Happy Wednesday, Chicago.

It’s kind of like I’m tempting fate to say it, but summer seems like a very fun (if horribly hot) start.

This week’s arts and food programming from Tribune is proof of that. There’s a new show full of laughs at The Second City, a Vietnamese restaurant in Lakeview that excels at what it does best, and plenty of delicious things in store for the June 19th and Father’s Day celebrations this weekend.

Even if you’re staying indoors this week to shelter from extreme temperatures, there are ways to have fun: a new anthology of poems about Chicago, a new home improvement show showing how Hollywood decorates, and hot dog recipes. hilarious histories that you can experience for yourself.

Stay cool and see you next week.

— Ariel Cheung, Food and Travel Editor

“Little revelations” delight Tribune critic Nick Kindelsperger at this Lakeview neighborhood restaurant by industry newcomers.

“This is not a restaurant that hits you over the head with warmth or weight,” Kindelsperger writes. “Instead, you’ll come away thinking about the little details, like how the spring rolls come with a peanut-based sauce that trades in overt sweetness for engrossing funk. Or how every slice of meat in Pan-Seared Duck Salad is so incredibly tender. Read his full review here.

The poems cover Montrose Beach and the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. The Bucket Boys and Smartbar. Police shootings and monarch butterflies. Gwendolyn Brooks and Carl Sandburg.

A total of 134 poems about Chicago make up the city’s premier anthology by contemporary poets writing about all aspects of what makes it great. But publishers had to jump through about a decade of hoops to get it published.

Chicago’s Perteet Spencer thinks everyone deserves to see each other when they walk down the grocery aisle. But that was not the case for people of African descent like her.

“We’re talking about a whole continent not represented in grocery stores,” she said. “Each tribe, each country, they all have their unique way of doing things.” So she and her husband started AYO Foods, which focused on African cuisine and high-quality ingredients – and in just two years it had reached stores across the country.

Across Chicago, black small business owners are gearing up to mark June 19 with festive food and drink, events and acts of service. From colorful slices of cake from Brown Sugar Bakery to free books for CPS students, here are ways to celebrate.

Halloween may be four months away, but true scream queens know planning can never start too soon.

The Tribune’s Chris Borrelli is here to help, with a look at the coolest macabre accessories for 2022 at the Midwest Haunters Convention, a trade show for mom-and-pop scare shops, haunted houses and other horror enthusiasts. .

Considered the Oscars of the restaurant industry, the James Beard Foundation Awards have returned to Chicago after a two-year hiatus, prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic and a racial reckoning in 2020 that led to a commitment to fairer judging processes by the foundation.

It was a night that saw heavy defeats for the Chicago nominees, but also encouraging wins.

Sarah Sherman, aka Sarah Squirm, aka last season’s freshest new face on ‘Saturday Night Live’ is a sure bet for stardom, writes the Tribune’s Chris Borrelli of the latest in a line of Chicagoans on the legendary sketch show.

And her latest visit to the Chicago stages proves she has plenty of fresh — albeit rather gross — ideas to share.

The Second City’s latest show is blazingly fast-paced, with an unflinchingly self-mocking cast and larger-scale cultural powers, writes Tribune theater critic Chris Jones.

And it’s worth a visit, especially if you haven’t been to the legendary improv theater in a while, he says in his review.

Abandoning the nasty interpersonal drama that fueled much of the previous show, “Hollywood Houselift” focuses on an element that has always most interested Tribune reviewer Nina Metz: the weirdness of working with high-end clientele.

Although the Chicago-style hot dog is arguably the best hot dog in the country, for most of the 20th century, Tribune reporters and recipe writers mostly acted deeply embarrassed by the dish.

The resulting recipes and recommendations are pretty hysterical through a 2022 lens, and food critic Nick Kindelsperger takes a historic walk through the Tribune archives for the best — and worst — picks.