A tower of seafood at Mariscos San Pedro. | Barry Brecheisen/Eater Chicago
Where to feast on Mexican seafood from ceviche to tuna tostadas
There’s magic to be found in Chicago’s extensive roster of mariscos joints. Steeped in folklore and flavor, these aren’t just seafood spots — they’re places where Mexican traditions come alive.
Drawing heavily from the flavors of Mexico’s western coast, particularly the state of Nayarit and Baja California, mariscos are all about community — the food is meant to be shared. While indulging in seafood delights might not always be considered budget-conscious, the generous portions and the free fish tostadas and ceviche offered by many mariscos spots add to the value of the fun experience.
From the fiery kick of a seafood cocktail that jolts you back to life after a night out to a plate that claims to be able to spark more than just your taste buds, we’ve explored menus that celebrate the ocean’s bounty with a blend of tradition and innovation.
And whether you’re in the mood for a laid-back, beach-themed casual spot, an elegant dining experience, a nightclub, or a boozy brunch that keeps the party going into the morning, Chicago’s mariscos scene has plenty to offer. Here’s a list of a few to try.
Note that this selection focuses mainly on Mexican-style mariscos and does not include Central or South American-style seafood, which merit their own list.
Vice President Kamala Harris — the daughter of an Indian woman and Jamaican man — took the podium on Thursday night at the Democratic National Convention at the United Center, three weeks after former President Donald Trump lied about her identity during an interview in Chicago. This may resurface those silly concerns about whether something can be two things at once.
Mirra, a unique restaurant that mixes South Asian and Mexican flavors, is out to prove that duality can exist. The restaurant debuted on Thursday in Bucktown adding another notable recent opening to the area surrounding Damen and Armitage avenues. Neither of the restaurant’s two chefs have Mexican roots. Zubair Mohajir is a James Beard Award nominee for his work at Coach House, his fine-dining Indian restaurant in Wicker Park. Rishi Manoj Kumar is ethnically Indian and from Singapore. He learned to love Mexican food as he worked with Rick Bayless at Bar Sotano in River North.
South Asian and Mexican flavors mingle at Mirra.
Their restaurant aims to highlight the tales of South Asian migration in America, stories like how Harris’ mother arrived when she was 19 to go to college. It’s how Northern Indians from Punjab settled in California to build railroads and mingled with Mexicans in the late 19th century. That produced the ubiquitous roti quesadilla which ditched the traditional Mexican tortilla for Indian flatbread. Mirra’s version features roasted mushroom and Amul (a processed cheese from India; the chefs at Logan Square’s Superkhana International use it in their famed butter chicken calzone). The opening menu also features a dum biryani with braised lamb barbacoa. This isn’t a typical biryani diners would buy from a street vendor. Dum biryani is fancy and sealed with a pastry shell over the rice and meat to preserve the aromatics.
Mohajir enjoys chatting with customers at the chef’s table at Coach House. It was there where Mirra took shape as the Southern Indian chef, who grew up in Qatar, found a story of an Indian girl, Mirra, kidnapped and taken to Mexico. He used Mirra’s history as inspiration. A popular Mexico City restaurant, Masala y Maiz, also played a role. In 2022, chefs Norma Listman and Saqib Keval traveled to Chicago and popped up at Bar Sotano after befriending Kumar. Listman is a native of Texcoco, a city about 15 miles northeast of Mexico City. Keval’s parents are from Ethiopia and Kenya; their families were from India, arriving in Africa two centuries prior. They met while working in San Francisco’s Bay Area.
Dum biryani with lamb barbacoa sealed with roti.
As the idea for Mirra matured, Mohajir and Kumar realized they needed to be more honest. Instead of aping Listman and Keval’s template, they needed to tell their own stories; neither one of them is Mexican. So they shifted and changed the restaurant’s design and changed the menu to better reflect their ideals.
While a tasting menu will eventually arrive on Wednesday, September 4, the opening a la carte menu is accessible with crispy tacos filled with Mexican green curry and scallops, a tandoori and adobo Cornish hen, and a carne asada made with a 40-day dry-aged ribeye and salsa macha. It’s served with mashed roasted eggplant, known as bagan bharta to South Asians. A happy hour menu includes birria samosas, oysters, and drinks from partner David Mor. Mor made the drinks for Mohajir’s Lilac Tiger — the bar in front of Coach House — and has his own establishment. Truce, just up the street from Mirra, was one of the bigger bar openings of 2024. Tony Perez, who also works a Lilac Tiger, curates the wines.
Crispy Tacos (Hudson Bay scallops, Mexican green curry, nopales pico, crispy fenugreek roti)
Desserts at traditional South Asian restaurants are sometimes lacking. At Mirra, they’ve combined rasmalai, a Northern Indian sweet made with cheese, with tres leches cake serving it with saffron-cardamom-infused milk. There’s also a rice pudding which should remind diners of flan with nods to kheer, an Indian sweet made with sugar and milk.
Chef Oliver Poilevey, whose family’s French restaurant, Le Bouchon, is down the street from Mirra, says his father, Jean-Claude Poilevey, would not approve of his son using Vietnamese fish sauce in French food. Fusion is a term that’s used sparingly, with chefs fearful that cultures are mashed together without respect for tradition. That’s not what’s happening at Mirra, Kumar and Mohajir say. Their dishes are created thoughtfully. It’s not just about combining cultures by hastily stuffing tandoori chicken into a tortilla and celebrating. Mirra shows how Mexican and South Asian spices and food can complement each other without worry if this is ridiculous cosplay.
Walk through the space below.
Mirra, 1954 W. Armitage Avenue, open 4:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday; tasting menu starts Wednesday, September 4. Reservations via OpenTable.
Manal Farhan lost her appetite. It was November of 2023, more than a month since the October 7 attack by Hamas in Israel, killing 1,139 civilians and members of the Israeli military and taking more than 200 hostages. The violence that day sparked an Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip that had already killed more than 14,000 Gazans (the toll has climbed astronomically since), flattening buildings, and creating a dire humanitarian crisis. Farhan, a Palestinian American in the throes of intense grief, hand-stitched a Palestinian flag and hung it outside her home in Logan Square. Then, she says she received a call from the management company representing landlord Mark Fishman telling her to remove it — if she didn’t, she’d be evicted. “I said ‘I’m Palestinian and there’s a genocide.’ They said, ‘You have to remain neutral,’” Farhan recounts.
Between anxiety about the eviction and the horror of witnessing Palestinians slaughtered and dismembered by bombs daily on social media, Farhan struggled to eat. “When you’re carrying that level of stress, your body stops responding to hunger. Hunger becomes a secondary concern,” she says. But hunger would often return when her mother Karima would make molokhia (ملوخية), a leafy stew with roots in Egypt that today represents a unifying dish across the Arab world. Molokhia, the national dish of Egypt, is ancient. The pre-Arabized roots of its name means “for the royals” or “for the gods.” The leaves, also called jute mallow, spread from Egypt across the Arab world with migration and trade. It’s seasoned simply with salt, garlic, and lemon, boiled in chicken broth, and often served with chicken or lamb.
This humble soup, made with greens and often chicken broth, has become a soothing symbol of solidarity amidst violence in Gaza.
In times of turmoil, we turn to the dishes that make us feel safe, and more and more these days, people in Chicago — home to one of the nation’s largest and oldest Palestinian immigrant communities — are seeking solace in a bowl of molokhia. As one count estimates at least 186,000 Palestinians may have been killed by Israeli forces — according to a letter published by researchers in the British medical journal the Lancet — Arab Americans are searching for comfort and solidarity by any means. In that climate, the dish is taking on a new political significance for many Arabs introduced to it for the first time. Almost every weekend, organizations like the U.S. Palestinian Community Network and Students for Justice in Palestine organize large protests downtown. On Thursday, August 22, groups assembled outside the United Center to protest the exclusion of a Palestinian American speaker at the DNC. Autonomous groups blockade streets in Wicker Park, protest weapons manufacturers like Boeing in the Loop, and even dyed Buckingham Fountain blood-red, spray-painting “Gaza is bleeding.” And now, as the Democratic National Convention descends upon Chicago, protestors march and disrupt politicians’ speeches, condemning them for funding Israel’s army. To ignore the political reality of the people who love this dish, then, would be to tell an incomplete story of molokhia’s place in Chicago.
“I don’t know a Palestinian who doesn’t love molokhia,” Farhan says as we eat and discuss her case at the Palestinian-owned Salam Restaurant in Albany Park. The same Palestinian flag Farhan made in November remains hanging outside her home as she continues to fight what she contends is an unlawful eviction. (The landlord argues that a lease agreement bans any article from being displayed out of a window.) Palestinian Chicagoans and allies have protested the eviction, boycotting the Logan Theater, which Fishman owns. Being evicted here in Chicago for “expressing love and pride” for her heritage, as her federal lawsuit against Fishman states, is ironic for Farhan. Her maternal grandmother’s home in occupied Palestine is now inhabited by Israeli settlers. (Farhan’s lawsuit, which argued neutrality was never the objective — other tenants could fly Christmas and Hanukkah decorations out their windows, according to Farhan’s lawsuit — was dismissed in March and Farhan awaits an appeal.)
Alongside graphic photos of corpses and rubble, I see displaced Palestinians making molokhia in Gaza on social media. “Mloukhieh is one of the most popular dishes loved and made by Gazans. Usually, it is made with chicken or chicken broth, but since no protein source is currently available, we are making it with processed chicken broth. As usual made with love, amidst the war,” Renad, a 10-year-old content creator from Gaza, writes in a caption. The lack of chicken is glaring; meat being nearly impossible to find or buy due to Israeli blockades of food, hygiene products, and medicine. Many, especially in North Gaza, have died of starvation. Still, the dish seems to retain its celebratory and comforting meaning, even in the depths of hell. “Palestinian food is one of the foundational aspects of socialization in our culture … regardless of the fact that [the refugees] were displaced and dispossessed,” says Lubnah Shomali, the advocacy director of Badil, a human rights organization for Palestinian refugees.
Lubnah, a Palestinian Christian, was raised in the Chicago suburbs before moving her family, including her daughter, my friend Rachel, to the West Bank to connect with their culture, even though life was harder under occupation. Lubnah says refugees often pick up different methods of making molokhia from each other, the same debates I hear in Chicago melded. “Within the refugee camps, there persists this need to host, invite people, and make meals,” Lubnah says.
For Mizrahi Jews, Jewish people of Middle Eastern descent, molokhia is part of their memory too, even though the Nakba severed these ties. Hisham Khalifeh, owner of Middle East Bakery in Andersonville, recalls meeting an 80-year-old Mizrahi Jewish man there in Chicago. “He still had his Palestinian ID in his pocket,” Khalifeh says. The man wanted to talk about the food he’d loved in Palestine and all that had changed since he was cleaved from his Muslim and Christian neighbors by Israel’s formation, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing. Khalifeh says the man told him in Arabic, their shared ancestral language, “Naaood lal tareekh.” Let us go back to history.
“White people love tacos [and] enchiladas… but I remember being a kid, eating molokhia at school and everybody being like, ‘Ew, this is slimy green stew,’” recalls Iman, a Mexican Palestinian Chicagoan. Iman agrees molokhia is a core part of Chicago but is doubtful others will see it that way — which she doesn’t mind. “It’s one of those things I feel is so loved but hasn’t been claimed or taken over by white culture yet.”
The first Palestinians arrived in Chicago in the 1800s, long before the modern Israeli state was established, according to Loren Lybarger, a professor at Ohio University and author of Palestine in Chicago: Identity in Exile. He recalls eating molokhia frequently at the homes of Palestinian community leaders in Chicago during his research.
Molokhia, the national dish of Egypt, is ancient. The pre-Arabized roots of its name means “for the royals” or “for the gods.” A 13th-century Syrian cookbook lists four different versions; one that calls for charred onions ground into paste and another with meatballs. It’s a food that’s inspired myth and religious fervor, as it’s said that the soup nursed 10th-century Egyptian ruler Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah back to health — hence the name. (It’s also sometimes called Jew’s mallow, referring to a claim that Jewish rabbis were the first to discover and cultivate it.) The Druze, an ethno-religious group in West Asia, believed and still believe the caliph was God. So many Druze do not eat molokhia even now, obeying his command. For most people, though, molokhia is no longer solely for kings or gods anymore. But making it can be an affair fit for royalty.
Cooked molokhia leaves have a “viscous quality, similar to nopales in Mexican cuisine,” Lebanese chef Sabrina Beydoun says. Molokhia is comfort food, something teeming and right in the deep greens, the grassy and earthy smell. “My mom would prepare it with a lot of pride,” she says. “As I’ve gotten older, I look back on [it] with fondness and nostalgia.”
And everyone has a different way they like their molokhia — the variations and debates are practically part of the experience. “Everyone does it their way, and everyone is convinced their way is better,” Beydoun says, laughing.
My friend Rachel, a former player on Palestine’s national basketball team, prefers molokhia leaves whole (Beydoun says this is common amongst Lebanese people), while my other Palestinian friend Rayean grew up with ground leaves. Farhan’s mother Karima’s special ingredient is a bit of citric acid.
Molokhia is prepared differently depending on the household and restaurant.
The father-and-son team of Ahmed and Mohammed Saleh at their restaurant, Cairo Kebab.
At Cairo Kebab, the city’s only Egyptian restaurant, molokhia became the second-most requested dish among its Arab diners since the spot began serving it daily in 2023 off Chicago’s fabled Maxwell Street in University Village, according to co-owner Mohammed Saleh. “Home foods ground us and make us into who we are,” he says. Molokhia is arguably part of a larger shift, where restaurants owned by marginalized ethnic groups are increasingly serving dishes once relegated to the home, due to both wider awareness through media, desire for the dishes among immigrant communities longing for familiar foods, and chefs feeling empowered to explore their identities in a deeper way.
“A lot of our customers who are Palestinian or Jordanian will ask for a bunch of lemon, or will ask for us to not cook it with garlic,” says Mohammed.
Ahmed, the owner and head chef of Cairo Kebab and Mohammed’s father, adds that unless they’ve had molokhia before, “Americans eat it however we serve it.”
Ahmed makes the restaurant’s version with lots of garlic in sizzling butter, while Raeyan’s family goes light on garlic. I love the chicken with crispy, roasted skin, and frequently alternate between spooning the molokhia onto the rice and chicken, and spooning rice and chicken into the molokhia. Some like it skinless and boiled. Most of my friends eat it with rice; Ahmed says many prefer sopping it up with bread, and some eat it plain like soup, with a spoon or light sips from the bowl. Usually, it’s served with squeeze after squeeze of fresh lemon.
Khalifeh has fond memories of molokhia with quail. Ahmed says in Egypt’s second-largest city, the port town of Alexandria, it’s often made with shrimp, and some use rabbit. In Tunisia, the molokhia is dried and ground into a powder, resulting in a silky, nearly black-colored stew with lamb. Sudanese people, because of their shared history with Egypt, also love molokhia. It’s spelled molokhia, mlokheya, molokhia… The differences are endless and dizzying.
