recently the weather in chicago has had a bit of chill in it, which both excites us and worries us. it means the muggy hotness of summer is beginning to cool down, and excites us to be able to indulge in cinnamon spiced foods and creamy squash dishes! it also worries us, because right around the corner from fall is the bone-chilling chicago winters that everybody here loathes!

the weather this september has been beautiful, and brian and i have not really had a chance to get out and enjoy it. we have been so caught up in last minute travels to hometowns, and with our everyday work lives, that we feel like "nice chicago weather" is quickly slipping through our hands! so, in order to give ourselves a bit of r&r, we are having an abbreviated yo soy dinner for september. we are going to limit the courses to 3, and also limit the guests to 10. it will make for a truly intimate dinner, and also will allow brian and I to be able to have some free time to get outside and hit the outdoor markets before they bid us adieu (er, i mean adios!)! and of course, since the courses are being reduced, so will the suggested donation of $50! the dinner for this month is at $30 per person! wow! even or guests' pocketbooks will be getting a bit of r&r as well with this mindset of ours!  so , mark your calendars and starve yourself for that day because this fantastic dinner all happens 09.26.10 at 6pm. also, we would like to put our past yo soy guests at the head of the line for this dinner, as somewhat of an appreciation, and also to toast along with us the beginning of a new season and goodbye to another! we will conclude the dinner with a game of loteria (mexican bingo) and this time i highly encourage everyone to bring your quarters! in true chicago style, it is "pay to play" time! hahaha!!!

so, if you have been a past guest of ours, we would love for you to join brian and i for this dinner. if you are a virgin to yo soy dinners, please don't feel left out, as the fall and winter menus that we are coming up with are FANTASTIC! and we will soon get to meet you, and feed you!

i will post the button this weekend to book your seats, old friends, and i cannot wait to indulge in a huge bowl of carrot star-anise soup with you all!

adios summer, you will be missed,

mikey + brian

mikey + brian

WOW!!

we thought that we had made a huge mistake by incorporating corn into every course simply because we had no idea how the dessert course would be.  we also thought that by the 3rd course, corn can be a little blah. well, it turns out corn is extremely versatile, in a albondiga (meatball), in tamales, as a soup, roasted, and frozen! it was awesome! 

the cocktail we started with was going to incorporate corn, but i thought it may have been too much, so we left it at ginger and pear margarita made with fresh lime, agave nectar, and rimmed the glass with salt and white pepper! the guests seemed to enjoy every bit of it, and it made for a great refresher to the summer heat we were experiencing! 

side note: we truly appreciate the guests that evening for getting into the whole "last weeks of summer" mentality and not complaining about sitting outside! everyone, and i mean everyone was a great dining companion that evening. we are still getting emails from everyone about how fantastic the others were and how new friends were made that night. 

the hit of the evening besides the margaritas seemed to be the corn soup with fresh cilantro and chinese spiced thick bacon!!! and of course the main dish which was the chipotle + honey + 5 spice glazed crispy chicken with asian potatoes and a roasted corn and jalapeño salad!

the most shocking, for us, was the dessert! the sweet corn and blueberry (pictured above) paleta! it had szchewan peppercorn in it for an added twist! it was delish!

And after dessert we had the amazing singer Jess Godwin perform, she was absolutely amazing! She really outdid herself, we can't wait to do another dinner with her!

stay tuned for next dinner date in september, we may go themed once again with the success of this one!

hopefully you all had a chance to catch us on the wciu's "you and me this morning" show where they featured a segment on yo soy and underground dining. it was a remarkable experience and a lot of fun to see how things work behind the scenes of these shows. we mentioned on the show that we get many influences for our recipes, and one being local harvest. check out the vid here:

YO SOY VIDEO CLIP on wciu

now that the tasting has been done, the interview finished with, we finally have the menu for next week set in stone! we are celebrating the harvest of corn and all of the great flavors and treats that they bring, so i guess you could call this the "estudio de maiz" or an "a-maiz-ing" dinner! hahaha! we promise, there will be no candy corn on the menu! 

we are going to start shucking away this weekend to preparing the following menu:

