The Violent Hour

The Violent Hour

A Culinary Review

By PsyCHO Butcher

Chicago suffers from an unfortunate "second city" complex, a mayor who hates nightlife because his father was an abusive drunk, and a certain halfheartedness when it comes to doing anything that might be construed as "uppity". Fortunately, their is a little cloud hovering just south of the el stop at North and Damen avenues, and this strange miasma seems to block the banal rays we emit, by virtue of our own working-class chumpishness. The result is that this address spawns interesting businesses like serpents from a stone. True, the first two failed in short order. Mod was a wonderful place...the first failure-it had a science fiction flair to it, and mac and cheese so good I was tempted to break the window to the place and rob a portion from a customer. I liked the egg-and-spacemodule motif. It made me imagine I was dining on a planet where ninety percent of this dreadful species had already gone extinct, and those few of us that survived had ample deviled eggs to go around.

Del Toro had terrible service, but great furniture. Each chair was like a torture device. Fortunately, you can still see the saddle-barstools, more suited to sadomasochistic pleasure than to lattes, across the street at Cippollina. It was an interesting place, this second failure, with great tile and strange horse stalls for bathrooms.

Hopefully, The Violet Hour will stick around, because the city needs it. We need a drinking space that shrouds itself in veils of image. We need a place to drink expensive cocktails and pretend we are cooler, more literary, more travelled, and genuinely interesting than we are. We need a place that serves absinthe and chicken wings on the same menu. For now, we have it, and I approve quite strongly.

From the outside, the place is a cipher. They keep changing the exterior, from one cryptic ruse to another. Do not look for a sign, you will not find one. Once the valet starts parking cars, this is merely annoying, but just as they open the doors, it imparts a bit of a speakeasy feel to the place. To augment this, the entranceway is dark and heavily curtained, stark, and obviously purposed to give would-be patrons the unmistakable impression that they have walked into the wrong place and should leave. I like this. Darkness, drama, chandeliers, and very tall chairs that resemble thrones. This place is very black metal, and to risk belaboring the point, I approve. The place feels such like a maze-a patron needing to tiptoe and squeeze between chairs in the event that they do not guess the correct path across the room in the darkness, amid a forest of overly tall seats-that is was disappointed not to see a corner devoted solely to death traps for the unwary. Perhaps such a thing is too much to ask in a place that carries a Chicago Liquor license, but their cocktails are deliciously inventive and served with an air of drama.

The place seems purposed to scare away tourists, frat boys, and the lame. To seal the deal, the place has a dress code and requests that patrons do not use cellphones.

Now comes the subject that your churlish and stupid friends will raise, either at the mere mention of the place, or upon discovering that the cocktails there cost something like fourteen dollars each (I frankly do not remember, for reasons I will mention in a moment). They are worth it, each and every one. Of course they are. The bartenders lavish time and care on each drink, and use very fine ingredients. Neither of these objections hold any weight whatsoever if a person visits for the purpose of imbibing one, or perhaps at most, two cocktails. After all, who goes out in the evening expecting to spend less than twenty dollars (a person must factor in the tip)? Such frugal evenings are best spent, enjoyably, on the fire escape, drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon and trying to eek the last resin out of a cannabis pipe. Places like this are for the theatre and ambiance of the place, and if a good buzz is needed, that must wait for the second, or third drinking establishment of the evening. What would be the purpose of having more, at a place like this? To get drunk? Getting drunk at swanky clubs is for the stupid-for people who order bottles of expensive vodka served to their tables at night clubs and covet the experience of the VIP room. People like that can die, frankly.

I arrived with my usual coterie of exotic dancers and adult film stars, on a weeknight, just after they opened. I suppose I avoided the line by doing this, but the fact of the matter is that my companions had serious work to do later in the evening, bilking needy men out of money they would otherwise spend on their families. My cocktail was something called a Vincent's Downfall, a Van Gough reference, of course, an homage to its liberal use of absinthe. It was delicious. One of my companions, a longtime friend for many years, devoured a whole plate of chicken wings without stopping. If you have never watched a sexy woman, trained in the art of adult entertainment, devour a full plate of chicken wings as if the Earth was about to run out of food, you should. I do not remember much about our conversation, absorbed by lust as I was the whole time, but it was a great experience and a great room to showcase desire and lust of all sort, for chicken wings or otherwise.

