Lite Bites: What Your Favorite Chefs & Mixologists Are Up To Around Town This Week

Giuseppe Tentori, partner/executive chef at BOKA. (Photo: BOKA)

The wind will blow you away!

• Boka executive chef Giuseppe Tentori (also of GT Fish & Oyster fame) has teamed up with chefs Rick Gresh (David Burke’s Primehouse) and Cleetus Friedman (Fountainhead) for the second-annual CigarBQue. The event takes place at 6:30pm June 21 and it's exactly what you think: people chowing down on chef-driven BBQ dishes and smoking cigars. The trio's invited a bunch of colleagues to help them whip up vittles, including the likes of Matt Troost (Three Aces), Jimmy Bannos Sr. (Heaven on Seven), Mike and Patrick Sheerin (Trenchermen), Rey Villalobos (Table Fifty-Two), David Blonsky (Bull & Bear/Public House), Heather Terhune (Sable Kitchen & Bar), Chris Macchia (Coco Pazzo) and Willie Wagner (Honky Tonk BBQ). Mixologists Thaddeus Dynakowski (Northside Bar and Grill), Ben Schiller (Berkshire Room) and Mike Ryan (Sable Kitchen & Bar) will be serving up cocktails, which are included in the $150 ticket price. A portion of the evening's proceeds will be donated to the Cigar Family Charitable Foundation. Get those tickets right here.


Acadia's Ryan McCaskey is getting ready for his annual Memorial Day pig roast. (Photo: Acadia)

• Shawn McClain's team over at Green Zebra is doing the ideal alternative for those not into BBQ this weekend: morel madness. For $30, diners get a three-course tasting menu with the seasonal mushroom as the star. They're poached, crispy and creamed, with the latter accompanied by sweet pea and garlic ravioli, Fiddlehead ferns and thyme jus. You can indulge in the menu May 24-26.

• For those looking for meat madness on Memorial Day, Acadia's Ryan McCaskey is doing his annual pig roast BBQ. The party's free (a $5 donation is suggested), and includes live music, whiskey punch, suckling pig roast, jerk chicken thighs, smoked shrimp, elote and more. Festivities start at 1pm.

• Endgrain, which is scheduled to open in early June by former Nightwood chef Enoch Simpson, gave GrubStreet Chicago a sneak preview of its menu, including the "unholy good biscuits" of buttermilk with crispy pork belly and Walleye fish on marbled rye. RIP, by the way, to GrubStreet Chicago, which is no longer. New York magazine decided to pull the plug on all its local food and drink sites—except the one in NYC.