GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Steve Spurrier stashed six decades worth of memorabilia in closets and cabinets, scattered between his office, his home and his nearby beach house. Jerseys and cleats. Helmets and visors. Trophies and trinkets. Rings and pictures. Spurrier’s collection was as massive as it was impressive.

He stored another assortment of keepsakes in his head: “ball plays,” some of them as famous as his notable one-liners.

He has gathered all those treasures — even the plays he jotted down from memory — and proudly put them on display at Spurrier’s Gridiron Grille. The one-of-a-kind restaurant opened this week in Gainesville and doubles as the Head Ball Coach’s personal museum.

Spurrier and his investment team spared no expense in putting together a “polished casual” eatery that serves farm-to-table food. They visited nearly 60 celebrity restaurants across the world, stopping at places owned by Troy Aikman, John Elway, Gloria Estefan, Pele, Mike Shanahan and Tiger Woods. They also studied what caused others to falter.

Football plays designed by Steve Spurrier from years past are displayed on wallpaper in a restroom at his new restaurant, the Gridiron Grill, in Gainesville, Florida.AP

“We believe we got a plan that’s in place to be very successful,” Spurrier said. “Location, food, service, we got all that. Hopefully we got all that. We believe we do.”

Spurrier gave The Associated Press a tour of the 18,600-square-foot restaurant that cost more than $12 million to build weeks before the grand opening, and the details and decor stood out.

Spurrier has his Heisman Trophy on display along with 14 championship rings, including Duke’s 1989 Atlantic Coast Conference title, South Carolina’s 2010 Southeastern Conference Eastern Division championship and his latest one from the Orlando Apollos (He claims the Alliance of American Football title after the league suspended operations in April 2019 with Spurrier’s Apollos atop the standings at 7-1).

The cleats he wore while kicking a 40-yard field goal to beat Auburn 30-27 in 1966 and clinch the Heisman Trophy are on display and so is the game ball from that one, both on loan from the Florida Sports Hall of Fame.

He has glass cabinets filled with trophies awarded to former players. There’s a wall-sized mosaic of Spurrier from his quarterback days adorning the main entryway, plaques recognizing Spurrier’s “Gator Greats” — the inaugural class featured Spurrier, Carlos Alvarez, Emmitt Smith, Errict Rhett, Danny Wuerffel and Percy Harvin – and hundreds of other items spread throughout.

The upstairs bar displays Steve Spurrier’s signature on the wall at his new restaurant, the Gridiron Grill.AP

A hole-in-one display from the par-3 course at Augusta National. Congratulatory letters from Hall of Fame coaches Pat Summitt and John Wooden. Fifteen keys to cities. An array of bowl watches. Pictures with President Bill Clinton, entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. and comedian/actor Jackie Gleason. Photos of Spurrier from every decade of his coaching career, beginning before he switched from hats to his trademark visors.

Speaking of Visors — that’s the name of Spurrier’s rooftop bar where, of course, he has a collection of about 250 of them on display. He also had two specific bar stools reserved for the “HBC” and his wife, Jerri.

“It’s all me? Yeah, it’s a little weird, I guess,” Spurrier said. “But a lot of team pictures, too, which is very important.”

There are five private dining rooms, which make Spurrier’s a hot spot for meetings and parties. Current Gators football coach Dan Mullen and men’s basketball coach Mike White will broadcast their weekly shows from the restaurant. There’s also a podcast room that houses every helmet from every team Spurrier has even been associated with.

ESPN has placed a rental deposit on part of the restaurant for the weekend of the Alabama-Florida game, scheduled to be played Sept. 18.

“This is built for Gator Nation,” said Freddie Wehbe, who collaborated with Frankel Media to handle most of the heavy lifting in getting Spurrier’s from conception to completion. “How would you not? UF is the program that Coach created.”

Spurrier was Florida’s first Heisman winner and coached the Gators to their first national championship 30 years later. He has a statue outside the stadium and is a member of the program’s exclusive ring of honor.