Coffee, and More Coffee, a Culinary Review by Psycho Butcher

Dear Readers,

Finally, I can write you from beyond the shackles of my unfortunate incarceration, for crimes which I am entirely innocent. That entire time, behind bars, I craved a decent cup of coffee-one not produced or adultrated by Sysco in any way.

Ahhhh. The independent coffee shop. I used to love the places. Years back, in Los Angeles, Dear Reader, I was deeply engrossed in the so-called "Hair Metal" scene. It took something like two hundred cups of coffee a day to keep me functioning, because I could afford neither the cocaine nor the hairspray to keep up with the lifestyle. Suffice it to say that I spent time at now-legendary coffee shops like Java, and The Living Room. In this latter venue, a young Drew Barrymore sneered and turned her back at me, rather than make me a cappuccino, and I stormed out of the place, threatening to burn it down. True story, but they had great coffee, and comfortable couches. The fact of the matter is that each of these little places, scattered throughout the hipster neighborhoods of the cities, had its own personality. I remember the day I saw the first Starbucks in Los Angeles. I was impressed by the green colors, actually, not aware that one more aspect of culinary culture was about to be absorbed by the dull and lifeless tide of globalization/homogenization/banality. I finally left the scene, and the city, for Scandinavia, seeking revenge for many wrongs done to me, through Black Metal, but that is another story.

In Chicago, at the same time, we boasted something like twenty independent coffee shops of our own. Then, Starbucks came, like Christian Missionaries bearing smallpox infested blankets, and within ten years, we were left with three or four. All the others gave up the ghost, the competition with friendly green yuppie frappuccino being too much for them. One of the notable holdouts was a place called Filter, which is more than legendary, nowadays, as a place where Bohemians in the Wicker Park neighborhood used to hook up, and generally hatch acts of gossip and innuendo. It was a fine place, with an excellent menu of coffee drinks, some with names like "Purple Bhudda", and food that was two or three orders of magnitude brighter than the usual plastic-wrapped questionables available in the cooler of a Starbucks. One or sever of the owners of this place lost his/her (there were three, all crazy) lease, got lazy, or otherwise grew unappreciative of all the money I had invested in his/her motorcycles and cocaine habit, by consuming one overpriced coffee drink after another hatching memos like the one you, Dear Reader, are writing at this exact moment. Anyway, the old Filter is gone, long live the new Filter, resurrected farther south on Milwaukee Avenue, and in many ways superior to the old one. The old space was triangular and commanded an amazing view of "The Action", that being the crazy people and drunk club kids that meandered the intersection of North and Damen on every night worth going out. This new place has no view to speak of save the other patrons-but seeing and being seen was always the real meat of the Filter experience back then and it still is. This place has generously free Wi-Fi, for two hours at least with a purchase, a feature the old one lacked because some dickhead thought he could make money charging the patrons. That dickhead is probably still around, but he bought first rate restaurant equipment, hired people who genuinely know what they are doing (many were plucked from other notable coffee shops, such as the Mercury), spent some serious money crafting a nice space with sufficient electric plugs, and generally created a place worth hanging out, for hours, while finishing the liner notes to an album. In case it is relevant, because this is a culinary review, their coffee is amazing, and their food solidly good. Their chicken Caesar wrap particularly well-conceived and crafted, their turkey burger and Thanksgiving wrap much less so. Their tea selection is great, and their food runners much more effective than in the last place. Filter girls from the last place, if you are reading this, I dream about devouring each and every one of you sexually and cannibalistically. The current ones I am just getting to know, but the new counter is designed to actually serve food rather than to showcase the beauty of hot, sweaty, hipster chicks working behind a busy counter in close proximity. Sigh.

