Tom Stoppard’s 1993 masterpiece, set in two different eras although in the same drawing room in Sidley Park, an English country estate, displays the playwright’s usual polymathic love of diverse subjects. These include the second law of thermodynamics, Lord Byron, and landscape gardening, for starters. But Arcadia also serves as a love letter to hunger—for love itself, for fame, and above all, for knowledge. As one character declares, “It’s wanting to know that makes us matter....

There’s a startling dessert at Appellation, the wine-bar adjunct to the new Pastoral cheese outpost in Andersonville. It features an Italian cheese called Il Nocciolo, formed from a trifecta of cow, sheep, and goat’s milk and crafted in southern Piedmont, where cheese makers have a talent for soft-ripened formaggio like Robiola. The square of dense, pasty-white Il Nocciolo is served with triangles of rigid, rosemary-scented shortbread and a dollop of sweet cranberry jelly, both much needed to stand up to the tangy barnyard punch this cheese delivers....

Sarah Chambers @Sarah4Justice Runner-Up Jahmal Cole

Two years after Chicago production duo the Odd Couple dropped Beat Tape Volume 1 the “couple” has since become a solo project: beat maker Tony Roche left the group and his former partner, Zach Henderson, has carried on the Odd Couple name on his own. Yesterday excellent Chicago hip-hop label Closed Sessions released Odd Couple’s official debut full-length, Chatterbox, which Henderson produced on his own. The album is packed with contributions from players in the hip-hop world—recent Kanye West collaborator Allan Kingdom, Boston MC Michael Christmas, and local rapper Saba, among others....

“It’s delicious,” Brian Bolles of Maude’s Liquor Bar says of duck fat, the ingredient with which Aaron Dexter of the Owl challenged him to create a cocktail. “It’s one of the most delicious fats. . . . But man, it’s really difficult with drinks, because it’s a fat. There are a few things you can do with alcohol and fats, but not many.” Bolles says that gin tasted terrible with duck fat, and a cognac pairing made for a drink that was too intense....

Poker players are traditionally segregated into two groups (aside from winners and losers, of course): analytical players and feel players. The analytical—or “math”—grinders put their trust in probability, game theory, and statistics. Make the mathematically optimal play, they believe, and eventually the money will be theirs. Feel players are a little more old-school, what movies romantically portray as the wise table veteran, able to read an opponent’s soul. Though Whitehead often repeats that he loves Texas Holdem, the variety played at the Main Event, there’s little actual love in the book....

AP Photo/Dimitri Messinis Coming soon to a supermarket shelf near you Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, amuse, or inspire us. • About Twitter’s new Audio Card feature, which lets users embed songs into posts? —Leor Galil

On Friday west-side rapper ZMoney dropped a track with everyone’s favorite gap-toothed Detroit MC, Danny Brown; Brown’s cartoonish, nasally flow has shown up on a handful of tracks from rising local rappers in recent years, and this collaboration with ZMoney is a strong cosign. But ZMoney’s been rolling out plenty of great tracks before his Brown collab, and recently he teamed up with local production duo the Odd Couple to make “I Can’t Stop....

Having spent 13 years as a wardrobe and prop stylist, Klafeta says the transition into home design felt natural: “It’s all related—trying to make things look good, fitting things together.” Experience creating custom looks on a small budget has served her well. By using rejected pieces of reclaimed wood, for instance, she was able to floor her second level for $600. The bathroom wallpaper is actually gift wrap coated with vinyl plastic....

Chicagoans is a first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford. This week’s Chicagoans are Annie Gomberg and Jason Rothstein, new parents. Annie: What had changed is, I felt the baby twist in my pelvis. I felt his head just sort of drop into place. There was something there, and what I wanted to do was get it out. Annie: That first night home, we slept in shifts....

Former Chicagoan and Second City alum Katie Rich was suspended from her writing position on Saturday Night Live after she posted a tweet on January 20 in which she joked that Barron Trump, the ten-year-old son of President Donald Trump, “will be this country’s first homeschool shooter.” Rich apologized on Twitter, but the the initial tweet and SNL‘s disciplinary action has sparked debates about the apparent double standard of who gets reprimanded for posts on social media, censorship of comedians (and the pressure to self-censor), and whether a child, even if he happens to be the son of the president of the United States, is fair game for humorists....

Dr. Cynthia Rozier, MD Northwestern Medical Group nm.org/doctors/1902191232/cynthia-k-rozier-md Runner-Up Dr. Andrew Repasy, MD Update: this page has been updated to reflect Cynthia Rozier’s current hospital affiliation.

unitedcenter.com Runner-Up Hyde Park

The Empty Bottle 1035 N. Western Runner-Up Metro

danielwadesongs.com Runner-Up Angel Olsen

In 2011, Erik Wallace (aka rapper Mister Wallace) and Anthony Pabey (aka producer Aceb00mbap) met at the Boystown cocktail lounge Wang’s; four years later they launched Futurehood, a label that supports gay and transgender musicians of color. “My driving force was to create a space there that was what Boystown was not providing, giving, or sheltering,” Pabey told the Advocate in 2016. He knew there was a thriving scene in the queer community, even if it wasn’t as immediately apparent to all: “I really feel like the queer rappers are the purest form of what rap is and what hip-hop is....

For nearly a decade, Chicago’s Dead Rider have devoted their genius to the underground rock scene; they’ve made five albums and each release has been a remarkable occasion. Their new one, Dead Rider Trio Featuring Mr. Paul Williams (Drag City, out October 19), is a collaboration with London-based spoken-word artist and experimental musician Williams that was recorded in a sort of exquisite-corpse format, and what strikes me most of all about it is how mesmerizingly hilarious it is....

Adam Jason Cohen grew up in New Jersey building DIY skate parks with his friends on unused land. The reward was not just a place to skate, but also a chance to watch how new communities developed in those formerly abandoned spaces. When the Chicago-based photographer learned that a group of south-siders had done the equivalent for dogs on tennis courts in Jackson Park, except with handmade agility equipment instead of half-pipes—naturally they called it Jackson Bark—he took his own dog, Molly, a seven-year-old pit bull, to check it out....

Three years ago Brooklyn-based artist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh started a mural project to bring attention to the street harassment of women. The series, “Stop Telling Women to Smile,” features the stoic faces of those who’ve felt uncomfortable and unsafe while walking their city’s streets. The latest addition to the series, commissioned by Columbia College, includes the faces of local women peering out over the corner of Eighth and Wabash. “It happens everywhere,” Fazlalizadeh says of catcalling and other forms of verbal harassment toward women....

various locations spexoptical.com Runner-Up Labrabbit Optics