Spurrier also nicknamed the stadium “The Swamp.” The Gators went 122-27-1 in 12 seasons under Spurrier, including a staggering 68-5 at home, and won six SEC titles.

The Gators renamed their football field after him in 2016, calling it Steve Spurrier-Florida Field at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. He’s without question the most beloved personality in school history.

A table setting with photos and other memorabilia is viewed at Steve Spurrier’s Gridiron GrillAP

Spurrier’s daughter, Amy Moody, urged him to build a restaurant just to get all his memorabilia organized and on display. Spurrier didn’t do much else to get the place up and running other than sit in meetings and tweak ideas from countless consultants.

One thing he did provide: those plays.

Spurrier recreated dozens of his most famous and successful plays on paper and had them turned into wallpaper that now covers both upstairs bathrooms.

A few of them came from lopsided wins against hated rival Georgia, of course. Others: Terry Dean connecting with Jack Jackson in a victory against Alabama in the 1993 SEC title game; Wuerffel to Reidel Anthony on a fourth-and-12 play versus Tennessee in 1996; Doug Johnson hooking up with Jacquez Green on a curl-and-go that set up the winning score against Florida State in 1997.

Spurrier’s menu, meanwhile, has several items that are sure to elicit smiles from the Florida faithful, too. Main courses include the Ike Hillard Catch of the Day, the Tomahawk Porkchop and the Emory & Henry. Drinks include The Kick (for Spurrier’s 40-yarder against Auburn), CiTrUs 75 (for his “you can’t spell Citrus without U-T” joke) and the 52-20 Pale Ale (the score of Florida’s first national title).

For Spurrier, creating the restaurant stirred fond memories. And he hopes it will do the same for his fans. It might also fill a void since the winningest football coach in the history of two schools (Florida and South Carolina) has more time on his hands than he expected when he temporarily walked away in 2016.

“Life doesn’t always go the way you plan,” he said. “I thought when my coaching days were over, I’d get good at golf again. But guess what? I grew arthritis in the fingers. … My golf game is not near what it used to be. But you get to the play the senior tees.”

Read More

The adrenaline that comes with a breaking news story never deserts a journalist, so when word arrived that Bears quarterback and savior Justin Fields would miss Wednesday’s practice (but possibly not Saturday’s preseason game!) with groin soreness, I immediately started devising a battle plan for our Chicago Sun-Times team. You know what they say about minor injuries: They’re only minor if they happen to someone not named Justin Fields.

Story assignments scribbled on a napkin for me and Bears beat writers Patrick Finley, Jason Lieser and Mark Potash:

Finley: Reaction from Kennesaw, Georgia, Fields’ hometown. Mood — somber, defiant, tearful? (Can a mood be “tearful?” Hmmm.) Paint a picture for readers. Find the collection point for candles, stuffed animals, scrawled words of encouragement for the sidelined hero. Talk with the locals. Anybody see this coming years ago? Fields’ youth coach still around? Pat: If family members ask for privacy during this very difficult time, ask them if they’re referring to your tent on their lawn.

Lieser: What’s a groin injury and who figures to benefit from it? Thinking Big Pharma here. Talk to medical professionals about the short- and long-term challenges of groin soreness (potential six-part series later). Timeline for healing? What’s the difference between a groin muscle and, well, you know? Will need a diagram for the newspaper and the website (tasteful!).

Potash: Famous Bears-Packers groin injuries from the past 100 years. Get Ditka to say groins aren’t what they used to be.

Me: Big picture. Chicago, a blue-collar town of thundering highs and shuddering lows — the metaphorical dichotomy of deep-dish pizza and The Great Chicago Fire (Nice! Use this!) How does the city deal with the latest blow to its psyche? Go deeper here than that deep-dish pizza. What does Fields’ iron willpower and wondrous athleticism say about us as a city? What does the bigger societal issue of groin soreness say about us? Working headline: Beyond Hurt.

