As a college student living in Chicago, great food at a reasonable price can be hard to come by. As many locals know, eating out in the city often involves sacrifice, forcing you to choose between cost, food quality, and atmosphere. That's why, when you find a place that doesn't ask you to give up anything at all, you can't help but to keep going back for more. Chilango Mexican Street Food is a rare find that never leaves you disappointed. For University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) students such as myself, fresh ingredients, vibrant surroundings, and happy customers are only a 15-minute walk from campus – close enough to stop for lunch and far enough to make it an adventure. Situated on the historic Taylor Street block that makes up most of Little Italy, Chilango offers a lively destination for any foodie on a budget. Pops of color attract the eye, making the spot stand out from any other on the bustling street, while warm trumpet notes from Mariachi music ensnare passersby into coming inside for a bite. Despite its success, Chilango is only four-years young. It’s quick shot to fame has everything to do with the hard work that founder and owner, Ernesto Guzman, has put into developing the business. That’s why on Tuesday, April 11, I sat down at the busy restaurant with Mr. Guzman to ask him about the birth of the concept and how Chilango became Taylor Street's most popular Mexican food joint. ****** Rachel Knowles: What made you want to open a restaurant? Ernesto Guzman: I paid for my college, and I helped my wife with her education as well by working in the restaurant and hospitality industries. I had graduated with a major in business, but then after so many years of working I decided to go to culinary school to study restaurant and hotel management: you get the perspective of cooking from the front of the house operations, and then you also get the other side – what’s happening in the kitchen. Most of the time, you belong in the front or the back of the house, and then you don’t know what the other does. I wanted to go to school so I would have a better understanding of both. RK: What inspired the concept of Chilango? EG: Chilango, to me, comes as a need. As a customer, I looked for good Mexican restaurants with fresh ingredients, tasty food, a good environment, great service, and fair prices in a nice area, and I discovered that it is really hard to find a place with all of those characteristics. I determined that there is a need – there are people like me looking for places like that – so I began to search for potential areas and explored the demographics and analyzed them, and when I found Taylor Street, I knew that I could develop and materialize my vision for Chilango here. RK: What stood out to you about Taylor Street that prompted you to say, “Chilango belongs here,” rather than somewhere else? EG: The demographics: not only the foot traffic, but you also have University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) faculty and students that are looking for that quick bite at a fair price. At the same time, they are looking for places where they are willing to spend a little bit of more time and more money relaxing because the atmosphere is proper for it. Chilango offers a balance of opportunities for both. RK: Let’s talk about the atmosphere for a minute, because I’ve lived here for four years so I saw the place that was here before this – a Colombian empanadas restaurant – and this is a huge upgrade: much more welcoming, more patrons, a larger menu, etc. How did you go about creating the design concept that manifested to what we see now? EG: Well, like many things in life, I just adapted from what I had envisioned. I originally was looking at another building just a few doors down. As I am in the middle of negotiating the deal, there were legal troubles with the former owners, so I decided I wasn’t going to pursue that. As I am walking down the street that day, I get to meet the owner of this place. It was lunch time and I noticed that the other restaurants in the area were busy, but not this place. I believe that the place was pretty new and the product was decent, but it wasn’t attracting a crowd. The owner was disappointed with his concept, he didn’t want to do anything else with it, he didn’t know how to do anything else with it, so we started negotiations. As soon as I did, I knew that I could rescue the product that he originally had – the empanadas – and make them a part of my menu and my vision for Chilango. I bought from him was whatever equipment he had and the branding for the empanadas, but as far as the recipes, I had to work them out to make them a part of what Chilango is now. Even though I rescued some of the names of the empanadas that he originally had – because they are compatible with Mexican cuisine – the recipes are 100-percent my own. RK: I know the place before Chilango only served empanadas. Do you think that was part of the reason why it didn’t become successful? EG: Absolutely. As I said before, the empanadas themselves were a good product: they were too authentically Colombian for my taste, so I had to change them to more of a Mexican style to fit the Chilango concept. Even though it seemed like he had an idea of what he wanted for his business, he didn’t have either the will, the energy, or the dollars to make it into something different. RK: What has been your biggest challenge so far in running your own business, and on the flip side of that, what has been most rewarding? EG: They both come very close together in my case: the biggest challenge that I confronted was being able to adapt. Chilango has grown so fast that we had to be responsive to the demand and the popularity of the brand. Not only in adding new dishes but everything else that running this business requires: people coming in and out, people calling, and people ordering online. Additionally, there were people trying to get us in magazines or newspapers, or create competitions about us when we were barely able to control the growth that we were already experiencing organically – we had no marketing. I had a marketing plan in place, but I never got the chance to executive