“When I was a kid in Egypt, molokhia wasn’t just a food, it was an event,” Eman Abdelhadi, an Egyptian Palestinian writer and sociology professor at the University of Chicago, wrote in an email. “A whole day would be spent in the arduous processes of washing, drying, and cutting it. It was something we all looked forward to.” Ahmed says that during Ramadan iftars, a time of gathering after fasting all day in the Muslim holy month, many customers request at least two plates of molokhia when breaking fast.
Ahmed Saleh, who owns Cairo Kebab, moved to Chicago in 1990.
For Arab Chicagoans who didn’t grow up with molokhia, Chicago is often the place they first tried it. “We don’t have molokhia in Morocco. But I heard of it because we used to watch old [Egyptian] movies,” says Imane Abekhane, an employee at Cairo Kebab. “Then I came to Chicago, tried the Egyptian molokhia, and I loved that.”
When I first started investigating molokhia for this piece, so many of my Arab friends told me Cairo Kebab’s was the best place to try it in Chicago — a bowl made me understand why. Tender roasted chicken, bright green molokhia balanced with just enough garlic and salt, vermicelli noodles in the rice, and a side of homemade tomato-based hot sauce with chile flakes, chile pepper, and black pepper — all delicious. Ahmed made the molokhia at my table the way it’s sometimes made in Egypt, with flair and performance, a gloopy river of green cascading from one saucepan into another before pooling in my bowl. Mohammed notes that he’s seen more Palestinians and Arabs come into Cairo Kebab for home dishes like molokhia since the devastation began in Palestine last year.
Even if everyone cannot agree on how to make it, everyone I spoke to agrees that molokhia is an Egyptian dish. But because of the large population of Palestinians in Chicago, many’s first meeting with molokhia — including mine — is at a Palestinian friend’s home, or at Palestinian-owned grocers like Middle East Bakery, where Khalifeh says non-Arabs often come in after seeing it online as part of a growing advocacy for Palestinian cuisine and the Palestinian cause — their resistance against Israeli occupation. That gives the dish a certain political significance.
When we made molokhia, Rachel used dried leaves her grandmother brought her from Palestine, an experience Mohammed Saleh says is common. “When we go to Egypt, my parents are always gonna bring back at least one suitcase full of dry pre-packaged goods, including molokhia,” he says.
Frozen and dried leaves are also readily available in Chicago, at Middle East Bakery, Sahar’s International Market, or Feyrous Pastries and Groceries in Albany Park. Both Raeyan and Rachel insist that dried — which produces a darker color than frozen — is better. Ahmed says dried has its merits, but frozen leaves preserve molokhia in its original state more effectively, the process of drying giving it a different taste and color. “Frozen is as close to molokhia leaves harvested in Egypt by hand as you can get,” he says. Khalifeh, in contrast, is adamant that dried is always better, saying it has a flavor and texture that frozen can never achieve. One of his tactics is to put a little bit of frozen leaves into the dried, helping with color and consistency. But he and Ahmed both say that not everyone can make dried molokhia correctly.
And perhaps something is lost in the modernity of freezing, something exchanged when sifting through the molokhia leaves is forgone. “My mom and aunts sit on the floor, removing stems and remnants of other harvest[s] like tobacco leaves,” Beydoun says. “It’s a communal practice. It is a poetic thing to witness.” In dried leaves, I see survival — a way to transport ancestral plants for scattered diasporas. Frozen molokhia must be shipped. But dried can be carried; it is not dependent on any company, just those who have a relationship with the plant.
Still, almost everyone agrees fresh leaves are best — if you can find them. Sahar’s has fresh molokhia leaves this summer, but “they go fast and we sometimes don’t know when they’ll come in,” a grocer told me over the phone. Hisham also directed me to Việt Hoa Plaza, where I found fresh leaves that the grocers there also said are rarely stocked due to the growing popularity of molokhia in East Asian cuisine. According to the Markaz Review, Japanese farmers started growing the plant after advertisements in the ’80s pushed molokhia with slogans like “the secret of longevity and the favorite vegetable of Cleopatra!”
“[It’s] very popular in Japanese grocery stores as well as Korean grocery stores,” says Kate Kim-Park, CEO of HIS Hospitality, adding that their version is slightly stickier. “The plant is called 아욱 (ah-ohk) in Korean,” she says.
Chef Sangtae Park of Omakase Yume in the West Loop has fond memories of cooking molokhia and eating it with friends and family. “I add it in traditional [Korean] miso soup or as side dishes [banchan] by blanching the leaves and sometimes mixing sesame oil, sugar, and Korean red pepper flakes,” Park says.
Ahmed Saleh holds a plate of chicken and rice, which is one of many ways folks enjoy molokhia.
You can also grow them yourself. Iman decided to start planting molokhia and other plants used in Palestinian cuisine likewild thyme (sometimes called za’atar, though it is applied differently than the spice mix of the same name) this March. “I felt like it was an act of preservation and resistance when people are trying to erase Palestinians,” Iman says. Globally, Indigenous cultures stress the importance of seed-keeping, and Palestinians are no different. But planting molokhia was difficult in cold Chicago. “[Molokhia] prefers temperatures between 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21 degrees Celsius) and 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius) and well-drained, loamy soil rich in organic matter,” says Luay Ghafari, Palestinian gardener and founder of Urban Farm and Kitchen, adding that Chicagoans should start planting the seeds indoors under grow lights “four weeks before the last frost date,” transplanting them into the garden when the chance of frost is over and the soil has warmed.
“It would get really hot and then it would get really cold again, so I was constantly running them in and out of the apartment when they were little seedlings,” Iman says. Now, the molokhia plants are healthy and mature, nothing like the yield Iman sees from Palestinian fields, but something she’s proud of. Ghafari says molokhia is an annual that can grow several feet tall in optimal conditions. “During harvest season, you often find it sold in large bales because it takes a large quantity of leaves to yield enough quantities for consumption.” But home plants in Chicago like Iman’s don’t yield enough leaves for much besides smaller pots of stew. Iman’s Mexican mother tends to the plants at their family home near the suburbs. “It’s our bonding thing,” Iman says.
Raeyan’s mother Nancy Roberts, an Arabic translator, typed up Raeyan’s grandmother’s molokhia recipe — the recipe we cooked from — that was passed down through generations. This, too, is a kind of sacred seed-keeping.
“I plan to pass [recipes] to my children until liberation,” Abdelhadi says. “Mahmoud Darwish said the occupiers fear memories, and Palestinians have made memory a national pastime.”
After running around in the summer heat of Chicago in search of stories about this plant, what were my memories of molokhia? They weren’t Rachel’s, Raeyan’s, Iman’s, or Laith’s — memories of childhood, family, heritage. But I wasbuilding a relationship with molokhia.
A colleague once said, “Palestine lines my mind.” I never forgot it because it so aptly described these past 10 months for me. Now, somehow, molokhia had settled there too, becoming part of my memory of this brutal time, intertwining with Palestine, with Gaza. “It was very bad today,” Hisham says quietly when I mentioned Gaza during our interview, referring to the Israeli airstrike that day in al-Mawassi, a designated “safe zone,” that killed over 100 people in a matter of minutes, most of them children. In every interview I did for this article, the genocide either kept coming up or the tension was thick as it was talked around. So how could writing about molokhia ever just be about food? How could researching, eating, and making molokhia not make Palestine fill my mind, and enter my dreams?
One night I dreamt that Rachel, Raeyan, and I were bustling around my kitchen making molokhia, me sifting the leaves with henna-stained hands, Raeyan stirring by the stove, Rachel chopping garlic. My friend Omar was in the kitchen too, watching. It was almost an exact replica of how we had looked when we cooked it.
Except Omar doesn’t live in Chicago. He is in Gaza.
The day of the dream, Omar told me the bombing was heavy; he might not live through the night. “I hope you live. May Allah protect you,” I messaged back. The next sunrise, I got a reply. Alhamdulillah. Thank God. Omar was still alive. For months, this has been the cadence of our messages. I may not live through this night. I hope you live. May Allah protect you. Alhamdulillah.
There was a night when, after we all saw yet another horrific image of a Palestinian person’s body mutilated by Israeli attacks and U.S. weapons, it was suggested, I forget by whom, that we go to Lake Michigan and scream. When we got there, we were silent for a long time. It wasn’t embarrassment, but the fear that God had stopped listening to our screams. What evidence did we have otherwise? Then, almost in unison, we screamed, the sound carrying over the water. And I have to believe we were heard.
Naaood lal tareekh. Let us go back to history. Nataqadam lal horeya. Let us go forward into freedom.
Nylah Iqbal Muhammad is a James Beard-nominated travel, food, and entertainment writer with bylines in New York Magazine, Travel + Leisure, and Vogue. You can follow her on Instagram, Substack, and Twitter/X.
Will Arnett used to leave BoJack Horseman recording sessions feeling disoriented. He’d step outside a dark Hollywoo(d) studio blinded by late-morning sunlight. As he walked to his car, he’d start to sweat. The caffeine from the coffee he’d just drunk would buck in his empty stomach. All the while, he’d be struggling to shake his character’s pathologically antisocial behavior. “This guy’s just been really shitty to someone in some fucked-up scenario,” Arnett says. “And I’m like, ‘What? How am I going to go on with the rest of my day?’”
Hey, that’s life as the voice of a depressed, self-loathing, alcoholic, anthropomorphic horse: Occasionally, you sink into the depths with him. “There were days where I’d come home really bummed out, and I’d be like, ‘What is life, man?’” says Raphael Bob-Waksberg, the show’s creator. “And I’d go to work the next day like, ‘Oh, right. I’m watching this really depressing episode all day.’ It’s seeping into my brain.”
On first look, BoJack Horseman was a satirical story of a washed-up sitcom star desperate to be famous again. But it was more than the tale of one unhappy equine. It was an existential comedy about people, some of whom happen to be animals, figuring out how to live without letting their piled-up baggage weigh them down. “That’s just such a unique point of view: to realize that each day, we get out of bed and we have a certain amount of damage that we are all either trying to protect our friends and colleagues from or protect ourselves from,” says executive producer Steven A. Cohen. From the beginning, it was clear that in the show’s world, like in the real world, damage can’t be reversed. When the ottoman in BoJack’s living room catches fire, it stays burned out in every subsequent episode. “Things like that, which were such small pitches at the time, were showstoppers,” Cohen adds. “Because you’re like, ‘That’s the way life is.’”
There were dozens of smart and funny animated series in the decades before it, but BoJack Horseman was different: It was built for prestige TV. It had a hard-to-pull-for antihero as toxic as Tony Soprano or Don Draper, an anti-feel-good sensibility, a unique visual style, and the ear of critics. But even while exploring serious topics—the Wikipedia page lists 12 hot-button issues it covered, and that’s a low estimate—the adult cartoon didn’t veer into self-seriousness. And it could’ve come about only during the brief time in the early 2010s when media conglomerates, in pursuit of building big streaming platforms, were willing to take chances on quirky ideas. Today, the show about a horse would be considered, well, a unicorn.
Over six seasons, BoJack got really real, really often. Yet as heavy as it was, it had a unique knack for finding room for jokes. “That’s one of the things I’m proud of with the show, is that 77 episodes deep, it was still really silly and goofy and cartoony while also being very dramatic and melancholy and intense the whole way through,” Bob-Waksberg says. “I never felt like we could choose one tone. It was always kind of both things.” BoJack tapped into an eternal truth: When you’re drowning, sometimes the only thing you can do to stay afloat is laugh at your predicament.
Late in the first season of the show, there’s a flashback to a fresh-faced BoJack and his friend and creative partner Herb Kazzaz—whom BoJack later screws over—sharing a moment at the Griffith Observatory. They look out at Los Angeles, and Herb says, “I see a city that you and I will run someday. And when we’re both famous and have everything we’ve ever wanted, we’ll come back here together and high-five.”
The scene, more or less, was ripped from Bob-Waksberg’s life. When he was new to L.A., he’d hike Griffith with friends, look out at the city, and snarkily wonder about the future. “We used to say, tongue planted firmly in cheek, ‘Someday we’re going to own this town,’” he says. “That was the thing we would do. We were like characters on Entourage.” Or The Lion King. “One day,” he adds with faux gravitas, “everything the light touches will be yours, Simba.”
That was a decade and a half ago. Back then, Bob-Waksberg would’ve laughed in the face of anyone who told him that his success was preordained. The dream of BoJack Horseman was alive, but in the way a zombie is alive. “BoJack was the development that wouldn’t die,” he says. “It was like two years I was bouncing around this thing, and there were points where I was like, ‘Why am I still spending time on this?’”
Bob-Waksberg was working on the project with Tornante, the studio founded by former Walt Disney chairman Michael Eisner. His spec script had initially impressed two development executives at the company, Cohen and Noel Bright. “In this town, everything starts with somebody sending us something to read,” Cohen says. “And the very first thing we read of his … it’s from the same writer today. You can see the hallmarks. He’s just a gifted storyteller.”
Cohen and Bright quickly set up a meeting with Bob-Waksberg. “When you sit with Raphael, he’s just as gifted in person, and you can see his brain working and when he’s excited, because his body starts moving and his hands start moving,” Cohen says. That day, Bob-Waksberg, hands in motion, told them a story about the time he went to a beautiful home in Laurel Canyon for a party that, to him, was anything but festive. “He was feeling completely alone and divorced from the magic reality that is Hollywood,” Cohen says, “and realizing like, ‘What does this all mean? And who are these people?’ … It’s 10 years later, and I don’t have those answers. And that’s uniquely Raphael, to just basically provoke you into thinking about something for 10 years.”
Eisner didn’t go to the meeting. “It was not Steven Spielberg,” he says with a smile. Afterward, though, he briefly met Bob-Waksberg and asked what show he was pitching. “Just tell me in one or two sentences the best idea,” Eisner recalls saying. “He said, ‘Well, it’s a comedy about a character who has the head of a horse and the body of a man.’” Eisner, who used to get a kick out of Mister Ed back in the ’60s, loved it. “I said, ‘Yeah, we’ll do it,’” Eisner says. “That’s how long it took.”
The show that Bob-Waksberg wanted to make was constantly asking, “What does this all mean?” The full premise wasn’t all that complicated: “BoJack the Depressed Talking Horse.” In fact, that’s exactly how he described it in an email to a friend in Brooklyn, cartoonist and illustrator Lisa Hanawalt. They both grew up in Palo Alto, California. “I knew who he was in middle school because he was in school plays and because he was loud and weird,” Hanawalt says. “Which is my favorite kind of person.” Bob-Waksberg wrote Hanawalt because he needed an artist to help bring BoJack to life. Luckily for him, Hanawalt had always loved horses. In early 2010, a few months before he reached out about his show idea, she’d made a comic about a horse person.