***

OK, I think you can see what I’m getting at here — that perhaps we in Chicago and we in the media are a bit preoccupied with all things Justin Fields these days. When Fields, the Bears’ 2021 first-round pick who will someday lead the franchise back to Super Bowl glory, because he just has to, feels groin soreness, we reflexively respond to the alarm by sliding down our fireman poles and rushing to the scene.

Take a deep, cleansing breath, everybody. If we all stay together, we’ll make it through this.

There’s still the chance that Fields will play Saturday against the Bills and fulfill the cosmic edict that says he must compete against his Bears predecessor, the much-maligned Mitch Trubisky, now a backup quarterback for Buffalo. I would just ask, meekly so as not to bring on a bombardment of objects thrown at me in anger, what’s the rush?

It’s true that Fields needs as many game reps as possible. To think that he’s anywhere close to being a finished product in terms of running Matt Nagy’s offense is silly. But it’s also true that what Fields does best at this point is run, and it makes little sense to risk further injury to his groin by having him run around the field in a preseason game.

Most of what has been said and written about Fields during training camp has been with the regular-season opener in mind. Bears fans want him in there against the Rams on Sept. 12 and, if I’m not speaking out of turn here, so do most media members. And why not? All of us are in it for the entertainment value that football brings. Fields is more entertaining than Andy Dalton the way a race car is more entertaining than a turnip. Nothing against Dalton. Or turnips. But putting Fields behind an offensive line that looks like a mystery, at best, isn’t the wisest move in the world for Week 1.

Nagy said the Bears are being “super conservative” with Fields’ injury, as they should be. The goal should be for the rookie to see the field when he’s ready to handle all that comes with being an NFL quarterback. Despite the hoopla surrounding him, no one can say with certainty that he’s ready for the starting job, not after three weeks of training camp and one preseason game.

Is the groin injury a blessing? If it is, it’s one weird blessing. But it does give Nagy an out if he’s feeling pressure to put the kid in the starting lineup. The coach has been consistent: Dalton will be the starter Sept. 12. Very few people want to hear it, but Nagy keeps saying it anyway.

At this point, I don’t want Fields’ injury to get worse, though I am prepared for the possibility of it happening. I can see it now, a Sun-Times special section that goes beyond the immediate problem: The NFL’s Soft-Tissue Injury Epidemic — Who Knew What When?

Read More

NEW YORK — R&B star R. Kelly is a predator who lured girls, boys and young women with his fame and dominated them physically, sexually and psychologically, a prosecutor said Wednesday, while a defense lawyer warned jurors they’ll have to sift through lies from accusers with agendas to find the truth.

The differing perspectives came as the long-anticipated trial began unfolding in a Brooklyn courtroom where several accusers were expected to testify in the next month about the Grammy-winning, multiplatinum-selling singer whose career has been derailed by charges that have left him jailed as he goes broke.

“This case is not about a celebrity who likes to party a lot,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Maria Cruz Melendez told the Brooklyn jury as she explained the evidence to be revealed at his federal trial. “This case is about a predator.”

She said he distributed backstage passes to entice children and women to join him, sometimes at his home or studio, where he then “dominated and controlled them physically, sexually and psychologically.”

The prosecutor said Kelly would often record sex acts with minors as he controlled a racketeering enterprise of individuals who were loyal and devoted to him, eager to “fulfill each and everyone one of the defendant’s wishes and demands.”

“What his success and popularity brought him was access, access to girls, boys and young women,” she said.

But Kelly’s attorney, Nicole Blank Becker, portrayed her client as a victim of women, some of whom enjoyed the “notoriety of being able to tell their friends that they were with a superstar.”

“He didn’t recruit them. They were fans. They came to Mr. Kelly,” she said, urging jurors to closely scrutinize the testimony. “They knew exactly what they were getting into. It was no secret Mr. Kelly had multiple girlfriends. He was quite transparent.”

It would be a stretch to believe he orchestrated an elaborate criminal enterprise, like a mob boss, the lawyer said.

Becker warned jurors they’ll have to sort through “a mess of lies” from women with an agenda.

“Don’t assume everybody’s telling the truth,” she said.

