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Chicago's Foodies are Currently Obsessed with Queso Fundido

Big Star's queso fundido

While New York goes through food obsessions every few months (it's cupcakes and then it's pork belly and then it's banh mi), Chicago prefers to idolize specific ethnic restaurants, where one or a few dishes completely stand out and really make the dining experience.

When we were in Chicago recently, we heard the same couple curious words all over the place: "Queso Fundido." Why was everyone talking about melted cheese so excitedly, and where could we get some? As it turns out, the Queso Fundido currently tempting the palettes of Chicago is what's on the menu at hipster taco joint Big Star, in Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood.

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Top Chef Travel / Food Travel / Reality Television Travel / Restaurants / → All Tags

Radhika Loses 'Restaurant Wars' But Still Cooks for Chicago Restaurant

This week's Top Chef was everyone's favorite episode: Restaurant Wars. As is the case in previous seasons, Restaurant Wars is the first episode in which no chef'testants are given immunity in the elimination challenge, and even the favorites can definitely go home.

Once again this year, we saw one of our top picks--Chi-town's cutie chef Radhika--asked to pack her knives and leave. While the judges' decision seemed fair (she clearly had no idea how to run a restaurant), we're still intrigued by her spicy global cuisine, and would be more than happy to eat at a restaurant where she's not running the front-of-house.

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Nightlife / Bars / → All Tags

Club Foot: the Real Dive

Citysearch's top-10 list of dive bars made Chicagoist get a little bit tart: it must have been "extremely rich people who have no idea what a dive bar is" who did the voting. We'll stay out of the semantics question of what's a dive and what's "just" a great bar (though we agree with Chicagoist's rule that calamari and dives are mutually exclusive).

We do know that the Ukrainian Village's Club Foot, rounding out Citysearch's list at #10 and even getting Chicagoist's nod, is a sweet, sweet place, with the biggest collection of Gen X and beyond toys and other crap that we've ever seen. Wish we lived above it.

Related Stories:
·   Taking a Dive [Chicagoist]
·   Best Dive Bar 2005 [Citysearch]
·   Club Foot [Chicago Trib]