it because I had so much already on my hands. With the challenges of being so popular comes the responsibility of maintaining quality, consistency, and a great environment – all of those things that are what I have always wanted to give to my customers can easily get out of hand just based on demand. My focus was just to be able to deliver to the customers that I was getting – that was the challenging part. The most rewarding part was seeing that we became so popular so fast. RK: It’s true. Just walking by Chilango, you’re immediately drawn to this place: the color, the liveliness of the customers, the music – it just makes it seem so welcoming, especially compared to what this placed looked like before you acquired it in 2013. EG: Well, it was very thought out. The former owner invested a lot of money in what he had, and it probably was good for his vision and his product, but not for this area. I knew that in order to get my concept where I wanted it to be, I had to transform the place so that it could become part of neighborhood, which is what I wanted. The colors, the name, the brand, the logo, the walls, the décor – you know by now I have really transformed the place about three times. I never envisioned that we were going to have so many people walking in, so I needed to have more seating space than I had in the past. A year after we opened, I changed some things, added some tables and a little more seating, then two years after we opened, I completely optimized my spaces to be able to accommodate not only more seating space, but also more equipment in the kitchen and more staff. When we started, we had two or three cashiers and one or two cooks, and we were buying ingredients one case at a time – one case of tomatoes and a few avocados – because you don’t know what is going to happen! Now we go through several cases of ingredients a day and we have 45 people working in the brand, including full- and part-time employees and contractors. RK: Do you have any other locations? EG: I have a building in Lincoln Park, and my original plan was to transform that location into a Chilango as well, but I’ve had definitely had challenges to get that one going: the spaces next to me were supposed to be available two months after I acquired the lease, but it took three years for them to leave. By the time they left and I was able to finally take over that space, my wife became pregnant with our first baby; so at the time I didn’t want to do any more expansions, I just wanted to focus on my wife, my baby, and the business that I already had. My baby is now seven months old. It has been both challenging and rewarding, having a baby and a business, but we are at the point where we are beginning to get used to it. We now have control over both situations, so now is the moment to start going. Right now, I am actually looking at another building in the neighborhood – we have negotiations going as we speak – so if that happens, I would be acquiring a building that is double the size of Chilango, so we can make that what we want it to be, and then focus on developing the Lincoln Park location. RK: What influences did you draw on for the menu? EG: The menu is inspired by Mexican street food – that’s originally the concept I envisioned. I wanted to feature some of the most popular eats that you have on the streets of Mexico City. But again, taking into account the tastes of my customers, I was able to adapt that cuisine into what I knew the customers in this area were going to like. The menu I have right now is not necessarily the one that I originally wanted to have, but it is a menu that works and makes people happy, and the quality, speed, presentation, taste, prices, and personality are all there, so I am still consistent with my original vision. RK: What is your favorite menu item? EG: Besides everything? *laughs* Something that I eat a lot is the Al Pastor taco with cheese on a flour tortilla – in Mexico it is called “Gringa.” And of course, the steak tacos! The guys know that I can have two of each of those and be happy for the day. My favorite empanadas are the mushroom, chicken, and cheese – “Champanion Chicken” – empanadas. RK: I know you already mentioned some of your plans for the future, some of which are already in the works. Is there anything else going on that you wanted to share? New menu items or concepts, for example? EG: The biggest opportunity that we have right now is to expand our menu, because there is demand for that: people want more items on the menu and people also want us to be more effective at catering. Right now, we do offer catering – we actually just finished a 100-person catering order today – but I would never be able to feed 100 people, plus my regular clientele inside of my restaurant. Our biggest catering order was at a couple of offices in downtown: we did 4,000 empanadas, 150 quesadillas, 20 gallons of horchata, and we used six cases of avocados for guacamole – that’s something. It took us all night of preparation and by 9:30am that next morning we were serving people downtown: it went flawlessly and people loved it! It gave us an opportunity to introduce our concept to a lot of people who didn’t know us, and now they come back to see where the food came from. But it is challenging as it is, for the size of the operation, to do orders like that – that is why we want another building. If that happens and this negotiation goes through, we will be able to add at least another ten items to the menu and accommodate more caterings. Also, starting the Sunday after Easter, we will start serving brunch. We will do brunch for two Sundays, then afterwards extend the offering to Saturdays as well, and within a month, we will offer breakfast every day. New items for those would include chilaquiles, enchiladas, and breakfast burritos, and of course we would offer French toast and pancakes, plus a variety of Mexican-style eggs, like huevos rancheros and huevos divorciados – these are very popular on other Mexican-restaurant menus anyway, so for us it would be no problem! ****** Rachel Knowles is a senior at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Originally published on Livin' the Chi-Life.