Defense lawyers have maintained in court papers prior to the trial that Kelly’s alleged victims were groupies who turned up at his shows and made it known they “were dying to be with him.” The women only started accusing him of abuse years later when public sentiment shifted against him, they said.

Kelly, 54, is perhaps best known for his smash hit “I Believe I Can Fly,” a 1996 song that became an inspirational anthem played at school graduations, weddings, advertisements and elsewhere.

The openings came more than a decade after Kelly was acquitted in a 2008 child pornography case in Chicago. It was a reprieve that allowed his music career to continue until the #MeToo era caught up with him, emboldening alleged victims to come forward.

The women’s stories got wide exposure with the Lifetime documentary “Surviving R. Kelly.” The series explored how an entourage of supporters protected Kelly and silenced his victims for decades, foreshadowing the federal racketeering conspiracy case that landed Kelly in jail in 2019.

Prosecutors in Brooklyn have lined up multiple female accusers — mostly referred to in court as “Jane Does” — and cooperating former associates who have never spoken publicly before about their experiences with Kelly.

They’re expected to offer testimony about how Kelly’s managers, bodyguards and other employees helped him recruit women and girls — and sometimes boys — for sexual exploitation. They say the group selected victims at concerts and other venues and arranged for them to travel to see Kelly in the New York City area and elsewhere, in violation of the Mann Act, the 1910 law that made it illegal to “transport any woman or girl” across state lines “for any immoral purpose.”

When the women and girls arrived at their lodgings, a member of Kelly’s entourage would set down rules about not speaking to each other, how they should dress and how they needed permission from Kelly before eating or going to the bathroom, prosecutors say. Also, they allegedly were required to call him “Daddy.”

An anonymous jury made up of seven men and five women was sworn in to hear the case. The trial, coming after several delays due mostly to the pandemic, unfolds under coronavirus precautions restricting the press and the public to overflow courtrooms with video feeds.

The New York case is only part of the legal peril facing the singer, born Robert Sylvester Kelly. He also has pleaded not guilty to sex-related charges in Illinois and Minnesota.

Read More

The newest injury concern for the Bears is tight end Cole Kmet‘s hamstring issue.
Kmet, who has rarely had a whiff of health trouble since the Bears drafted him last year, missed practice Wednesday. As he did with quarterback Justin Fields‘ groin injury, coach Matt Nagy downplayed his absence as merely an “extremely conservative” approach to make sure he’s ready when it matters.
With the Bears still more than three weeks away from their season opener against the Rams, they can afford to take it slowly with players they believe don’t need the reps as much as others.
Kmet opened his career with 28 catches, 243 yards and two touchdowns while playing 56% of the snaps last season. He played 70% or more in each of the last seven regular-season games and the playoff game.
“You’re going to see his game step up speed-wise,” Nagy said of Kmet last week. “Last year, [he’s] probably thinking a little bit and then when we got a chance to make a play, he did. This year you’re probably going to see a little more, ‘Hey, I was open; Get me the ball,’ or ‘Hey, run to my side,’ that he didn’t have last year.”
Kmet and Fields joined an ever-morphing injury list for the Bears, along with defensive tackle Eddie Goldman (back) being added Wednesday. The Bears also gave several players, including linebackers Khalil Mack, Roquan Smith and Robert Quinn, a rest day.
Hicks’ mysterious absence
A series of six questions about defensive tackle Akiem Hicks yielded no useful information from Nagy about his star player’s abrupt exit from practice Tuesday.
“There’s no update,” Nagy said. “He’s back today. That’s the only thing that matters.”
It’s not, though.
Whether it was related to health, his contract situation or something else, something significant clearly happened with Hicks. He left during stretching, then Nagy spoke with trainer Andre Tucker before getting into an extended conversation on the field with general manager Ryan Pace.
That bizarre scene, coupled with Nagy’s dodgy responses, registered as curious.
“He’s been fine,” Nagy said. “We want him to come out and play good football. That’s all. You know what I mean? Go sack the quarterback and stop the run.”
It has been choppy for Hicks, 31, since the end of last season. He’s in the final season of a four-year, $48 million contract, and agent Drew Rosenhaus has said he wants an extension. Hicks also reportedly was given permission to explore trade possibilities in the offseason while the Bears made cost-cutting moves.
He has refused to speak to the media since the start of camp.
Daniels back in business
Bears right guard James Daniels spoke to the media for the first time since tearing a pectoral muscle in Week 5 last season and going on injured reserve and is optimistic about the offensive line this season despite the constant injury-related disruption it has encountered already.
The Bears have moved him among the three interior o-line positions over the three seasons since drafting him No. 39 overall, but now he is locked into the right guard spot and should benefit from the continuity.
“Position-wise, it doesn’t really matter,” Daniels said. “I feel good wherever the Bears want me to play. I’ll be fine with that.”

