The Daily Parker

It's day 88 of my exile from the office, but I recently found out I may get to go in for a day soon. Will this happen before the 24th (day 100)? Who's got the over/under on that?

Meanwhile, outside my bubble:

• A new book alleges that Melania Trump remained in New York during the first few months of her husband's presidency as a tactic in renegotiating her prenuptial agreement.
• Michael Tomsky asks, "Why does Trump lie?"
• Cellphone data shows that people in some parts of the country are gathering at pre-pandemic levels. (Not in Chicago, however.)
• A stretch of Broadway in Lakeview (the Chicago neighborhood adjacent to mine to the south) will close to traffic tomorrow so that it can open to restaurants.
• One of my favorite Internet producers, Julie Nolke, wonders "where missing puzzle pieces go."
• AVWeb has a nifty catalog of all the ways pilots try to stop being pilots...abruptly.

And just in case you're not scared of everything on earth, here's a list of things in the cosmos that can help you feel even more scared.

Not just articles today, but also a whole HBO mini-series:

• Starting Monday, HBO will air a 6-part series on the infamous McDonald's Monopoly fraud, about which I have posted previously.
• That interesting new take-out place you saw on GrubHub? It might not exist.
• Republicans voting in favor of President Trump's abuse of power and obstruction of Congress will be remembered.
• The Atlantic calls Facebook's new data-privacy tool "a data landfill."
• Airlines have slashed flight schedules in and out of China as a result of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, but Cranky Flier says it's more about the panic than the virus.
• By the way, coronaviruses are way less contagious than measles, so try not to panic.

For yet another thing to worry about today, after this post and the one before it, the New Yorker has started a series about the last time democracy almost died. (Hint: it got better.)

And it's not even lunchtime yet:

• A storm has left Venice flooded under 187 cm of water, the second highest flood since records began in 1923. Four of the five largest floods in Venice history have occurred in the last 20 years; the record flood (193 cm) occurred in 1966.
• As our third impeachment inquiry in 50 years begins public hearings, Josh Marshall explains what the Democrats have to prove.
• Yoni Appelbaum wonders if the country can hold together. He's not optimistic.
• Via Bruce Schneier, the NTSB has released a report on the autonomous car accident in 2018 that killed Elaine Herzberg. A notable detail: "Police investigators later established that the driver had likely been streaming a television show on her personal smartphone."
• Chicago Tribune restaurant critic Phil Vettel lists his 50 favorite restaurants in the area. I have a mission.

And you should see Sir Rod Stewart's model railroad. Jaw-dropping.

Here are the news stories that filtered through today:

• Netflix released viewing figures as part of its quarterly report to shareholders. Guess what their most popular show is?
• The New Yorker reviewed Chef Iliana Regan's autobiography, and now I might have to buy it before my next dinner at Elizabeth.
• Given WeWork's declining fortunes and enormous lease liabilities, what will happen to New York's real estate market if WeWork dies?
• With the Chicago Teacher's Union on strike, Greg Hinz asks, who will get the blame?
• Actor John Lithgow thinks President Trump is a horrible entertainer.
• David Graham thinks Tuesday's debate was boring, and unnecessary.

See? You thought more of the news would be bad.

My task this afternoon is to parse a pile of random text that has, shall we say, inconsistencies. Before I return to that task, I'm setting aside some stuff to read later on:

• The Chicago-area transit agency Metra plans to spend $2.6 bn over the next five years on fixing things. It can do this because Republican Bruce Rauner, who basically froze the state budget for his entire term, got booted out of office a year ago.
• The Trump Administration continues its assault on evidence-based research, for example gutting two USDA programs by moving their headquarters to Kansas City.
• The Atlantic's Mark Bowden interviewed dozens of top military officers who think the President is dangerous to our national security.
• It turns out, people support climate change prevention and remediation efforts even when they know the cost.

And finally, Crain's reviews five relatively-new steakhouses in Chicago. Since we probably won't eat steak past about 2030, these may be worth checking out sooner rather than later.

I live only a short walk from the space formerly occupied by 42 Grams, one of the best restaurants I've ever experienced. The food at 42 Grams was so good that they earned two Michelin stars just a few months after opening. But when the owners' marriage fell apart, so did the restaurant, closing suddenly one weekend in May 2017.

A new restaurant opened in the space at the end of September, and...well, it might be worth trying, but maybe not yet.

Brass Heart opened last summer. Chicago Eater was optimistic:

Last year, there was worry about a lack of fine dining options in Chicago after a rash of closings including Tru and 42 Grams. Brass Heart swings the pendulum the other way.

The Robb Report interviewed chef Matt Kerney on his ambitions for the space:

“It’s a chef’s dream to have a little tasting menu-only restaurant, and when given the opportunity, I wanted to do my high-end, hyper-refined restaurant,” he says.

“Everything that we cook I want to taste like the purest form of itself. I want the lobster to be the most lobster-y lobster you’ve had and the tomato to be the most tomato-y,” he says. “For our tomato dish we make a tomato oil, and then a tomato vinegar on top of that. Everything is about amplifying exact flavors.” And where at Longman he worked magic with a lot of off cuts, he gets the luxury of creating with high-end ingredients at Brass Heart, using A5 wagyu and lobster in his menu.