An unexpected and new coffee shop has sprung up just north of the place. The wormhole. It is a nostalgia coffee house, complete with a prop from "Back to the Future", possibly never used, a De Lorean fitted with time travel modifications. Hopefully, the owner will sell this waste of space, pay off his or her investors, and put tables in the window there. There are no window tables, and this is unfortunate. I also want him or her to pay off their investors because the place should stay here. This place needs some wear. It needs some stories. Its coffee is every bit as good as Filter's, and far better than Starbucks, if for no other reason than it is served in reusable cups, by efficient staff, in a timely manner. It includes Intelligentsia alums among its staff, a wise move, because these refugees know how to make coffee and handle volume. Intellgentsia, of course, is some of the best coffee this side of Portland, but the new means of producing drip coffee, one slow funnel at a time, take so long that many people are justifiably put off by the slowness of the process. Yes, I know that in my previous entries I have pointed out that the STRONG wait, the WEAK do not, but my time is damned precious, and I am not sure that the results at Intelligentsia are worth the wait. I digress. The artifacts at the Wormhole are amusing, but not necessary, and I hope the posters for The Goonies are taken down, one after the other, over time, and replaced by graffiti. In the meantime, I will go there often, precisely because they do not serve food to speak of, and because i enjoy the place. Both are welcome, both should be patronized.

A letter from Federal Prison from Psycho Butcher, our Restaurant Critic

Dear Readers,

I have been incarcerated, unjustly, for the last few months, pending charges of arson. I should not comment on an investigation in progress, but the act was real, performed by yours truly, for very good reasons I am sure you can guess. But that is not why I am posting today. I write to once again comment on the loveliness of brunch.

Brunch is a magnificent ritual. Perhaps just as mighty as the feeling of setting torch one's enemies is the process of, having woken up from sparse hours of slumber, drunken hours after the act spent in a sonambulic playground of hard drugs and illegal sex acts, is the loveliness of stumbling into seat and ordering flapjacks the next day. This I write from prison, of course, not an omlet in sight.

So, lacking in actual pleasures, let me share my fantasies about the red velvet pancakes at the Bongo Room. They are lovely; just the right consistency, exceeding any reasonable person's idea of the appropriate portion size (this is mandatory for pancakes, because let face it dear readers, no matter how much red food coloring they felt fit to enrich the lovely mixture with, pancake fixings are inexpensive and it is appropriate to overserve guests at brunch, a nod to the begotten days of a hearty breakfast before getting behind a plow or other such rustic instrument), and topped with appropriate creaminess. The ancient bullwark of brunch in this town had not lost its heavenly status on the day prior to my incarceration, and since it was a weekday morning, I was able to walk in and sit down at a table without having to wait outside on Milwaukee Avenue, corpse paint running from an evening of smoke and sin.

Nightwood, in Pilsen, serves a fine brunch as well. Disappointing was the Eggs Benedict, actually, but impressive was the hamburger, not a brunch item at all, but ordered nonetheless by the drummer from a rival Black Metal band, a Phillistine, who had the sense to smell cooking meat from the street outside and follow his animal instincts. Both places have appropriately exquisite coffee, which is mandatory for such occasions as well.

Now that I am reporting to you, dear readers, the breakfast biscuit, or whatever it is they call the McMuffin. sendup at Hot Chocolate, has slid a bit, not from lack of love but from rushed execution, but their Hot Chocolate is something to dream about. Alone, in this dark cell, I ruminate on the Cthonian world of their Black and Tan, counting the bricks and lamenting the likelihood of lunchmeat on white bread, meal after meal, until my motives are understood and i am vindicated.