Read More

Kanye West is bringing “Donda” home.

Kanye announced Wednesday that he will hold his third public listening event for the yet-to-be-released “Donda” album on Aug. 26 at Soldier Field. The news was announced straightforwardly via the singer’s IG account.

Tickets go on sale at noon Aug. 20 via Ticketmaster. Show time is 9 p.m. According to Variety, the event will also be livestreamed via Apple Music, while the album still does not have an official release date.

Kanye’s previous listening events (both in Atlanta, and famous for his taking up residence at Mercedes-Benz Arena) featured two distinct versions of the album, which leads fans to expect a third version for the Soldier Field date.

The album is named for Kanye’s mother, Donda West, who passed away in 2007 at the age of 58 after plastic surgery complications.

Throughout the album’s rollout, Kanye has remained mum about the project except through minimalist IG posts, including this one of a dove in a window following the second listening party:

Read More

The Little League World Series is back. There won’t be international teams or 22,000 fans in the stands when the championship rolls around, but the tournament in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania, is set to start Thursday.

The coronavirus forced the cancellation of the tournament in 2020, and this year, the delta variant surge resulted in Little League tournaments for several older age groups being scrapped. But what most fans understand as the Little League World Series, featuring 10- to 12-year-old players, will take place over the next week and a half, with the championship set for Lamade Stadium on Aug. 29.

“It won’t be the same as what they’ve seen on TV and from years past, but I told them, ‘I don’t care if there’s 10,000 people or 10, you shouldn’t have any problem getting up to play here,'” said Dustin Radar, manager of Nebraska’s Hastings Little League team, the top club in the Midwest region.

“I think they’re just really excited for the opportunity.”

Though there won’t be fans packing the hill at Lamade Stadium, those close to the players can still see them in action. Each team will receive 250 game passes to distribute to friends, families and community members.

Instead of splitting 16 teams into U.S. and international brackets, Little League’s championship tournament will feature strictly American squads in 2021 because of COVID-19 and the international travel restrictions the pandemic brought about. Typically, eight teams from different geographic regions represent the United States, with the rest of the world broken into another eight regions.

This year, each U.S. region’s champion and runner-up moved on, instead of just the champ. Though manager Ben Lutwig’s Upper Providence Little League team of Oaks, Pennsylvania, northwest of Philadelphia, won the Mid-Atlantic region outright, he feels good about letting the so-called B teams participate.

“I think Little League is doing the right thing and everything they can do to make it as good of an experience as possible,” Ludwig said. “A 16-team tournament is more robust, so I think it’s great what they’ve done here to expand it out, given the circumstances.”

Ludwig and company are well-prepared for adverse situations. His team lost its second game of the Pennsylvania state tournament, meaning it had to win five games in five days to advance to the Mid-Atlantic tournament.

His group succeeded, leading Ludwig to believe they’re equipped for elite competition.

“Based on what we just went through, it seems like ‘all right, this is going to be nothing out of the ordinary,'” Ludwig said. “It’s going to be something that our kids are ready for, and they’re going to step up to the challenge.”

Other teams, like Florida’s Martin County North Little League, took advantage of the expanded U.S. bracket. Manager Mark Rodgers’ team finished runner-up to Tennessee’s Nolensville Little League.

