Tyler LaRiviere/Sun-Times
Over the past year, I’ve worn a coat and tie exactly once. The incoming head of the Taiwanese economic development office in Chicago wanted to get acquainted over a Zoom call. I knew he’d be wearing a coat and tie, and didn’t want to be disrespectful: they’ve got enough of that coming from communist China already.
It was, as they say in diplomatic circles, a frank and productive exchange of ideas.
A few minutes before we spoke, I stood before the mirror in the bedroom, fingers fluttering at the necktie blue, not red, for obvious reasons. I wondered if I’d remember how to tie it. But I’ve been tying neckties since 1974, when I played the Mr. Darling/Captain Hook role in “Peter Pan” at Camp Wise and had to tie a tie onstage while delivering lines. You don’t forget.
Caitlin Cole Design [Official Rendering]
A new upscale Italian restaurant from a gaggle of local industry veterans is coming soon to the ground-floor space in No. 9 Walton, a ritzy Gold Coast condo building at 912 N. State Street. Adalina is slated to open this summer with a menu that draws on both Northern and Southern Italian cuisines, in the two-story space that previously housed Walton Street Kitchen & Bar.
Soo Ahn, formerly of shuttered Michelin-starred brewpub Band of Bohemia, will lead the kitchen and work alongside chef de cuisine Sam Rosales (Monteverde) and pastry chef Nicole Guini (Blackbird, Avec). In his prior position, Ahn developed a reputation for his creative and thoughtful use of vegetables. It remains to be seen if that focus will reemerge at Adalina, but customers can expect offerings including porcini lumache pasta (porcini powder-infused pasta, castelvetrano olives, pancetta, ricotta salata) and Chilean sea bass Vesuvio (truffle, potato gnocchi, oregano, snap