the place was always packed. Everyone I knew on the South Side would get it in bulk.” After Baldwin passed away in 1961, as well as the two following company presidents in quick succession, Robichaux and her husband purchased the company in 1967. But when Joseph Robichaux suddenly died of leukemia in 1971, Jolyn decided to sit at the helm of the company herself, and notified Baldwin’s largest account holders accordingly. She had no formal business training, but she was forced to learn quickly: Baldwin’s eight parlors were losing business as people began moving out of the South Side. Using her infallible charm and quick business sense, Robichaux not only improved the company’s delivery and accounting services but also tripled its annual profits. Robichaux and the company also broke “the freezer barrier” and got Baldwin Ice Cream’s products to be sold in large supermarket chains all across the United States. Jolyn also appointed several Black women, including her sister, mother, and niece, to executive positions in the company. According to a 1991 Tribune interview with Robichaux, being the only Black ice cream manufacturer in the United States allowed her to leave a strong business impression.

TURTEL ONLI

“In the early years, some people were uncomfortable with me,” she noted in the interview. “My white male counterparts always insisted that I bring along another black woman to our meetings, and they always brought someone with them so it wouldn’t look as though we were a couple. Now, we don’t have those problems. Being a black woman has actually helped me. I was different, and nobody forgot who I was.” Zenzile “Zenzi” Powell, who opened Zberry, a frozen yogurt and sorbet bar on in Hyde Park, in 2011, remembers growing up eating at Baldwin’s. Speaking to her own experiences as a Black businesswoman, Powell notes, “Sometimes, I don’t know if the same level of respect is given my way.

What I have seen is that apparently my story has inspired a lot of young ladies and people around here. That’s been personally gratifying, to know that me doing my personal best and giving young adults and teenagers some kind of inspiration to do their own thing as well.” The longevity of the Baldwin franchise was a profound inspiration for Powell and her own business aspirations. Born in South Shore, later raised in Hyde Park, and an alumna of Florida A&M University, Powell used both her passion for cold desserts and her sharp business acumen to raise Zberry from the ground up. While things are still up in the air for Zberry, Powell mentions an array of possibilities

PROFILE

An Unlikely Love Story for the future of the store, including moving locations, going mobile, or trying to get Zberry’s products in grocery stores. Perhaps Powell finds some of Robichaux’s own tenacity in herself. Although Baldwin’s parlors have long since disappeared, and the company discontinued the ice cream in 2014, Robichaux’s legacy as a powerful Black businesswoman and the memories of Baldwin Ice Cream remain as testaments to the South Side’s long history of culinary entrepreneurship. In 1985, Robichaux was awarded the “National Minority Entrepreneur of the Year” award from then-Vice President George H.W. Bush. By 1991, only one original Baldwin neighborhood parlor remained, in Chatham. In 1992, Jolyn retired, moved to Paris, and sold the company to Eric Johnson, whose father founded Johnson Products, and who renamed the company Baldwin Richardson Foods. According to Robichaux’s niece, one of the few things Jolyn wasn’t able to accomplish during her presidency was the success of a blackeyed-pea-and-brandy ice cream. For Yahya Muhammad, owner of Shawn Michelle’s Old Fashioned Homemade Ice Cream, ice cream has always been a prominent culinary staple of his community, current and past. He still can’t forget the unique flavor of Baldwin’s homemade ice cream—one that he says you can only ask your grandma to make, the kind you make with a churn. Keeping these memories in his mind as he pursued his master’s degree, Muhammad decided to experiment with homemade ice cream himself, spending five years perfecting his recipes. He initially sold his ice cream to friends and family

