Boka

Six of Chicago's top chefs prepared three dishes using fresh local ingredients from the Green City Market. Picture "Iron Chef" judged by a crowd of appreciative Chicagoans, and you'll have some idea.

As we sat there, in the nearly empty dining room, housed in the stately and fabulously interesting old North Western Railway power plant, I couldn't help but wonder, what is it that makes one restaurant succeed and another fail?

My first six months here were brutal. Too broke to splurge on winter clothes, I layered all of my LA outfits on top of each other and shivered through the worst winter Chicago had seen in a decade.