A Tale of Two Hot Dogs

A Tale of Two Hot Dog Stands

a Culinary Review by Psykko Butcher

There are those people in life who are so obsessed with the superficial images of things that they become enveloped in a mist of their own illusions.  These are the Sham Mirrors, to borrow from Arcturus, set up in the culinary landscape to sell a simulcrum of a thing.  They proliferate, in gentrified parts of town, and account for so many duplications of the primordial Irish Pub that I can scarcely look at a backlit plastic shamrock without retching

  Rockstar dogs, despite its wonderful location, and vintage edifice, bisected by decades past road expansion to mere sliverhood, is such a place.  the hot dogs are named after rock bands, yes, though nothing so adventurous as a plague bringer, or an anal cunt.  No matter, the staff is underpaid and consequently inefficient and unfriendly, and the dogs all taste the same.  True, the hot dog is a synthetic culinary life form known for its dubiousness.  Still, my Led Zepplein was the same crap I could get for much cheaper at a real fry pit llike Mr. G's, and be surrounded by actual grease, not kitsch grease.  The fries at Rockstar suck too.  Burned, from staff obliviousness, and probably supplied by the Aramark cesspool.

  I will gossip, dear reader, and mention that the owner, Dion Antic is a legendary charlatan, a kitschmaster par excellance, founder of such culinary dens of iniquity as Iggys and others too numerous to mention.  Iggys, in its day, was lovely though, for all the cocaine left over on the tables and the waitstaff, so buxxom and tatttooed as to ooze rockandroll.   there is no rock here, only crap food.  801 n Ashland and there is on on armitage, open late, but why go?

   By contrast, Hot Doug's is a shrine to the dark god of the Wiener.  Far off, in an unfashionable stretch of California, it draws culinary pilgrims from every distant planet.  the line is formidable here, my bandmates and I have never escaped waiting outside, often in the rain, for a hot dog.  But oh, what hot dogs.  Rabbit meat, Fois gras, Venison, authentic Cincinnati chili, Duck Fat Fries, and busy staff that somehow manage to be polite and funny.   They work in the halls of the gods, plain and simple.    3324 north california m-sa 10:30-4

The Weak Do Not Deserve to Eat Here

The Weak Do Not Deserve to Eat Here
a Culinary Review of Kuma's Corner
By Psycho Butcher

It is a discernible fact of human existence that there are stupid, witless human beings who have little appreciation for the life granted to them by dark unknowable powers, and that these are the majority. These people consume vast amounts of frozen food, eat at TGIFridays with some regularity, obsess about their girth, or the lack of it, and generally cannot tell decent food from the massmarket crap that pervades every opportunity to stuff a ho-ho or McNugget into an orifice. Note, gentle reader, I am not saying there is anything wrong with occasionally getting high and debasing one's self with a bag of Doritos, or wandering through the drive through of a Mc Donalds and, in an intoxicated state, shoving fistfuls of lovely fries down ones throat while sitting in a parking space. Such episodes are a vital to the process of being human, and debasement has its place in the scheme of things. The crux of the matter is that stupid people cannot tell the difference between a hamburger that is a true work of culinary genius and a massmarket piece of crap designed to appease the masses. Kuma's serves the former, not the latter. In fact, the hamburgers at Kumas rank among the finest culinary accomplishments in the city, along with the hot dogs at Hot Doug's, the sandwiches at Bari, and the cassoulet at La Sardine.

This place is also notable because it is a bar devoted to Metal, in all its destructive energy, ostentation, glory, and ugly grandeur. It is a virtual shrine to Metal and its aesthetic, from the names of the menu items to the vinyl on display over the bar, from the malevolent bear logo, to the "Die Emo Die" written in chalk above everything else over the bar. It is a place where metalheads go to finally hear their favorite music, played without irony or apology, as they dine, get drunk, or otherwise enjoy themselves. The place is devoted to supporting the local scene, and acts such as The Lair of the Minotaur and Plague Bringer receive equal billing to the likes of Neurosis and Darkthrone.

The place is frequently very busy, especially at those hours when a hamburger and three pints of beer seem like a good idea. If you cannot tolerate a wait for a table, you are weak, you should not go here. The strong know that waiting for a table means that, either the food is good, or that there are not many other options around. Every stupid bar in the city has a hamburger, so the second contingency is void. The food is that good.