before opening his first Shawn Michelle’s store at 119th and Western almost a decade ago. Muhammad describes his ice cream selection as “old-fashioned flavors with an upscale twist,” with unique flavors like “raspberry cookies & cream” and honey-cinnamon-graham-cracker. Shawn Michelle’s recently moved to the historic, recently reopened Rosenwald Courts Apartments in Bronzeville, which offers more square footage, booths, and tables, and will be opening in July. As Black entrepreneurs, both Muhammad and Robichaux built their businesses around the goal of uplifting the Black communities around them. Muhammad also recalls visiting Baldwin Ice Cream parlors as a child, and salutes Baldwin’s, and Robichaux, for paving the way. “I’m inspired by the bridge that [Robichaux] and other Black ice cream entrepreneurs have built for people like myself,” Muhammad said. “The fact that she did it, and the scale that she took her business to, where so many people like me can enjoy the fruits of her labor, is monumental. I just want to continue the legacy that she laid down and other Black entrepreneurs in the culinary arts. I want to pick up the banner, pick up the sword, and hope that there’s someone to pick up my legacy as well.” Ultimately, the legacy of Baldwin Ice Cream, and Jolyn Robichaux, lies not only in memory but also in the local Blackowned businesses that continue to sustain and honor the South Side’s history of Black entrepreneurship. It is these Black restaurateurs in particular who, through their food and their spaces, foster a sense of community, culture, and pride that promises to remain and prosper. ¬

Chicago rapper inspired by love and community to bring unique tacos to Bronzeville BY MIRA CHAUHAN

hen Raymond Jones returned to Chicago last year, it was after a career as a rapper, making a song that was number 47 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, writing for FunnyorDie. com, and even suing Eminem. Now Jones, who also goes by Raydio G, spends most of his time in a small restaurant just south of Bronzeville. Seating about ten people, Jones’s new venue is certainly a contrast to the concert halls and studios that have previously marked his career. But for Jones, Love Taco, which opened in March, was a lifelong dream. Located on the corner of 51st Street and Michigan Avenue, Love Taco serves specialty tacos, as well as a mix of other Mexican food. Opening a restaurant was a new experience for Jones, who has spent most of his life in the entertainment industry. After graduating college in 2007 with a degree in computer science, Jones decided to hold off on pursuing a career in the technology industry and try out an entirely different field: rap. Growing up, Jones would practice tunes with friends. “I didn’t know I was good. I didn’t know I was dope,” Jones said. But motivated by his friends’ encouragement and his own love for rapping, Jones went to his mother with the following proposition: give him six months to make a career out of rapping. After five months, Jones and two other rappers received a record deal with what is now RCA Records of Sony Music.

The group called themselves Hotstylz. By May of 2008, they released a song, “Lookin’ Boy,” that reached number 47 on the US Billboard Hot 100. The fame was followed by what Jones described as “rapper stuff ”—touring the world, holding concerts, and in general capitalizing on their newfound fame. Having made a name for himself through the rap industry, Jones decided to start doing more comedy. He started writing comedy pieces primarily on websites like Funny or Die. “I fell into the whole comedy writing thing,” Jones said. His first pieces gained traction and offers continued to come in. Since then, Jones has written for the hit television show “Key and Peele” and published a relationship therapy book with a comedic twist, 48 Laws of Penis. Despite his success with comedy and rap, Jones couldn’t shake off a desire to open up a restaurant. As with rap, growing up, Jones would always cook for friends and family. He cooked so much that his friends used to joke that he should open a restaurant. Finally, in 2016, Jones returned to Chicago, and what started out as a joke became a reality. Part of Jones’s reason for coming back to Chicago was the changing nature of the Bronzeville community. “There’s a new resurgence in this community,” said Jones, referring to new stores and restaurants in the area. Between new grocery stores like Mariano’s and local investment in the community like the Forum and Bronzeville

