I am not one of those people who incessantly complains about cold weather. I was born and raised in Chicago and then went to University of Wisconsin-Madison for college. Cold weather is something with which I am very familiar. It’s not worth being upset over because you know it will eventually warm up.

The restaurants we featured this week have all been open for well over a decade, which is multiple lifetimes you’re talking about a dining establishment. This is something I love about the Chicago dining scene. Despite the never-ending stream of new restaurants, there are still so many classics that have stuck around and continue to be strongly supported by the community.

I have a thing for all things classic – I prefer Billie (Holiday) to Lorde, estate gems to modern, champagne coupes to flutes, and I love old school restaurants and speakeasy-style places.

Many people don’t realize the episodes do not air in the same sequence in which they are shot. So although this season is almost halfway over, this is the first episode I shot as the new host of Check, Please! It was a nice coincidence that Trattoria No. 10 was included in this bunch since the executive chef Laura Piper was an instructor when I was a culinary student at Kendall College. Although she was not my teacher, she taught in the kitchen next door to Chef Pierre Pollin’s (my instructor – and favorite at that) and would pop in to give additional tips and feedback on our work.

Hello!

My guests this week were such a lively bunch. This show was incredibly fun to shoot! As one can imagine, a restaurant named Wood in the heart of Boystown gave way to many a joke throughout the afternoon. Heck, even they have fun with the name with their cheekily-named brunch: Morning Wood Brunch. Although we had quite a few giggles during the taping, the food at Wood (which was recently added to Michelin’s Bib Gourmand list) is nothing to joke about.