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Here's a well-produced video, apparently in a series called "The Next Level" and featuring Grant Achatz talking about what drives him, along with some fun footage of food at Alinea. But where's it from? It's exceedingly shy about identifying itself, but in fact it's a very subtle promo for Lexus, so subtle in fact that you never even see a Lexus badge clearly on the car Achatz drives down Lake Shore Drive. It was produced by a New York-based production company called Roadside Entertainment. In any case, it's Achatz talking interestingly about what motivates him and some cool behind the scenes stuff; we don't see a way to embed it but you can watch the three-minute video here.

As you can probably guess, this summer's unprecedented weather isn't just muggy and uncomfortable, it's also terrible for crops. Yes, at first it sounds great that we'll all be eating ripe peaches and tomatoes sooner than usual, and warmer weather means the promise of a longer growing season. But chef Jonathon Sawyer — a Food & Wine Best New Chef and owner of Cleveland's Greenhouse Tavern and Noodlecat (and noted lover of wild mushrooms) — thinks this might not be a good thing: "My farmers are terrified," he says. "Everyone’s on the edge of their seat, anticipating these locusts and insects of biblical proportions. We’re all pretty terrified of what might happen once it starts getting real hot.”

Workers at an Indiana Subway restaurant worked while unwell with "norovirus" — a nasty stomach flu with symptoms we won't share around lunchtime — getting their customers just as sick with their super-contagious, pickle-juiced germ-wiches. In fact, of the 75 people who had norovirus in the county, 72 had eaten at Subway before getting sick. Ugh, it's like Shigella, (remember her?) all over again. [HuffPo]

It started with a request from a friend and ended with... a really big trophy. Lee Ann Whippen has her own competition BBQ team, Wood Chicks BBQ, which she started in Virginia before she moved to Chicago to open Chicago Q. But the Safeway National BBQ Battle in D.C. is not one of her team's regular events. She had met Mike Skahill, a retired D.C. firefighter who leads the Firefighting BBQ Team, at a competition in 2006 and they had remained friends. When she told Skahill that she was coming back east to bring her competition rig to Chicago, he suggested that she help out his team at the Safeway event. It certainly paid off for Skahill; Whippen, with her restaurant experience, was a key figure in taking the Firefighting BBQ team to the Grand Champion title as well as placing third in brisket. Because of their differing styles, she and Skahill actually cooked his and hers briskets for the competition, but they both agreed to submit Whippen's. Skahill told the Washington Post a teammate's reaction was "'Oh my god...You have got to taste this.’ When I heard that reaction, I knew which one we had to enter.” [Washington Post]

So a sous chef at Eleven Madison Park, that's like, what in Chicago terms? Rick Bayless plus Grant Achatz and Graham Elliot and a garde manger to be named later? But even then, it's not really the same, is it, because after all... it's not New York.... We're not mocking The Peninsula or its newly-hired chef, Lee Wolen, here, but rather the second city attitude that has the press swooning that someone from Eleven! Madison! Park! is coming to Chicago. We have all due respect for EMP, Phillip Foss tells us that their cookbook is the shizzle (we don't expect to be making anything from it ourselves any time soon), but let's look at where else Lee Wolen has worked. He worked at Butter under Ryan Poli in Chicago, and at Moto which is also, let us doublecheck, in Chicago. Why, it's almost as if he had an impressive resume from Chicago before he worked in New York that got him his job at 11MadPa or OneoneMork or whatever its acronym is. So we welcome him back to the restaurant town second to nobody's city, congratulate him on his steady rise which has now landed him in the lead spot at the hotel that gave us Graham Elliot and Curtis Duffy, and look forward to what he does once his menus officially debut in September at The Lobby, which has replaced gone-for-good Avenues as the lead dining venue in the property.