MAY 3, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 23

PROFILE

Cookin’ projects overseen by Urban Juncture, the Bronzeville business landscape has been undergoing a slow but long-expected, and often embattled transformation. For Jones, opening Love Taco was a way to “be a part of the change.” When Jones started planning Love Taco last year, he said he wanted to have a restaurant that would provide Bronzeville with “different options.” To come up with recipes, Jones worked with a friend, Seth Rushing, who graduated from Le Cordon Bleu. The specialty tacos live up to their name. Customer favorites include the Sweet Thang, featuring chicken and pineapple, and the Bob Marley. Shae Ellis, who has been working at Love Taco since it opened, said, “You don’t find these particular tacos everywhere.” But Jones’s driving vision for the restaurant can also be gleaned from its name. From the romantic comedy posters that line the walls to the menu’s references to R&B songs—like the Purple Rain taco, a shout-out to the classic Prince song—love is certainly in the air at Love Taco. As he explained this, a classic love song began playing in the background—“Everything is love,” Jones added. Part of the focus on love comes from Jones’s own commitment to love in his life. Along with his book on relationships, 48 Laws of Penis, Jones also makes humorous YouTube videos giving relationship advice. “I just want to bring the men and women back together again,” he said. The love at Love Taco, though, isn’t about Jones’s career—it’s his vision for the restaurant’s role in Bronzeville. “Love is what this community needs more of,” Jones said. Jones has a lot of faith in the neighborhood that he calls home. His love for Bronzeville and his desire to see it improve is why he brought Love Taco to 51st and Michigan. “Being from here, I loved Bronzeville,” Jones said, citing its architecture and rich jazz history as just a few examples of what makes the community special. “Bronzeville is an awesome place,” Jones said. “Unfortunately, it has a black eye.” But he wants to counteract the perception he has encountered of his neighborhood as only marked with violence. Jones has often pointed out that Love Taco does not have bulletproof glass separating the customers from the kitchen, a common security measure 24 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ MAY 3, 2017

JASON SCHUMER

in many restaurants nearby. “I’m running a restaurant, not a prison. I didn’t want to create that atmosphere,” Jones said. According to Jones, measures like bulletproof glass lead people to assume that “something bad will happen.” He didn’t want to have that attitude. “I wanted to give the neighborhood a chance.” Jones recognizes that his outside success is an exception to the norm—“Everyone is not as fortunate as I have been. I beat the odds.” Jones’s goal for the restaurant is simple: “I want customers to come back.” He didn’t mean that he wanted loyal customers who would buy from him regularly. He meant he didn’t want his customers to become “victims of the street.” “I tell some of my customers, ‘I want to have this conversation next year,’” Jones said. Part of Jones’s emphasis on preventing street violence comes from his own experience. A friend of his, Frank Hill Jr., fondly referred to as Marveloso, was killed last year in Austin. One of the items on the menu, the Marveloso Tamale, is in his honor, and all profits from its sales go to Marveloso’s children. What happened with Marveloso, however, never dissuaded Jones from opening

up the restaurant. “I never thought I shouldn’t reach out to communities in need.” Right now, Jones is involved in every step of the business. “I cook, I cashier, I even clean toilets,” Jones said. His mother, who so many years ago let him take a risk with pursuing rap, sometimes comes to work at Love Taco on the weekends. In addition to working at the restaurant, he is continuing to develop his comedy career, doing shows around the country; he hopes to eventually break into the film industry, too. Jones even hopes to eventually expand Love Taco, opening up a new restaurant in another neighborhood, or as Jones put it, “in another community that is in need of a chance.” When I walked into Love Taco, sitting in one of the stools by the window was a boy in the fourth grade, the little brother of one of the Love Taco employees. He struck up a conversation. He wants to be a NASCAR driver, a mechanic, a police officer, and a few other things—“I’m still figuring that out,” he said. But that’s fine, as Jones could have told him. Love Taco is a testament to the many paths you can take to achieve a happy life for yourself and your neighborhood. ¬

Love Taco, 109 E. 51st St. Monday-Thursday, 11am-9pm; Friday, 11am-10:30pm; Saturday, noon-10pm. (312) 650-9635. facebook.com/LoveTacoChicago

EVENTS

BULLETIN Cook County Safety & Justice Community Conversation Chicago State University (Cordell Reed Building), 9501 S. King Dr. Wednesday, May 3, 6pm–8pm. bit.ly/cookcountyjustice Cook County officials will be hosting a conversation to discuss progress on criminal justice reform in the past two years, specifically regarding pretrial release laws. This is the third in a series discussing safety and justice measures in Cook County. There will be an opportunity for questions and feedback. (Mira Chauhan)

Gone Dark: What’s Happening with that Vacant Building Greater Grand Crossing Branch Library, 1000 E. 73rd St. Wednesday, May 3, 6pm–7:30pm. (773) 329-4111. bit.ly/gonedark Some Chicago neighborhoods have an abundance of abandoned buildings, while others have very few. Learn about the tools and resources available to uncover why that vacant building near you might be abandoned, and how it affects your neighborhood. (Roderick Sawyer)