“I looked at his pitch, and I was like, ‘This looks really depressing. I don’t know about this. I’m into things that are less depressing,’” Hanawalt says. “And he was like, ‘OK, cool.’ But now I actually like the depressing aspects of it a lot. I take it back.”
With Hanawalt’s blessing, Bob-Waksberg downloaded a bunch of animal drawings from her website and showed them to Cohen and Bright. “I kind of put them in a little envelope, and I brought it with me and said, ‘This is the show I want to make, with these guys,’” he says. The execs loved the concept and asked for an outline. “I was frantically Googling, ‘What does an outline of a TV episode look like?’” Bob-Waksberg says. “I sent in this thing, and Steve was like, ‘This is not an outline, but sure, go write your draft now.’”
Bob-Waksberg eventually came back with something more fleshed out. “Everything that came in was so true to form,” Bright says.
“All of a sudden, we realized that Raphael was different from everybody else,” Eisner says. “Somebody like Raphael comes along once a decade, if that.”
That original script treatment included what became the pilot’s opening scene: Charlie Rose interviewing a drunk, defensive BoJack about his long-ago-canceled sitcom, Horsin’ Around. “For a lot of people, life is just one hard kick in the urethra,” BoJack says. “Sometimes when you get home from a long day of getting kicked in the urethra, you just want to watch a show about good, likable people who love each other, where you know, no matter what happens, at the end of 30 minutes, everything’s gonna turn out OK. Because in real life … did I already say the thing about the urethra?”
Finding someone to personify a sad horse turned out to be fairly easy: Bob-Waksberg and Arnett had the same manager. “My manager said, ‘Hey, this guy we represent wrote this really cool thing for this animated series,’” Arnett says. “And it’s always a crapshoot. You never know what you’re going to get. I read it and it was like, ‘Wow.’” The actor, who has a uniquely gravelly voice, loved that the series sounded both grounded and ridiculous. “OK, so this guy is kind of a has-been, and he lives in this fucking cliché house in the Hollywood Hills with what’s left of his entourage, which is one moron,” Arnett says. “And then on top of it all, he’s not a guy, he’s a horse.’”
“The first thing I said to Will—I mean, I was nervous, I guess, to meet a star—was just like, ‘It’s great that you’re cast because you sound like a horse,’” Hanawalt says. “And he’s like, ‘Never heard that one before.’”
The one guy left in BoJack’s entourage was Todd Chavez, who ended up being less of a moron and more of a sweet and sneakily wise slacker with a million crazy ideas. Kind of like Jesse Pinkman if he’d never met Walter White. Coincidentally, Breaking Bad was almost over, and Aaron Paul was about to be available. “He got this really goofy, silly comedy script, and he did not know this would also go to a dark place,” Bob-Waksberg says. “And so I think he felt like, ‘Oh, this is a ray of sunshine. What a fun break from being in a pit, the slave of neo-Nazis making meth all day.’” Not long after he learned about BoJack, Paul committed to it. “I love that you can laugh and also really have an emotional experience in a single scene of that show,” he says.
The rest of the main BoJack characters were a mix of humans and animal people. Princess Carolyn (Amy Sedaris) is BoJack’s feline agent who struggles with work-life balance. Like most Labrador retrievers, actor Mr. Peanutbutter (Paul F. Tompkins) is an outwardly cheerful people pleaser. And Diane Nguyen (Alison Brie) is BoJack’s Vietnamese American ghostwriter who deals with depression. (When we spoke, Bob-Waksberg complimented Brie’s performance but reiterated a point that he’s made in other interviews: “I think I was not fully cognizant when I cast her, the limitations I was putting on myself by casting a white actress to play a Vietnamese character. I wasn’t up to the responsibility of writing a Vietnamese character fully. And so part of that is it’s not just the casting, it’s the writing. It’s that I wasn’t thinking about all the dimensions of what this would mean. And I think that, combined with the casting of Alison, was a disservice to the character.”)
Yet even with all BoJack had going for it, networks weren’t interested. Bob-Waksberg felt like he was rowing a boat with one arm, just going in a circle. “No one’s going to buy this show,” he remembers thinking. “Maybe I’ve outgrown it.” Arnett and Paul, who’d also come on as executive producers, did their best to sell the project, but it seemed futile. “I was part of the pitching process, just kind of calling people that I had relationships with or had a past with and really pushing this thing to get across the line,” Paul says. “And everyone was passing on it.”
Everyone except one. In the early 2010s, Netflix was no longer just a DVD subscription service. It was gunning to become a real Hollywood studio. To make a big splash—with consumers and creators—it needed to take creative risks, particularly the kind that other networks had long been afraid to take. It had found early success with House of Cards, Orange Is the New Black, and a reboot of Arrested Development but still hadn’t green-lit an animated show. Cohen and Bright happened to know Blair Fetter, a new creative executive at the company. They asked him whether he’d take a look at an animation test put together by Mike Hollingsworth, who became the show’s supervising director.
“That five-minute test had me hooked,” Fetter says in an email.
“The questions he asked were ‘Is this going to have Will Arnett in it? Is it going to have Aaron Paul?’” Bright remembers. “I was like, ‘Yes. Yes.’ Those are the easy answers.” Then Fetter asked two more questions: “Does the creator have a vision?” and “Could we hear it?”
About a month later, Bob-Waksberg had a meeting with Netflix. During his presentation, which lasted more than an hour, he sketched out the entire first season of the show without a single note in front of him. The pitch was years in the making. “That long development process gave me the room to grow as a writer and figure out what kind of stories I wanted to tell in this world so that when the opportunity came,” Bob-Waksberg says, “I would be ready for it.”
“It felt exactly like the Netflix version of an animated series,” Fetter says. “We were all in.”
The first season of BoJack Horseman had to be made at a full gallop. After selling the show to Netflix, Bob-Waksberg and his team had about seven months to finish 12 episodes. “Which was wild,” he says. “We had some materials because we’d been developing it for so long, but it was still a mad dash to get that first season done.”
The process of learning how to create a digitally animated show on the fly was particularly difficult for Hanawalt, the production designer. “I was using watercolor on paper,” she says. “I didn’t know how to draw on the computer at all.” What she did already know how to do was create distinct characters. That helped give the show its unique look.
“What first drew us in was her attention to attire and wardrobe,” Cohen says. “Drawings of some of the characters that were these anthropomorphic animals but were wearing a tweed jacket with patches and a vest or a tie. And all these different looks that were exciting and different than the traditional animation characters that were wearing one outfit for 30 years.”
Hanawalt liked playing around with patterns, whether it was the designs on BoJack’s sweaters, the little fish on Princess Carolyn’s dress, or the red arrows on Diane’s jacket. “A lot of the details didn’t come from anywhere in particular,” she says. “It was just me wanting to make them look specific rather than generic.”
The anthropomorphic cast eventually could’ve filledNoah’s ark, giving the animators the opportunity to conjure up characters like Sextina Aquafina, a dolphin pop star; Amanda Hannity, the editor of Manatee Fair; and Cuddlywhiskers, a hamster and TV producer. Naturally, the show was full of animal references, animal jokes, and animal puns. Yellow lab Mr. Peanutbutter gets anxious when there’s a stranger in his yard. There’s a spear-nosed bartender/marlin at a ’50s diner named Brando who announces the delivery of three beers: “Stella!,” “Stella!,” and “Corona Light.” And Princess Carolyn has dinner with an albino rhino gyno.
And aside from The Simpsons, no animated series had better—or more numerous—sight gags. Some were broad, like Vincent Adultman, who’s really three kids stacked under a trench coat. Others were of the blink-or-you’ll-miss-it variety, like a party banner that says, “Happy Birthday Diane and use a pretty font.” There were also plenty of running jokes, like when Hollywood became “Hollywoo” in the show after BoJack drunkenly stole the “D” in the famous sign. The way Bob-Waksberg sees it, some of the series’ silliest bits popped because of what Arnett did with them. The showrunner recalls working on the scene where BoJack wakes up hungover and sees the missing “D” in his pool. “The line we wrote for him was ‘D-d-d-damn,’” Bob-Waksberg says. “And I remember being like, ‘OK, we’ll replace this later. This is not a joke,’” he says. “And then Will did it at the table read, and it was so funny and stupid. And so we thought, ‘OK, let’s not touch that.’”
Like Arnett, BoJack was a veteran sitcom actor with impeccable comic timing. But the character was also, frankly, despicable. Arnett realized that early in the show’s run. He points to a story line in the first season when BoJack is so afraid of losing his lackey Todd that he sabotages his rock opera. “BoJack is so fucking hateful about it,” Arnett says. “That for some reason always sticks out at me because Todd’s so sweet and kind and BoJack is just so unrelentingly BoJack in that moment.”
While voicing someone with so many ups and downs, Arnett admits that he couldn’t help but think of his own. “It made me think about my own mental health a little bit, for sure,” he says. “A lot of it felt like it’s a cautionary tale.”
Over the years, Arnett has spoken candidly about his own sobriety. “I’ve often thought about how prescient it was of Raphael to write this,” Arnett says. “And I went through my own struggles, which I talked about with Raphael. I was like, ‘God, it’s so odd to do this thing, to play this guy.’”
Still, Arnett is not BoJack. Despite what some misguided fans might think. Several years ago, the actor had a house built in Beverly Hills. It had a pool. “People were like, ‘I saw photos of Will Arnett’s house, it’s just like BoJack!’” Arnett says. “And I’m like, ‘Motherfucker, shut up.’ By the way, we need to take the internet apart.”
At midnight on August 22, 2014, Netflix released the entire first season of BoJack Horseman. “We all waited up and watched the first couple of episodes,” Bright says. The next morning, the producers started hearing that some viewers had seen all 12. That shocked them. After all, binge-watching TV was still a relatively new phenomenon. “That was something that we all looked at each other like, ‘This is unbelievable,’” Bright adds. “We just spent four and a half or five years working on this show. It premiered. And the next day, people were like, ‘I love the season.’” Most critics agreed: Writer Alan Sepinwall called the show “something that simultaneously functions as both lunatic farce and melancholy character study.” Four days after the first season dropped, Netflix announced that it was renewing the animated series for a second season.
These days, studios cancel promising shows with ruthless efficiency. But back then, streaming companies gave new series more time to build an audience. Even though BoJack didn’t have as many viewers as Game of Thrones, Netflix got behind it. That faith was a gift to its fans, a group that grew as time went on. “People that stayed with it and watched the show and got the show came to love it,” Bright says. “And it was really fun to see that happen.”
Viewers stuck with a series that stayed funny, but became less fun. BoJack’s depression worsens. He mistreats the people closest to him, repeatedly crosses the line with young women, and pathetically clings to the hope that he’ll once again become an A-lister. He reminded Eisner of an older American comedian he once ran into at a hotel in England. When Eisner asked what the comic was doing there, he replied that it was the only place he still got recognized. “BoJack was a big star,” Eisner says. “All he wants to do is be in the movie Secretariat, which he can’t get because he’s no longer a star. He spent all his money. He’s living a life of memories. He’s gotten himself involved with bad things, drugs and alcohol. He still has an agent. And it is a metaphor for anybody who’s had success and is now forgotten.”
To Bob-Waksberg, BoJack was, in some ways, like an exorcism: “I could get out some of my darker feelings into this show,” he says. But as sad as the series could be, he wasn’t trying to fetishize bleakness. He recalls a note a fan sent him after Season 4. “Which has one of our more hopeful endings,” Bob-Waksberg says. “But he had just seen Episode 11, and he emailed me saying, ‘I understand what your show is trying to tell me: Life is bitter and hopeless and it’s never going to get better, and I should stop hoping that it’ll get better or try to make it better. It’s just one slow slog down the drain.’” Bob-Waksberg responded by telling him to please watch Episode 12. “And then he did. He’s like, ‘I feel much better now.’ I was like, ‘OK, good.’”
As the seriesmoved along, everyone in BoJack’s orbit tried to pull themselves up from the depths, even if it seemed impossible. As they grew, so did the show—both thematically and narratively. The audience got an inside look at every major character’s psyche, including Todd’s. Paul was touched when the kind goofball became TV’s most prominent asexual character. “I love that they decided to just tackle his identity and [him] trying to understand, wrap his own hands around like, ‘Wait, who am I truly? Who am I?’” Paul says. “And then obviously he realized, ‘Oh, I’m asexual.’ He didn’t even know that was a thing. And so many people come up to me, and I can tell right away that they want to talk to me about BoJack and specifically about asexual identity. And a lot of people said, ‘Look, I didn’t even know that was a thing. I just knew that I was different and I was just trying to find my place, and you really shined a light on something that I didn’t even really know existed, even though I’m living in that skin.’ It’s pretty amazing.”
Bob-Waksberg and the writers weren’t afraid to try new things. “At the beginning of just about every season, Raphael would pitch us a bold idea for one episode somewhere in the upcoming season,” says Fetter, now vice president of scripted series at Netflix. “He would pitch it off the cuff, and it always felt like it was going to be a terrible episode, leaving us skeptical. But inevitably, he would execute that big idea in such a mind-blowing way.”
One of those episodes barely had any dialogue. And it was set underwater. “I said, ‘Really?’” Eisner recalls. Bob-Waksberg told him yes. That idea became Season 3’s hypnotic “Fish out of Water.”
Then there was Season 5’s showstopper. Bob-Waksberg had always liked monologues. He wondered whether he could pull off an episode that was one long speech. “Just Will talking for 25 minutes,” he says. In the Emmy-nominated “Free Churro,” which Bob-Waksberg wrote, BoJack gives a wrenching eulogy at his abusive mother Beatrice’s funeral.
At most table reads, Arnett goofed around with Tompkins and Sedaris. This was different. He was the only actor there. “I thought, ‘I wonder how this is going to go. I guess we’re about to find out,’” he recalls. “And it was just very strange. And then reading it out loud, it worked. Which is just such a testament to how strong the material was.”
That day, the room was completely silent. “You could hear a pin drop,” Bob-Waksberg says. “It was just like everyone was on the edge of their seats. It was such this beautiful, intimate thing. It was incredible.”
In 2019, Netflix announced that the sixth season of BoJack Horseman would be its last. “It was such a dream job, and we were hoping to do it forever,” Paul says. “And so it was a bit of a hard pill to swallow when Netflix said, ‘Look, we love you, but we’re going to do one more season, and that’ll be it.’”
While making the final BoJack episodes, Bob-Waksberg didn’t allow himself to be wistful. He still had an ending to write. “It’s hard to internalize this idea of appreciating what you have while you have it,” he says. “There are moments where I enjoyed it, where I was having fun, where I thought, ‘This is cool. We’re doing something great. Look at me. I’m at TV fantasy camp.’ But I felt so much pressure all the time. Every season I thought, ‘This season has to top the last season, or people are going to hate us. People are going to hate me. This is the time where I let everybody down.’”
