#LoveLocal: Time Out Chicago supports and celebrates local food, drink and culture

Election Day in Chicago will be here before you know it. Once you've exercised your right to vote, it's time to settle in for what's sure to be a rollercoaster of an evening (that's putting it mildly). If you're too stressed to cook, leave it to the pros: Many Chicago restaurants are offering election night specials, including themed meals and tasty deals. And with the state's latest ban on indoor dining in Chicago, there's no better time to show your support through a delivery or takeout order. RECOMMENDED: Here’s where you can drop off your mail-in ballot in Chicago Start plotting out your election night dinner with these specials from Chicago restaurants. We'll continue adding to this list through Tuesday, November 3, so check back often for more meal deals. Can't find what you're looking for? Our list of takeout and delivery favorites should do the trick. Alinea: The three-Michelin-starred destination offers an all-American smorgasbord to go ($85 per person) that includes giant soft pretzels, fancy pigs in a blanket, fried chicken, saucy pork ribs and tater tots. For dessert? Apple pie, of course. The Dearborn: Dinner for four ($75) includes all of the culinary comforts you need to survive election night 2020: Two pizzas of your choice, an order of mac 'n cheese, a dozen dry-rub wings with all the fixings, and six USA-themed cookies. Funkenhausen: An Election Week Survival Kit ($150) is loaded up with your choice of two appetizers, a shareable entree, two desserts and yo

As of Friday, October 30, indoor dining and drinking will once again be banned in Chicago. Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced the critical rollback in a press conference earlier today, adding that group gatherings will be capped at 25 people. These new restrictions were triggered by Chicago's rising COVID case rate, with the city reporting an average of nearly 800 confirmed new cases per day. The last time the state ordered bars and restaurants closed was back in March, when Pritzker's "stay-at-home" order first went into effect. In the months since, bar and restaurant owners have grappled with state and city mandates, which have slowly allowed for the return of outdoor and indoor dining. Things started regressing late last week, when Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot shut down indoor service at bars and issued a non-essential business curfew. Come Friday, dining rooms will once again go dark, as restaurants and bars must turn to takeout, delivery and outdoor service—the latter of which has become increasingly limited due to Chicago's cold and snowy forecast this week. We asked local chefs, restaurateurs, bar owners and industry leaders to weigh in on the state's latest shutdown. Unsurprisingly, they reacted with sadness, anger and devastation for an industry that's been rocked by the current crisis. Take a look at their responses below, and consider supporting if you're able—we've linked directly to each business's website for that purpose. Michelle Durpetti, owner of Gene & Georgetti

A lifelong Avondale resident has transformed his home into a full-out Halloween haunted house—complete with a graveyard, towering inflatable ghosts and a fountain of fake blood—and he's inviting his neighbors and other Chicagoans to come by and check it out.  Rico Pineda first had the idea to craft his extravagant Halloween setup several years ago, after his grandma expressed disappointment they hadn't received many trick-or-treaters. They both wondered if people skipped the house because their decorations hadn't been eye-catching enough. "I asked her, 'Do you want me to put up more decorations?'" Pineda says.  His grandma agreed, and Pineda spent the next two years gathering decorations from places like Target, Party City and Facebook Marketplace. Once he had amassed a suitable collection of spooky items, he spent an entire weekend in early October this year—working from 7am to 7pm each day—putting up the decorations himself, with a bit of help from one of his cousins (she handled the window decor). Pineda shared photos of the finished results in a couple Facebook groups. He was surprised when the photos garnered more than 2,000 likes and 500 comments, full of people eager to experience a bit of Halloween fun during an otherwise dreary year. Now he estimates about 15 families visit the house on an average night. Sometimes he comes out and chats with them, inviting folks to take photos and spend time strolling through the yard. "They walk through, take pictures," Pineda says

