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House-made, house-cured, hand-churned, hand-dipped—we’ve heard it all before. We’ve probably tasted most of it. And despite the more-than-occasional sensation that we’re trapped in a Portlandia episode, we have to admit that (A) this kind of approach to food continues to enthrall us, and (B) we have no problem asking, without a shred of self-consciousness, “Is it local?” The other question on our minds of late is how these age-old techniques are affecting modern cooking....

The films of Fritz Lang take place in an impressively well-organized universe: every detail, no matter how small, seems to reflect a master plan. Lang, of course, directed some of the most paranoid of great movies, such as Spies (1928) and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933), which imagine vast criminal conspiracies behind seemingly chaotic events. He was also especially adept at tragedy: in films like You Only Live Once (1937), Scarlet Street (1945), and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956), the heroes seem inalienably tied to their bad ends, as if their lives were controlled by cruel gods....

The premise is gold. Striding Lion InterArts Workshop retells the story of the Texas 11–state Democrats who fled to a New Mexico motel for 30 days in 2003 to avoid a vote on Republican-favored redistricting–as a trippy spaghetti western. It comes complete with a savvy video opening, stylized movement sections, and a few memorable images: a dancing gray-haired, cigar-chomping waif dubbed the Spirit of Bipartisanship and “Hot Tub” Tom DeLay in ten-gallon hat and American-flag Speedo....

Mike Sula Ward Eight’s manhattan I don’t recall annoying more people with a restaurant review than I did last summer when I wrote about Premise. For the most part, all those aggrieved Andersonvillians weren’t whinging at what I said about the new restaurant, but at a perceived slight on Anne Carlson and Cody Modeer, the bartenders who took over the previous restaurant—In Fine Spirits—after the exceptionally talented Ben Schiller left....

Haymarket Pub & Brewery may have been named in honor of the historic Haymarket affair—it’s located in the area where it took place—but the kind of working-class folks who participated in the riots don’t seem to be flocking to it. In fact, none of the yuppie types who were there during a Thursday evening recording of the Drinking & Writing Brewery radio show seemed much interested in Haymarket’s history, despite the broadcasters’ best attempts to talk over the din....

Dan Koretzky, cofounder of Drag City Records, recalls receiving the 2,000-copy shipment of Royal Trux’s Twin Infinitives at the doorstep of his Erie Street apartment with a kind of optimistic trepidation. Released in 1990, the double LP was the embryonic label’s first big go of it; Drag City had only released a pair of seven-inch singles prior. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » More than 20 years later, after releasing albums by Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Joanna Newsom, Silver Jews, and whatever Ian Svenonius happened to be up to, Koretzky can probably buy himself a nice desk with actual legs and perhaps even a drawer or two....

The Chef: Duncan Biddulph (Rootstock)The Challenger: Rodney Staton (the Ogden)The Ingredient: Cod milt Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Cod milt is most common in Japanese cuisine, where it’s steamed, fried, or occasionally served raw with ponzu or another sauce. It’s in season during the winter, so anyone who wants to try it now is in luck. Biddulph got some fresh from his fish purveyor, but he also bought a large frozen block of it from an Asian market in Chicago....

Shuffling Sports Re: “What about Mariotti?,” posted by Michael Miner, December 7 The criticism of Ryan did not begin after it was all over. This was not mere hindsight criticism. The criticism began as soon as he took office in Du Page County for continuing the prosecution of Cruz, Hernandez, and Buckley that his predecessor had begun. Many people saw the flaws in the case from the get-go, and as the flaws just grew and grew and the case became more and more a scandal, what did Ryan do?...

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Twenty-year-old Colin Agunobi admits that the recent economic tumult hasn’t affected him personally: “I’m still pretty young, I don’t have to pay taxes or bills, really. But my mom does.” Still, Colin and his friend Kameron Robinson think it’s clear the country needs completely different leadership on the economy. And they weren’t going to miss the chance to vote for what could be the first African-American U....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The composer and the lyricist for the stage version of Mary Poppins will join Tony-winning Urinetown composer-lyricist Mark Hollmann for a forum on musical theater Monday. As previously noted here, Hollmann–a veteran of the off-Loop theater and improv scenes, the University of Chicago, and the Columbia College music faculty–will speak at a “meet-the-artist” event sponsored by Theatre Building Chicago’s musical theater development program, in which Hollmann studied....

