“First Bites Bash 2019 at The Field Museum,” by S.M. O’Connor

Chicago Restaurant Week 2019 kicks off with the First Bites Bash tomorrow night, Thursday, January 24, 2019, from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. at The Field Museum of Natural History. This is the 12^th annual Chicago Restaurant Week, organized by Choose Chicago. Sweet and savory dishes from over seventy of Chicago’s most popular chefs and restaurants will be on hand. Originally, tickets ranged from $95 to $125, but the $95 tickets have sold out, and the $125 tickets will be available until the event sells out or noon on Thursday. Click here to purchase tickets via Eventbrite. Beer, wine, and other beverage-makers are the sponsors.

There is no guest list. Customers should print out their tickets on paper to avoid technological complications that could prevent tickets from displaying on smartphones. There are neither refunds nor price adjustments.

Joe Flamm, the Executive Chef of the Michelin-starred Italian restaurant Spiaggia and Café Spiaggia, will be the Host Chef. He is also the winner of Season 15 of Top Chef on Bravo.

Jamel Doss, the Assistant Bar Director of The Aviary cocktail bar, will be Host Mixologist. Last year, she won the National Restaurant Association’s inaugural Chicago STARS Mixology Competition.

All guests must be twenty-one-years-of-age-or-over and have valid identification. No children will be permitted, not even babes in arms or wee tots in strollers.

This year, First Bites Bash benefits Pilot Light. This is a non-profit organization that helps schoolchildren apply the lessons they learn in classrooms to the food available in cafeterias, at home, and restaurants so they can make healthy choices.

PARTICIPATING RESTAURANTS

Artango Bar & Steakhouse

Atwood

Aurelios Pizza

Baptiste & Bottle

Bar Siena

Bar Takito

Barrio

Bistronomic

Blue Door Farm Stand

Blue Door Kitchen & Garden

Café Spiaggia

Carnivale

Casati’s Pizza Vino

Chicago q

Cindy’s

Clubhouse

CURRENT

Demera Ethiopian Restaurant

Eddie V’s

EDEN

Eli’s Cheesecake

ETA Restaurant + Bar

Farmhouse Chicago

Firecakes

Freds at Barneys New York Chicago

Fulton Market Kicthen

Geja’s Café

Fene & Georgetti

Grand Central Bar

HaiSous Vietnamese Kitchen

Half Sour

Homestead on the Roof

Izakaya Mita

Katana

Kinzie Chophouse

Kitty O’Shea’s

Lost Lake

Marchesa

Margeaux Brasserie

Mercadito Chicago

Odyssey Cruises

Orso’s

Petterino’s

Piccolo Sogno

Piggie Smalls Gyro Shop

Pink Taco

Portsmith

River Roast

Roka Akor Chicago

Sapori Antchi bar italiano

Seasons 52

Shallots Bistro

State & Lake Chicago Tavern

Steadfast

Sunda New Asian

TAO

Tapas Valencia

Taureaux Tavern

Tempesta Market

Terzo Piano

Texas de Brazil

The Berghoff Restaurant

The Chicago Teachers’ Lounge & Eatery

The Hampton Social

The Kennison

The Madison Bar & Kitchen

The Promontory

The Signature Room at the 95^th

Upstairs at The Gwen

Wicker Park

Wildfire

ZED451

BEER

Stella Artois

WINES

Josh Cellars

SPIRITS

Bulleit

Don Julio

Ketel One

Tanqueray

Jetro Sake

SODA

Pepsi

Stella Artois will be hosting an After-Party at TAO. There will be free shuttle service to TAO from the Field Museum. One’s First Bites Bash wristband will afford one expedited entry to TAO upon arrival. The reception will last about an hour-and-a-half.

Vendors are subject to change. Tickets cover samples. They reserve the right to curtail service to anyone who is intoxicated. Security guards may inspect bags and persons.

Absolutely no food or beverage may be brought into the event. If a guest shows up inebriated (or otherwise unfit), he or she will not be permitted inside and will not receive a refund.