For Rodgers’ team, preparing for the tournament while adhering to COVID-19 guidelines was no easy chore.

“We practiced on three different fields. We did nothing together as a team, except a little bit of infield-outfield. We kept everybody apart because where we live, COVID was all around us,” Rodgers said. “We were all living the horror stories.”

Despite the ongoing pandemic, Little League spokesman Kevin Fountain said many of its leagues returned to the field this year, though 2021 participation has not been totaled. Approximately 2 million children played in 2019.

For Rodgers’ team, COVID-19’s effects have been significant, as several players have been infected. Rodgers has practiced law for 30 years and represents athletes such as Baltimore Orioles outfielder Trey Mancini, who missed the 2020 season because of chemotherapy treatment for stage three colon cancer.

Due to his close professional and personal relationship with Mancini, Rodgers connected the 2021 Home Run Derby runner-up with his team via Zoom to serve as a guiding presence as they begin to navigate unfamiliar territory.

“It’s been really cool to do that with him, especially with what he went through last year,” Rodgers said. “We’ve used him as an example of overcoming adversity and how at some point, baseball is not about living and dying — it’s got to be fun.”

Read More

Andy Dalton will get more than six plays Saturday to try to change the city-wide narrative about the Bears’ quarterback competition-that-isn’t-really-one against rookie Justin Fields.

Not that he’s thinking about it that way.

“You can’t focus on that,” he said after practice Wednesday. “If you focus on that, then that’s gonna beat you down. And so I know who I am, I know who I was created to be, I know where my identity lies.

“And so do I want the fans behind me and this team and all that kind of stuff? Yes. Do I want them behind Justin? Absolutely, I do.”

Fields gave Bears fans plenty to cheer in the first exhibition game. Dalton did not. failing to garner a first down over two drives — one came back on an Alex Bars holding call — and completing 2-of-4 passes for 18 yards. He ran six plays before giving way to Fields.

Dalton, though, remains the Bears’ unquestioned Week 1 starter — even as Bears fans breathlessly wait for coach Matt Nagy to give the job, eventually, to Fields.

“Justin is going to have his time and Justin is going to have a great career,” Dalton said. “But right now it’s my time. And so my focus is on being the best player I can be for this team and do everything I can to help this team win.’

That sound awfully similar to Mike Glennon’s “this-is-my-year” declaration in 2017 after the Bears drafted Mitch Trubisky. But Dalton has the self-confidence and the resume never had. Glennon at the time had started 18 games and thrown 30 touchdowns; Dalton has 142 and 218, respectively. Dalton has thus far managed a potentially awkward situation remarkably well, even as he knows the ovation that awaits the rookie Saturday.

“I mean, he’s a first-round pick and just with everything that’s gone on here, there’s a lot of excitement with it,” Dalton said. “But I didn’t feel like there wasn’t excitement for me either, you know. So it’s like, yeah, I think for us if we just go out and operate how we know we can do, I think the fans will be excited when we score lots of touchdowns this year.”

Fields struggled in practice Tuesday. His development hit a roadblock Wednesday, as he threw only a few passes in practice because of a groin injury. Bears coach Matt Nagy said he hoped Fields would be able to play Saturday — exhibitions are valuable for his development, and for the Bears’ ability to evaluate him in a game setting.

With or without Fields, Dalton will play more Saturday than he did in the opener — at least twice as many snaps as he got last week. His goals are simple.

“You just want to see the offense operate the way it’s supposed to …” he said. “I just want to be efficient and set the standard of how we’re going to be getting in and out of the huddle, how we’re going to move the ball and all that kind of stuff. …

“This week, obviously, we’ll have a chance to get in more of a rhythm.”

Dalton was sharp in practice again Wednesday. He’s been solid for the past three weeks –safety Tashaun Gipson said Dalton’s had a “super-fine camp” — but it’s human nature for him to want to show a stadium full of people that the offense is good hands.

“I think that’s the biggest thing is, alright, this is what it’s like to be playing some real football,” he said. “Fans in the stands, there’s some emotion involved, and you’ve still got to be at your best.”