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Every summer, thousands of young people flock to the city of Chicago to partake in an array of massive music festivals, the most coveted of which include Lollapalooza (known as “Lolla”) and Spring Awakening (“SAMF”). These festivals offer fans unique, exciting experiences, alluring attendees with the opportunity to see all of their favorite artists perform across one, three- to four-day event.
While this may sound like a dream come true to any music enthusiast, there is an ugly side to these festivals, particularly those centered around Electronic Dance Music (EDM). Beyond the glitz and the glamour of these massive events hides a danger which can sometimes become life threatening: irresponsible concert-goers may find themselves in precarious situations, resulting from a party culture that glorifies alcohol and drugs.
In 2015, 238 Lolla-attendees were sent to the emergency room across the three-day event, according to the Chicago Tribune. Out of these cases, the Chicago Sun Times identified more than 100 patients as underaged teens with alcohol-related emergencies. Comparably, the same source reports that SAMF sent 45 teens to the hospital with alcohol poisoning and other drinking-related emergencies.
Hospitals often have to accommodate the anticipated influx of ER-patients during festival weekends with additional staff and equipment, often running “Drunk Drills” to prepare, noted the Chicago Tribune. “The average intoxicated Lollapalooza teen was a 14-year-old girl from the suburbs,” pediatrician at Lurie Children’s Hospital and professor at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine Dr. Bob Tanz told the Chicago Sun Times. “That’s pretty startling by itself.” He added that the teens’ average blood-alcohol levels were found to be well above the .08-percent mark – the level that prompts a DUI charge – and that a few concert-goers “approached near-fatal levels” of alcohol. One hospital in Streeterville treated as many as 33 individuals from Lolla 2015, primarily for alcohol and drug abuse, according to an attending physician in Lurie’s ER, Dr. Walter Eppich. Apparently, several teens had double or triple the legal alcohol limit to drive in their systems from mixing hard liquor with popular party drugs like marijuana, ecstasy, or cocaine, Eppich added. Unfortunately, this practice is not uncommon at festivals and dealers know that they can score a pretty penny from selling at these events.
So how is it that, despite security precautions, so many underaged teens get access to alcohol (or drugs) within these events? There is no way to know for sure, but some think “liquor gardening” may be a contributor. This practice involves burying bottles of alcohol at the festival location a week prior to the event, and then retrieving it sometime during the festival. According to the Chicago Tribune, there are even entire Reddit threads dedicated to best practices for sneaking alcohol into festivals like Lolla and SAMF. It seems to me like this method could be equally effective for smuggling in drugs, considering how much makes its way past the festival gates and into the systems of teens, many who are doing it for the first time.
It can be hard to enjoy the show when you are too busy vomiting, struggling to breathe, or having seizures – all symptoms of alcohol and/or drugs overdose. As they say, experience is a hard teacher; but you also have to live through your experiences in order to learn from them.
If the possibility of death isn’t enough to make you want to skip out on music festivals, consider also the exorbitant price of admission: SAMF 2017 can run you anywhere from $189 to $219 for the three-day fest, and this year’s Lolla fest starts at $120 to $335 across four days – you can buy a plane ticket with this type of money!