HCVP Accommodations Workshop CHA South Office, 10 W. 35th St, 5th floor. Thursday, May 4, 2pm–4pm. Free. Register at bit.ly/HCVPAccommodations This program features information about the CHA’s programs to help voucher holders navigate difficult situations. Focusing on your rights as a voucher holder, at this event CHA staff will offer suggestions for escaping domestic violence and show you how to request an accommodation and apply for a hardship exemption. (Adia Robinson)

Go Red Por Tu Corazón Mother’s Day Celebration Bridgeport Art Center, 1200 W. 35th St. Sunday, May 7, 12:30pm–4pm. Free. heart.org/goredcelebration Dedicated to the heart health of mothers (and all women), this event will include free events centered around heart-to-heart chats,

hands-only CPR, family fun, and more. There will be activities for the entire family. (Roderick Sawyer)

Spring 2017: Get Employed Now Woodlawn Resource Center, 6144 S. Cottage Grove Ave. Tuesday, May 9, 10am–noon. (773) 451-8077. bit.ly/HiredWRC At this intimate version of a traditional job fair, employers will give attendees the opportunity to apply on site for jobs that are hiring right now. Featuring just thirteen exhibitors, representing fields from security to hospitality to counseling, this event will give attendees an upper hand at finding positions that will fit them best. (Adia Robinson)

Project Gentlemen 2017 Hyatt Regency Chicago, 151 E. Upper Wacker Drive. Saturday, May 27, 8am–4pm. Free. High school seniors. (773) 531-7719. Register at iamagentleman.org/pg-chicago This full-day interactive event aims to prepare young men graduating from high school for successful careers, healthy lifestyles, marketable skills, and balanced relationships. How? Through workshops, guest speakers, networking and on-site personal grooming, to name a few of the scheduled activities. Each gentleman attending will have the opportunity to leave with a complete business outfit from suit to shoes, as inventory permits. (Nicole Bond)

VISUAL ARTS Geometric Complexions Zhou B Art Center, 1029 W. 35th St. Through Friday, June 9. ondays-Saturdays, 10am5pm. (773) 523-0200. zhoubartcenter.org The Zhou B Art Center will host an exhibit entitled “Geometric Complexions,” featuring thirteen artists working within a visual tradition originating as early as 1908 with Cubism. The exhibit will showcase a range of techniques and approaches to the medium. (Bridget Newsham)

Lesley Jackson: Walking with Rilke 4th Ward Project Space, 5338 S. Kimbark Ave. Through Sunday, May 7. Saturdays, 1pm–5pm, or by appointment. Free. (773) 203-2991. 4wps.org Multimedia artist Lesley Jackson uses objects like gathered leaves, a rubber band, and tree bark to evoke the “romantic struggle with mortality” of the German poet Rainer Marie Rilke at this month-long exhibition in Hyde Park. ( Jake Bittle)

On Writers and Writing: The Work, The Scene Seminary Co-op, 5751 S. Woodlawn Ave. Friday, May 5, 6:30pm–8pm. Free. (773) 752-4381. semcoop.com Peg Boyers and Robert Boyers will talk about managing the acclaimed Salmagundi, one of the country’s longest-running literary journals dating back more than fifty years. The editors will read their own literary work, discuss how they work with writers, and evaluate the highs and lows of a life in literature in the Hyde Park bookstore. ( Joseph S. Pete)

Intercessions: Art as Intervention and Prayer Rootwork Gallery, 645 W. 18th St. Through May 21; see website for performance schedule. (917) 821-3050. facebook.com/rootworkgallery “Intercessions” brings together visual and performance art to contemplate “the body and the spirit; the sacred and the profane.” The opening reception features the work of painter, sculptor, and performance artist Maya Amina, as well as percussion and mixed media artist Xristian Espinoza. (Hafsa Razi)

