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Articles by Cliff Doerksen
Into the Friar - Chicago Reader
Waiting for the Blue Line train at Oak Park station the other day, I crossed paths with a vigorous-looking young man clad in sandals, a brown, hooded, ankle-length robe, and a simple belt fashioned of rope. Take away his wire-framed glasses and shave a helipad onto his melon and he would have been the very picture of a medieval Catholic monk. “You’d be a monk,” I said to him, flaunting my enormous erudition. Close, but no ciborium: He was rather a friar, of the Franciscan order specifically.
The Real American Pie
As an icon of the American way, apple pie is a johnny-come-lately, a usurper, a pale pretender to its pastry throne. The phrase as American as apple pie is of 20th-century origin and didn’t attain wide currency until the 1940s. Perhaps not coincidentally, the 40s are also when mince pie went into eclipse as our defining national dish.
Ripe for a Remake
Attention filmmakers: how about a Nightmare Alley unrestrained by quaint Hollywood moral codes? By Cliff Doerksen "How do you get a guy to be a geek?" marvels Tyrone Power as a recently hired carnival magician to his thuggish boss in 1947 cult noir Nightmare Alley, screening this week in 35-millimeter as part of the Music Box's Noir City series.
A Cult Artist’s Cult Artist
Who’s Jackie Leven? Ask Johnny Dowd, or Ron Sexsmith, or Pere Ubu's David Thomas. By Cliff Doerksen Jackie Leven Gothic Road (Cooking Vinyl) I've been a devout fan of legendary Cleveland art-rockers Pere Ubu and their leader, David Thomas, since I first heard their debut album, The Modern Dance, on college radio in Winnipeg in 1978.
Pizzeria Bebu turns out pie-in-the-sky good pizza | Restaurant Review | Chicago Reader
There is no food more adaptable to the human requirement for joy than pizza. You can share it, hot and steaming, with your best friends, and it’s near guaranteed that before you’ve finished, you’ll all burst out laughing together for some reason or another.
At Curious, things are curiously out of whack | Restaurant Review | Chicago Reader
One early evening at Curious "A Chef's Playground," a friend gazed distantly out the window at the McDonald's across Chicago Avenue and began chanting like a devotee of Lord Krishna: "Filet-O-Fish-Filet-O-Fish-Filet-O-Fish . . .
Chef Benjamin Lustbader pays tribute to his culinary mentor, Michel Richard | Key Ingredient | Chicago Reader
For this year's Reader Key Ingredient Cook-Off, we asked some of Chicago's top chefs to create a dish to honor a person who influenced their cooking. The exercise stirred many kitchen memories. Mentor: Michel Richard, who was the chef and owner of Citronelle in Washington, D.C. (Richard passed away last year at the age of 68) "I'd been working for a couple years [when I started at Citronelle], but I didn't know anything.
Chef Ben Ruiz pays tribute to his culinary mentor, Erick Williams | Key Ingredient | Chicago Reader
For this year's Reader Key Ingredient Cook-Off, we asked some of Chicago's top chefs to create a dish to honor a person who influenced their cooking. The exercise stirred many kitchen memories. "I always wanted to be a chef. I came from a family that always cooked at home, but I didn't appreciate it that much until I went to college and learned what really bad food was. It forced me to cook a lot of my own meals. "[Williams] taught me how to not bullshit and actually do real cooking.
Chef Sarah Rinkavage pays tribute to her culinary mentor, Jason Hammel | Key Ingredient | Chicago Reader
For this year's Reader Key Ingredient Cook-Off, we asked some of Chicago's top chefs to create a dish to honor a person who influenced their cooking. The exercise stirred many kitchen memories. Mentor: Jason Hammel, chef and owner of Lula Cafe and chef at the yet-to-open Marisol in the MCA "Everything about [Lula] was different from anything I knew and learned in the past in cooking.
Chef Ryan Pfeiffer pays tribute to his culinary mentor, Tim Bucci | Key Ingredient | Chicago Reader
For this year's Reader Key Ingredient Cook-Off, we asked some of Chicago's top chefs to create a dish to honor a person who influenced their cooking. The exercise stirred many kitchen memories. Mentor: Tim Bucci, culinary instructor and gold medalist in the World Culinary Olympics "Chef Timothy was my first instructor at Joliet Junior College—that's where I went to culinary school.
