Latest news with #Void
Chicago Tribune
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Restaurant review: Void, a whimsical Italian American refuge for the weird and wonderful in Chicago
While the Italian American restaurant Void does whimsy well, most evident with its Spaghetti Uh-O's and No-Lört, it's become one of the best restaurants in Chicago right now. It's the first business by a trio of industry veterans who've seen their acclaimed workplaces rise and fall: chef and owner Tyler Hudec; co-chef and co-owner Dani Kaplan; and general manager, managing partner and owner Pat Ray. When you go to Void — across the street from Loaf Lounge, just up from the curious free bookstore on the corner — you'll find a storefront transformed from a nondescript neighborhood bar to a creative refuge for the weird and wonderful. Spaghetti Uh-O's emerged early as the signature dish since opening in Avondale last August. 'It was something we put on the first menu,' said Kaplan. 'We always had the intention that the menu would change frequently, but it just became so popular that we knew we'd never be able to take it off.' Your server will bring a custom-labeled can to the table, then pour the SpaghettiOs-inspired pasta into a soup plate, and finish with crumbled cheese. It's too hot to eat right away, but eat you will, slurping tiny al dente by the spoonful. The Sicilian ringlets are traditionally used in baked pastas, similar to the timpano in the 1996 film 'Big Night.' Here they swim with teeny tender meatballs in a bright vodka sauce, the spirited Italian or Italian American creation of disputed national origin. I was a Beefaroni kid, who hated sweet and soupy SpaghettiOs, but Spaghetti Uh-O's have redeemed the concept with what's truly Void's identity: Italian American that's playful yet precise with innovation and nostalgia. 'I grew up in a house where there was always SpaghettiOs in the pantry,' said Kaplan. 'We decided to add a little bit of flair with a table presentation, and my sister is a graphic artist, so I asked her to come up with a fun label.' The grown-up mini meatballs use a mixture of ground chuck and ground pork shoulder, said the chef, and pancetta. 'We make thousands of tiny meatballs a week,' said Kaplan. 'If we would have known back then, I don't know if we would have chosen to do it.' And there's that redemptive sauce, which begins with their house red, said the chef, a mixture of garlic, olive oil, red wine, herbs, onions and tomatoes, slowly cooked for seven hours or so. 'We fortify it with more tomato,' she added. 'And cream and butter and vodka and some fresh parsley.' House-made Italian sausage debuted recently as one of the newest dishes. On my first of two visits, my server said it was one of her favorites, reminding her of homemade sausage and peppers. While I saw the dish on Instagram before that dinner, I was still not prepared for the stunning whole coil, snappy and smothered with silky piquillo peppers, plus fennel in ribbons and fronds, all on a radiant red sauce conjured from more of those sweet Spanish chiles. Kaplan worked at The Butcher & Larder when chef and owner Rob Levitt first opened it in 2011, before he closed and moved on to Publican Quality Meats as chef de cuisine and head butcher. 'When we were setting up the kitchen, I was like, we gotta have a meat grinder and a sausage stuffer and one day we'll have time to use them,' said Kaplan. 'We get in whole pork shoulders from Slagel and grind and encase everything in house.' The result is flawless, from the subtle spicing to careful cooking. It's no small feat to keep the casing completely intact, revealing patience and skill. A native of the northwest suburbs, Kaplan started working in kitchens at 15, she said, cooked at Lula Cafe 20 years ago, and was sous chef at Analogue, where she met Hudec, who was a line cook then. 