I have watched many a petulant couple enter the place, notice the wait, then leave and it is always amusing to note instances where the would-be carnivores were scared off by the music. One particularly notable example walked in, dressed to go somewhere nice, the way yuppies do. The woman, seeing the place and hearing the crushing strains of Mayhem and Pig Destroyer, lambasted the man for bringing her to a trashy place, full of metalhead vermin. He left with his tail between his legs, emasculated. Fool.

I will not describe the menu except to say that the Mac and Cheese is every bit as good as the burgers. The salads are surprisingly good, because to neglect them and have them on the menu would defy the place's monstrous and uncompromising commitment to metal superiority, the selection of beers and wines is appropriate, and that to serve a hamburger, crumbled over a bed of fries, as the Slayer is served, is genius.

I am pleased to report that they have made some progress on their fries, which are now quite good. This is important, because an excellent hamburger served with average fries is an average experience.

Kuma's Corner is as 2900 West Belment. kumascorner.com

Every Person in the MIdwest Should Be Forced to Eat Burgers at Kumas Corner: A Culinary Review by Psyko Butcher

If you do not eat here on at least a semi-regular basis, you will be killed.

Babies should not be permitted to defile the sanctity of my repast

Babies, their Locustlike Omnipresence, and Why they Should Not Be Permitted to Defile the Sanctity of My Repast

A Culinary Review of Maya Del Sol, by PsyCHO ButCHER

Oak Park. Earnest Hemingway called it the city of broad lawns and narrow minds, and despite their unflagging liberalism, this continues to be the case today. Liberals often fail to see how they can be narrow-minded, always assured that they are completely correct in their beliefs, and thus, having arrived at their narrow-minded opinions through the best of intentions, recontextualize their mental arthritis as a perverse virtue. Oak Park is the sort of place people are scowled at for not recycling plastic by housewives who commit far greater sins to the planet by their overconsumption of gasoline for their mini van. It is a safe, reasonable, and banal place to grow up-and thus, it produces a profusion of babies. Babies should not be allowed in restaurants unless their owners have given the other patrons of the restaurant to discipline the child for its misbehavior, with sharp knives, if necessary. My rhythm guitarist, a female, assures me that crying babies result from a failure of parents to apply a program of operant conditioning on their hellspawn. Children who eat cocoa puffs in front of the TV, with a plastic spoon and a sippi cup, are so overstimulated at meals, and so unused to sitting still, that in every restaurant they must run around with a fish stick in their hand or face the angst of a life spend in the waning days of a great civilization, with doom on every horizon. Our children know it is their fate to suffer for our collective sins. They hate us for it. Thus, they cry.
Maya Del Sol is the most promising restaurant to spring up in this culinary wasteland for a great span of time. Usually, Oak Parkers, mild in their dispositions, fail to recognize good food when they encounter it. Oak Parkers mistake snootiness for good food. Their suburban lives have given them so few experiences by which to judge anything, every piece of shoe leather served on the right table setting passes for fine cuisine. Maya Del Sol is a Latin Fusion restaurant, meaning that the chef has license to serve up food from anywhere on the globe that Che Guevera would have sought to convert to communism. This, generally speaking, is a good idea. The empanadas we ate, though wrapped curiously in spring roll wrappers, were presentable. Their salsa verde was truly incredible, curiously, served with an unpalatable alternate that tasted like Campbell's tomato soup out of the can. The Tilapia tacos I had were decadent, extraordinary, apocalyptic in their glory. Best since Mas, on Division street.
I recommend this place. Knock over a stroller on your way in.

