Elevating Good Food with Rooftop Farmer Jen Rosenthal

Jen Rosenthal’s first full year as the rooftop farmer at Uncommon Ground restaurant can be fairly described as a big success. By the time the roughly half-year growing season ends in a few weeks, Rosenthal and her team of mainly interns and volunteers will have harvested nearly a ton of tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, greens, beans, herbs, and other produce, most of which is used in the restaurant downstairs.

Food Hub Survey Finds Growing Role, Ongoing Challenges

Food hubs, which provide aggregating, marketing and distribution services to regional food producers, are growing in numbers and influence, according to a survey report released Sept. 19, but still face a number of challenges.

Chicago's Daley Plaza farmers market with Picasso sculpture

Chicago’s Wurst Festival: Oktoberfest with Good Food Oompah

The three-day Wurst Festival in downtown Chicago’s Daley Plaza this week will feature the key ingredients of any good Oktoberfest: sausages and seasonal beers. What makes this salute to encased meats stand out from most German-style harvest festivals in the U.S. is its emphasis on responsibly and sustainably produced foods from local and regional producers.

Tailwinds Craft Spirits Bring Tropics to Chicagoland

Discerning rum drinkers in the Chicago area may debate which locale produces the best variety. Some will say Puerto Rico, others Jamaica or Venezuela or Barbados or a variety of other nations in the Caribbean region. Now, at least a handful of Chicagoland’s craft spirits fans would include a new entry: Plainfield.

Honey Butter: Sustainable Fried Chicken in Chicago

Fried chicken has been described as comfort food, indulgence food, and fast food, but for the most part, any resemblance between fried chicken and sustainable food has been purely coincidental. That is hardly the case, though, for Honey Butter Fried Chicken, a new restaurant created by two of Chicago’s most talented young chefs, whose much-anticipated grand opening arrives Saturday (Sept. 14).

Bob Martin of Johns Hopkins University’s Center for a Livable Future in Baltimore, Md.

Good Food Cultivators: Bob Martin, Food Policy Advisor

Many people who serve as aides to farm state congressmen tend to be sympathetic toward the big agribusiness and food marketing companies that wield clout to influence federal agriculture policy. Bob Martin, now a senior policy adviser at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for a Livable Future in Baltimore, Md., went in the opposite direction.

Michigan State’s Spin on School Spirit(s)

The Artisan Distilling Program at Michigan State University opened a tasting room in July. The launch of the bar near the East Lansing campus fulfilled a longtime goal of MSU professor Kris Berglund, whose program had operated in a low-profile manner since he founded it in 1996. “We’ve kind of been the black ops guys,” said Berglund. “Now we’re coming out into the light a little bit.”

Oak Park Micro Brew Review

A Beerfest With a ‘Waste Not’ Theme

The star of the Micro Brew and Food Review Aug. 17 in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park was beer, of course. But as the photo gallery on this post shows, sustainability was also a major theme.

Master butcher Kari Underly

Breaking the Glass Ceiling With a Cleaver

Chicago’s Kari Underly is known nationally for her mastery of meatcutting. Now Underly, a third-generation butcher who grew up near South Bend in northern Indiana, is seeking to raise money to create the Range Meat Academy, which she says will be “the most comprehensive butcher training program in the industry.”