Chicago's forecast is noticeably chillier this week, as daytime temps dip into the 50s. Local restaurants and bars are bracing for what's to come: The winter season in the Midwest is already cruel on bottom lines, but in the midst of a global pandemic, restaurant owners are also grappling with reduced indoor capacity and stringent guidelines designed to keep guests safe. With city officials encouraging restaurants and bars to stretch outdoor dining setups into the winter months, a village of igloos and greenhouses has cropped up in the West Loop. It's a partnership between West Central Association, the Illinois Restaurant Association and Stella Artois to offer a "outdoor dining solution to Chicago restaurants allowing customers to dine together, safely apart," according to a press release. Opening to the public on Friday, October 16, the outdoor area includes Fulton Market favorites Beatrix, the Publican, Kuma's Corner, Duck Duck Goat and Gus's World Famous Fried Chicken. The temporary plastic structures surround a vibrant chalk street mural designed by Los Angeles-based artist Shepard Fairey’s Studio One. Ready to book an igloo or greenhouse for the evening? You'll need to make a reservation through the restaurant you'd like to dine at—so be sure to call ahead and pack a blanket! Take a look around Dining Together, Apart below. Photograph: Kevin Conway, Flightless Bird Creative       Photograph: Kevin Conway, Flightless Bird Creative Most popular on Time Out - A glitter

This year is already pretty terrifying, but if you're looking to up the ante, Replay Lincoln Park is hosting the spookiest drive-thru haunted house Chicago has to offer starting on Friday, October 2. Located at 2833 N Sheffield Avenue, the arcade bar is transforming its back alley into a spine-chilling corridor filled with zombies, demons and undead souls. When guests arrive at Alley of Darkness, they're treated to a short drive-in movie to set the scene and boost the scare factor. Then they are asked to put the car in park for 30 minutes, while a cast of spooky characters lets loose and terrorizes them. Visitors can expect a 360-degree experience that involves plenty of fake blood, hair-raising sound effects and realistic props. It's worth noting that you may not leave your car at any point during the haunting—so lock your doors and prepare to scream. Reservations are required, and tickets will set you back $75 per car. Don't have a car? Replay is loaning out several vehicles that are aired out and sanitized between parties, though it will cost you an extra $25 for the convenience. Alley of Darkness will be serving screams from October 2 through 31 with reservations available every 20 minutes between 5 and 10:40pm. Most popular on Time Out - City of Chicago shares new rules for outdoor dining this winter- Beloved bar Southport Lanes to close after 98 years in Lakeview- ZooLights will still illuminate Lincoln Park this year, but you’ll have to pay admission to get in- The b

Chef Jason Vincent is tired. For the past seven months, he's fought tooth and nail to save the restaurants he's worked his entire life to build. In Before Times, Giant was the kind of success story that every restaurateur hopes for—the cozy, 1,400-square-foot eatery was consistently packed from the moment it opened until last call. These days, the celebrated spot is hanging on by a thread. Even with 40 percent capacity indoors and a small patio out back, Vincent says that he’s operating at a small fraction of his usual revenue. The restaurant owner’s worries are mounting, but he isn’t throwing in the towel. As the forecast chills, Vincent is taking Giant on the road with a food truck. “I’m not pretending to be good at this,” Vincent says. “I could fall flat on my face and waste a bunch of money on a food truck, but I can’t be on the other side of this, turning on the sad music and hitting ‘closed’ on my business and say to myself, ‘Well, I didn’t try everything.’ I gotta try.” Photograph: Kristen Mendiola   The canary yellow truck will roam Chicago and park in residential neighborhoods for the lunch hour, serving pizza by the slice, burroti, old-fashioned doughnuts and Pretty Cool ice cream bars. Residents can also book the vehicle for private at-home catering gigs, complete with boozy beverages from sister spot Chef's Special Cocktail Bar. It’s an idea that Vincent and his team have been tossing around since April. When he realized that neither the city nor the country had

The new Netflix series "Emily in Paris" has Chicago's full attention—but not in a good way. The 10-episode season follows its titular character, Emily Cooper (played by Lily Collins), a Chicago marketing executive who's landed her dream job in Paris. Along the way, Emily and other characters seem to find joy in talking shit (pardon our French) about the city of Chicago, slinging insults at Cubs fans, suburban malls and—perhaps most infamously—deep dish pizza. During one scene in particular, Emily is chatting with her new boss and the company's founder about the saucy specialty. When the founder describes deep dish pizza as a "quiche made of cement," Emily responds: "Oh no, you must have gone to Lou Malnati's." The 49-year-old pizzeria did not take kindly to the negative commentary, sharing a press release today titled "Lou Malnati’s Pizzeria Is Not A Fan of New Netflix Series 'Emily In Paris.'" In the official statement, Lou's admits that it's up for "good-natured banter with pizza lovers from New York or California" but that it took offense to the series' disparaging language during these difficult times. "We've been serving Chicago's favorite deep dish since 1971. When Netflix’s 'Emily in Paris' writers chose to take a shot at Chicagoans and our pizza to try to get a laugh, it felt heartless and not humorous in the midst of COVID-19,” explains owner Marc Malnati. To counteract any hard feelings, Lou's is offering $5 off four- and six-packs of pizzas through online retailer