Chef Dino Tsaknis pays tribute to his culinary mentor, Michael Lachowicz | Key Ingredient | Chicago Reader
For this year's Reader Key Ingredient Cook-Off, we asked some of Chicago's top chefs to create a dish to honor a person who influenced their cooking. The exercise stirred many kitchen memories. Mentor: Michael Lachowicz, chef and owner of Restaurant Michael and George Trois "Me and my buddies opened up a pizza place when we were young, and [Lachowicz] had a restaurant down the block. It came to a point where I needed more money.
Chef Evan Sumrell pays tribute to his culinary mentor, Ryan McCaskey | Key Ingredient | Chicago Reader
For this year's Reader Key Ingredient Cook-Off, we asked some of Chicago's top chefs to create a dish to honor a person who influenced their cooking. The exercise stirred many kitchen memories. "[Acadia] was the first place I worked when I moved to Chicago. I didn't know anything about fine dining, what it took, what it was about. I learned a lot of discipline. [McCaskey] made me understand what it takes to be successful in this business, how much work you need to do, what you need to put into it.
Chef Dan Salls pays tribute to his culinary mentor, Rick Bayless | Key Ingredient | Chicago Reader
For this year's Reader Key Ingredient Cook-Off, we asked some of Chicago's top chefs to create a dish to honor a person who influenced their cooking. The exercise stirred many kitchen memories. Mentor: Rick Bayless, chef and owner of restaurants including Frontera Grill, Topolobampo, and Xoco, and host of the TV series Mexico: One Plate at a Time "The first kitchen I ever worked in was my own, at the Salsa Truck.
Chef Won Kim pays tribute to his culinary mentor (and mother), Sun Hee Kang | Key Ingredient | Chicago Reader
For this year's Reader Key Ingredient Cook-Off, we asked some of Chicago's top chefs to create a dish to honor a person who influenced their cooking. The exercise stirred many kitchen memories. "My cooking mentor is my mother. I'm her youngest and most special kid—special in the sense that I would eat anything she put in front of us. We grew up pretty poor. I used to be her prep cook. Every time we made kimchi, I was the one that would mash all the ginger, garlic.
Chef Carlos Gaytan pays tribute to his culinary roots in Mexico | Key Ingredient | Chicago Reader
ArcLight Presents: You Never Had It: An Evening With Bukowski The Fate of the Furious Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2: An IMAX 3D Experience How to Be a Latin Lover Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales 3D
South-side picnicking done right | Summer Guide | Chicago Reader
It's one of Chicago's eternal complaints: food writers ignore the south side. Actually, I think the culinary coverage south of Madison Street is better than it used to be, with neighborhoods from Pilsen to Bridgeport to Chinatown now known as booming, hip dining-out neighborhoods. But I also think we shouldn't be in any hurry to see the south side turn into Logan Square.
Dining out—way out | Food & Drink Feature | Chicago Reader
Suburbia can't catch a break. The lifelong urbanite's scorn of the sprawling cultural wasteland is palpable, and suburban-born, restless, creative types going back to Hemingway can't wait to escape. Can we get over these biases? At least in terms of food?
A Thanksgiving conversation that isn’t about Donald Trump | Bleader
The Bears really suck this year. Every other team is better than the Bears. What can we do to make the Bears great—sorry, make sure the Bears don't suck anymore? Also, after today's game, whom do we hate more, the Vikings or the Lions? There are some subtle differences between them. Like, the Vikings are from Minnesota and the Lions are from Michigan. Both of which went to Trump.
The Real American Pie
Mince pie was once inextricable from our national identity. Blamed for bad health, murderous dreams, the downfall of Prohibition, and the decline of the white race, it nonetheless persisted as an American staple through the 1940s. So what happened? By Cliff Doerksen Cover of the December 17 Reader; click image to enlarge As an icon of the American way, apple pie is a johnny-come-lately, a usurper, a pale pretender to its pastry throne.
Ripe for a Remake
“How do you get a guy to be a geek?” marvels Tyrone Power as a recently hired carnival magician to his thuggish boss in 1947 cult noir Nightmare Alley, screening this week in 35-millimeter as part of the Music Box’s Noir City series.
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