Louisiana gumbo for your block parties

...and in Avondale, this Monday Night Foodball. [View this email in your browser]( [READER Logo]( [Food & Drink]( | June 21, 2024 Scott Doland is many things: musician, comedian, riverboat guide, native of Lake Charles, Louisiana. That last bit is key to his chief aspiration. What he really wants to be is your back door man.  “Football season coming up,” he reckons. “Gathering season is coming up. Block parties are coming up. It's right around the corner. Nobody has to know because your gumbo will show up the back door in a five-gallon pot.”  Doland also happens to be one-half of the nascent gumbo-based pop-up Dolin’ Out, who will be doling out Louisiana gumbo at the next [Monday Night Foodball]( the Reader’s weekly chef pop-up at [Frank and Mary’s Tavern](.  Yes, there’s been a disturbance in the Force. Funeral Potatoes, originally scheduled for June 24, has canceled for reasons they’re keeping to themselves for now . . .  Into the breach comes Doland and business partner Morgan Weiss, who are ramping up a Creole-Cajun concept based on the former’s native gumbo, which he absorbed growing up in the kitchen next to his Granny Leumel.  “She had polio,” he says. “She was a paraplegic. So she loved me being in the kitchen with her because it really sped things up.”  Doland first publicly debuted this toasty, clean-tasting chicken and sausage gumbo at a pop-up at Frank and Mary’s last February. Weiss, who spent some formative years working in a traditional British pub in the UK, joined him at a second one last month.  “One of the first things I said to Scott when we went into the kitchen at Frank and Mary’s is how the smell is identical to the pub’s kitchen in England,” she says. “It was a good smell—similar to how a seasoned pan imparts a different flavor. I think the pub and the kitchen at F&M’s smells seasoned.”  You can’t invent two résumés more suited for executing a deep, soulful bowl of gumbo, served with rice, potato salad, and sliced baguette. You can [DM them]( if you want it through your back door, but until then come through the front starting at 5 PM this Monday, June 24, at 2905 N. Elston in upstanding Avondale.  Meantime, check out the full Foodball schedule: [a bowl of gumbo with meat and potatoes and bread]( [Dolin’ Out slings a mean gumbo at the next Monday Night Foodball]( Dive into a bowl of Scott Doland and Morgan Weiss’s Louisiana stew at the Reader’s weekly chef pop-up at Frank and Mary’s Tavern. by [Mike Sula]( | [Read more]( → [a tray of drinks and food on a table]( [Vietnamese cuisine meets craft beer at Pho No. 1 Brewing Co.]( On the far northwest side, Son Ton is concocting experimental brews inspired by the pairing of street food and bottled beer in Saigon. by [Steven Melendez]( | [Read more]( → Reader Bites celebrates dishes, drinks, and atmospheres from the Chicagoland food scene. Have you had a recent food or drink experience that you can’t stop thinking about? Share it with us at [fooddrink@chicagoreader.com](mailto:fooddrink@chicagoreader.com?subject=Reader%20Bites&body=). [Lemon cake bites at Middle East Bakery & Grocery]( They are everything you want in a lemon dessert. I fell in love at first bite with the soft, moist sponge, made with just enough zest to cut the intense sweetness. They’re fully coated in lemon icing, which conjures the same satisfaction as the sugary, near-waxy coating on your favorite packaged desserts, but with a more scratch-made taste and texture. — Taryn Allen [a man and a woman standing around a fire with pots and pans]( [Mother Nature’s Candy]( March 2010 | Chicago chefs venture to an Indiana maple tree farm to see some magic get made. by [Mike Sula]( | [Read more]( → [Getting high (on butter) at Beacon Tavern]( July 2016 | Billy Lawless’s new seafood-focused restaurant is intoxicating. by [Aimee Levitt]( | [Read more]( → SAVE THE DATE! Please join the Chicago Reader for our 3rd annual UnGala at the Museum of Contemporary Art. 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