'The last place I was at for a significant amount of time was Lost Lake,' said Kaplan about the craft tropical cocktail bar and kitchen, which closed in 2022. That's where she launched her annual charitable Chick-feel-gay pop-up, a satirical take on Chick-Fil-A, indeed with fried chicken sandwiches and waffle fries. This year, the chef held the event at Void on June 22, and donated 20% of the proceeds to Brave Space Alliance, the Black and trans-led LGBTQ+ focused center in Hyde Park. On the regular menu, fried chicken Marsala delivers a half bird with double-fried light and dark meat, maitake mushrooms, Marsala and house-made (Hidden Valley in Italian) dressing. An homage to three iconic chicken dishes (Korean fried, Marsala and Harold's, with a paper bag presentation), the bird was tasty, but the sauce softened crust leaned more toward chicken katsudon meets Brown's Chicken with their coveted fried mushrooms. Eggplant Parm achieves that difficult dance between crispy and soft with a depth completely unexpected. I almost didn't order the ubiquitous dish with eggplant, mozzarella, the defining Parmesan and red sauce. But then another terrific server my second night described a complex preparation, which sounded something like a terrine. Nothing could have prepared me for the exquisite crispy cheese frill and the extraordinary layers within. 'We take whole Italian eggplant and peel them and slice them thin,' said Kaplan. 'And each slice is individually breaded and fried, and then it gets layered in a pan with some really nice imported whole milk mozzarella and Parmesan, and our house red sauce, with probably 140 slices of eggplant in each pan. And then we bake it and press it, and then, once chilled, slice it into individual portions. And then the top gets coated in Parmesan and then seared to get that frico on the top.' Eggplant parmigiana is a dish that we all really enjoy, said the chef, but it's so frustrating when it's just a slab of wet eggplant with breading falling off. Shrimp scampi toast tells an operatic love story between an Italian American dish and Hong Kong dim sum. 'We essentially take everything that would go into the sauce of shrimp scampi — garlic, olive oil, chile flake, parsley, dry vermouth and lemon zest — and we cook that down til it's super concentrated,' Kaplan said. 'Then we make a farce with shrimp and spread that onto white bread, and then it gets deep-fried.' So it's dim sum shrimp toast with the flavors of shrimp scampi. Then they're loaded with pristine head-on banana prawns from Australia, then bathed in buttery scampi sauce, and gilded with petals of what I call 'GoodFellas' garlic from the 1990 film by Martin Scorsese. 'Uh-huh,' said the chef. 'Where they gotta slice it with a razor blade.' As a Chinese American person myself who grew up on Italian American food on the Northwest Side, the marriage of these flavors was forever fated. And every time Kaplan's family ordered Chinese takeout as a kid, they had to get shrimp toast, she said, 'and everyone fought over it.' At void, it's a full reimagination of the familiar. The wedge, with classic iceberg lettuce, but creamy garlic dressing, includes a market vegetable garnish. I wondered if it was an interpretation of giardiniera, but turns out they're more elemental. 'When you would go to a Chicago Italian American restaurant, it was always like a wedge of tomatoes, some peeled carrots, a slice of cucumber and like one pepperoncini,' said the chef. 'And you always get the creamy garlic dressing.' The cabbage at Void, however, is unlike any other. It's extraordinary, elevating the unlovely side vegetable to be a sculptural main event with an aromatic sear, Caesar dressing, garlic chives, white anchovies, crushed croutons and feathery Parmesan. A spumoni milk punch cocktail asks on the menu, 'is pistachio an aphrodisiac?' Quite possibly, when foamed over a delicious and delicately sweet clarified potion that drinks magically like melted ice cream, but mixed with bourbon, rum and aronia berry liqueur made by their friends at Apologue, now a spirit maker. At Void, Ray has some input on their cocktails, he said, but their main bar supervisor is Guillermo Bravo. Bartender Amanda Figueroa concocted the nonalcoholic Chaotic Good as a complex sippable snow cone in a glass with cold brew espresso, grapefruit, Demerara sugar and No-Lört made by Void. That is, in fact, their own house-made Malört instigated digestif that's an alcohol-free glycerin extraction on several botanicals, the most prominent of which is wormwood, said Ray. 