Chicago Restaurant Week will last from Friday, January 25, 2019 to Thursday, February 7, 2019, so it’s actually two weeks. Almost 400 local restaurants are participating this year. This includes 100 restaurants participating for the first time and forty-five suburban restaurants. It features prix fixe menus that start at $24 for brunch or lunch, and $36 and/or $48 for dinner (excluding beverages, tax, and gratuity). One can search for participating restaurants by clicking here and scrolling down the Webpage until one sees the search engine. The Chicago Restaurant Week sponsors are 100.3 FM (“She 103”), 101.9 FM (“The Mix”), Concierge Chicago at McCormick Place, the James Beard Foundation, Josh Cellars, Michigan Avenue Magazine, OpenTable®, the Chicago Transit Authority (C.T.A.), Metra, Pace, Smithfield Food Service, and Stella Artois.

The Field Museum is part of the Museum Campus with the John G. Shedd Aquarium and the Adler Planetarium at the northern end of Burnham Park. The Field Museum is open every day of the year, save one (Christmas Day). It is open from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. with the last admission at 4:00 p.m. There are upcoming Illinois Resident Free Days. The street address of The Field Museum is 1400 South Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60605-2496. The phone number is (312) 922-9410. The Website is https://www.fieldmuseum.org/.

The Field Museum of Natural History in March, 2018

The Field Museum of Natural History’s entrance pavilions are at opposite ends of Stanley Field Hall, which has a north-south axis. The two porticos (porches) are each reached by two successive flights of stairs.

Both porticos of The Field Museum of Natural History are flanked by two small porches, which each have two caryatids (columns in the shape of maidens). On the facade, the wings are adorned with a colonnade of attached fluted Ionic columns. The building’s fluted Ionic columns have volutes (spiral-scroll-shaped crowns).

Each portico of The Field Museum is tetrastyle in antis with double-ranked fluted Ionic columns capped by volutes. An entablature crowned by a pediment rests atop the columns. The continuous frieze in each case is relatively plain. The wave-themed acroteria that crown the pediments are borrowed from the Palace of a Fine Arts, which housed The Field Museum until 1920 and now houses the Museum of Science and Industry.

The Field Museum of Natural History isn’t “just” a museum. Visitors can watch scientists at work through windows at the Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice DNA Discovery Center’s Pritzker Laboratory.

Mrs. Charles (Laura) Schweppe, a daughter and co-heiress of John Graves Shedd, the former partner of Marshall Field I who succeeded him as president of Marshall Field & Company, and who, under the guidance of Stanley Field founded the Shedd Aquarium, donated an exhibit of 100 bronze sculptures by Malvina Hoffman to The Field Museum. They represent every race, nation, and tribe in the human family (more or less). On January 9, 1933, the first group, Unity of Man, went on display.

In addition to the four figures Henry Hering (1874-1949) made for the corners of Stanley Field Hall, he also made the twelve plaster round lion head shield escutcheons that line it. These are replicas of the marble round lion head shield escutcheon he made for the pediment of the facade of The Field Museum of Natural History.

Christmas at Chicago’s Union Station

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a POLAR EXPRESS display in the Great Hall of Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a closeup of the THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is the headlamp of THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Union Station Company rail car loaded with super-size gifts is part of THE POLAR EXPRESS mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Union Station in downtown Chicago has emblems of Amtrak, Metra, and historic railroad companies whose routes they now operate like Burlington.

Cinemas sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) Helped Design

This is the Pickwick Theatre Building, an Art Deco movie palace and office building erected in downtown Park Ridge, Illinois in 1928.

The architects were Roscoe Harold Zook and William F. McCaughey. Sculptor Alfonso Iannelli, who also worked on the Adler Planetarium, contributed to this building.

In recent years, the Vlahakis family, who’ve owned the building for 50 years, have been able to turn the building into a multiplex by adding smaller theaters around the original auditorium. The latest one, with a screen four times the size of the one in the auditorium, will open in time to screen INFINITY WARS in May, if all goes well.

The Catlow Movie Theater is a cinema that opened in downtown Barrington, Illinois in 1927. The Tudor Revival style of architecture is not confined to the facade of the cinema. As with the Pickwick Theatre in Park Ridge, Illinois, sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) played a role in the design and decoration of The Catlow Movie Theater.