A nation gripped by economic instability and bitter partisanship, where extremists dominate the public discourse and demagogues denounce government power while strategizing to get it. America in 2010? Or Germany in 1930? Willkommen to Cabaret. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Adapted by playwright Joe Masteroff, composer John Kander, and lyricist Fred Ebb from Christopher Isherwood’s semiautobiographical Berlin Stories, the landmark musical is set in Berlin just as the Nazis were evolving from a fringe movement into a mainstream political party....

“I was a young trial lawyer,” he tells me. “I called the director and I got the part. And so I’m sitting in this restaurant having dinner”—and he opened the Reader. He feared the worst. “The Reader was hard on a lot of people. My recollection is they didn’t mince any words.” And sure enough, his eye immediately confronted a headline that said, “It’s the Acting, Stupid.” But that turned out to be another show....

This 1998 musical deftly interweaves the fully felt characters in novelist E.L. Doctorow’s tale of America’s boiling pot in the early 20th century. Three clans of immigrants–an ethnically and racially mixed assemblage that looks a lot like America today–and historical figures like Henry Ford, Emma Goldman, and Harry Houdini show how change can radicalize or humanize. Terrence McNally’s fluid dialogue, Lynn Ahrens’s compassionate lyrics, and Stephen Flaherty’s gorgeous variations on ragtime waltzes and cakewalks are grist for L....

The Tribune has changed so much since Colonel Robert McCormick died in 1955 that if the press baron were given to spinning in his grave he’d be a dervish already. But Joseph Aaron, editor of the Chicago Jewish News, is sure the Colonel will be set off by the flying feet of Sam Zell, the real estate mogul and self-described “grave dancer” who’s buying the Tribune Company. “Colonel McCormick was pretty anti-Semitic,” says Aaron....

Intimidation, suppression, and fear of reprisals. Are we talking North Korea? Chile under Pinochet, perhaps? Guess again. According to inside sources speaking at what they believe is great risk to their standing, that’s the current environment at the Saints, Chicago’s unique all-volunteer performing-arts support group—source of all those polite, penguin-uniformed ushers who keep things moving at thousands of performances in practically every nonprofit theater in the Chicago area. What they describe is a bitter battle among the directors on the Saints’ board, with the party in power shutting down dissent....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I find closeups of actors’ faces to be the most consistently disappointing images of recent movies shot in wide-screen. Since few faces are that much wider than they are tall, a wide-screen closeup often results in lots of empty space—as closeups tend to be filmed in shallow focus, the remaining portion of the shot usually contains little in the way of depth-of-field....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I can barely imagine what the cultural life and political life of this country would become without the New York Times. But it’s an idea that Michael Hirschorn, writing in the Atlantic, says we’d better get used to. He says the New York Times Company is looking at over $1 billion in debt and a mere $46 million or so in cash reserves, and the flagship paper is saddled with the sinking readership and advertising endemic to the industry....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » On Friday night, the Art Institute opens its show “Light Years: Conceptual Art and the Photograph, 1964-1977” with an outdoor screening of Andy Warhol’s eight-hour film Empire. This is no simple movies-in-the-park affair: the museum plans to project Empire from the third floor of the Modern Wing onto 12 upper stories of the Aon Center, starting at 6 PM....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Lots of folks “enjoyed” Trapped in the Closet in a snarky, condescending way—which severely bums out the people who, despite the high likelihood that they hold a very negative view of the man himself, consider R. Kelly’s catalog to be some of the best R&B music ever made. But I think everyone can agree that the wildly surreal, 22-part dramedy remains one of the weirdest—and thus most compelling—things to happen to pop music in the past couple decades....

The fact that it’s the only Chinese-Portuguese fusion in town is no slight. The union between those two cuisines, which originally were melded on the tiny island of Macao, is certainly a smart one. But in lesser hands, the result could be considerably dumbed down. Fat Rice‘s hip interpretation of Macanese food is damn-near brilliant. My favorite Fat Rice dishes lean toward the Chinese side of things, partly because I’m addicted to Sichuan peppercorns....