But that time never came. In the last scene of the series finale, BoJack and Diane have an intimate conversation on a roof. “Because we’d set up that imagery earlier, and that felt like something we kept coming back to,” Bob-Waksberg says. The question he had was “How do we get to that roof?”
Well, first BoJack hits bottom. After breaking into his old house, he nearly drowns in the pool. Then he’s sent to prison. He sees the sentence as comeuppance for a lifetime of shitty behavior. When he gets out of jail, he’s relieved to find that all the important people in his life have freed themselves from his grip. And BoJack, it seems, has freed himself from his own desperate need for validation. “I liked the idea of this final line, which Diane says, ‘It’s a nice night.’ And BoJack says, ‘Yeah, this is nice,’” Bob-Waksberg says. “Because it felt like so much of BoJack the character is him regurgitating the past or having anxiety about the future. And one of his difficulties is just being present in the moment. And so in a small way, giving him that, right at the end of the series, felt pathetic and rewarding and appropriate.”
“I think Raphael is right,” Arnett says. “BoJack spent so much time and the show spent so much time looking back at what made him so flawed and so worried about how he was going to be perceived and how he could manipulate people in situations. I think at the end of the day, all of that was sort of futile.” Arnett knew that BoJack was never going to be redeemed. “He wasn’t given the tools to mature and grow up, and we sort of see why. So how could we expect him to be this great guy?” he says. “I always thought it was kind of a miracle that he ended up being a functioning person at all.”
If there’s one thing that Arnett took from playing BoJack, it’s this: “Be honest with yourself about where you’re at. That’s what it taught me. I don’t always get it right, but I think I’m getting better at it.”
As the discussion of mental health issues has become less stigmatized in America in the 10 years since the show premiered, dozens of TV series and movies have depicted people dealing with past trauma and depression. But few, if any, have resonated quite like BoJackHorseman. “That’s one of the best shows that I’ve been in any way involved with in, I don’t know, 50 years,” says Eisner, who had a hand in Happy Days, Cheers, and Family Ties.
There’s a reason why Netflix’s Hollywood office has a big conference room named after the show. “I do think that BoJack Horseman showcased our ability to push boundaries in different mediums and certainly jump-started more animation and comedy in general,” Fetter says. “It’s probably the series most writers tell me they love all these years later.”
In the middle of working on BoJack,Hanawalt bought her first horse. “I found her on Facebook,” she says. “It was an impulsive purchase.” She also got her own anthropomorphic, animal-centric show, Tuca & Bertie, which ran for three seasons between Netflix and Adult Swim. Hanawalt hopes that there’s still a place for the kind of series like hers, the kind of series that BoJack helpedusher in. “I want there to be room for more experimentation and a little weirder stuff,” she says. “I like that. Keep it weird.”
Right now, Bob-Waksberg is working on his next project. This time, he plans to put a little less pressure on himself this time around. He’s come a long way in the past five years.
Before the last half season of BoJack Horseman was released, there was a premiere at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. Bob-Waksberg took the stage to start the screening, with a note written down to himself at the top of his speech. Take a breath and take in this moment.
“Because I felt like I hadn’t done that for the entire run of the show,” Bob-Waksberg says. “That’s something that I’ve tried to take with me since then, to not get so—like BoJack—hung up on the future or the past that I forget to be in the present.”
While the Democratic National Convention may not be a boon for Chicago’s restaurant industry, local politicians, journalists, and comedians are still planning on sampling the city’s culinary delights this week. Some point to a lack of variety in those diets (we have some suggestions for that); there’s certainly a tendency to stay close to downtown and visit the same North Side neighborhoods. Still, there’s some fun to be had, even if these visitors have limited taste buds and stick with pizza and hot dogs. Eater scoured the convention floor and asked politicians what they put on their hot dogs.
Lori Lightfoot
Former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot.Scott Olson/Getty Images
After taking a nearly year-long hiatus, Lightfoot returned to the media circuit this week with DNC analysis on CBS Chicago. The former mayor, who chose an unorthodox smorgasbord for her Super Bowl spread in 2019, prefers a “modified Chicago-style” dog.
“Brown mustard, dill pickle slices, tomatoes, sport peppers, and celery salt,” Lightfoot says, “Sometimes also giardiniera instead of the sport peppers. But sometimes if the hot dog is really good and grilled right, just a dog in a bun.”
Jaime Harrison
DNC chair Jamie Harrison.Alex Wong/Getty Images
The DNC chair kept his restaurant plans under wraps but his spokespeople tell us he’s a slaw dog fan. Harrison tops his dog off with chili, coleslaw, relish, ketchup, mustard, and onions.
The Daily Show correspondent Grace Kuhlenschmidt.Arturo Holmes/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival
“I was living in Chicago when the pandemic hit and on the news they started talking about how we were going to go into lockdown,” she says. “My roommate Andrew and I turned to each other like ‘We need to order The Roost NOW.’ So we did and that was the last thing I ate before I started wiping down my groceries.”
During the DNC, Kuhlenschmidt will return to her old favorite and order the House-Style fried chicken sandwich with cheese on a biscuit, plus the chocolate chip bread pudding. When it comes to hot dogs, Kuhlenschmidt took a swipe at Chicago tradition: “When it comes to hot dogs, I need ketchup,” she says. “I really don’t care what Chicago or the National Hot Dog Association say. Ketchup is a divine condiment.”
DNC senior advisor Keiana Barrett (the chief diversity & engagement officer for developer Sterling Bay) plans on sticking close to McCormick Place and patronizing Williams Inn, the pizzeria and sports bar in the South Loop, owned by the same Black family as Jeffery Pub, one of the oldest queer bars in the country. She’ll start with the hot wings, “fried hard” with ranch dressing, and deep-dish pizza with mushrooms. Barrett only eats turkey hot dogs and prefers them grilled with mustard, barbecue sauce, relish, pickle, and a dash of seasoned salt.
Christy George
DNC executive director Christy George.Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
Winner of the 2022 Banchet Award for Best Alternative Dining, Sinhá should expect a visit from the DNC’s executive director Christy George (Gov. Pritzker’s first assistant deputy governor for budget and economy). Among her top picks at the Brazilian restaurant: mango salsa, plantains, chicken curry, and steak.
“Best Brazilian food in the city recently had it and can’t wait to go back,” George tells Eater — not that there are a ton of Brazilian options in Chicago. “Their patio is intimate and beautiful, it’s a local woman-owned restaurant, and the food is killer.”
When it comes to hot dogs, George ignores Chicago-style rules.
“Ketchup and mustard, unapologetically,” she says.
Don Harmon
Illinois Senate President Don Harmon.Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
The Illinois state senate president hasn’t had much time to sit down and dine during the DNC.
“I wish I had been eating anywhere but off the fat of the land, wherever food is put in front of me from reception to reception,” Harmon says on the convention floor on Tuesday before the delegates cast their vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.
“Hot dogs you’ve only got three choices: you can eat it Chicago-style, you can eat it with mustard and onions, or you can eat it plain,” Harmon says, adding that he’ll eat any of those three options depending on the circumstance.
“If I can’t spill I’m not above a plain hot dog, mustard, and onions when I’m low-key and Chicago style if someone else is fixing it,” he says.
Tavern-style pizza from Pat’s. | Garrett Sweet/Eater Chicago
These spots will never disappoint hungry customers
Everybody deserves time off, including folks in the hospitality industry. But it can be frustrating for hungry diners who just want something to eat to learn that the restaurant where they were looking forward to eating is closed for the day — particularly on Mondays, when many restaurants traditionally shut their doors. But none of the restaurants on this list will disappoint: they’re all open Monday and ready to kick-start your dining week in Chicago.
The governor announced his unofficial declaration on Saturday after appearing in a video segment with former White House press secretary Jen Psaki. The bitter and yellowish spirit is both reviled and beloved in Chicago where passionate opinions have made it a divisive topic.
“If you come to Chicago, every Chicagoan knows you got to have a shot of Malört,” Pritzker tells Psaki. “This is a liqueur that Chicagoans take — I’m not saying it’s the best-tasting liqueur, I’m just saying that it’s the one that if you want to prove your mettle, you got to have a shot.”
The two proceeded to ham it up while enjoying the infamous shot with the governor high-fiving Psaki and praising her, “Well done!”
Psaki pauses as her tastebuds realize what she has done: “Whoo! That has an aftereffect.”
This leaves an uneasy feeling for Chicagoans. There might be a portion happy to see naive politicians and journalists suffer while trying to stomach that first shock shot. But watching Pritzker’s segment, recorded in the lobby of the Hotel Zachary — with the Wrigley Field’s famous marquee in the background — it’s not hard to wonder if Malört is beginning to jump the shark. This used to be a working-class drink, one that survived tough times over nine decades. Dive bar owners were the only ones stocking the drink, often dusting off old bottles in storage for only a handful of fans who enjoy the unusual beverage once marketed as medicine. A few blocks away, Nisei Lounge — one of the few dives that survived after the Hotel Zachary opened in 2018 and remade the area — specializes in Malört infusions. It’s the kind of dimly lit tavern where Malört is best enjoyed. It’s quite a juxtaposition to the huge windows that soak up natural light at the hotel across from the Friendly Confines.
A private pop-up, the CNN/Politico Grill, is opened during the DNC in Chicago outside the United Center.CNN
The scene is particularly confusing considering that the Cubs are owned by the Ricketts family, who aren’t exactly known as allies of the Democratic party.
The reality is Malört isn’t carried at DNC venue the United Center, confirms Tremaine Atkinson, owner of CH Distillery. That’s the company that now owns Jeppson’s Malört. Outside the arena, CNN and Politico have teamed up on a private pop-up restaurant. It’s open from 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. during the convention, set up just inside the United Center’s security perimeter, only accessible to DNC attendees. It’s called the CNN/Politico Grill. They’ve run these restaurants for 20 years outside of both Republican and Democratic national conventions, according to a rep. One popped up earlier this summer outside of Milwaukee at the RNC. They feature local vendors and food.
The Chicago edition will feature Portillo’s Italian beef, Jay’s potato chips, and Marconi’s giardiniera. Vienna beef hot dogs, selections from Publican Quality Bread, and celebrity chef Stephanie Izard’s This Little Goat chili crunch are also available, according to a CNN rep.
Alas, while Big Shoulders Coffee, beer from Haymarket Brewing, and boozy cider from Right Bee Cider are also available, Malört is nowhere to be found: “Damn! It would certainly liven up the conversations!” Atkinson texts.
Coincidentally, CH — which has designs on making Malört a national brand — had already launched a marketing campaign promoting “I voted” stickers, with shirts and decals reading “I Malörted” stickers available at bars and stores.
As Chicago has increasingly become a culinary Las Vegas — where anxious coastal elitists visit and enjoy Midwestern comfort foods without shame, without worrying about their beach bods or judgment — Malört has become part of that ritual. This is a city that embraces craft beer and breweries, cheap beer and shots at dives, and fancy drinks at cocktail lounges. What happens in Chicago stays in Chicago.
Sean is joined by Chris Ryan to react to a handful of casting tidbits (1:00), before digging into the newest installment in the Alien franchise, Alien: Romulus (11:00). They discuss the new movie’s fealty to the original, the chances it takes, how it works as a pure horror movie, and more. Then, they rank all nine movies in the franchise (53:00), before Sean is joined by Romulus director Fede Álvarez to talk about making a movie in the franchise that he is a superfan of, some of the particular choices made around fan service, how he approached practical effects during the production, and more (1:11:00).
Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Chris Ryan and Fede Álvarez Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner
Good food is just part of what makes a restaurant successful, something many would-be chefs and restaurant owners don’t always realize. Developing entrepreneurial skills is challenging, and additional folks living in underserved communities face additional obstacles folks are living in including access to capital and mentors.
Sunshine Enterprises, a local nonprofit based in Woodlawn, has been helping restaurant owners and other entrepreneurs running small businesses for eight years through an assortment of classes, pairing them with mentors, helping them find the right neighborhoods for their restaurants, and aiding them to navigate the often confusing world of permitting. Part of Sunshine’s mission is to “bring vacant storefronts back to life” says Sunshine’s Managing Director for Programs Laura Lane Taylor. Earlier this week, Sunshine assembled food vendors at Navy Pier for Taste of Sunshine, the first-ever showcase for 16 of its alums.
Tammie Wiliams of Baker Sister, a Beverly-based wholesale cookie company was one of those vendors.
Williams established Baker Sister in 2014, so it’s not a new business. However, Williams says she needed Sunshine’s help in launching an eShops using Amazing and Walmart. That’s where Sunshine’s guidance was crucial: “They provide us with attorneys and a lot of different services that we need in order to keep up the momentum or to open up new doors.”
For example, through networking, Williams was put in contact with reps at Wintrust Arena, home of the WNBA’s Chicago Sky. She’s hopeful that one day her products could be available at the McCormick Place sports stadium.
Social media marketing has become more important than ever, but those from marginalized communities don’t have as far as a reach. Sunshine helped Williams with that, too: “The marketing piece was paramount for me,” she says. “We needed that in the worst way.”
So Navy Pier provided Williams with a unique opportunity: “I know that Navy Pier is one of the most sought-after tourist venues in the world,” she says. “I’m looking to promote from that vantage point, both here in the city of Chicago, for those who don’t know me, even though we’re in grocery stores and all, but still, we can expand our footprint.”
Taylor talks about the need to strengthen local chambers and for more educational programs. For example, building permits and liquor licenses can be tricky.
“We need more academic programs like the ones that Sunshine is doing,” Taylor says. “We need it in multiple languages — we are offering it now in English and Spanish — but you need it in Polish — you need it in other languages.”
The group matches participants with coaches for guidance. If a particular skillset or knowledge base is needed beyond the coach’s purview, Sunshine’s help desk springs into action, tapping into the group’s network of business professionals.
Sunshine was founded in 2016, as part of Sunshine Gospel Ministries, which is affiliated with Moody Church. They’ve also helped Nestor Correa of Humita Express, a restaurant near the border of Irving Park and Avondale. Humita is one of only a handful of restaurants that serves Ecuadorian cuisine. The pandemic forced Correa to close his restaurant, and he turned to Sunshine for help. Correa says when he first opened in 2003, there were only three Ecuadorian restaurants in Chicago, but that number has since increased to 20. Many in the community ask him for advice, and it’s challenging running a restaurant and supporting other restaurant operators. Correa also has a food truck and bar.
“We are from Ecuador, and our mission is we are trying to introduce our cuisine in the city,” Correa says.
Humita is working to expand its menu by adding ceviche. Understanding food costs and accounting are ways Sunshine can help, but Correa is hopeful to open a larger restaurant, more like a cafe where he can serve an expanded menu, but he’s unsure of the location, and that’s where Sunshine has been helping.