'We were trying to create all of the flavors of the spirit that everyone knows and loves,' he added. 'But with none of the payoff.' Available by the shot and bottle, their slogan is, 'We have successfully removed Malört's only redeeming feature.' It's a throwback to the original era of Jeppson's Malört, when a number of amateur distillers made allegedly medicinal elixirs. 'We're trying to play with nostalgia the same way that the kitchen is,' Ray said. 'And we have a large range of nonalcoholic options in our beverage program, which is one of our cornerstones.' He grew up in Indiana, but started his bar and restaurant career in Tokyo, before working nearly every position at Sepia and eventually managing the day-to-day operations at The Violet Hour. House-made focaccia rounds out the trio of menu mainstays alongside the Spaghetti Uh-O's and wedge salad. Served with olive oil and fermented garlic honey butter, the bread retains its character from an 18-hour fermentation, but I found it a touch too dense. Especially since Kaplan intended the focaccia to act as a little , she said, for that last loving gesture of swiping your plate. Her cannoli cake though captures the flavors of creamy filled shells in an ethereal layered dream. A recent seasonal sundae offered a perfectly petite silver coupe filled with scoops of a gorgeous house-made salted vanilla gelato and blueberry sorbet, topped by crunchy cornbread toffee and drizzled with a golden buttermilk caramel. It's a nostalgic presentation in an age of over-the-top desserts. As is the space, which feels inherited, but was painstakingly reclaimed by the business partners. Hudec and Ray bought the former Moe's Tavern in 2021. But it took 296 days from the time they submitted their plans until the city approved them. They began rebuilding in 2022. 'It was pretty bad,' Hudec said. 'And it took the help of all of our friends who are involved in the trades, and a lot of friends and family.' But the trio designed the distinctive vintage art-filled interior themselves. 'We went to every thrift store within reasonable driving distance,' Hudec said. 'And anything that we really liked with a cool frame came home with us.' Originally from New Jersey, he was most recently the executive chef at Wyler Road, and was previously at The Winchester. Both restaurants closed, in 2024 and 2018 respectively. The latter space became Kasama in 2020. The partners have succeeded in creating their own space that's inviting and inclusive for their exceptional staff and diners alike. On my visits, families with babies sat at tables, before solo smokers sat at the bar after one last cigarette out front. 'We really did want to make a place that we would want to eat at and spend a lot of time at,' Hudec said. 'We all have to work here, so it should be a place that we like to be too, along with everyone else.' Void 2937 N. Milwaukee Ave. 872-315-2199 Open: Tuesday to Thursday from 5 to 10 p.m.; Friday and Saturday from 5 to 11 p.m.; closed Sunday and Monday Prices: $21 (Spaghetti Uh-O's), $31 (shrimp scampi toast), $27 (eggplant Parm), $29 (sausage), $12 (cannoli cake), $12 (Chaotic Good nonalcoholic drink), $14 (spumoni milk punch cocktail) Sound: OK (65 to 70 dB) Accessibility: Wheelchair accessible with restrooms on same level Tribune rating: Excellent to outstanding, 3.5 of 4 stars Ratings key: Four stars, outstanding; three stars, excellent; two stars, very good; one star, good; no stars, unsatisfactory. Meals are paid for by the Tribune.
