Sushi 'pub' keeps it simple

Masu Izakaya focuses on small-plate offerings

04/21/2010

Food Review

Masu Izakaya is named for the square boxes, or masu, that Japanese drinkers perch their glasses of sake in. Once used to measure out rice, the boxes catch the liquid that spills over the glasses’ sides from overgenerous pours. At the end of the night, drinkers swallow the lukewarm accumulated slosh.
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A new standby

Flaco’s Tacos is great for friends, affordable and tasty, if inconsistent

04/14/2010

It’s a world where diners are getting more and more finicky about their Mexican food. A master like Rick Bayless and his famous Frontera Grill and Topolobampo on North Clark Street have set a standard — providing guidance for knock-offs like Adobo Grill (in Old Town and Wicker Park) and Zapatista on South Wabash.
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All in the tragic family

Art house giants come together for strange cinema

04/07/2010

Film
Clashing titans pack cineplexes across the country this week, but juggernauts of another variety can be found starting this Friday at the Music Box Theater, when a long-awaited collaboration between two art-house giants finally opens.
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The strains of family history

Modern and WWII-era Poland the setting for award-winning novel

03/31/2010

Book review
Brigid Pasulka was recently awarded the 2010 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for her debut novel A Long, Long Time Ago & Essentially True, the melancholy weaving of two strains of a Polish family’s history.
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Battling cancer with art

Cultural center shows off Chicagoan Hollis Sigler’s introspective work

03/24/2010

Visual art
Chicago artist Hollis Sigler learned she had breast cancer in 1985 and her 15-year struggle with the disease inspired a powerful and surreal outpouring of paintings on display through April 3 at the Chicago Cultural Center.
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Genetic theater

On the ‘DNA trail’ with Silk Road

03/17/2010

Theater review
The set says science. DNA strands, the deoxyribonucleic acid better known as the building blocks of life, line the back wall of the stage. It is a fitting nod to the concept that undergirds the new Silk Road Theater Project production, “The DNA Trail: A Genealogy of Short Plays about Ancestry, Identity, and Utter Confusion.”
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Which witch runs this city?

Play sets sights on urban development, with a twist

03/10/2010

Theater review
The Mir Theater, in association with Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs Theater, delves into the oddly intersecting worlds of urban planning, the mob and witchcraft - yes, witchcraft - with a new staging of "Beautiful City."
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Questions left unanswered

Scattershot script does in Hoffman-directed play

03/03/2010

Theater
A Goodman Theater world premiere, "The Long Red Road" is largely set on a South Dakota reservation, but it needn't be: its atrocities have no clear kinship with the historical pains of the Native American people.
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Baking up a good school

Book examines what worked - and what didn't - at 200 city schools

02/24/2010

Book review
A good school, it turns out, is a lot like a cake. Put in sugar, eggs and oil, but forget the flour, and all you end up with is a sweet, sloppy mess. Without all the right ingredients, success will continually evade you.
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The woodsman

Intuit spotlights the work of barber who cut more than hair

02/17/2010

Art
Ulysses Davis spent most of his adult life cutting hair. Born in 1914, the Fitzgerald, Ga. native worked as a blacksmith’s assistant before migrating east with family to sleepy, historic Savannah, where he opened a neighborhood barbershop behind his home in the 1950s. The shop served a dual purpose, though. It was also Davis’ personal art gallery.
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