In the past, Sunshine has held Shark Tank-like competitions for its participants. There’s a thorough application process for its Community Business Academy, a 36-hour boot camp.
“They need to show in their application that they have the wherewithal to carry out their particular vision, and they have to be able to make the time commitment to invest in their business model,” Taylor says.
Sunshine is fortunate to have backing from the city of Chicago and private funding.
“The small business ecosystem is there, but it needs to be strengthened, it needs to be connected in a much stronger way with the system that helps people get business with anchor institutions and certifications and sort of, you know, what the civic federations of the world are doing,” Taylor says.
The United Center, on the city’s Near West Side, is caught in limbo near the fancy restaurants along Randolph Restaurant Row and the older guard along Madison Avenue. It’s not an amusement park-type atmosphere like in Wrigleyville, where North Side developers are building hotels, restaurants, and stores close to Wrigley Field. The United Center is surrounded by parking lots and housing — though there’s a plan to change that.
But for more discriminating tastes, the neighborhood does offer some solid eats. There’s fine dining, family-friendly casual, and iconic Chicago burgers nearby. While the arena food has improved in certain areas, there’s no need to depend on concessionaires for a good time. There’s certainly no need to wait in line for a taco while missing Black Hawks or Bulls game action.
These are the best bets for food around the United Center.
Japanese food wasn’t always seen as belonging on the same fine dining stage as other foods in Chicago, which is why Arami’s 14-year run in West Town has been remarkable, coinciding with how the perceptions of Americans have changed. As one of the first restaurants along a stretch of Chicago Avenue now crowded with restaurants, Ty and brother Troy Fujimura’s restaurants set a standard with hot and cold options with top-notch sushi, noodles, and skewers.
That run will close at the end of August as Arami’s final service will come on Saturday, August 31. Fujimura says he notified his workers on Wednesday, August 14.
“We struggle like any other restaurant — especially a small restaurant — and [it’s hard to] kind of make ends meet without having to compromise,” Ty Fujimura says. “So we’re in that position now where I think the restaurant, I know the restaurant has run its course.”
There’s a pattern for the Fujimuras who earlier this year sold his first restaurant, SmallBar, in Logan Square. There are personal and family struggles that Ty Fujumura didn’t want to share. Despite the support of regulars, Arami has struggled since the pandemic began in 2020. Chef Joe Fontelera departed to pursue his dream of spotlighting Filipino food and opening Boonie’s Filipino Restaurant. Not that scrambling was anything new for Arami. Two years in, opening chef and partner BK Park left the restaurant abruptly in 2012 (he would later open Juno in Lincoln Park). The Fujimuras closed the restaurant for two weeks to reload. In 2016, a fire kept the restaurant closed for a month. Even more recently, the Fujimuras brought back a fan favorite rehiring chef Nelson Vinansaca, their former sushi chef who moved to Ecuador five years ago. Vinansaca brought stability, but apparently, it hasn’t been enough.
Fujumura says if anyone is interested in buying a turnkey restaurant, he’d be interested in selling the business. But right now, he feels a sense of relief. Arami could also be considered a pioneer as one of the first upscale restaurants on a stretch of Chicago Avenue that now includes Brasero, Forbidden Root, All Together Now, and more. Fujimura says he’s been wrestling with the decision to close the former Michelin Bib Gourmand staple for about a month.
“It might sound weird, but I’m really happy — I’m happy because now we have time to celebrate,” Ty Fujimura says. “We can celebrate this restaurant with our friends and our family. You know past employees, people that haven’t been there yet. — there are so many experiences that people have shared there whether it’s memories made for birthdays, anniversaries, or what have you.”
The restaurant opened just before sushi omakase became trendy and has hosted several celebrities including Blackhawk players, musicians, and actors. It was also where sports reporter Darren Rovell complained about surcharges.
“I’ve been waffling back and forth… I could restructure my lease and maybe do a little fund raise, and do some changes at the restaurant,” he says. “But you know what? That sounds like I’m rescuing this restaurant. The restaurant doesn’t need to be rescued. This restaurant needs to be retired,”
Fujumura has been reexamining his role in the restaurant industry. He remains a partner at Lilac Tiger, the reimagined Wazwan in Wicker Park with food from James Beard Award nominee Zubair Mohajir. Midway International Airport still has an Arami location, and he’s hopeful of opening one at O’Hare International Airport. His company, Fujimura Hospitality, runs the food service at the Chicago Corinthian Yacht Club at Montrose Harbor, and he runs Rockwell Bottle Shop in Lincoln Square. But it’s been challenging during the pandemic. He swung hard and relocated Michelin-starred Entented from Lincoln Square to a new space in River North. Pandemic-era dining restrictions crushed the restaurant which has since closed and is now home to Obelix.
“After doing this now for well over two decades, it’s that time to catch your breath, that time to be in your own element, and inside your head… those times are far and few in between,” Fujimura says. “I feel no one’s going to give me that, no one’s going to make that time for me — I need to make that time for myself.”
Arami, 1629 W. Chicago Avenue, closing Saturday, August 31.
Welcome to the Scene Report, a new column in which Eater Chicago captures the vibe of a notable Chicago restaurant at a specific moment in time.
Locals can scream to the top of their lungs that Chicago has a distinctive barbecue style, chefs can hold panels, and writers can publish explainers to try to educate and even bridge the North and South Side divide. But Chicago is a city where many are unaware of barbecue history, and it’s not shocking that few outside the 312 and 773 area codes will truly acknowledge aquarium smokers, sticky tomato-based sauces, and tip-link combos.
But a pitmaster must exude confidence without allowing perception or history to distract them from the goal of perfectly smoked meats. The crew at Sanders BBQ Supply Co. have demonstrated their prowess since the restaurant opened in June in Beverly. The restaurant is led by James Sanders, a veteran chef who ran a catering business out of a West Side kitchen and who owned Dirty Birds Southern Kitchen, a restaurant serving chicken and fish.
The smoked meats are delightful, but so are the side dishes.
Sanders pulled Nick Kleutsch off the deck to join the team as pitmaster. Kleutsch soaked up Central Texas’s barbecue culture in Austin before honing his craft in Indiana where he ran a Texas-stye barbecue pop-up called Lucy’s BBQ from a bar in Highland. The Tribunelauded Lucy’s last year. Sanders isn’t a Central Texas operation. They’re an amalgamation of different styles. The team also includes sous chef Nehemiah Holmes and chef Bill Jones. Here’s the scene at Sanders BBQ Supply around 11:30 a.m. on Saturday, July 27.
The prime brisket and ribs are purchased by the pound.
Nick Leutsch is at the carving station with the rest of the crew.
Make sure to grab the spicy and sweet mustard sauce that is packed with cumin.
The wait: Over the weekend, Sanders made an Instagram post apologizing for running out of food. But visit Austin, Kansas City, Memphis, or any barbecue-crazed town and customers risk missing out on specialty items if they show up late. The cure to combat this is to set your alarms or calendar reminders. Sanders opens at 11 a.m. Thursday through Sunday. Parking is a breeze along 99th Street. There’s a slight wait, but it’s fun chatting with customers and sharing ordering strategies. On this particular Saturday, the restaurant wasn’t serving links and that’s clearly communicated on the menu board. It took about 20 minutes from waiting in line, watching staff carve up prime brisket and Texas-style smoked beef ribs, to sitting down and having a food runner drop off an order.
The menu: For all the charm that Chicago’s South and West side barbecue restaurants have to offer, a glance at the food at Sanders shows that diners are in for a different experience. The menu offers both prime brisket and pulled pork by the pound. Chicago barbecue rarely includes so-called beef dino ribs, but for $35 customers can indulge on Saturdays only. These beef ribs are more or less brisket on a bone, and that gives a fattier and more flavorful bite.
The menu with all the goodies.
The chicken wings are smoked and perfectly charred, glazed with a sticky sweet peach tea sauce. The sauce wasn’t my favorite, but once dunked in the cumin-forward mustard sauce — a concoction Kleutsch brought with him from LeRoy & Lewis in Austin, the wings activate into some of the best in the city. There are two kinds of sausage — cajun and jalapeño cheddar.
The sweet tea chicken wings are perfectly cooked.
While customers usually don’t visit a barbecue restaurant for its sides, Sanders’ cornbread and mac and cheese stand on their own.
Fried catfish is also available.
A word about the pork ribs — they’re fantastic and might be the best in Chicago. They’re St. Louis-cut spare ribs. They’re not doused with sauce. Seemingly, the team found a compromise between Chicagoans’s love for saucy food and more traditional dry-rub barbecue. The meat is tender but does not fall off the bone. There’s plenty of bark and the sauce isn’t providing the smoke. It’s the post-oak burned from a 4,600-pound M&M1000 rotisserie smoker. It’s a pure wood smoker without a gas assist. What that means is this is a serious and top-of-the-line machine. As I walked out of the restaurant, a neighbor greeted me and gushed about the ribs. I consented: If I lived nearby my cholesterol would be in trouble. These ribs are divine. I think about them a lot.
The sides, like mac and cheese, are also serious. Sanders serves a sweet potato cornbread with a creamy texture inside. If a customer orders one of the two salads, they’ll be treated to a crispy version as the greens are served with sweet potato cornbread croutons. These croutons are outrageous. The smoked burger also looked formidable, but my stomach was full of spare ribs and brisket. Kleutsch insists it’s the best item on the menu.
These St. Louis-cut pork spare ribs come from Iowa.
The verdict: Sanders BBQ ticks all the boxes. It’s a comfortable place to sit down and enjoy smoked meats. There are two patios with live music. I hear whispers of expansion in the future, but I won’t jinx it. In a city where civic barbecue traditions aren’t celebrated very loudly, Sanders finds itself playing an important role in uniting old and new school philosophies while introducing a whole new generation to a world of tasty barbecue. Sanders has a chance to be one of the best casual restaurants in Chicago, one that customers from all walks of life can enjoy. Even vegetarians — the pulled jackfruit sandwich looks awfully tasty.
Sanders BBQ Supply Co., 1742 W. 99th Street, open 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. — or until they sell out — Wednesday through Sunday.
Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times journalists (when the two were neighbors downtown) have long decamped from their namesake tower on Michigan Avenue, but go underneath the Mag Mile to the original Billy Goat Tavern and you’re sure to find a few ink-stained wretches crowding the bar. Local reporters, and sometimes their sources, still flock to the original Billy Goat, where the names of famous Chicago journalists like Richard Roeper grace the walls. The “Cheezborger” made famous by Saturday Night Live doesn’t disappoint, particularly the award-winning “Curse-Breaker” with bacon, grilled onions, and jalapeño.
In a news release, Krafton said it “intends to collaborate with Xbox and ZeniMax to ensure a smooth transition and maintain continuity at Tango Gameworks, allowing the talented team to continue developing the Hi-Fi Rush IP and explore future projects.” Krafton added that it “intends to support the Tango Gameworks team to continue its commitment to innovation and delivering fresh and exciting experiences for fans.”
The move from Microsoft to Krafton will not impact Tango’s existing game catalog, which includes The Evil Within, The Evil Within 2, Ghostwire: Tokyo, and the original Hi-Fi Rush, the publisher said. Hi-Fi Rush is available on PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X.
Tango Gameworks was founded in 2010 by Shinji Mikami. The studio’s first release, The Evil Within, was a survival horror game in the vein of Mikami’s work at Capcom, where he had overseen survival horror games Resident Evil, Dino Crisis, and Resident Evil 4 as game director. Tango Gameworks became part of Xbox’s stable of studios when ZeniMax was acquired by Microsoft in 2021. Mikami left Tango in 2023.
The studio found great critical success with Hi-Fi Rush in 2023. The rhythm-action game was a surprise release through Microsoft’s Game Pass subscription, and markedly different from the dark and violent games Tango Gameworks had come to be known for.
Microsoft announced in May that it planned to close three studios under the Bethesda Softworks umbrella: Redfall developer Arkane Austin, Mighty Doom developer Alpha Dog Studios, and Tango Gameworks. A fourth studio, Roundhouse Games, had its staff reassigned to other duties.
Each week on Polygon, we round up the most notable new releases to streaming and VOD, highlighting the biggest and best new movies for you to watch at home.
This week, Despicable Me 4, the latest Minions movie starring Steve Carell, comes to VOD following its theatrical premiere earlier this year. That’s not all, though, as we’ve got several exciting streaming premieres this weekend as well like The Bikeriders on Peacock, La Chimera on Hulu, The Instigators on Apple TV Plus, and more.
Here’s everything new that’s available to watch this weekend!
Genre: Action comedy Run time: 1h 40m Director: Lee Myung-hoon Cast: Hwang Jung-min, Yum Jung-Ah, Jeon Hye-jin
A retired secret agent (Hwang Jung-min) finds himself unexpectedly thrown back into the fray of international espionage when he becomes involved in a mission involving his wife (Yum Jung-ah), a detective who knows absolutely nothing about her husband’s former life.
Genre: Period comedy-drama Run time: 2h 13m Director: Alice Rohrwacher Cast: Josh O’Connor, Carol Duarte, Isabella Rossellini
The latest from masterful Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher (Happy as Lazzaro, Le Pupille) stars one of the Challengersboys as a British archaeologist in a story of stolen historical artifacts. La Chimera was a Palme d’Or nominee at Cannes 2023.
New on Prime Video
One Fast Move
Where to watch: Available to stream on Prime Video
Genre: Action drama Run time: 1h 58m Director: Kelly Blatz Cast: K.J. Apa, Eric Dane, Maia Reficco
K.J. Apa (Riverdale) stars in this sports drama as Wes, a troubled young man who attempts to convince his estranged father Dean (Eric Dane) to teach him how to become a professional motorcycle racer. Taking him under his wing, Dean and Wes are forced to work through their troubled relationship as they attempt to create a new future for themselves.
New on Apple TV Plus
The Instigators
Where to watch: Available to stream on Apple TV Plus
Image: Apple
Genre: Heist comedy Run time: 1h 41m Director: Doug Liman Cast: Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, Hong Chau
Matt Damon and director Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity) reunite for this irreverent crime comedy co-starring Casey Affleck (Manchester by the Sea) and Hong Chau (The Whale). Damon stars as Rory, an ex-Marine who agrees to work alongside an ex-con (Affleck) to rob a mayoral fundraiser. When the botched robbery incites a city-wide manhunt by the police and the vengeful crime boss behind the plot, the pair “consensually kidnap” Rory’s therapist (Chau) in their desperate bid to escape and survive.
New on Peacock
The Bikeriders
Where to watch: Available to stream on Peacock
Image: 20th Century Studios
Genre: Crime drama Run time: 1h 56m Director: Jeff Nichols Cast: Jodie Comer, Austin Butler, Tom Hardy
The Bikeriders follows a motorcycle club over the course of a decade, as they go from a simple gathering of enthusiasts to a hardened gang. Jodie Comer plays Kathy, a young woman who gets swept up in the biker gang world after meeting hotheaded Benny (Austin Butler).
