Eat. Watch. Do. — ‘Champion’ review, Valentine’s Day specials and Jean Banchet award winners
It’s Thursday, Chicago.
With Groundhog Day tomorrow, we’re hoping Punxsutawney Phil misses his shadow for a better chance of an early spring.
It has been quite the week of festivities for Chicago-area restaurants, with the Jean Banchet awards ceremony Sunday. If you believe food is the best way to show love, as we do, use our roundup of 78 Chicago restaurants with Valentine’s Day specials and promotions to help you woo your Valentine. Look out for our Mardi Gras and Lunar New Year roundups next week.
Over in entertainment, critic Nina Metz reviews a PBS documentary and a new FX show about Truman Capote, while Chris Borrelli travels to my hometown to scope out a unique musical theater-themed-rave coming soon to Chicago.
Enjoy the weekend, we’ll see you back here next week.
— Lauryn Azu, deputy senior editor
Restaurant news: Pierogi Kitchen in Wicker Park, among 11 notable openings and closings around Chicago
Akahoshi Ramen, Honey Butter Fried Chicken Glencoe and Turner Haus just opened, but Big Kids and Jade Court are slated to close. Read more restaurant news here.
Think ‘Les Miz’ and lasers. Broadway Raves are the new big night out for young lovers of show tunes.
“Masquerade,” anyone? Tribune reporter Chris Borrelli traveled to Detroit to catch this touring singular sensation before it plays a sell-out party at Subterranean. Read his dispatch here.
78 Valentine’s Day specials at Chicago restaurants, from romantic dinners to Galentine’s Day celebrations
Valentine’s Day is the biggest date night of the year and you’ll want to make plans now to avoid heartbreak. Read about area specials near you here.
Review: ‘Champion’ at Lyric Opera delivers the full force of a boxer’s painful story
Three different singers play the welterweight boxer Emile Griffith in Lyric Opera’s visceral production of Terence Blanchard’s 2013 jazz opera. Read more about the show here.
Jean Banchet awards 2024: Galit restaurant, chef Paul Virant and former Tribune restaurant critic among winners
Longtime former Tribune dining editor Phil Vettel received a standing ovation accepting the new Culinary Excellence of the Year Award. Read about the awards ceremony here.
‘Razing Liberty Square’ review: Climate gentrification scatters a Black community in Miami as developers move in
PBS’s Independent Lens looks at what rising sea levels in Miami mean for formerly ignored neighborhoods that are on higher ground. Tribune critic Nina Metz reviews here.
Column: What does ‘Godzilla Minus One’ have that Hollywood doesn’t?
Back for a very limited run in black-and-white, “Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color” is a triumph of efficiently budgeted imagination, Tribune critic Michael Phillips writes. Read his column here.
Into the lucrative world of sports trading cards and memorabilia with expert Michael Osacky
Michael Osacky occupies an important niche in the surprisingly vast, sometimes wicked and increasingly competitive and lucrative world of sports memorabilia. Read about one of the biggest sports memorabilia conventions that just took place in Rosemont here.
‘He didn’t run’: A flutist honors his grandfather, a Chicago Defender journalist during the civil rights movement
Flutist Adam Sadberry, 27, never met his grandfather, the pioneering African American journalist L. Alex Wilson. His grandfather’s legacy is the inspiration behind “Musical Journalism,” a recital that is coming to the University of Chicago. Read more here.
‘Feud: Capote vs. The Swans’: When Truman Capote skewered New York’s elite
A mascot of New York’s high society, Truman Capote revealed their ugly secrets on the pages of Esquire magazine — and lived to regret it. Read Nina Metz’s review of the new FX show here.
