The new Monday Night Foodball spring schedule is stormproof

I’m crouched like a vampire over the counter in my half-lit kitchen, wondering why I left the house yesterday. I haven’t slept in almost 24 hours, and my drooping flesh bag needs to drag itself back to the coffin before sunrise.

My brain has other ideas. Bad ideas. It wants to stay awake and relive the failures of the day as if that would bleed them out.

But there’s a cake in front of me. It glows in the dark—lavender-colored, fuchsia-speckled buttercream draped with inky purple jam. I stab it with a fork and push it into my mouth.

It rushes through me: a flood of orange chiffon, sticky berries, tart sumac, and as I swallow, and my eyes close, it bites me, a sting of chili so unexpected I laugh out loud.

And then I remember—someone gave me this cake hours earlier before everything went south. That unexpected gesture is why I left the house. I’d gone out where people were gathering to forget the horrors of the day with the unfailing alchemy of food and friendship.

It didn’t go to plan that evening, but that is the magic formula that’s sustained humankind for all of its existence. Weddings, parties, birthdays, funerals, harvest moons, holidays, send-offs, homecomings, divorce settlements, happy hours, mass vaccinations after prolonged periods of isolation, protests in opposition to fascism, or whatever occasion satisfies the primal need for human contact—they’re always fueled by food. Eating is the commonality that makes them work.

That’s what we go for at Monday Night Foodball, the Reader’s long-running weekly guest chef pop-up at Thattu in Avondale.

Credit: Henry Barret

This thing that started almost five years ago just finished its 2026 winter schedule on a low note. We’d gotten some good press recently, and it seemed to have spiked attendance. First-timers lined up and ordered food with the faithful regulars, sipping avocado martinis that tasted like milkshakes, and the party got started.

Then it got messy, disorganized, chaotic, frustrating. Mistakes were made. People got hangry, which almost never happens.

It was an unusually unhappy ending for a Foodball, compounded by the terrible first impression it made on the new folks. Normally, I wake up on Tuesdays feeling warm and fuzzy, but not this time. I felt hot and dreadful.

Later, I sat down with Thattu owners Chef Margaret Pak and Vinod Kalathil for a postmortem, and we raged at the perfect storm that hit the restaurant. Literally. The cherry on the shit sundae was a lightning strike in the alley early that morning after everyone left, temporarily knocking out the power.

Once we blew off steam generated by all the things that seemed out of our control, we made a plan to stormproof Mondays at Thattu.

Bison taco by Ketapanen Kitchen

Not that I expect any storms from the new spring lineup of badass chefs cooking everything from kitchen barbarian Basque, to Hawaiian-Filipino, Nigerian, Mexican, Indigenous, Guatemalan, yinzer red sauce Italian, and Silk Road–spiced French pastry.

It all starts Monday, April 13, with a lysergic union of culinary forces: the return of Jeremy Leven’s Basque-inspired Gilda, with veteran Foodball weirdos Rafa Esparza and Anthony Baier’s FAFO, just ahead of the opening of their new West Town brick-and-mortar.

Then on 4/20, it’s Roland Floro Calupe’s Pacific Island–hoppingPanlasa, followed by a West African jollof party with Dozzy Ibekwe’s Dozzy’s Grill on April 27.

On Quatro de Mayo, it’s a street vendor buyout in collaboration with the Street Vendors Association of Chicago, followed by Guatemalan street food from Thattu line cook Shirley Cisnero’s Margot’s Fusion Kitchen.

Jessica Walks First’s all-Indigenous Ketapanen Kitchen returns for her fifth (and possibly last) Foodball on May 18, one week before the Memorial Day break. Then restaurant PR guru Dave Andrews launches his Pittsburgh red sauce Italian project Macerelli’s, on June 1, the feast day of Saint Fortunatus of Spoleto, innat.

I’m not promising Windy City Burger Social Club’s Anas Masoud will do that cheesesteak when he comes back on June 8, but I will encourage it.

The long-awaited return of Milo’s Market from homie Berto Bahena on June 15 proves he isn’t too big to grill me a quesabeeria after all.

And then a three-peat from Best of Chicago pastry pop-up winner and aforementioned cake angel Divs Ray and her Umami from Scratch on the second day of summer, June 22.

It winds up with the premiere of reimagined classical Cantonese from Chicago restaurant royalty: Carol Cheung of the late, great Jade Court on June 29.

The sky clears and Vinod rolls up the garage door on a new spring Foodball season at 2601 W. Fletcher in Avondale on April 13 at 5 PM for happy hour, with $5 beers and nonalcoholic drinks, and $12 bespoke cocktails by Melanie Hernandez.As always, follow the chefs, @chicago_reader, @thattuchicago, and myself for weekly menu drops, updates, and the stories behind Chicago’s most exciting foodlums.

Kirk Williamson

Krik WIlliamson

The new Monday Night Foodball spring schedule is stormproof

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