The Bikeriders is a film of old-fashioned, simple pleasures: great tunes, perfect costumes, myth-making shots, and a cast of great character actors really going for it. (Including, but not limited to, Michael Shannon, West Side Story’s Mike Faist, Justified’s Damon Herriman, and a completely unrecognizable Norman Reedus as a shaggy Californian wildman biker.) It’s a film about looking at the gorgeous, unknowable people on the screen — and that one gorgeous, unknowable person in particular — just as Hardy’s character does at one point with Marlon Brando in The Wild One, and thinking: What would it be like to be them?
New to rent
Despicable Me 4
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu
Image: Illumination
Genre: Comedy Run time: 1h 34m Directors: Chris Renaud Cast: Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig, Pierre Coffin
Formed supervillain-turned-secret agent Gru is back with an all-new adventure! Despicable Me 4 sees Gru relocate his family when his former rival Maxime Le Mal (Will Ferrell) re-emerges seeking revenge. As Gru’s family attempt to adjust to their new home, Gru’s teenage neighbor attempts to follow in his villainous footsteps, while Gru’s minions decide to become superheroes. That’s a lot, I know!
Despicable Me 4 is full of good ideas, with lots of them specifically appealing to what people like about these movies: Minion antics, Gru’s villain-ness versus his normal family life, and over-the-top Big Bad Guy theatrics among them. But all these bits and pieces are jumbled together and not cohesive enough to make sense as a story. The movie is discordant, like a bunch of musicians playing unfamiliar instruments (or a bunch of — dare I say — Minions given instruments) and trying to make a coherent song. But amid that chaos, sometimes the music starts sounding good — a cool jazzy saxophone solo soars briefly above the cacophony. You just have to grit your teeth and ignore the clanging drums and out-of-tune oboes around it.
Dandelion
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu
Image: IFC Films
Genre: Drama Run time: 1h 53m Director: Nicole Riegel Cast: KiKi Layne, Thomas Doherty, Melanie Nicholls-King
KiKi Layne (If Beale Street Could Talk) stars in this musical drama as Dandelion, a struggling singer-songwriter who travels the country performing gigs, all the while yearning for a career breakthrough she fears will never happen. After striking up a romance with Casey (Thomas Doherty), a fellow disgruntled musician, their love proves to be the inadvertent catalyst for Dandelion’s discovery of an authentic artistic voice all her own.
Widow Clicquot
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu
Image: Vertical Entertainment
Genre: Drama Run time: 1h 30m Director: Thomas Napper Cast: Haley Bennett, Leo Suter, Natasha O’Keeffe
This period drama stars Haley Bennett (Swallow) as Barbe-Nicole Clicquot, the widow of an 18th century vigneron who becomes the head of their fledgling vineyard after his untimely passing. Weathering financial difficulty and political turmoil, Barbe-Nicole must struggle to make a name for herself and nurture the company to fruition.
The state has fined a suburban brewery an undisclosed amount after they served a special infusion of Jeppson’s Malört with cicadas, celebrating the insects’ 2024 emergence. Noon Whistle Brewing Co. in Lombard made headlines in May for combining Chicago’s infamous liquor with bugs foraged from a neighboring park.
The Illinois Liquor Control Commission’s March report includes a blurb that does not mention Noon Whistle, but it refers to a licensee selling an infusion containing cicadas: “The licensee was cited for the violation and was provided education on the issue.” A message to an ILCC rep wasn’t immediately returned. Noon Whistle’s co-founder Mike Condon confirmed the fine over email and wrote he preferred not to share more info.
In May, Noon Whistle compared its cicada-infused malört to tequilas bottles with worms. They charged $5 per shot, and it was available for a limited time. Malört infusions are all the rage, as neighborhood bars are mixing ingredients like pumpkin spice and candy cane into the liquor. Even outside of Chicago, bartenders are unveiling sinister concoctions with the bitter spirit. The liquor is so storied that former Chicago Tribune beer writer Josh Noel has written a book, Malort: The Redemption of a Revered & Reviled Spirit, that will be released on September 3.
Local authorities have long held concerns about spirit infusions made at taverns and restaurants, worried that bartenders would ignore the science and allow bacteria to grow while waiting for flavors to develop. Plenty has changed over the years in terms of information available to the general public. For example, the Illinois Liquor Control Act of 1934 wasn’t written to take into account homebrewers; the Internet has helped better educate folks. The act does include a 14-day limit for infusions and bottles have to be clearly labeled with the start and end dates and listed the ingredients used. The state law also defines infusions as using “ingredients, including, but not limited to, fruits, spices, or nuts, are added to naturally infuse flavor into the spirit.”
Bugs aren’t listed. But neither is bacon — Chicago went through a phase, in the late 2010s, when bartenders were gleefully infusing spirits, like bourbon, with pork. There weren’t reported fines. However, presumably, they weren’t hunting pigs and curing their own bacon. They weren’t hunting wild pigs, they were buying a product from a store or butcher. There’s no such facility to procure food-grade cicadas.
Keep this in mind when cicadas remerge in Illinois in 2037.
Lollapalooza sightings
Last week, Chappell Roan drew the largest crowd ever at Lollapalooza, with organizers claiming the star attracted the largest festival audience ever during a Thursday, August 1 performance with a legion of about 80,000 fans in Grant Park gathering in front of her stage. Of course, these folks have to eat and River North restaurants feasted on the opportunities to feed celebs. Two days before, Roan sampled seafood in River North at Sushi-san. A rep says it was a low-key visit and the singer was barely noticed at the restaurant, part of the Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises group.
Lettuce has long been a company that draws celebrities and works with concert promoters to feed VIPs. With that in mind, it’s unsurprising that Kesha also found her way to Three Dots and a Dash where a rep says she threw a party for her band and took selfies in the bathroom. Meanwhile, The Killers, whose hit Mr. Brightside has found renewed life in clubs from Northalsted to River North, also played Lolla and the band dined at Lettuce’s Italian restaurant, Il Porcellino. This was while California singer-songwriter Dasha headed to Bub City and sang while they line danced, inspired by the performer’s viral TikTok. Rounding it out, Pierce The Veil did the most punk thing conceivable: They ate dinner at RPM Steak. The band also ate dinner with Blink-182’s Tom DeLonge at Miru the Japanese restaurant inside the St. Regis Chicago. Singer and actress Reneé Rapp (Mean Girls)was joined by Remi Wolf for dinner at RPM Seafood.
Other sightings included the K-pop group Stray Kids who visitedBonyeon, the steak omakase in West Loop. Icelandic singer/musician Laufey dined at Publican Quality Meats and was tended to by head chef and butcher Rob Levitt.
But life wouldn’t be the same without a Kardashian mention. Kourtney Kardashian, who has embraced more of a vegan diet, ate at Penelope’s Tacos in River North and posted a photo on Instagram.
5419 N Sheridan Rd, Chicago, IL 60640 (773) 878-7340
Chicago is in for a weekend of Air and Water Show fanfare.|
Getty
Technically, Chicago’s annual Air and Water Show on Saturday, August 10, and Sunday, August 11 will be held between Fullerton Avenue and Oak Street, but the strafing planes have been known to fly as far north as Rogers Park. There are, however, options for escape. One possibility is leaving town altogether. Another is hiding in a basement with snacks for sustenance. A third, and arguably best solution, is finding a peaceful patio far from the lake, with nice food, drink, and a quiet summer sky as a pleasant backdrop.
Those who aren’t excited about the Blue Angels’ return can take back the weekend with Eater Chicago’s list of top bars and restaurants where patrons can avoid the roar of aircraft through the two-day event.
Eater maps are curated by editors and aim to reflect a diversity of neighborhoods, cuisines, and prices. Learn more about our editorial process.
If you buy something or book a reservation from an Eater link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics policy.
A sea of restaurants has been lost since the pandemic’s start in March 2020 and it was presumed the Bento Box was one of the vanquished as Rick Spiros’ Asian restaurant ceased operations in Bucktown. But COVID’s complications were just one of the Bento Box’s concerns. A fire, just days before Gov. J.B. Pritzker ordered restaurants to close their dining rooms to curb the spread of the disease, made it feel like fans would never again sample Spiros’ signature egg rolls or red curry Singapore noodles.
Spiros, who is Greek American, has a fondness for global cuisines and cooks an assortment of cuisines. With his restaurant closed, he again focused on catering and his personal chef business. The latter became popular as diners kept away from restaurants during COVID. He began working at Trogo Kitchen & Market in Logan Square, the restaurant and cafe space inside the Green Exchange, a building overlooking the northbound Kennedy Expressway’s Diversey exit. Trogo was one of the locations where crews filmed kitchen scenes for the pilot episode of The Bear. He befriended owners Lolita Sereleas and Cian O’Mahony and serves as the chef in residence. Legendary Chicago chef Jimmy Bannos of Heaven on Seven fame has also done gumbo drops at the restaurant as he preps to open a new restaurant in suburban Skokie.
While hosting pop-ups, Spiros says he was greeted by Bento Box regulars who weren’t subtle in their praise for the old restaurant. Their enthusiasm struck him “like a thunderbolt” and led him to mount a comeback.
“I had very little idea how much people loved the restaurant, how much it was missed,” Spiros says.
And so, starting on Wednesday, August 7, the Bento Box returned, open Wednesday through Friday at Trogo, giving Spiros room to continue his personal chef business, and Trogo the space to flex programming if a rare opportunity (say Jeremy Allen White and company want to film more scenes) presents itself. There will be one seating to start — around 6 p.m. Reservations will allow diners to book until around 6:30 p.m.; Spiros doesn’t care if everyone is served their meals at once. It’s a three-course prix fixe: egg rolls, green curry mussels, and red chili chicken Singapore noodles. Takeout and delivery are also available a la carte. Spiros wants to eventually add a lemongrass creme brulee for dessert.
The last four years away from the daily operations of a restaurant have been restorative for Spiros. As they sorted through the fire’s aftermath, it became clear that he could not return to the Bento Box’s original Bucktown location, 2246 W. Armitage Avenue. It didn’t feel right trying to reopen. He didn’t even have the right equipment, like his beloved flattop that he was accustomed to using: “It came to the point where I just didn’t know if I wanted to do this right now,” Spiros says.
Chef Rick SpirosThe Bento Box
The world of restaurants has changed since Bento Box debuted in 2010. It’s not the first time he’s been asked, but what is a white guy doing cooking Korean, Chinese, Indian, and Japanese food? Spiros says many of his clientele are Indian and Korean, and he’s always happy to hear praise from those groups, especially from elders. One reason for his success is that he’s respectful of origins: “I’m not going to put sesame oil in something where it doesn’t belong,” Spiros says. “We’re not a fusion restaurant.”
“To be honest with you, I think that’s part of what makes this country awesome,” he adds. “We can have all these different cultures here and people can have an interpretation of it.”
Spiros likens his efforts to a cover band saying that even if a band plays another group’s song “note for note,” there will be differences: “There’s still something different in the way Led Zeppelin plays Stairway to Heaven or how someone else does it.”
He’s also here to offer something different. A dive serving a large menu might not have someone who can make handmade noodles. Making noodles is a labor-intensive act and it’s not cheap — an order of noodles at Bento Box costs more than $20. In the past, some have questioned Bento Box’s prices. Spiros recalls a customer complaining that he could buy similar food “for a fraction of the price” down the street. But then he returned with an apology, happy with Bento Box’s quality.
“The guy came back and said he was wrong,” Spiros says.
Bento Box at Trogo Kitchen & Market, inside the Green Exchange, 2545 W. Diversey Avenue, open 6 p.m. on Wednesday through Saturday, reservations via OpenTable. Carryout and delivery also available.
If you’ve logged onto Netflix at all recently, you’ve probably seen at least a few real estate shows pop up on your recommended list, with titles evoking the glamor and fame that one presumably achieves with a clientele predominated by plastic surgeons. From Paris to Tampa to Beverly Hills, these glossy reality series bring the best of unscripted television tropes to the world of luxury home sales, with agents whose egos are even bigger than their properties’ primary suites. Between the OG that started it all, Selling Sunset, and new additions like Owning Manhattan, we’re slowly witnessing the growth of a thrilling new subgenre I’ll tentatively brand “Real(i)ty TV.”
While the glitz and glam of the houses on display are essential to the shows’ appeal, that’s not what these programs are really about. If it’s pure real estate porn you’re after, you can head to ol’ reliable HGTV and stuff yourself with episodes of House Hunters and its exponential offspring. Netflix’s beloved real(i)ty shows, on the other hand, are for those of us who want drama—who thrive off the chaos of ambitious, plasticky people crying in Teslas and boasting about commission rates in home movie theaters.
Thus, it feels only right to analyze these shows (for brevity’s sake, only the tip of a steadily growing iceberg) by ranking their dramatic value. Never mind the properties’ cost, square footage, or resale value; the more important criteria here are things that numbers cannot express, such as vanity, envy, horniness, and hot tub make-outs. Let us dive into the world of real(i)ty TV not with housing at the forefront, but with all the shady stuff that goes down when listing agents are at play.
5. Buying London
Meet Daniel Daggers: a bespectacled British man who, first and foremost, earnestly calls himself “Mr. Super Prime” and, secondly, heads the luxury London property group DDRE Global. Daggers considers himself the great disruptor of London’s real estate market, mainly because he’s shaped his team of international agents into savvy lifestyle influencers and he spends his free time ramming into desks around his office as he tours homes via a VR headset. While Buying London ranks undeniably high on the Posh British Accent-ometer and features a truly smashing soundtrack of generic British girl pop, it is unfortunately lacking in the juicy drama we’ve come to expect from other British reality hits like Love Island.
There’s no shortage of charming moments: Agent Oli Hamilton (who looks like a yassified version of Severus Snape) flexes his unmatched pinstripe suit collection, and the team embarks on a group meditation session followed by gourmet smoothies. But the show simply doesn’t have enough petty plotlines to fill its seven-episode season, which means that, instead, we get a montage of Oli receiving a “total style makeover” (wearing a beanie) and scenes of Daniel’s parents insisting he find a wife before they die. I agree with Daniel’s mother that “it’s a pity” he isn’t pursuing love—not because I necessarily care about whether he finds a Mrs. Super Prime, but because watching men with big egos and deeply unbuttoned shirts bumble through dates is one of life’s great pleasures.
The one semi-dramatic plotline on Buying London is Oli’s flirtationship with DDRE’s Swedish interior designer, Juliana Ardenius (who just happens to be a former model and Miss Teen Universe contestant). Their chemistry is … not exactly electric but, nevertheless, palpable enough to arouse the suspicions of Oli’s non-model/non–Miss Teen Universe wife, Avia, who later confronts Juliana over drinks. But even this minor tiff ends up resolved at a later company party, when Juliana tells Avia she “would never go for Oli in a million years,” and they toast to “a fresh start.” (Pour one out for Oli, who definitely got a self-confidence boost from being the kingpin of a half-baked love triangle.)