Of course, I realize that there are those that do party responsibly, but I believe that anyone in attendance should at the very least be aware of the risks. So if you do decide to attend festivals this summer, my only bit of advice would be to stay safe, be smart, and keep hydrated! Rachel Knowles is a senior at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Originally published on Livin' the Chi-Life. The art of marking skin with ink is over 5,000 years old and continues to evolve. Explore the cultures, practices, and objects connected by ink in Tattoo.” – The Field Museum After much research and inquiry into different shops, I decided to get a tattoo as a 21st birthday present to myself (sorry mom). I didn’t think it would hurt that much – and it didn’t. Of course, I did take a couple of Norco beforehand, left over from my appendicitis surgery, so I guess you could call that cheating. After a couple of hours of needle pricks and buzz-buzzing, I was officially inked – a hummingbird permanently affixed to my left shoulder, wings stretched behind in an eternal flutter. It’s true what they say: once you’ve gotten your first tattoo, you immediately begin planning your next. That might not be a bad thing though, since getting multiple tattoos actually has been shown to boost your immune system. But regardless of the health (and ego-related) benefits, I have always been a planner, and so I took to the Field Museum’s newest special exhibit, Tattoo, to find some inspiration from tattoo practices from across the globe. Walking into the exhibit reminded me a lot of walking in Vanity Tattoo, the shop where I got my hummingbird done: red paint, low lighting, edgy décor, and countless displays across the walls. The exhibit was expansive, covering the history, cultural practices, and technology surrounding tattooing before getting into the more contemporary aspects of the art. Items throughout the exhibit included everything from photographs, design books, and intricately painted clay and wood artifacts, to tools, canvases, and silicone body molds. It began by introducing the origins of tattooing as central to many of the world’s cultures, which use the practice for various purposes. In rituals, tattoos were used to reflect or enhance an individual’s spirituality. Some symbolized a coming of age, while others were thought to give wearers “magic powers.” “Tattooing for some of these poor villages was a way to get by,” said Elizabeth McHugh, a junior studying Spanish and international studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). “People from other countries go to visit these little villages where they make these beautiful tattoos and think it’s just so cool, but it really means more than that. It’s a part of their way of life. This exhibit really allows you to appreciate that.” Tattooing has also been used as a punishment, to mark those deemed sinners (prostitutes received tattoos of penises) or to dehumanize people (Jews were given numbers in the concentration camps under the Nazi regime). One of the most interesting sections of the exhibit explored prison tattooing, particularly in the Soviet Union’s “gulags,” where tattoos began as a method for branding criminals. Later, the practice was reclaimed by inmates who used them to broadcast their crimes and assert their authority in prison hierarchies, or express resistance to those holding them captive. A skull and crossbones warned other prisoners that you were a murderer, and a cat indicated thievery. Stars represented the number of years you had been imprisoned, while rings demonstrated status. Wolves, pigs, and apes caricatured prison guards – an inmate’s way of showing resistance to the authority of their captors. Another notable section of the exhibit introduced how tattooing spread to the West, adopted first among sailors and soldiers as rites of passage, and then popularizing across the US through traveling tattoo artists, who lugged large trunks containing tools, ink, and displays of their work from town to town. “You hear so much about tattoos in the US, but it’s something that happens all over the world,” said McHugh. “It’s a worldwide fascination that people have. It’s so different, yet the same at the core as a means of expression and symbolism. It means a lot to people for different reasons.” As I neared the end of the exhibit, the familiar buzzing of needle got louder and louder, leading me to stumble upon the exhibit’s very own tattoo parlor, where real artists worked on clients. The in-house studio is set up for LIVE tattooing demonstrations that you can watch through a clear glass window. A warning though: if you do decide to explore the Field Museum’s Tattoo, don’t be surprised if you end up wanting a permanent souvenir of your own. The exhibit is open now until April 30 during the museum’s regular hours for an extra fee. If you’re feeling extra adventurous, you can even book an appointment to get your own tattoo done at the end of your visit. Rachel Knowles is a senior at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Originally published on Livin' the Chi-Life. |
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April 2017
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