An Ill-Begotten Beginning

The Honkey Tonk Barbacque, in Pilsen, Opened Too Early and has MAde some Insulting Decisions Regarding Service And To Dine There is To Become Furious at the Inadequacies of Others, Especially Considering the Wasted Potential of the Affair Because it is Charming and Good that the Propriotors of A Food Truck Expand into Permanent Quarters

A Culinary Review by Psycho Butcher

The particular operation, on Eighteenth street in the lovely Pilsen neighborhood, was suggested by a friend on the basis of its inherent promise. I say lovely, because it is ruled by picturesque criminal gangs and has buildings whose exteriors contain elements of the quaint and unexpected. Within its confines is a place that offers live country music on Friday and Saturday nights, and is in the process of opening its doors to guests. The food, though not terrible, is not great. The cornbread was too dry. I make better cornbread and my oven must double as a kiln for crafting swords. The idea of roasting meat over a flame appeals to me for reasons which should be obvious to my regular readers. The meat was adequate. The chicken fatty and cheap. The ribs equally so. The mac and cheese tolerable. The bread worthless. Ironically, the only truly exceptional meal was their vegetarian option.
This was all very disappointing because the room is truly charming. It has a high ceiling and is replete with rustic nicknacks. So unfortunate that they did not expend so much energy on plates an silverware. There were none of either. Dine-in guests are quite literally forced to eat their meals, carry-out style, on to-go paper and with to-go forks. This infuriated me so much I nearly stabbed the waitress, friendly and charming though she was. Even the pathetic to-go boats dispensed to us were inadequately small.
The place serves no coffee. My charming server looked at me as if it were normal that a place that serves dessert lack coffee, trying to sell me sweet potato pie at the same time she denied me the essential accompaniement. She is lucky to have left the table with her life.

Unless you are a buffoon and like country music, do not go here.

In the West, Cuisine ist Krieg

Cuisine ist Krieg in Portland

Portland.

In terms of its climate and overall disposition, the Pacific Northwest is as close as our miserable little country gets to the greatness of Scandinavia. The climate plays some small part of it, I am sure. Gottenburg and Portland share a similar, gloomy, cloudscape, with a grey ocean thundering just a ram's run away. Just think of it. Giant trees covered in moss, on which to tie captive maidens. It wrenches the heart to know that the churls and cretins that founded this stupid berg thought not to preserve a single oak, fixated as they were on farming every square meter with the humble harvest of corn, corn, and more corn.

Formerly a logging town, haunt of junkies and hippie burnouts, Portland was a place where a wretch with a methamphetamine addiction could while away his or her last days thumb-strumming an acoustic guitar with a loyal dog barking to the broken rhythms. The benevolent, yet not overtly sunny weather and relative lack of ultraconservative mongoloids has been good to the town, of late, and it is now a city enlightened enough to sport a performance venue dedicated to Metal-the Satyricon. Eager to settle a score with our old Black-Metal Enemies, Indian, my bandmates drove our tourbus overnight to reach the place, but I digress.

Portland is possessed of the most incredible cuisine. Among other things, the Starbucks there are empty. Barely a soul in those terrible cafes. And no wonder, the one Starbucks coffee I had there was particularly atrocious-not the standardized, solid, boring but effective flavor of a typical Starbucks house coffee, but a pale, watery, brew tasting of dishsoap. Clearly, they have given up. Vanquished, but a hoard of independent coffeehouses that brew coffee fit for the mighty Thunder God himself, the empty green rooms are a laughing stock there. Stump Town, the mightiest of them all, is a formidable coffeehouse. Stump Town is the equal of our vaunted Intelligentsia, and is is one of many independent coffeehouses there. One by one, Chicago has let its independent operations go, and lameness is triumphing here. Sad fate. Northwest Coffee Roasters, on Burnside, is a pleasant room with admirable lattes. I caffeinated there daily and contemplated the sad fate of Filter-closed, by an idiot who had so little respect for his customer base, and the generosity they had shown him by patronizing his business, that he neglected to renew his lease as a Bank of America usurped his spot. Fool. Ungrateful, short-sighted fool.

It seems that, to triumph over mediocrity, one has to wage constant war. Customers need to be educated at every opportunity, to avoid equating a homegrown Chinese Restaurant with tacky decor and strange fortune cookies, from a Panda Express. Burger Baron is not the same as Mc Donalds, and yet the cretins will have you think otherwise because they fill the airwaves with their shit.

For now, good food, and the nuanced, pleasant lifestyle that goes with it, triumphs in Portland. Among other things, there are more strip clubs there than any other place I can imagine. These are colorful places, not the fleecing operations of Atlanta, or mere JerkOff dens. Each is different. Again, I digress.