4. Owning Manhattan
Ryan Serhant, founder of the self-titled real estate brokerage SERHANT., claims to have done over $8 billion in property sales. He also wrote a book called Big Money Energy, and—as he refuses to let anyone forget—is a cool 6-foot-3. (His favorite pastime is standing in property photos to demonstrate a condo’s very high ceilings.) Ryan’s all-star team of agents sells properties across Manhattan and some of the bougier areas of Brooklyn, giving us viewers a much-needed reminder that Williamsburg hasn’t been “gritty” for a good 20 years. The show is ripe with other endearing (annoying) New York-y things, such as agent Chloe Tucker Caine being a former Broadway star (and, thus, the person who assesses the vocal acoustics of newly listed penthouses) and agents patiently explaining to old-school Manhattanites what influencers are.
There’s nothing too juicy going down at SERHANT., with the lack of workplace romance proving especially upsetting considering everyone looks like a grown-up Gossip Girl character. As with any good New York story, we see the agents hustle for power and status, with a refreshingly innocent subplot following Southern belle agent Savannah Gowarty’s transition to life in “the big city.” Meanwhile, the firm’s Brooklyn expert, Tricia Lee, must fight to have her voice heard among the big bad Manhattan agents, including Nile Lundgren (whose bald head–singular hoop earring combo tells us everything we need to know about him).
The real standout of Owning Manhattan, however, is Jonathan Normolle, a Danish nightlife junkie who believes that having neck tattoos makes him “the next generation” of real estate. He’s like a Jersey Shore cast member who overstayed his welcome in Europe and now raves about leather parties and pickled herring, so, naturally, he becomes the series’ sole villain and tragic Icarus figure. (In trying to achieve podcast stardom, Jonathan, alas, flies too close to the sun.)
Though watching Jonathan’s rise and fall—from real estate wunderkind and model to … just model—is plenty satisfying, there’s nothing that leaves us grasping for more by the end of the season. Sure, we find Ryan scrambling to save face after losing out on a major deal, but that’s the boring business stuff (a.k.a. what HGTVis for). This is Netflix, baby, so bring on the gossip, backstabbing, and betrayals!
3. Buying Beverly Hills
Now in its second season, Buying Beverly Hills focuses on Mauricio Umansky, founder and CEO of the Agency, a global real estate brokerage based out of L.A. As the husband (spoiler: now ex-husband) of Real Housewives star Kyle Richards, Mauricio was predestined for reality show success, and it also doesn’t hurt that his top agents are his three oldest daughters, all of whom are as business savvy as they are skilled at applying bronzer. Ladies and gentlemen: King Lear.
The show delivers on its family drama. In the latest season’s subplots, middle daughter Alexia feels slighted by her other sisters’ newfound closeness, Mauricio and Kyle casually discuss the latter’s cheating allegations while preparing an Italian salad, and Alexia partners on a deal with Joey Ben-Zvi, her smarmy ex-boyfriend turned colleague, who—it must be noted—wears sunglasses indoors and sweaters as over-the-shoulder accessories. There’s also eldest daughter Farrah’s separation from her fiancé, Alex, which leaves her emotionally distraught enough to take over a barely defined director of operations role and even sport leisure wear on camera.
The true pièce de résistance of this season is the introduction of a new villain: Michelle Schwartz, a managing partner at the Agency who—for reasons apparent only to her—believes herself to be Mauricio’s obvious successor (never mind that they’re basically the same age). Joey’s early-season observation that “when you fuck with one Umansky, you fuck with all the Umanskys” proves quite prophetic when Michelle promises to mentor the Umansky girls only to later talk shit about them (calling them, among other things, “business suicide”).
Thus comes an epic showdown (rooftop poolside spat) between the Umansky sisters and the Wicked Witch of the Westside, and, truly, there’s never been more damning jabs thrown with margaritas in hand. But really, Michelle’s comeuppance is just the cherry on top of a season jam-packed with big life changes, major power swings, and—get this!—men opening up about their emotions.
2. Selling Sunset
Where does one begin with a show that’s led by twin brothers who are 5-foot-6 and bald but nevertheless radiatemachismo? Perhaps, to properly express the many, many dramatic arcs of the show’s latest season, we’re better off starting with its final episode, which (naturally) included the Oppenheim Group agents exploring their allegiances and darkest secrets via polygraph test moderated by … Tan France?
Things at the Oppenheim Group have never been messier. Agents repeatedly hurl deeply personal insults at each other; newcomers are received with trepidation, if not outright hostility; and Bre Tiesi dishes on sleeping with Michael B. Jordan and co-parenting a son with Nick Cannon. There’s also endless use of the phrase “social climber,” which is apparently the equivalent of “whore” in the luxury real estate world, where being self-made is everything. Take a shot every time Nicole Young calls Chrishell Stause this if you want to get completely sloshed in under an hour.
Oh, and Jason Oppenheim and his young, German model girlfriend, Marie-Lou, break up—but you already saw that coming. (Thank you to client/guest star Nikki Glaser for the acute observation that “for someone who doesn’t want kids, it’s weird that you’re dating one.”) Dating someone 20 years your junior is, it turns out, not always the surest path to true love, even if Marie-Lou did—as Jason never fails to mention—study economics at university. Way to go, Jason; you fumbled a relationship with the next Adam Smith.
Meanwhile, Chrishell and her Australian musician partner, G Flip, go from the honeymoon stage of dating to literally honeymooning in a matter of months. They also reveal plans to have a wedding ceremony every year on their anniversary: an ambitious, not-at-all-annoying goal seemingly designed to give Jason, Chrishell’s ex, an annual reminder of what could’ve been. We don’t see much of G Flip this season, but, when we do, they always look fresh out of a Matrix movie or Hot Topic ad, so we’re led to believe that Chrishell made the right call based on vibes alone.
1. Selling the OC
I’m prepared to get flack for ranking a Selling Sunset spinoff higher than Selling Sunset itself, but, truly, nothing can top the flawless dramatic structure of the OC’s latest season, which checks all the boxes of the best telenovelas. To start, we get an unprecedented (and objectively baller) power move from agent Gio Helou when he sends a speedboat to carry attendees from his colleague Kayla Cardona’s open house to the one that he’s hosting just across the Bay.
From here, things only get more chaotic at the Oppenheims’ OC office. A large chunk of the latest season consists of arguments about whether Austin Victoria did indeed ask fellow agent Sean Palmieri to join him and his wife for a threesome. (A question also arises of whether there would have been weed available at this threesome, which—to be fair—would have made for a more alluring proposition.) Like many of the great issues of our time, the truth of this alleged threesome proposal is left murky, which makes the whole ordeal all the more captivating. Among many other profound quotes, Austin remarks that the office is turning into a brothel and then tells Sean, “You’re not hot, bro … You’re making up rumors that my wife and I want to fuck you?!”
The best subplot of Selling the OC is equally messy but far more romantic, following the will-they-won’t-they relationship of agents Tyler Stanaland and Alex Hall. The back-and-forth of it all is enough to put Pam and Jim and Ross and Rachel to shame: Alex even considers forgoing her trip to Italy with a new love interest after Tyler pleads with her to stay. (Never mind that he completely ignored her in the preceding weeks.) While the fact that (spoiler alert) they don’t work out is definitely for the best, it’s pretty great to watch them try to convince themselves otherwise. Real estate agents … they’re just as delusional as the rest of us!
Holyn Thigpen is an arts and culture writer based in Brooklyn. She holds an MA in English from Trinity College Dublin and spends her free time googling Nicolas Cage.
Back in May, House of the Dragon writer Sara Hess said that the decision to scale back Season 2 from 10 to eight episodes “wasn’t really our choice.” Dragon’s audience didn’t have a choice either, but viewers have had their say since Sunday, and most seem to have sided with Hess. This season didn’t quite get to where book readers estimated it might end; Episode 8 would have worked great as the setup for a final couple of episodes, but it had way too many loose threads and half-fulfilled plot points to feel satisfying as a season finale. All in all, this was one of the more bizarrely structured seasons of TV I can remember—and unfortunately, the odd ending puts a damper on what had at one point been looking like a strong season.
Nevertheless, we’re here to take a look at all the lore, big questions, and book implications we can. Here are my thoughts on “The Queen Who Ever Was.”
Deep Dive of the Week: Everything Daemon’s Final Vision Tells Us About the Future of House of the Dragon
I must admit to a growing fatigue about the extent to which House of the Dragon has used prophecy to create character growth and move the story forward. In a 2000 interview, George R.R. Martin explained his own philosophy regarding the use of prophecy in storytelling, saying, “Prophecy is one of those tropes of Fantasy that is fun to play with, but it can easily turn into a straightjacket if you’re not careful.” He continued: “One of the themes of my fiction, since the very beginning, is that the characters must make their choices, for good or ill. And making choices is hard.”
But House of the Dragon is all-in on prophecy, and I’m grateful, at least, for the fodder it provides for this column. This week, we reach the culmination of Daemon’s Harrenhal arc, resulting in a rich vision in the godswood. Daemon gets glimpses of the future and even communes with Helaena, who herself has been rattled by visions from a young age. Let’s break down what it all means.
Before Daemon’s vision even begins, he sees an antlered figure disappear behind Harrenhal’s heart tree:
All images via HBO
This is a deep cut. Harrenhal lies on the north bank of the Gods Eye, the largest lake in Westeros. In the center of that lake is a mysterious island known as the Isle of Faces. This island has ancient significance. It’s where, many thousands of years prior to the events of House of the Dragon, the First Men and the children of the forest signed the Pact, ending a long war between the two. Faces were carved into the many weirwood trees on the island so that the gods could witness the pact, giving the island its name. It’s said that, in the current day, the Isle of Faces is the only place in the south of Westeros where a significant population of weirwoods still exists (there’s actually a very clear shot of the island and its trees in this episode when Rhaenyra and Addam arrive at Harrenhal). All the rest in the south have been cut down or burned.
In more recent times, a group known as the green men keep a “silent watch” over the island, per Catelyn in A Game of Thrones. “No one visits the Isle of Faces,” Bran tells us in A Storm of Swords. Thus, the green men are incredibly secretive to the point of possibly being apocryphal. Nursery tales claim that the green men have horns and dark green skin, though most maesters would say that they just wear headdresses of antlers and green garments.
We don’t even know what the green men do. There are rumors that some children of the forest still live on the Isle of Faces, and are protected by the green men. But no one knows for sure.
This particular green man is gone before Daemon—or we—can get too good a look at him. But for readers who’ve bought into the theory that Daemon may precede Brynden Rivers as the three-eyed crow, Westeros’s foremost greenseer, this sighting could cause a red alert. We’re very much in fan theory territory here, but this hypothesis seems much less far-fetched after “The Queen That Ever Was.”
Speaking of Brynden, this is where Daemon’s vision really begins: with a silver-haired figure encased in a tree. His wine stain birthmark gives him away: This is Brynden Rivers, the same greenseer who mentors Bran Stark in Season 6 of Game of Thrones (though Thrones omitted the birthmark). The birthmark is what gives him the moniker Bloodraven.
This is a vision of the future, as Brynden hasn’t actually been born yet. (He is also supposed to be missing an eye, a detail I imagine House of the Dragon omitted because it’d prompt some viewers to mistake him for Aemond). Bloodraven is actually Daemon’s great-grandson, and should appear in HBO’s forthcoming A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which is set about 100 years after House of the Dragon.
Next up, a three-eyed bird flies in front of Bloodraven’s face:
I’m not much of a bird watcher, but to my eye this is a crow. That’s a neat detail—Thrones changed the bird to a raven, probably to avoid confusion when the Night’s Watch is so frequently referred to as “crows.” But in the books, Brynden appears to Bran as the three-eyed crow, not the three-eyed raven, and this is a nod to that.
Next up, a White Walker with an army of wights:
I don’t think that one needs much explanation. I do wonder if this is more or less what Aegon the Conqueror saw in his vision. I’m surprised this wasn’t the Night King himself.
Then, a couple of dragons lie dead on a battlefield:
These two are difficult to identify. Book readers could guess, but then we’d get into spoiler territory. And there is more than one potential explanation, especially if the show tweaks some things from the books.
Now, a figure walks through a battlefield littered with bodies:
As with the dragons, there are many explanations here. I’m almost certain this figure is Daemon, given that the character falls through the battlefield as a transition to the next scene, where Daemon is drowning in a black abyss:
Next up, the comet from Season 2 of Game of Thrones:
This comet, which also plays a big role in A Clash of Kings, is one of my favorite features in A Song of Ice and Fire. In that second novel in the series, everyone has their own explanation for what the comet means; at least a dozen different interpretations are given. Some are flat-out wrong (I don’t think the comet honored the new king Joffrey, who would go on to die in the very next novel), but others are left ambiguous. Maybe the comet really did herald the return of dragons—Daenerys’s were born shortly before its appearance. Maybe it really was sent by the Undying Ones to guide Daenerys to Qarth—Dany did follow its path there. Or maybe it’s a complete coincidence. Comets just show up sometimes.
We’ll never know for sure. But as a literary device, it provides a great signifier of how symbols and prophecies can be read in many different ways. It all depends on the character doing the interpreting.
Next up, Daenerys’s eggs in a bed of fire:
And then the dragon queen herself, emerging with her dragon hatchlings:
Now back to the present day, and the current dragon queen. Rhaenyra sits the throne:
And then, the trippiest part of this whole scene for me, when Daemon turns and comes face-to-face with Helaena. “It’s all a story, and you are but one part of it,” she says. “You know your part. You know what you must do.”
At this point, it’s revealed that Daemon isn’t just having a vision of Helaena as she exists in his head: Helaena herself is communicating with Daemon in real time from King’s Landing. Here the scene shifts to Helaena, as Aemond emerges to once again try to convince his sister to fly Dreamfyre into battle. She reveals that she knows that Aemond burned Aegon and let him fall from his dragon, essentially leaving him to die.
“Aegon will be king again,” she says. “He’s yet to see victory. He sits on a wooden throne. And you … you’ll be dead. You were swallowed up in the Gods Eye, and you were never seen again.”
Aemond says he could have Helaena killed. “It wouldn’t change anything,” she spits back.
Even casual viewers probably realize that Helaena has been right about pretty much everything she’s seen in her visions. Remember when she says in Season 1 that young Aemond will have to “close an eye” to claim a dragon? Yeah, she knows the future. And based on his facial expressions during this conversation, I think Aemond knows this about his sister.