Chicago Zine Fest 2017: Friday Night Panel Discussion & Reading Co-Prosperity Sphere, 3219 S. Morgan Street. Friday, May 5, 6:30pm–9:30pm. Free. (773) 837-0145. chicagozinefest.org The Chicago Zine Fest, one of the country’s largest exhibitions of underground selfpublishers, kicks off with a UofC Library– sponsored panel about using zines for

self-care and coping at the Bridgeport venue. After the discussion and Q&A, zinesters including Natasha Hernandez, Bianca Xunise, Weekly contributor Javier Suarez, Sage Coffey, and Fiona Avocado will read their work. ( Joseph S. Pete)

Stoop Dreams: Opener and Fundraiser Ageless Arts Tattoo & Body Piercing Studio, 2407 S. Kedzie Ave. Saturday, May 6, 6pm– midnight. facebook.com/lasartelitas Little Village based creative collective Las Artelitas opens its third season with an art auction and fundraiser. This “accessible grassroots and resistant space” hopes to offers free workshops in the future and is fundraising to support several projects, including their Little Village School Supply Drive. In addition to art, this event will also feature a performance from Lily Be and live music from Mermaid N.V. (Adia Robinson)

Hyde Park Handmade Bazaar The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. Sunday, May 7, noon–4pm, showcase at 2pm. (312) 801-2100. promontorychicago.com; more info at bit.ly/HPHandmadeBazaar Dozens of artisan craft and food makers, from Nigerian fabric makers to fusedglass jewelers to mixed media artists, will showcase their wares at this annual fair. Browsers can wander the tables to the tune of music by DJ Sean Alvarez. ( Jake Bittle)

MUSIC Moonrunners Music Festival Reggies, 2105 S. State St. Friday, May 5, 2pm; Saturday, May 6, 11am. $20–$45 for single-day tickets, $75 for a two-day pass. (312) 949-0120. moonrunnersmusicfestival.com This two-day festival of “roots, rock, and blues” will be packed to the gills with too many acts to name in one blurb, or even in twenty. The headliners will be roots rockers Urban Pioneers and outlaw country artist Shooter Jennings, on Friday and Saturday, respectively. ( Jake Bittle)

MAY 3, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 25

EVENTS

Lewis Del Mar, Anna Wise Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport St. Saturday, May 6. Doors 7pm, show 8pm. $16–$24. All ages. (312) 526-3851. thaliahallchicago.com Lewis Del Mar—made up of two friends, Danny Miller and Max Harwood—will be performing at Thalia Hall this Saturday, including songs from their self-titled debut album. Their music is described as “a sound as challenging as it is comforting,” drawing influences from Latin folk and hip-hop. Also featured at the concert will be Grammy Award-winning singer and songwriter Anna Wise. (Mira Chauhan)

Kiki Walker 2040 (message a host for address, near Damen Pink Line). Saturday, May 6, 8pm–11:55pm. $5. bit.ly/KikiWalker Kiki Walker of Springfield, Il. brings minimalist sounds to Chicago fans of “dreamy bedroom pop.” She’s joined by locals Yarrow (whose music is described as “drone music to listen to in the rainforest”), Big Guy (“dancing in gym class”), Judge Judy, and Executor, supposedly “the world’s most sensual band.” (Adia Robinson)

STAGE & SCREEN The Artists Lounge Open Mic South Side Community Art Center, 3831 S. Michigan Ave. Every first and third Friday until June 30, 7pm–10:30pm. $7, $5 performers. (773) 373-1026. sscartcenter.org This multi-genre open mic is the 2015 collaboration of wordsmiths Dometi Pongo and Johnetta “Awthentic Poetry”Anderson. Poets, singers, emcees, musicians, and visual artists alike can showcase their talent every first and third Friday of the month, at the open mic’s newest home, the historic South Side Community Art Center. (Nicole Bond)

26 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ MAY 3, 2017

Switch on Summer at Buckingham Fountain

Among All This You Stand Like A Fine Brownstone

Angela Jackson: 'A Surprised Queenhood'

Buckingham Fountain, 301 S. Columbus Drive. May 6, 4pm–7pm; fountain comes on at 6pm. (312) 742-3918. chicagoparkdistrict.com

eta Creative Arts Foundation, 7558 S. South Chicago Ave. Friday, May 12–Thursday, June 8. $40, discounts available for seniors, students, and groups. Seating begins half an hour before performance. (773) 752-3955. etacreativearts.org

Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St. Tuesday, May 30, 7pm–8:30pm. Free. (773) 752-4381. semcoop.com

The ninety-year-old Buckingham Fountain is a Beaux Arts icon of Chicago that crops up on both big and small screens. This summertime staple, modeled after the Palace of Versailles, attracts tourists the world over with its well-choreographed water shows that include a 150-foot jet. Locals should take note of this springtime show: the landmark fountain will be turned on at 6pm, and family-friendly festivities include free giveaways and a Beatles tribute band. ( Joseph S. Pete)

Dance4Peace Harold Washington Cultural Center, 4701 S. King Dr. Saturday, May 6, 5:30pm–8:30pm. $15, $10 students and seniors, $8 groups of ten or more pre-sale only. (773) 624-8411. facebook.com/redclaydanceacademy Red Clay Dance Youth Ensemble and Academy present their fifth annual Dance4Peace concert to celebrate youth committed to creating works about “peace and positivity.” This year’s event explores global citizenship and will include their Community Hug Award ceremony recognizing a local hero, culminating with the announcement of winners for their 2017 college and summer scholarships. (Nicole Bond)

Harvey Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. May 11–June 11. $15-$68. (773) 753-4472. courttheatre.org Long before there was Donnie Darko or Wilfred, there was Mary Chase’s 1944 Pulitzer Prize-winning play Harvey. The titular character is an invisible rabbit that stands six feet and three inches tall and may end up imprisoning the “carefree and kind” protagonist Elwood P. Dowd in a sanitarium. ( Joseph S. Pete)

Enjoy this revival tribute that celebrates the life of Vantile L. Whitfield as well as, of course, the Gwendolyn Brooks centennial. First performed to acclaim at eta back in the nineties, you now have a second chance to watch sketchbook vignettes of Black life come to together through Whitfield’s adaptations of poetry by Gwendolyn Brooks—don’t miss out. (Roderick Sawyer)

Never the Milk & Honey The Greenhouse Theater, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave. Through Sunday, May 28. Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, 8pm; Sundays, 3pm. $28-$37. (773) 609-4714. mpaact.org It is written that there is a land of milk and honey, promised as respite for the faithful when the world ends. Explore what happens as covenants and faith are broken, when the world doesn’t end as expected, in Joseph Jefferson Award winner Shepsu Aakhu’s newest play, directed by South Shore native Carla Stillwell. (Nicole Bond)

Sign ‘O’ the Times DuSable Museum of African-American History, 740 E. 56th Pl. Wednesday, May 17, 7pm. $10, $5 for DuSable members. dusablemuseum.org In honor of the first anniversary of Prince’s death, the DuSable Museum, in partnership with South Side Projections, presents the Purple One’s 1987 concert film, Sign ‘O’ the Times. Film critic Armond White, the author of New Position: The Prince Chronicles, will introduce the screening. (Nicole Bond)

The Centennial Brooks celebrations continue as acclaimed poet, playwright, and novelist Angela Jackson joins Beacon Press and the UofC Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture to discuss her new book, A Surprised Queenhood in the New Black Sun: The Life and Legacy of Gwendolyn Brooks. (Nicole Bond)

BrooksDay@Nite: Praise & Jubilation Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St. Wednesday, June 7. Doors 5:30pm, performance 6pm. Tickets $35 before May 7, $45 May 7 through the event day. (773) 324-4844. brooksday.org This year has brought us myriad events in honor of the one hundredth birthday of Illinois’s thirty-two-year poet laureate, but this is the official centennial birthday party celebrating the life and works of the incomparable Miss Gwendolyn Brooks. Featuring one hundred one-minute performances, hors d’ oeuvres, and cake, now is the time to buy tickets for cheap and even sign up to volunteer at the event. Nora Brooks Blakely, Quraysh Ali Lansana, Nate Marshall, and Patricia Smith will be among the many presenters. (Nicole Bond)

MAY 3, 2017 Â¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 27