Chicago tea company founder highlights stories of tea farmers
By Elisa Xu Medill Reports Annie Xiang makes her online Chicago-based tea business about more than selling single-origin loose-leaf tea to customers. It’s about amplifying the stories of the Chinese farmers who cultivate tea and humanizing them in the process. “It meshes my (passions for) community building and cultivating empathy really well,” Xiang said. “I […]
High school best friends create the first Black-owned gourmet sliced bread company
By Diamond Palmer Medill Reports The history of sliced bread goes back to 1928, but it has left out Black creators since then. This means endless shelves of sliced bread without any Black brands for almost a century. Imagine walking into the local grocery store and finding no Black-owned sliced bread. This is the experience […]
Mapping the way to five of Chicago’s spiciest restaurants
By Harrison Liao Medill Reports In a way, the term “spicy food” is a misnomer. Adding heat to a dish is a global game changer for the palate but can be achieved with myriad techniques and ingredients – from herbs to pastes and sauces to fresh chili peppers and peppercorns. Spice, in this sense, can […]
Dew Suriyawan shares the art of authentic Thai food
By Harrison Liao Medill Reports I didn’t know anything about Chinese food until I found out how much I didn’t know about Chinese food. My parents immigrated to the U.S. in the 1990s from Hunan, a landlocked province in central China. They had me in 1994 in Ann Arbor, while they were pursuing graduate engineering […]
The House of Burritos that Feels Like Home
By Nick Mantas Medill Reports Just west of Wrigley Field at the intersection of Lincoln and Addison sits one of Chicago’s little-known treasures of the city, the original Burrito House. 3545 N Lincoln Ave is the address of where “x marks the spot” for this family run institution. Now expanded into three locations, Luis Salinas […]
