My Serious Eats colleague Nick Kindelsperger recently posted an excellent recipe for shrimp and grits. And though I love to cook, I've been busier than Rachael Ray at a cookware convention these days. Though, with my appetite whetted for the southern classic, I did what every red blooded American male does when he can’t do it for free: I paid for it. Not just any sandy, goopy mass topped with rubbery frozen shrimp would do. I turned to a guy I could trust for my fix: Chicago chef Randy Zweiban of Province. Zwieban lards Anson Mills organic grits with creamy Manchego and tops them with plump farm raised, perfectly cooked shrimp. The Anson Mills grits are both soft and creamy...
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Pretty Province Manzanita Trees at Province Randy Zweiban, formerly of Norman Van Aken’s Miami outpost Norman’s and Chicago’s Nacional 27, opened up his new spot, Province, last week. When I spoke with Zweiban recently he said he’d chosen “maybe the worst time in the last 150 years to open a restaurant.” He wasn’t worried though, saying his former mentor Van Aken always used to ask why, if the restaurant business was so hard to make money at, was there a restaurant on every corner in America? Hard to argue with that. That being said, Zweiban’s new LEED certified dining room featuring reclaimed wood, cork, a breathtaking ceiling mounted grove of petrified Manzanita trees, and mouth-watering food photography from Laurie Proffitt...
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