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Product Description
This insider’s guidebook to Chicago’s Western Suburbs for newcomers, lifelong residents, visitors, and business travelers covers history, culture, dining, entertainment, recreation, touring, special events, and local resources. Discover a history that includes the Underground Railroad, Frank Lloyd Wright, Ernest Hemingway, gangsters, railroads, Route 66, and the I & M National Heritage Corridor. Visit restored prairies, nature trails, sprawling estates, historic campuses, corporate headquarters, cemeteries, and a world class zoo. Shop antiques and boutiques, megamalls and thrift stores, specialty bookshops and classic record stores, Old World bakeries, meat markets, and candy counters. Dine on hearty Bohemian a… More >>

A Native’s Guide to Chicago’s Western Suburbs

The restaurant industry is one of the industries impacted the most by the bad economy. The reason is simple – restaurant face rising costs, while consumers looking to save money cut out discretionary spending. Fuel costs make all prices go up especially food, which must be transported to restaurants, and when trying to trim the budgets, many consumers start cooking at home to save money. Restaurants will need to get pretty creative to entice patrons to part with their cash. Here is a look at some restaurant trends you can expect to see next year.

Locally Grown Food

Expect to see more locally grown food next year. With recent scares from tainted food, especially the salmonella incident which mistakenly fingered tomatoes as the culprit, restaurants will need to be extra careful with the food it serves its diners. After all, even though they do not know if they bought tainted food, if it makes a customer sick that customer will always remember them as the restaurant that gave them food poisoning. More restaurants will end up sourcing their food from local farms and Farmers Markets to ensure fresh ingredients.

More Pasta Please

Pasta is one of the most inexpensive menu items for a restaurant to make. For the most part, sauce ingredients are cheap, so restaurants can get away with charging $15 for an entree that probably only cost them $1. And they can get away with hardly putting any meat in the dish as patrons fill up quickly on pasta. (more…)