UNO:                                                            

summer chilled corn soup + smoked chinese bacon 

DOS:                                                                  

chinese chicken tamales + sweet corn puree + sliced snow peas

TRES:                                                                  

crispy chicken w/ chipotle honey szechuan chile glaze + chinese potato salad

CUATRO:                                                                 

 sweet corn and white pepper paletas  

we are still working on what the passed appetizer will be, but you can bet it will be something with corn! as for the cocktail, well we will give you a break there, as i am not sure how in the heck to get corn to taste amazing in a mixed drink situation! so, i will see what great fruits they have at the market to mix with and come up with something refreshing and relaxing!

here is the button! let the deliciousness begin!!!

how many peeps?!

for 1 $50.00 for 2 $100.00 for 3 $150.00

the tasting party we had was a blast! 

we should first like to start by thanking everyone who came out to help us taste the creations brian and i were inspired to cook from our recent san fran trip. we also are really appreciative of the feedback given, and truly take them seriously, and make recipe adjustments accordingly to make sure everything we cook is freakin' awesome. also, thanks for the smiles and the support during the bright lights shining and flashing in all of your pretty faces!

so, i recently have been reading and researching what other "underground" dinners are doing and how they are carving their niche. what i found to be so amazing is that the craze is not limited to only the east and west coast of america, it is also huge in cuba, united kingdom, australia, and hong kong! so, the question that came to my mind is the whole concept of "underground" and what it means to brian and i. we have been asked what that means a couple of times, and i find that there are so many different interpretations of this label. to help me answer that question i found a book called "secret suppers" by jenn garbee that i have recently ordered through amazon, and am waiting on pins and needles for it's arrival! while i wait, i read a quick synopsis, and in the book she interviews different "underground" dinner hosts and their reasoning behind their adventure in this "secret" world. there are chefs that work under cheflebrities that want to branch-out, executives who have found themselves unemployed and want to pursue a passion that always had laid dormant, and people who want to eventually open a restaurant (but are lacking the capital). we fall in the latter. we are not doing "underground" dinners because we want to be cool, or we want to only have people that can afford a $200 per person meal, or because we refuse to give out secret passwords to people to gain entry into our lives and our passion. we are doing it because we want a restaurant. and for these once a month dinners we are given a small glimpse into what it feels like. and we love it.

the seeds that planted this idea for us was the fact that for the past 6 years brian and i have been together, the tie that initially bound us was food. we both work in the restaurant industry, i started in high school at age 15, and we have a true love for the hospitality industry as a whole. we love the instantaneous joy and the bonds that happen over meals, the warmth you can feel and give by tasting and serving someone's food, and the comfort it can bring when you are low. so , i guess you can say that "underground" dining to us means all of the above, with the addition of it being done out of the pure love of cooking something from nothing, sharing it with people we care about, as well as people we have yet to meet, and doing so out of true hospitality, and offering it in an alternative dining situation. a table of people we know, who may not know each other, and end up leaving as friends with great memories is mainly what we do now.

i will now get off my my soapbox about "underground" dining and focus my energy on what we are going to do in 4 hours from now! we are off to shoot a segment on wciu's "you and me in the morning" about yo soy. we are excited to do so, and to see what people we may meet by doing this! we also want to make sure that people wanting to contact us do so via email from this website for further information on the next dinner we are hosting on the 29th. 

we need to go to bed now, or we will look like hell in the morning! 

til' then! lights! camera! acción!

the tasting menu for tomorrow's event is set in stone! during "tasting" parties we feature dishes that we are going to be presenting on upcoming menus in a more "cocktail party" environment. we invite past diners, as well as future, there is no table, just small portioned passed plates and a lot of food discussion. we will still have a small performance so that there is a small glimpse into what the full dinners are like. the tasting being held today is for the 08.29.10 dinner that will include the following items:

* chinese pork tamales with corn and poblano salsa *

* honey chipotle 5 spice fried chicken + asian potato salad  *

* mango + white pepper paletas * 

the performer at this tasting is a past performer, stephen leonard, who is amazingly talented. 

also, there will be a surprise guest that will be here to document the whole event! so, be on the look-out for upcoming pictures, and video of this sure to be deliciously fun event!