But the post-open reviews do not encourage. Chicago magazine gave it 1½ out of 4 stars:

Alas, the procession of zillion-megawatt meteorites is interspersed with miscalculations and filler. The course before that magical halibut involved cappelletti chewier than bubblegum, stuffed with oversalty pheasant, and served in a broth so aggressively earthy it almost tasted like dirt. After the halibut came a shockingly bland seared lamb loin sitting atop ground hazelnuts and surrounded by beets and 25 dots of flavorless persimmon purée. Next came the Kobe beef masterpiece and, with it, hope. But the following course? A nutty Grayson cheese that had been transformed into a slice of cheesecake and paired, for some nefarious reason, with Dijon mustard foam: a marriage that makes no sense. The 15 courses began to feel like a Ping-Pong game between James Beard and an art school freshman. The three-and-a-half-hour meal’s rhythm, which was relaxed bordering on somnolent, only accentuated the problem.

It does have 4½ stars on Yelp, but so do Wildberry Pancakes and Dog Haus Biergarten.

So I may not plunk down the $125 for the entry-level omnivore menu just yet. We'll see what the Michelin folks say.

I'm under the weather today, which has helped me catch up on all these stories that I haven't gotten to yet:

• The Chicago Tribune announced their critics choice dining awards for 2018. Yum.
• Megan Garber explains why female Democratic representatives wore white to the State of the Union address.
• Matt Ford says the actual speech was a waste.
• Chicago History Today compares North Michigan Avenue today with 1931.
• Josh Marshall says the president is scared—and should be.
• Jeff Bezos calls the National Enquirer's attempted extortion by its correct name. (To which the New York Post trumpets, "Bezos exposes Pecker.")
• Airbus is considering ending the A380 program.
• Vox interviews David Dunning.
• Franklin Foer believes "Russian-style kleptocracy is infiltrating America."

And now, I will nap.

In descending order of pissed-off-making:

• Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called making Election Day a holiday "a power grab," because more people voting does in fact take power away from the Republican Party. (We used to call this sort of thing a gaffe.)
• US Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) criticized adolescent Sears Holdings CEO Eddie Lampert for exactly the things The Daily Parker has criticized him for all along. "It appears that you have enriched yourself while driving the company into bankruptcy," said Warren. No kidding. (She didn't annoy me; Lampert did.)
• Restaurants have gotten so loud even restaurant critics have noticed: "Those beautiful, minimalist spaces that are so in vogue reflect sounds, making it hard to hear your dining companions."
• The tolerant, thoughtful guys over at Immigration and Customs Enforcement set up a fake university to find and deport people committing immigration fraud through student visa abuse. (I'm not as much annoyed as concerned when law enforcement uses blatant deception to catch people, but I agree that policing student visas is appropriate.)
• Lack of sleep has become a national health crisis. (I almost forgot to add that I've averaged 6½ hours for the first 30 nights of 2019, getting 7 hours only 9 times this year, according to my Fitbit.)

And with that last one, I may now go take a nap.

Former Embeya owner Attila Gyulai, accused of embezzling over a million dollars from the restaurant he co-owned with chef Thai Dang his wife Komal Patel, was arrested in Spain yesterday:

Gyulai and his wife, Komal Patel, disappeared in summer 2016 after abruptly shutting the restaurant. They abandoned their Ford Flex SUV in front of their River West home, a detail uncovered in an exhaustive investigation by Crain's. Police ticketed the car two​ weeks later and impounded it in mid-August. By then, bank records later would show, their accounts had been used for a series of payments outside the United States.

Though the West Loop restaurant had won praise for its design and Asian cuisine, Cook County Circuit Court records show the couple took $1.5 million out of the restaurant, which was partly owned by chef Thai Dang. Judges had ordered Gyulai and Patel to pay the money back. Gyulai and Patel were last known to be living in Tulum, Mexico.

Dang, who was left to pay creditors after his partner disappeared, now owns Haisous, a restaurant in Pilsen, with his wife, Danielle. "We never thought this day would come this quick," he said via text upon learning of Gyulai's arrest. "We just knew we had to keep moving on with our lives."

Good. If the accusations prove true, he needs to go to jail.

Today is the last work day of 2017, and also the last day of my team's current sprint. So I'm trying to chase down requirements and draft stories before I lose everyone for the weekend. These articles will just have to wait:

• The New York Times interviewed President Trump; Josh Marshall has some thoughts about it.
• The Times also describes how a small section of the 2nd Avenue Subway is the most expensive mile of subway track on earth.
• Mother Jones has a video tribute to Trump Administration staffers who left their jobs in 2017.
• Joe Scarborough has an op-ed predicting "2018 will be the most consequential political year of our lives."
• Citylab investigates where urban fauna go when their habitat changes.
• The Chicago Tribune summarizes 200 new Illinois laws that take effect Monday, rounds up the biggest brand fails of 2017, and predicts a lot of restaurant closings in 2018 (starting with Glazed and Infused tomorrow).
• Also on Monday, the work of several notable artists including René Magritte passes into the public domain.
• And finally, did you know that PowerPoint is Turing-Complete?

We now return to "working through lunch," starring The Daily Parker...