Eater
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Eater
A Chicago Restaurant Aped Chick-fil-A to Raise Funds During Pride Month
Over the weekend, Void, an Italian American restaurant in Chicago's Avondale neighborhood, became the latest to enlist the fried chicken sandwich as a symbol of protest for the LGBTQ communities. For its Chick-Feel-Gay pop-up held on Sunday, June 22, the restaurant sold crispy chicken sandwiches and shakes. These were gourmet versions of what fast-food fans would find a Chick-fil-A. But this was no tribute. Though there have been attempts to whitewash its past, Chick-fil-A remains a sensitive topic thanks to its history of opposing LGBTQ causes. Last year, Chicago's Brave Space Alliance bristled when news broke that a location would be moving in underneath the nonprofit that's been advocating for LGBTQ members on Chicago's South Side for 25 years. While responding to comment for that story, a spokesperson of Chick-Fil-A told Eater Chicago that there's been plenty of misunderstanding when it comes to the fast-food company's stance on the queer community. Chef Art Smith didn't buy that explanation, describing the chain as 'the evil Chick-fil-A' at his annual Lunar New Year Party held at his Hyde Park Home. In 2014, Leghorn Chicken was a pioneer for this type of rebellion. The Ukrainian Village chicken sandwich spot, which has since closed, built its brand around being LGBTQ friendly, playing loud hip-hop music, and staying open on Sunday (Chick-fil-A famously closes on Sundays). A Vermont restaurant held a similar event in 2021. Lost Lake, the now-shuttered tiki bar in Logan Square, was the first to host the Chick-Feel-Gay pop-up in 2020. Led by sous chef Dani Kaplan during Pride Month, proceeds benefited the Brave Space Alliance. Kaplan, now a co-owner at Void, decided to bring back Chick-Feel-Gay to her new restaurant for Pride in 2025. Void's event drew a crowd, giving customers a unique way to celebrate. Check out some of the photos below. Void, 2937 N. Milwaukee Avenue See More: Chicago Restaurant News Eater Scenes
Arabian Post
25-06-2025
- Business
- Arabian Post
Privacy‑First Code Editing Gains Traction
Void, a Y Combinator‑backed, open‑source AI code editor, has entered beta testing, promising developers full control over their code and data while delivering advanced AI capabilities. Launched this month, it positions itself as a credible contender to proprietary rivals like Cursor and GitHub Copilot. Developers can now choose whether to host models locally via tools like Ollama and LM Studio, or connect directly to APIs for Claude, GPT, Gemini and others, bypassing third‑party data pipelines entirely. Built as a fork of Visual Studio Code, Void offers compatibility with existing themes, extensions and key‑bindings. It supports familiar developer workflows—integrated terminal, Git tools, language‑server support—and overlays powerful AI‑driven features such as inline coding suggestions, chat assistant capabilities, and agent modes that understand a full codebase. Unlike most proprietary editors, Void is fully open source, enabling users to inspect and modify prompts, index their own files, and control how AI interacts with their repositories. The founders—twins Andrew and Mathew Pareles—come from Cornell and previously launched a platform for technical interview preparation. Their vision: create an open‑source IDE compatible with Cursor and Copilot features, without locking user data into a closed backend. A LinkedIn preview indicates upcoming support for a third‑party extension marketplace, with integrations including Greptile for codebase search and DocSearch for documentation retrieval. ADVERTISEMENT Developers testing Void praise its responsiveness and privacy focus. One review demonstrates connecting Void to a local Gemma 3 12B LLM via LM Studio, allowing summarisation and inline code queries without data leaving their machine. Performance reportedly improves significantly on proper GPU drivers. On Hacker News and Reddit, users highlight the freedom to self‑host AI models and steer clear of vendor‑locked services. Some caution that deep integration with the VS Code UI may present long‑term maintenance challenges. Meanwhile, competitors press ahead. Cursor, a proprietary AI IDE developed by Anysphere Inc, recently rolled out version 1.0 on 4 June 2025 after raising its valuation to US $9 billion in May. It features agent‑mode tasks and SOC 2 certified privacy options. However, its closed‑source nature means all processing occurs on remote backends, which some developers view as a risk. Security analyses of AI‑generated code caution that tools like Copilot and Cursor can introduce vulnerabilities. An empirical study found that nearly 30 per cent of AI‑generated Python code contained security issues, such as injection flaws, underscoring the need for developer scrutiny. Void mitigates some of these concerns by granting users full transparency and editability over prompts and code flows. This setup may help reduce hallucinated or insecure output, provided developers systematically inspect and test the results. Academic research also reveals broader concerns: open‑source extensions, including AI‑powered ones, have sometimes exposed sensitive keys in IDE environments. Void's model, which processes data locally unless explicitly routed to trusted APIs, could lessen this risk compared to cloud‑first tools whose extension frameworks may inadvertently leak secrets. Void's roadmap includes planned features like multi‑file operations, checkpointing for AI‑powered edits, and visual diff tools. Community contributions are encouraged via GitHub, and weekly contributor meetups are hosted on Discord. Adoption so far has drawn interest from privacy‑focused and FOSS‑oriented developers who value self‑hosting. Questions remain about long‑term maintainability, performance optimisation, and whether the editor can match the polish and ecosystem of its proprietary competitors. However, early signs indicate strong potential for reshaping the AI‑IDE landscape by prioritising transparency and user control over convenience and lock‑in.
