Places Already Mentioned

What's the rule for reposing. Does one need new information about a place. Must there changes? Should we regularly update our old posts?

Here's a quick rundown on recent meals at places I have written about before:

Yum Thai
Has the attention made this strip mall Thai better? I have been twice in recent weeks and the food was as good if not better than ever, and they have hired a few extra servers. Rumors abound of a new version of the "secret" menu. Until then, you can work off of the old foodfirst version. An orange soup-curry from the Thai menu on a recent visit was too hot for some of my dining companions. You might love it. I nearly always order one dish from the regular menu, a dish of grilled steak, too much garlic, too much sliced fresh peppers and a bit of dressing. Amazing. Chewy rice noodles have been especially good too. 7748 W. Madison, Forest Park, IL.
(708) 366-8888

La Quebrada
Breakfast has to be a winner when the chilequiles come from fresh made tortillas. A recent order of ceviche Acapulceno was a bit tiny, and it took a while to get the extra jalepenos needed to make it exactly as I like it, but once I settled in on this limey pleasure, I did not care about much else. 4859 W. Roosevelt Rd. Cicero, IL (and other locations)

Grand Slam Pizza
This is not "classic" Chicago thin pizza, Vito and Nick's style pizza with no border, but it is exceedingly good thin crust pizza. Lately, the crust has been a bit harder, and while I am no crisp fetishist, the extra cook only made this pizza better. Go here for coupons and other info.

Salerno's
OK, I do not think I have ever written about the Berwyn branch of this red sauce-aria. They have a great sampler, chicken parma, sauteed mushrooms (you wonder why until you cannot get enough of the mushrooms), cheese ravioli, sausage and meatball all drenched in that red sauce, Sunday sauce any day. 7111 Roosevelt Rd. Berwyn, IL

3-D Jerk Chicken
Not the best jerk chicken in Chicago, but...I wish this place still used the jerry-rigged Weber under the hood instead of the gas fired Southern Pride as the meat, while well cooked, tastes a bit of gas (and I do not buy the idea that gas has no flavor). More than great chicken, the $7 chicken is one of the finest deals in Chicago. You get a 1/2 chicken well hacked, over a lot of gravied rice and beans, a slice of dough bread (always a reason to have jerk), a good portion of well cooked, peppery cabbage, and another good portion of sweet, sweet potatoes. The dish of jerk sauce, a Chicago thing, seems too small until you realize its scotch bonnet intensity requires not much more in the bucket. 5317 W. North Ave, Chicago. Take Out only (773-637-6518)

Thyme and Honey
$14.95 for home-made soup, several fried shrimps, a nicely flavored and tender butt steak, fresh made garlic mashed potatoes AND dessert. It made an unexpected fine dinner on a Saturday night when we meant to go to Chinatown but left too late. 100 S Oak Park, Oak Park

The "New" Mandarin Kitchen
I have yet to go here when I cannot possibly come close to ordering all the things I want. Too many good things. I keep on, however, veering to a few key dishes: homemade noodles, salty vegetable with minced tofu, soup dumplings, fresh sesame pancakes. They have lunch specials that are amazing deals at less than $5 for food, and they are worth it just for the boiled peanuts. Based on a post card, the hot pot looks well worthwhile to order. 2143 S Archer, Chicago

OK - I'll jump in. Here's where I've dined recently:

Hama Matsu
5143 N. Clark St., Chicago, (773) 506-2978
Japanese/Korean in Andersonville - much better than I expected. The egregious Korean Chef came to the table and was anxious to show off the foods of his home country. The bi bim bop was just okay, but the noodle dishes and seafood were good. We didn't try the sushi, but reportedly the sushi chef is skilled. And, it's BYOB - a major plus for me.

Siam Pasta
809 Dempster St., Evanston, (847) 328-4614
Also BYOB - a little better than a typical neighborhood Thai place. The space used to be a used record store, and the ownership obviously put a lot of money into it to make it a nice, warm multilevel space - including a great outdoor rooftop patio (becoming less relevant these days, I guess). It's an offshoot of the place by the same name on Western a couple of blocks south of Howard. The separate menu of chef's daily choices is worth seeking out.

I am curious ro why spme places are mentioned repeatedly,others not at all.We were heading down Dempster and passed both Kauffman's and Chaim's-which I have never seen mentioned here.I am certain there are places worthy of a repost.But Chaim's for example,is it because of lack of experiene?

Vital Information wrote:Grand Slam Pizza
This is not "classic" Chicago thin pizza, Vito and Nick's style pizza with no border, but it is exceedingly good thin crust pizza. Lately, the crust has been a bit harder, and while I am no crisp fetishist, the extra cook only made this pizza better. Go here for coupons and other info.

VI, after your original post about Grand Slam, we've ordered from there probably five or six times. It's fine, as you said, not great perhaps, but just fine, and for local delivery, I haven't found much better.

It has been my experience, though, that some pizza joints (Geppetto's is a good example) are fabulous for a delivery or two, and then they start becoming just ordinary (and I don't think it's that we get used to the taste; I think they are actually really good for a burst of time, and then fade for reasons as varied, perhaps, as a change in personnel or ingredients -- I mean, maybe for a few months, they were getting this great cheese, and then it just stopped).

Hammond

hattyn wrote:I am curious ro why spme places are mentioned repeatedly,others not at all.We were heading down Dempster and passed both Kauffman's and Chaim's-which I have never seen mentioned here.I am certain there are places worthy of a repost.But Chaim's for example,is it because of lack of experiene?

I did a long post on Chaim's on Chowhound a while back. I will dig it up and re-post when I have a bit more time. It is quite good IMHO.

Rob

What's the rule for reposing. Does one need new information about a place. Must there changes? Should we regularly update our old posts?

Here you go again with these philosophical questions in the middle of an informational post. The philosophy of the re-post.

I know I definitely err on the side of not re-posting enough (almost never, in fact). Knowing that I have posted on it, I feel I have nothing to add. And for whatever reason, my personal focus has been on following others' good tips, patronizing places I like and want to be sure are doing well, and filling in those embarassing gaps in my local knowledge (for example, 20 years and counting, and I still have never tried Dell Rhea's chicken, a place I drive by maybe 6 times on the average week - let's see, over 20 years that makes over 6000 times I needed only to take 10 minutes to stop and try, and I still have not made it - it is just embarassing). Anyway, that stupid block against re-posting is part of why I have not posted much of late. So I am sidling up to the idea of posting.

Anyway, I think that if you have not posted on a place in 60 days, it is okay to post again. Though you may wish to consider adding it to the old thread.

dicksond wrote:Anyway, I think that if you have not posted on a place in 60 days, it is okay to post again. Though you may wish to consider adding it to the old thread.

Me, I say post as much as you think is worthwhile. It's all about more data points. I would have no reserves about posting on the same place five times in a month if I had five unique experiences of a place. That paints a much more persuasive picture to me when I read it, then a single visit.

Thing is, I spend so much time following others' hints, and have a limited enough quota of eating out, that I rarely revisit places multiple times in a short span. And when I do, like Jury's, for example, the visits are similar enough so as not to warrant additional reports, in my mind. On the other hand, if I were exploring a new menu like the behemoth at Sticky Rice, I well might post on several meals in a row.

But if you're going to err, I'd say err on the side of posting. I don't think I've ever thought, "Gee, that's just too many posts on that place." Mostly, do what seems right to you, and don't worry to much about any board-wide philosophy of posting, which I don't really think exists.

I do agree with dickson that it makes sense in a lot of cases to add to old threads. But again, no real harm in starting anew. Most of all, posts are good.