The organizers behind Black People Eats, one of Chicago's most prominent Black-owned restaurant databases, have debuted a new virtual event aimed at celebrating Chicago's wonderfully diverse culinary scene. Every weekend this month, Blaktober will feature dining deals from 76 Black-owned restaurants in the city, including fan-favorite spots like Brown Sugar Bakery, Mabe's Deli and 5 Loaves Eatery (among many others—you can see a list of participating restaurants here), plus a free downloadable e-cookbook with recipes from Black chefs, virtual cooking demos and more. If you want to pump up the experience, you can also opt to buy tickets from the Blaktober Eventbrite page, which will net you VIP access to the cooking demos and other perks, like tickets to a virtual Afrobeats dance class.  Earlier this year, Black People Eats hosted a similar virtual event in honor of Juneteenth. Jeremy Joyce, the group's founder, says he wanted to boost awareness for Black restaurants during the month of October after learning that countries like the U.K. observe Black History Month then (instead of in February, like the U.S. does). "This event means a lot to me. It's a way to celebrate Black restaurants all month long outside of February," Joyce says. "I realized that now most Black restaurants and businesses only really get highlighted in February and now Juneteenth. We wanted to do something that will leave an imprint on history by doing something in October. This means connecting people to

It was heartwarming to watch videos of Claudio Velez (better known as the Tamale Guy) leaving the hospital last week after a 35-day stay during which doctors treated the local entrepreneur for COVID-19. A longtime fixture of North Side bars, where he'd frequently show up selling homemade tamales out of a red cooler, Velez and his family realized a dream earlier this year when they opened a restaurant in Ukrainian Village—aptly named Tamale Guy Chicago. Naperville's Solemn Oath Brewery had been working on a collaborative beer with the Tamale Guy crew to celebrate the opening of the new restaurant before Velez was diagnosed with COVID. When Velez was suddenly hospitalized and his restaurant was forced to close just a few weeks after opening, the project took on new meaning, offering a way to raise funds for Velez's treatment, his family and his business. In speaking with the team behind Tamale Guy Chicago, Solemn Oath's brewers learned that Velez's favorite flavor of paleta (the ubiquitous Mexican popsicles that are frequently sold by street vendors) was mango. That information served as the inspiration for a "hazy paleta pale ale" that clocks in at a reasonable 5.5% ABV and is made with strawberry, mango and a hint of ancho chile. "I think we can all agree that while there have definitely been many different tamale vendors throughout the Chicago bar scene, Claudio has always been the undisputed king of the scene," Solemn Oath director of marketing Jared Saul told us, explainin

Chicago is famously a city of neighborhoods, made up of a tapestry of distinct communities that lend a sense of variety to our urban environment. So when Time Out polled thousands of city-dwellers on their favorite places to spend time and narrowed down the 40 coolest neighborhoods in the world, we weren't surprised to find that Uptown is among them. Of course, we understand that naming the coolest neighborhood in a city is a subjective distinction that differs from person to person, which is why picking them wasn't an easy task. We relied on a shortlist based on thousands of responses to our annual Time Out Index and crowned Uptown as Chicago's coolest nabe for the first time (Pilsen took the top honors last year). A historic entertainment district that's home to old theaters like the Aragon and the Riviera, Uptown is a place where venues like Carol's Pub, The Green Mill and the Baton Show Lounge are finding ways to safely stage shows for locals and visitors while most marquees throughout the city remain dark. There's also no denying the breadth of the North Side neighborhood's restaurant scene, which includes Ethiopian food at Demera, sizzling Chinese barbecue from Sun Wah and steaming bowls of pho amid the Vietnamese restaurants on Argyle Street. More importantly, Uptown reflects the turbulent times we're living through, as one of countless communities that has banded together to support neighbors near and far. The area hosted a variety of peaceful marches and demonstratio