BBC News
21-06-2025
- Health
- BBC News
Cat from Staines among contenders for National Cat of the Year
A cat from Surrey who has saved her owner's life on multiple occasions is a finalist in this year's National Cat event, organised by charity Cats Protection, highlights the impact cats have on people's Void is one of three contenders in the Incredible Cats category which recognises those who have raised the alarm in an emergency or prevented a is able to alert owner Laura Welch when she is about to have a medical episode linked to her heart condition, Inappropriate Sinus Tachycardia. Ms Welch, from Staines, said: "The cardiac episodes can flare up multiple times a week – I get a lot of pain, a really high heart rate and get dizzy like I'm going to pass out. "I don't know where he learnt it but Void knows to alert me before it happens. He sprints over at full speed and gently taps me over and over again until he sees that I'm listening."She recalls one occasion when she was in bed and Void "sprinted up the stairs at full speed" to alert her to an episode. "I woke up 10 minutes later and he was sat right by my head and I realised I'd had a seizure. I trust him, I really do," Ms Welch for the National Cat Awards is open and will run until 31 July. Category winners and the overall National Cat of the Year will be announced during a ceremony in London on 24 September.
Scottish Sun
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scottish Sun
Mega entertainment venue to open in northern town dubbed ‘the new Berlin' – with frozen margarita bar and beer hall
Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) A NEW day-to-night entertainment venue is coming to Stockport this month, in a former bank with a frozen margarita bar and a beer hall. Called 'Underbank,' the venue is due to launch a soft opening across the bank holiday weekend from May 24 to May 25, before full opening on May 30. 2 Underbank is a historic part of Stockport and the new venue will be known by the same name Credit: Instagram @theunderbank The venue will be Stockport's first dedicated beer hall, with a sound system and will be spread over four floors. Owner Des O'Malley said: "The street parties, the car park raves, Foodie Friday — everyone's started saying Stockport's like the new Berlin", reports Manchester's Finest. On the ground floor, there will be pints served from many of Manchester's top breweries including Pomona Island and Runaway. There will also be a Guinness tap and a frozen margarita bar, with flavours such as mango and coconut. Watermelon tequila hot shots will be available too. Eventually, the whole building will open as a multi-facility venue with a recording studio and event space in the basement and a rooftop terrace, planned to open next summer. It also happens to be the only venue in town with dual access from both the Overbank and Underbank, a quirk of the area's unusual topography. At roof level, the entrance will link guests directly to the growing Old Town market plaza. And the main bar downstairs will connect to the Underbank strip, home to a number of other entertainment venues. Underbank will also be the first place in Stockport to install a Void system — the high-end audio rig used at major festivals. Major US city's new Guinness Brewery offers bonus with pints for St. Patrick's Day and Instagram users will love it Over the opening weekend, a number of local DJs and artists will be performing at the venue. The venue will run a rotating kitchen residency too. Whilst the attraction is set to open in phases, parts will be open from May 24, with guests who follow their Instagram page about to get 50 per cent off their bill. The historic building used to be home to 'Walmsley', an 18th century furniture store but later fell into disrepair. A regional Bank HQ for Cheshire then filled the site. All of the launch parties are free to the public, however getting on the guestlist is recommended to guarantee entry. Britain's 30 best pub beer gardens revealed – is one located near you? Plus, inside the old tube station being converted into a Wetherspoons with original ticket hall.