There’s a whole free-will dilemma being cracked open by Daemon and Helaena here. Maybe part of the reason Helaena has been so passive is that, in seeing the future, she’s resigned herself to it. Maybe something similar has happened with Daemon: When Rhaenyra warns him not to leave her again, he answers, “I could not. I have tried.” (Rhaenyra notes that her own lot in life was “decided for me long ago.”) That’d largely violate Martin’s philosophy—that prophecies must remain vague enough that characters can be free to make difficult choices—but it seems to be the direction the show is heading in.
But let’s set the philosophy aside and ask a more straightforward question: Is the show straight up spoiling itself with these visions?
I’ll let showrunner Ryan Condal answer that. In a virtual Q&A with press on Monday, he explained that spoilers aren’t at the top of his mind as he writes the show:
“We’re not pretending that nobody has read Fire & Blood, and that there’s not a Wikipedia that’s there one Google link away if you want to find out what happened,” Condal said. “We dispensed with the idea that there were going to be surprises on that level right at the beginning and writing the series.”
He also noted that it would have been silly to pretend that Viserys wouldn’t die at the end of Season 1—every viewer could see that coming from miles away. Granted, there’s a difference between the audience knowing the fate of the current king on a show that is clearly about a succession crisis, and the audience knowing the fates of characters who could potentially resolve that crisis. Still, Condal continued: “I will just say that, just because a thing is told to you doesn’t mean it’s going to happen exactly that way. And we’ve seen obviously in history and all that be misinterpreted before, both in the world of Fire & Blood, and in the world of A Song of Ice and Fire.”
So maybe these visions will come to pass exactly as Daemon and Helaena have seen them, and this story will turn out to be about the journey and not the destination. Or maybe the visions aren’t as set in stone as we may think.
After multiple episodes of teasing, Rhaena … still hasn’t claimed Sheepstealer, the dragon that has left Dragonstone to seek fresh mutton in the Vale. But it seems very likely that she’ll do so—and that she was probably meant to do so this season before the episode count was reduced—which surely has book readers curious and sad about a fan favorite character from Fire & Blood: Nettles.
Nearly a month ago, Martin published a particularly cranky blog post. The post contained various thoughts on dragons, including a long defense of some of his dragon-related literary decisions. For example, Martin gave his dragons two legs and two wings because “no animal that has ever lived on Earth has six limbs. Birds have two legs and two wings, bats the same, ditto pteranodons and other flying dinosaurs, etc.”
He also wrote a long paragraph detailing how his dragons are not nomadic and would never be found outside Dragonstone. He specifically said that they wouldn’t be found in the Vale. Here’s the relevant paragraph:
My dragons are creatures of the sky. They fly, and can cross mountains and plains, cover hundreds of miles … but they don’t, unless their riders take them there. They are not nomadic. During the heyday of Valyria there were forty dragon-riding families with hundreds of dragons amongst them … but (aside from our Targaryens) all of them stayed close to the Freehold and the Lands of the Long Summer. From time to time a dragonrider might visit Volantis or another Valyrian colony, even settle there for a few years, but never permanently. Think about it. If dragons were nomadic, they would have overrun half of Essos, and the Doom would only have killed a few of them. Similarly, the dragons of Westeros seldom wander far from Dragonstone. Elsewise, after three hundred years, we would have dragons all over the realm and every noble house would have a few. The three wild dragons mentioned in Fire & Blood have lairs on Dragonstone. The rest can be found in the Dragonpit of King’s Landing, or in deep caverns under the Dragonmont. Luke flies Arrax to Storm’s End and Jace to Winterfell, yes, but the dragons would not have flown there on their own, save under very special circumstances. You won’t find dragons hunting the riverlands or the Reach or the Vale, or roaming the northlands or the mountains of Dorne.
This commentary is so pointed that I have to think Martin had a heads-up about where House of the Dragon was going. In Episode 6, Sheepstealer showed up in the Vale and presented a deviation from Martin’s source material—and book readers started speculating that the show was replacing Nettles with Rhaena.
In Martin’s book, a vagabond girl named Nettles claims Sheepstealer. All of the recent Rhaena action from the Vale has been a show invention, which seems to telegraph the direction the show is moving in. This is all a bit of a shame, as Nettles is unlike any other dragonrider in A Song of Ice and Fire. She’s a bastard girl born to a dockside sex worker in Driftmark. The book describes her as “black-haired, brown-eyed, brown-skinned, skinny, foul-mouthed, fearless.” And remember, in the books the Velaryons are not Black—they have typical Valyrian features: pale skin, silver hair, purple eyes. Nettles has no known Valyrian ancestry and no Valyrian features whatsoever—the only rider in all of A Song of Ice and Fire without so much as a hint of “the blood of the dragon.”
Nettles is, apparently, one of Martin’s favorite characters. A couple of years ago, a fan asked Martin whether there were characters from Fire & Blood that he’d like to write more about. He answered Nettles, rhetorically asking, “Where does she come from? Where does she go to? What is her life like?”
I have to stop here to avoid spoiling Nettles’s story, which will likely become Rhaena’s story next season. This decision is prudent in some ways—combining characters is a classic book-to-screen adaptation move for a reason, and Rhaena is underused and often forgotten in Fire & Blood. But it does represent a dramatic shift in how each medium views dragonriders. House of the Dragon is taking Fire & Blood’s Broom Boy—its promise that dragonriding isn’t just for Valyrians—and is dashing it in favor of a character whose last name is literally Targaryen.
Will this cause problems down the line? Not that I can tell based on how the plot unfolds in the book. But Martin ended his blog post by writing, “Ignore canon, and the world you’ve created comes apart like tissue paper.”
Meet Sharako Lohar
We knew that Sharako would appear this season thanks to casting news, and in the finale she finally makes her debut. Tyland and the greens think the Triarchy could be key to winning this war, and Lohar leads their fleet. So who is this mud-loving, polygamous admiral?
Well, Sharako isn’t fleshed out much in the books. Dragon’s creators have swapped Sharako’s gender for the show, but in the books the character commands a fleet of 90 warships. It’s not clear exactly how many Corlys Velaryon has at his disposal, but as is made clear on both the page and the screen, Sharako’s fleet is powerful enough to at least challenge the Sea Snake’s.
It also appears that the show is merging Lohar with another character, Racallio Ryndoon, who was part of the force that fought Daemon in the Stepstones many years earlier. The tip-off that these two characters are being merged is the detail that Sharako keeps multiple wives—an attribute that the book ascribes to Racallio. In fact, Racallio is one of the wildest characters in all of A Song of Ice and Fire. I just have to let Fire & Blood’s description do the character justice:
Surprisingly little is known of his youth, and much of what we believe we know is false or contradictory. He was six-and-a-half feet tall, supposedly, with one shoulder higher than another, giving him a stooped posture and a rolling gait. He spoke a dozen dialects of Valyrian, suggesting that he was highborn, but he was infamously foul-mouthed too, suggesting that he came from the gutters. In the fashion of many Tyroshi, he was wont to dye his hair and beard. Purple was his favorite color (hinting at the possibility of a tie to Braavos), and most accounts of him make mention of long curling purple hair, oft streaked with orange. He liked sweet scents and would bathe in lavender or rosewater.
That he was a man of enormous ambition and enormous appetites seems clear. He was a glutton and a drunkard when at leisure, a demon when in battle. He could wield a sword with either hand, and sometimes fought with two at once. He honored the gods: all gods, everywhere. When battle threatened, he would throw the bones to choose which god to placate with a sacrifice. Though Tyrosh was a slave city, he hated slavery, suggesting that perhaps he himself had come from bondage. When wealthy (he gained and lost several fortunes) he would buy any slave girl who caught his eye, kiss her, and set her free. He was open-handed with his men, claiming a share of plunder no greater than the least of them. In Tyrosh, he was known to toss gold coins to beggars. If a man admired something of his, be it a pair of boots, an emerald ring, or a wife, Racallio would press it on him as a gift.
He had a dozen wives and never beat them, but would sometimes command them to beat him. He loved kittens and hated cats. He loved pregnant women, but loathed children. From time to time he would dress in women’s clothes and play the whore, though his height and crooked back and purple beard made him more grotesque than female to the eye. Sometimes he would burst out laughing in the thick of battle. Sometimes he would sing bawdy songs instead.
Racallio Ryndoon was mad. Yet his men loved him, fought for him, died for him. And for a few short years, they made him a king.
So yeah, get ready for more Sharako in Season 3!
Where is Otto?
For the first time since Episode 2, we get a glimpse of the man who did more than any other to put this entire war into motion. Way back at the beginning of the season, Otto, who’d been dismissed as Aegon’s hand, was supposed to head to Highgarden to rally the Tyrells to the greens’ side, as they had yet to formally declare for either faction. Then he disappeared, and we later learn that Alicent’s letters to him went unanswered.
Now we know the reason for Otto’s silence: He’s in prison … somewhere.
There are no book insights—and no book spoilers—to be had here. In Fire & Blood, Otto remains in King’s Landing after Aegon fires him. And he’s instrumental in winning the Triarchy over to the greens, though he does so by way of raven, not by mud fight. If the showrunners were determined to give Otto more to do, the obvious decision would have been to send him to Essos. At his age, he might not have been able to wrestle in the muck, but he could have been given some interesting scenes. Sending him somewhere unknown instead, and revealing he’s locked away, creates a big mystery. Color me intrigued!
Total speculation: The most likely location for Otto is Honeyholt, the seat of House Beesbury in the Reach. We know that the Beesburys declared for the blacks after their lord Lyman Beesbury was killed back in Season 1. If he passed through Beesbury lands on his way through the Reach, they would have been inclined to take him prisoner.
The problem with that theory? Honeyholt lies west of Highgarden. So if Otto met with the Tyrells first, he would have had to continue to Oldtown to cross paths with the Beesburys. And if he made it to the Tyrells, why not give him a scene or two at Highgarden?
The other problem: Otto should be much too smart to get himself captured this way. It’d be out of character for him to attempt to march through territories that are openly at war with him. In the “Inside the Episode” video that aired after the finale, Condal remained tight-lipped about Otto, saying, “We don’t know quite where he is or what happened to him.”
Finally, justice for the Tyroshis
Book readers have long had a bit of a sore spot about how Game of Thrones muted Martin’s lively world. Especially in later seasons, a world that is full of color became a mess of grays and blacks. I’m talking about literal wardrobe choices and how Thrones slowly moved away from the bright sigils and eccentric outfits described in Martin’s writing in exchange for a dreary palette that was supposed to convey how dark and serious the story was becoming.
Nowhere was this sort of change more stark than in the depiction of Daario Naharis, the Tyroshi sellsword who accompanies Daenerys for a few seasons. Here’s how Daario was described in A Storm of Swords:
Daario Naharis was flamboyant even for a Tyroshi. His beard was cut into three prongs and dyed blue, the same color as his eyes and the curly hair that fell to his collar. His pointed mustachios were painted gold. His clothes were all shades of yellow; a foam of Myrish lace the color of butter spilled from his collar and cuffs, his doublet was sewn with brass medallions in the shape of dandelions, and ornamental goldwork crawled up his high leather boots to his thighs. Gloves of soft yellow suede were tucked into a belt of gilded rings, and his fingernails were enameled blue.
And in the show, we got … two pretty-looking generic dudes (thanks to an actor change), one clean-shaven, one bearded:
Well, the blue-hair enthusiasts got their wish this week. With Tyland in Essos, we see quite a few people who bear a striking resemblance to book Daario. I mean, just look at this guy:
Heck, we got two blue-haired Tyroshis:
Big episode for blue-haired representation and for everyone who enjoys a good splash of primary color.
The Board Before Us
The Triarchy is on the board thanks to Tyland’s prowess in the mud-fighting pit. That’s the biggest change to the map in a while, and it gives the greens the naval power to match the blacks. Though Aemond and Co. still have a major dragon deficit (and are facing a reunified Daemon and Rhaenyra), the greens made up some significant ground. Here’s how it all looks:
Next Time On …
That’s it for House of the Dragon Season 2. But we did get a full seven-second look at A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, coming next year:
I encourage you to read Tales of Dunk and Egg, the three novellas that will serve as the basis for this next series. They’re possibly my favorite bit of writing in all of A Song of Ice and Fire. Just absolute delights. And they’re short.
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25585907/53942562993_e2597be28c_h.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25585891/53942314326_5c483e5232_h.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25585890/53941412842_6ad3b370c4_h.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25585894/53942649699_77f0c5ee4f_h.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25585900/53942649594_efa3d5f8fd_h.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25582177/31JUL24_Eater_CairoKebabMolokhia_5.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25582181/31JUL24_Eater_CairoKebabMolokhia_9.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25582173/31JUL24_Eater_CairoKebabMolokhia_1.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25582182/31JUL24_Eater_CairoKebabMolokhia_10.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25583036/2167476619.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25583029/2156575581.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25583042/2160837780.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25583045/2161970876.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25552505/sandersbbq_kimkovacik_eaterchi_13_53876714303_o.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25552498/sandersbbq_kimkovacik_eaterchi_01_53875579312_o.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25552502/sandersbbq_kimkovacik_eaterchi_07_53876715108_o.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25552501/sandersbbq_kimkovacik_eaterchi_06_53876893995_o.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25552509/sandersbbq_kimkovacik_eaterchi_23_53876712038_o.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25552506/sandersbbq_kimkovacik_eaterchi_15_53876713518_o.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25552511/sandersbbq_kimkovacik_eaterchi_25_53876711603_o.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25552515/sandersbbq_kimkovacik_eaterchi_40_53876708708_o.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25557395/The_Instigators_Photo_0101_H_2024.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24982500/bikeriders_dtrl1_4k_r709f_stills_230831.089040.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25515729/2539_FP_00360A.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25563721/MWbtuikQ.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25563719/Clicquot_first_look_still.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25562988/Screenshot_2024_08_06_at_1.21.37_PM.png)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25562989/Screenshot_2024_08_06_at_1.22.16_PM.png)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25562990/Screenshot_2024_08_06_at_1.29.24_PM.png)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25562992/Screenshot_2024_08_06_at_1.22.51_PM.png)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25562997/Screenshot_2024_08_06_at_1.23.26_PM.png)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25563004/Screenshot_2024_08_06_at_1.24.27_PM.png)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25563008/Screenshot_2024_08_06_at_1.24.48_PM.png)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25563013/Screenshot_2024_08_06_at_1.25.16_PM.png)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25563014/Screenshot_2024_08_06_at_1.26.15_PM.png)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25563015/Screenshot_2024_08_06_at_1.26.42_PM.png)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25563018/Screenshot_2024_08_06_at_1.27.13_PM.png)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25563019/Screenshot_2024_08_06_at_1.27.36_PM.png)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25563027/Screenshot_2024_08_06_at_5.02.48_PM.png)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25563030/daario_naharis_1920.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25563033/Screenshot_2024_08_06_at_1.15.16_PM.png)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25563035/Screenshot_2024_08_06_at_1.17.34_PM.png)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25563036/HotDS2PowerMap_ep8_HBO.jpg)