Every couple of years or so, a report circulates that Chicago, forever “the second city” (if that!) to New York, is experiencing a culinary renaissance and is about to shed its reputation as a backwater. (Chicagoans, naturally, deny, even to themselves, that such is the case.) A piece in today's Sun-Times makes the case yet again, and we have to say, it's pretty convincing. Aside from its own chefs, led by the brilliant Grant Achatz (profiled so memorably in this week's New Yorker) now Chicago has New York's Marcus Samuelsson opening a seafood restaurant, Terrance Brennan opening an Artisanal, San Francisco's Laurent Gras bringing his classical French genius, and Govind Armstrong expanding his chic empire from L.A. and Miami. Are the days of Chicago's being a place you start out in and then escape from coming to a close?

Their Kind of Town [Chicago Sun-Times]
Related: Earth to Chicago: You Lost ‘Iron Chef’ Fair and Square