Easily, the best Tapas I have had outside Spain, was at El Torro Bravo, on the City's West Side. They serve incredible Paella as well, have an appropriate wine list, and the servers do not flinch at the sight of a seven-piece black metal band, in corpsepaint, sitting down to dine.

I wish I could say I liked Farm, but I did not. The operation was buckling under the strain of its own success, and they made mistakes like undercooked lentils, unattentive service, and a Dungeness crab risotto that tasted like risotto, yes, but not Dungeness crab.

Other culinary highlights include the city's battery of "roach coaches". These hardy operations, based in trailers, delivery vans, and mobile homes, line the inner-city parking lots, serving a dizzying array of foodstuff in a kitchen smaller than a decent amplifier. In Chicago, we persecute gyros vendors for the fun of it, so enthralled are we with regulating away charm and adventurousness, in the name of cleanliness, that we forget that each of these operations is a small microcosm of cuisine-a world of possibilities from which greater things might sprout.

Sadly, the city's churches were mostly stone, and well-guarded, but again, I digress.

Brunch

BLACK METAL BRUNCH
A Culinary Review by the Illustrious and Infernal Psycho Butcher

Since my unfortunate period of incarceration, I have made a point of appreciating the small things in life that a person might otherwise ignore: candlelight, black nail polish, wood smoke. One of the greatest of these small joys is the ritual of brunch. It compares favorably to a Sunday afternoon, spent on the floor of a prison cell, administering a homemade tattoo with an unraveled bass string and the broken contents of a Bic pen, though I must admit, the latter has its charms as well.

Regarding the reasons for my incarceration, my attorney has advised me that, if I am to stay in the country, I should not comment. Suffice it to say that my actions were ethically justified, and aesthetically as well. Ahhh, wood smoke.

Brunch is, in fact, a perfect example of “Nature Red in Tooth and Claw” as the Englishman would have put it. The better the brunch, the more a person is forced to wait, in the cold or the rain, or for enduring hours spent crouching on a charming Wicker-Park sidewalk, reading the vapid nonsense the publishers of Red Eye choose to print rather than real news. In fact, the longer the wait, the better the food, because the gluttonous hoards of humanity do not assort themselves randomly. Those cretinous individuals happy with a Waffle House stack of pancakes, or Moons Over My Hammy sit comfortably, stuffing their obese bellies without so much as a hunt for a space to park their minivans, while the truly astute breakfast enthusiasts all flock to a tiny cluster of establishments. Among the best of these is the Bongo Room. I have not been there since before my incarceration, and in truth, it was at its best before my original incarceration, in the 1990’s. I am told that the lines for brunch have stretched two city blocks, down Milwaukee Avenue and through the parking lot of an adjacent Burger King, (now closed, thank Odin). Many was the Sunday morning when my bandmates and I were forced to wait outside this place, cigarettes in hand, for hours, for a mere taste of the heavenly pleasure of the chocolate chip pancakes there. I am sure they are still divine.

In essence, the weak do not deserve to eat good food. The stupid eat bad food without realizing it.

I write all this because I recently dined at Hot Chocolate, for brunch, and it was worth the hellish wait. In fact, they provide free coffee, and fragments of delicious pastries, while encouraging the would-be patron to sit on comfortable furniture. This was, frankly, amazing to me. When brunch came, I was delighted. Each member of our party had a dish that amounted to a novel interpretation of a classic delight. The grilled cheese sandwich was delightful. The real trick was the analog of the Egg Mc Muffin that my drummer was kind enough to share with me. It was heavenly. The donuts there live up to their reputation- for them it is perhaps worth waiting ten years in a cramped cell.