Read More

It’s the year of cevapi. This hearty, comforting sandwich — made with small grilled sausages tucked into somun or lepinja (chewy flatbread) and decked out with onions, kajmak (clotted cream), and ajvar (a robust red pepper–eggplant spread) — has been popping up at a recent crop of new-school Balkan restaurants. You’ll find it all over: from Doma, a Croatian-inspired café, to Rose Mary, Joe Flamm’s Italian-Croatian juggernaut. But Balkan food goes way beyond cevapi. The region includes Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia, Slovenia, Greece, and other countries, and chefs with ties to these places are opening passion projects that look at these cuisines in fresh ways. These four, including a virtual kitchen slinging street snacks and a Logan Square taverna offering a personal tour of Athens, are standouts.

Kiosk Balkan Street Food

3517 N. Spaulding Ave., Avondale

The take Two Serbian brothers and hospitality pros offer variations on the street eats of their childhood via a virtual kitchen.
Why go Chef Nemanja Milunovic used to snack on grilled meats from kiosks around the former Yugoslavia. He translates his recollections of these into a menu of hits — from sarma, pork-stuffed cabbage rolls topped with two smoked pork ribs and basking in a thyme-paprika jus, to tavche gravche, paprika-loaded Macedonian beans with dried pepper sauce.
Must order Anything on somun, the perfect vessel for the immensely satisfying cevapi, as well as the fried chicken sandwich, garnished with shredded cabbage tossed with Champagne vinaigrette and urnebes, a spicy spread of feta, garlic, and peppers.

Rose Mary

932 W. Fulton Market, West Loop

The take Top Chef winner Joe Flamm’s humming West Loop restaurant marries his Italian background with his wife’s Croatian one.
Why go Flamm’s dishes cleverly meld the two cuisines, as in the rich, creamy stracciatella, which is dotted with seasonal berries, herbs, and balsamic vinegar and comes with a round of lepinja to tear apart and scoop it all up. This is Flamm, so pastas are a must: His version of djuvec, a Serbian vegetable rice dish, subs in tortellini, while deeply flavored lamb and red pepper ribbons are an excellent match for a glass of plavina, a bright, dry Croatian red wine.
Must order The tender, spicy pork ribs pampanella, slicked with Calabrian chile agrodolce, sprinkled with walnuts, and accented with a tangy cabbage-yogurt slaw.

016 Restaurant & Sandwich Shop

5077 N. Lincoln Ave., Ravenswood

The take Southern Serbian cuisine reflected through the lens of American influences.
Why go Chef Bojan Milicevic named this spot for the area code in Leskovac, his Serbian hometown. He serves dishes that are representative of the area, but with surprising twists. The Chi-Vap is a mash-up of cevapi and a Chicago dog, with bacon-wrapped sausage tucked into a roll and dragged through the garden. The Lincoln Square muffuletta recasts the New Orleans classic with mortadella, capicola, and lonza (dry-cured pork loin) and is accented by kajmak, ajvar aïoli, and giardiniera.
Must order The everything-spice burek is a flavor bomb. Milicevic stuffs the savory, flaky pastry with cream cheese and leeks and finishes it with a blast of everything bagel seasoning.

Andros Taverna

2542 N. Milwaukee Ave., Logan Square

The take RPM vets Doug Psaltis and his wife, Hsing Chen, explore his childhood memories of dining in Athens.
Why go Psaltis’s Greek cuisine is fresh and vibrant, whether it’s an herb-loaded whipped feta spread, served with crisp crudités and pillowy pitas, or tender octopus, braised in red wine and vinegar before being finished on the charcoal grill. Chen’s dessert menu is packed with contemporary Greek sweets like ouzo-soaked watermelon, roasted almond kourabiedes cookies, and, the star, frozen Greek yogurt studded with baklava and drizzled with pistachio sauce and honey.
Must order The flaky whole sea bass comes from the wood-burning oven. Get it with the herby tomato-sauced peas and a glass of moschofilero off the predominantly Greek wine list.

Read More

Read More

Read More