Remember the old Wendy’s catchphrase, “Where’s the beef?” Well, after all these years I have the answer: At Deuce’s and the Diamond Club, 3505 N. Clark St.

There’s no doubt in my mind that once baseball season starts, this burger bar will be packed with young, partying 20-somethings, so go before that if you want some fun in a bun.

I ordered the Shroomed Burger: grass-fed, antibiotic and hormone-free beef topped with caramelized mushrooms and onions, fontina cheese and Worcestershire mayonnaise, and served on a Kummelweck bun with caraway seeds and salt chunks. Shroomed was $8 and delicious.

But my hubby and I couldn’t help but try a few other things on the menu, which has more than 30 items. D&D also offers a monthly cocktails and cuisine dinner, a four-course meal with welcoming cocktails for $20.

“I tried to take the bar food and elevate it a little,” said executive chef Jamie Finnegan, a Logan Square resident who aspires to serve the city’s best burgers. “The owner (Kevin Killerman) wants to put out a really quality food product.”

We ate delicious appetizers, with my faves being the smoked duck quesadillas and “Glass of Bacon,” thick, delicious homemade bacon, cured with Vermont Maple Syrup and smoked with black peppercorns, made onsite.

“Everything is made from scratch,” said Finnegan, who has a degree in culinary arts. “And I’ll smoke just about anything.”

Although D&D is kid-friendly, it reminded me of a Rush Street club with its two levels of party atmosphere (but also really good food). The street-level Deuce’s, named after a fictional baseball player The Deuce, has an outdoor patio with nine cabanas. Inside, I loved the rows and rows of colorful liquor bottles.

On floor two is the Diamond Club, with an old-fashioned photo booth and big comfy couches filled with luxurious throw pillows, which conjured up thoughts of a sheik and his harem’s hangout.

Starting Jan. 26, Finnegan — also a former DePaul U. graphic design student whose grandfather helped develop the university’s music school — will offer steak, chicken, pork and duck tacos, sure to be delish. Come summer, the third floor will see a rooftop deck and “reflection” pool, where the dress code will be “as little as possible,” laughed Finnegan.

This is scary… I received a phone call from a very reliable, knowledgeable and longtime source in the Chicago Police Department, who is not an alarmist but is deeply concerned about the upcoming NATO and G8 summits.

The source said training for the summits has consisted of watching videos from those events in other cities, and that the helmets Chicago police will wear are “motorcycle helmets.” The videos show non-stop confrontation between police and protestors, with one showing a cop with his throat crushed by a wrist rocket with a marble in it, the source said.

They said expected is a core group of anarchists between 10,000 and 15,000 strong and 100,000 to 200,000 protestors. The source said only about 2,000 police officers out of 9,500 to 10,000 will be in full riot gear, which means “a lot of hurt cops.”

“They’re not going to be able to control anything,” said the source, who named Water Tower as a possible protest site. “The city is gonna burn down.”

I found my thrill… for fresh blueberry pancakes at, surprise, Dos Diablos, a Mexican restaurant at 15 W. Hubbard St. which recently began serving Saturday brunch. The pancakes were the best ever, and now I’m on a quest to find someone to top them. Nookie’s in Old Town was my first try, but didn’t hold a candle! FYI, coming soon to Dos Diablos is a mechanical bull. Oh what fun!

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By Dane Kantner
Posted: 01/26/2012 11:28 AM

Grass fed beef and kimmwelweck buns... yum! Maybe they should serve beef on weck too? :]