Very recently, we repeated the brunch ritual at Café Lula. Before my incarceration, this was a small, hipster, diner. It was the sort of place a person would pretend to read the Onion as they waited for an inexpensively-priced and expertly-rendered interpretation of eggs and potatoes, as they nursed a hangover from hours of drunken screaming. It has come up in the world, rising to the top of a culinary food chain that has sent formidable phonies to their dark demise. The brunch there is truly magnificent. The French toast, for instance, was an infernal delight, with layer after layer of mysterious pleasure stacked neatly for annihilation at the business end of a fork. The trout was magnificent. The fish did not die in vain and must have gone to Valhalla for its contribution to the pleasure of a greater being.

Black Metal Restaurant Review

Mr. Psycho Butcher wrote this in 2003, I think. He is out of prison again. It is worth reprinting because he has voiced a desire to continue writing these dispatches.

BLACK METAL RESTURAUNT REVIEW

By PSYcho ButchER

Avec

The Mediterranean is not populated by Teutonic hordes, but I am willing to grant them a certain dark imagination. After all, where would we be without the Spanish Inquisition, Niccolo Machiavelli, and the genius of the Borgia family? After a hard day of plotting destruction, nothing sates my dark desires more than a nice bloody sausage and a glass of DARK RED wine.

Avec (which simply means "with" in French, an unfortunately trendy name. It seems to be a reference to the way the place is paired with its older neighbor, Blackbird, to the West, or perhaps it is a reference to the way food is supposed to be shared at the place. Ahhh, blackbird, such a dark name.) is in a particularly cavernous part of Randolph Street, just on the precipice of downtown's urban jungle. Its interior is tasteful woodwork all around, much like that of a Viking ship. I found the wood soothing, and I almost cracked my corpsepaint smiling at the breezy interior backed by emerald green bottles.

The last time I went, it was on a Monday night, just as the sun was setting beneath the horizon and I could walk about under the cover of darkness. For the money, the place is one of the best "nice" restaurants in the city, so I expected the place to be crowded with the teeming hoards of foodies. I was not disappointed. The Chef, Koren Grieveson (hopefully, she is Nordic, such a powerful menu full of the Nichean ethic), designed a whole menu around small plates that are meant to be shared. To the uninitiated, this means you spend money on a ridiculously small dish and get pissed off, stabbing someone on your way out. To the culinary ubermensch, however, it means you can partake of a few small culinary masterpieces and share them, leaving with your hunger sated and yet not bloated to the point of loosing your pale, drawn figure.

If you have weak-willed plutocratic tastes, you will hate this place and you should stay away and suffer. They will make you share a table. I despise the weaklings who will not sit next to their fellow man. What are they afraid of? A dark clad figure in facepaint reeking of EVIL? The long wood tables are so that you can commune with the horde, supping together as in the great MEAD HALLS of old. This is one of the most magnificent aspects of eating in a great gothic metropolis such as Chicago or Paris. Those who are too timid to share my space should go to some horrible suburban hell or eat at the Cheesecake Factory and grow fat and stupid.

The garlic sausage on the menu is incredible to behold, savage and imbued with the spirit of the animal. The most magnificent dish is their seafood soup, an incredible and strong food that will leave you gasping for want of more. Their cured meat is excellent as well, and I liked watching it hang forlornly in the case they use to age it to perfection.

They have an excellent choice of wine at Avec, and for an elite restaurant, most of it is decently inexpensive. This is good; I like to imbibe hearty swallows of wine without wondering whether I will be able to buy the new Dimmu Borgir album when it comes out. Last time I was in, it was a MONDAY, and the first three bottles I ordered were sold out. The one I finally got was a superior bottle, however, and my fine serving wench was versed enough with the menu to keep steering me toward the BLOOD RED vintages I prefer. If you prefer to swill and waste your money drinking at Cru, to hell with you, you are weak.

If you have beer and pretzel tastes, you should have the knowledge of self and purity of purpose to stay away. This haven is not for you. If you are a plutocrat out to impress a date with your taste for luxury, drive into the lake and die and leave this place to those truly hungry to taste life before Armageddon takes all the fine food from us and replaces it with hell and turmoil.

Avec is at 615 West Randolph Street, Chicago. If you drive, you are weak, and you will have to hunt for a parking space or pay the Valet parking guys.