Illinois is filled with serious dining destinations, but some of its most memorable restaurants refuse to behave seriously. Much like California's wonderfully weird restaurants, these Illinois favorites turn eating out into an affectionate form of theater. Servers may insult customers, dance on counters or send dinner across the room on a model train. At one restaurant, the building itself appears to have been drawn with a [...]

Costco's Kirkland Signature brand has earned a reputation for offering high-quality products at lower prices, leading shoppers to wonder whether some of their favorite name brands are secretly making them. While Costco doesn't publicly disclose the manufacturer behind every Kirkland item, a handful of partnerships have been confirmed over the years, while others remain popular rumors. Some partnerships are confirmed One [...]

One of the Bay Area's best-known restaurant groups has suddenly shut down all of its restaurants, bringing an end to more than three decades in business and leaving hundreds of employees without jobs. Vine Hospitality announced this week that it is permanently closing all seven of its restaurants across the Bay Area, citing an increasingly difficult operating environment and unsuccessful efforts to secure additional [...]

Of Hawaii, Alaska and New Hampshire, the Granite State may have the clearest path to eventually landing a Buc-ee's. New Hampshire has busy interstate highways, heavy tourism, no general state sales tax and millions of travelers moving between Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont and Canada. A Buc-ee's would almost certainly attract crowds. But the chain has not announced a New Hampshire store, selected a site or revealed any [...]

For decades, a trip to the mall wasn't complete without stopping for a meal. Whether it was celebrating a successful shopping trip or grabbing lunch between stores, mall restaurants were once a destination in their own right. Today, many of those familiar names are becoming increasingly difficult to find. Sbarro has moved beyond the mall For years, Sbarro was synonymous with mall food courts, serving oversized slices of [...]

West Virginia recently lost two locally rooted restaurants within the span of just a few days. Their departures join the restaurant closures that have shocked customers across America, but these losses feel especially personal because both businesses were closely connected to their communities. One was a hometown pizzeria whose history stretched back more than four decades. The other was a downtown Charleston gathering [...]