Janet Franz

I was looking forward to this "girls' weekend." My family was out of town, and my friend Marian was coming from central Illinois for a visit. It would be fun...

Purpose: To share a vision of "global gastronomy." Hypothesis: Diners will trek to an out-of-the-way restaurant charging up to $160 a person to eat such dishes as 114-degree scallop, textural...

We believe chocolate, that Valentine's Day staple, has come to symbolize love because good chocolate is much like love: It makes your knees weak, you can't stop thinking about it...

One can draw a lot of conclusions about Chicagoans from a visit to the Park Grill, the restaurant adjacent to the McCormick Tribune Ice Rink in Millennium Park. 1. They...

Viand Bar & Kitchen, which opened Dec. 10 on Ontario Street, seems to have a corner on "cute." And that's a compliment. Interspersed in the windows outside the restaurant are...

"Look, there's Henry VIII! What's he doing in Chicago?" For anyone thinking about taking a young child to Europe--and thinking about all the reasons not to--let those words, uttered by...

There's a lot of name-dropping going on at BOKA, a new restaurant in Lincoln Park. First, there's the name of the place, which sounds like it could be Eastern European,...

This is the season when Christmas shoppers busily try to fulfill the wishes of others. But we imagine that those shoppers, heading bravely by the thousands to various malls, have...

In many ways, the Corner Grille is just your average diner: The menu bears headings like "From the Griddle" and "Melts and More"; the metal tables are topped with sugar...

It's not as if there weren't already enough Italian restaurants out there. And it's not as if Giovanni Garelli hadn't already worked at a slew of them (Avanzare, Scoozi!, Mare)....