Thursday, February 16, 2012

Two Red-Hot Chicago Spots Crack GQ's 'Best New Restaurants in America' List!

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Next's dining room (Photo: Next); diners wait anxiously outside Ruxbin (Photo: Ruxbin).

Take that, New York!

GQ just released the annual Ten Best New Restaurants in America list, and two awesome Chicago spots made the cut. No other city got those honors. Yeah!

Ukrainian Village's sensational BYOB Ruxbin simply got the nod at #9 because "The thirty-two-seat room feels as if it's been carefully assembled over a lifetime," writes editor Mike Benoist.

He continues: "The menus are hand-embossed each day. And the food, like the rest of the place, is labored over. Time and energy take the place of overused, overpriced ingredients. Squid stuffed with sausage gets depth and heat from a chile paste imported from a farm in Tennessee. Cream of Wheat, enriched and amplified by lamb drippings and brown butter, is maybe the best thing I ate all year."

Wow. It's gonna be even harder to get in that place now!

And writer Michael Paterniti had this to say about Next, which came in at #3:

"Few restaurants are able to transcend superstar chefs, genre, or gimmick and sell themselves on pure concept without sounding as if the demiurge (a) has lost his precious marbles or (b) is working overtime to give new resonance to the acronym "WTF?" But then came (Grant) Achatz's whimsical offering: Next is America's first time-travel restaurant, operating in ever changing four-month rotations."

Who else made the cut around the country?! Find out right here.

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