Monday, February 18, 2008P
President's Day
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Business Toolbox: What's selling
Lent means fish? Think again
KANSAS CITY -- Retail grocers, conflicted about what to offer their customers, are focusing on a mix of products that offer value to the shopper, and reports of product bookings imply more of the same through March.
Market analysts and buyers said the only thing grocers can agree on is the outlook for high-quality beef products, which tends toward the bearish.
Aside from that, grocers have little on which they can hang an advertising campaign until after the Easter holiday, the analysts and buyers said. Some are offing to give away an Easter ham or turkey with a set amount in accumulated purchases over time, but there is little beyond this that grocers are using to attract buyers into their stores.
Most grocers are reserving a portion of their weekly newspaper supplements for seafood specials that are labeled as Lenten specials, but market analysts said there is little to no change in protein buying patterns over the 40-day observance. – Dow Jones
Business Toolbox: The suppliers
Retailer likes Pacific Seafood
PORTLAND -- Pacific Seafood, a family owned seafood company based in Portland, Ore., has been recognized as a Fred Meyer Stores "Vendor of the Year" for calendar year 2007. Nominees were selected by Fred Meyer divisional buying and merchandising staff based on several key performance criteria, as well as general cooperation and enthusiasm toward achieving mutual goals.
Pacific Seafood will attend Fred Meyer's Vendor of the Year celebration dinner in March to commemorate the achievement. The Pacific Seafood name will also be inscribed on a plaque that will be showcased in the Fred Meyer office lobby. – Press release
Business Toolbox: Sustainability
Shark fin craze killing off hammerheads
The scalloped hammerhead was once considered immune to the effects of overfishing because it was so widely distributed, but recent surveys show it has suffered catastrophic declines – as much as 98 per cent in some regions.
Scientists will add it to the 2008 Red List of marine animals in danger of extinction, along with eight other species of shark that could soon be on the point of disappearing completely.
The other species being added to the list are the common and big-eyed thresher, the short-fin mako, the silky, the smooth hammerhead, the dusky, the tiger and the bull shark. There are currently 126 shark species classified as being at risk of extinction – either critically endangered, endangered or vulnerable.
Dr Julia Baum, a shark expert at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, said that many predatory sharks are in serious danger of being wiped off the face of the earth within a generation. She said: "The oceans are being emptied of sharks and if we carry on the way we are, we are looking at a really high risk of extinction for some species within the next few decades.
"Sharks are really at the top of the list of marine fish that could become extinct in our lifetime. That should be a wake-up call."
Scalloped hammerhead sharks are often caught accidently as "by-catch" with other large fish such as tuna. But in the past few years they have also become victims of the lucrative trade in shark fins, which has grown rapidly as China has become more wealthy.
The trade often involves slicing off the fins from live sharks which are thrown back into the sea, where they bleed to death.
Measures designed to curb the trade are hopelessly inadequate, according to conservationists. But what has surprised scientists is the speed at which scalloped hammerheads and other species of shark have fallen victim to the trade.
"The market is mainly in China but most of the information comes from Hong Kong because most shark fins go through there," said Dr Baum, a member of the shark specialist group of the World Conservation Union.
"It is estimated that between 26 and 73 million sharks are going through the Hong Kong fin market each year. That's three to four times the total shark catches being reported to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation."
Shark-fin soup was traditionally served as a wedding dish for the wealthy. But an increasing number of middle-class Chinese are now serving it to wedding guests and important business partners, Dr Baum said yesterday, at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. – The Independent, UK
Business Toolbox: Your supply
No haddock? Blame herring fishery
In recent years, Chatham fisherman Peter Taylor noticed that the haddock he'd been catching on Georges Banks disappeared after large herring vessels, some towing nets as wide across as a football field, started targeting that area.
He said prey species like haddock move into certain areas of Georges Bank when there are large schools of spawning herring. Cape fishermen, in turn, go there to catch the haddock.
"I've never gone through a year and seen this few herring," he said. "The amount of haddock we caught in that deep water also dropped. There was no doubt in our minds that there was a correlation between herring and what we catch."
It was a lesson that made a big impression on fishermen: no food, no fish.
"People have been fishing here for hundreds of years and they know that a healthy herring population is key to having other healthy fisheries," said Peter Baker, director of The Herring Alliance, a collaboration of environmental groups dedicated to reforming what they call "industrial" fishing by large herring vessels. The group is concerned the fishing power of these large vessels could bring on a collapse of herring stocks as the foreign factory fleet did back in the 1970s. – Cape Cod Times
Business Toolbox: Going to hell all over
No fish for Nigeria because pirates rule the seas
The price of fish may soon rise as trawler operators have abandoned Nigerian waters in fear of rampaging pirates seemingly operating under the very nose of the Nigerian Navy.
Investigation by the Nigerian Tribune in Lagos showed that a kilogramme of fish which hitherto sold for about N300 two weeks ago now sells for between N400 and N500, raising the fear that lovers of fish may soon start paying more if the activities of the pirates are not curtailed.
A fish seller at the Apapa Wharf in Lagos and another at the Eleja Tutu Market, Liverpool, Tin Can, Lagos, told the Nigerian Tribune that they did not cause the increase in the price of fish.
“What we buy is what we sell. The trawlers are no longer going to sea. You can go there and see where they moored their vessels. The few who ventured out said they usually had their hearts in their mouths until they came back. They said the pirates had taken over Nigerian waters.”
NITOA members have raised the alarm over the increasing pirates’ attack and the victims had written to the Federal Government threatening to abandon the trade if the activities on the sea borders were not curtailed. – The Nigerian Tribune, which has as its motto “Truth, Courage & Fairness,” qualities desperately needed in Africa these days
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Business Toolbox: What your customers are reading
Can shrimp fleet be turtle-safe?
Question: I read recently that shrimp are caught in nets that routinely harm sea turtles and that anyone who truly is concerned with such issues should boycott shrimp. Can you address these issues?
Jan Knopf, Fort Salonga, NY.
When it comes to shrimp, the concerned consumer can feel as if she is caught between a sea turtle and a mangrove tree: The former is a historic victim of wild shrimp-catching; the latter, of shrimp-farming. But the threat to both of these species is probably on the wane.
Wild shrimp are caught by trawlers (boats that drag nets) in waters close to the shore. In the United States, shrimp are caught in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coasts of the Carolinas and Georgia. (There is also a small cold-water shrimp fishery off the Maine coast.) In the past, shrimp-boat nets would indeed trap other animals, sea turtles among them. But in the past few years, the industry has insisted that each boat be equipped with a Turtle Excluder Device, a metal grid that strains out and eliminates the turtles.
According to Eddie Gordon, executive director of Wild American Shrimp Inc., "Ninety-nine point nine percent of all boats are pulling these TEDS." And it's not just out of love of turtles. "Shrimpers want to catch shrimp," he said. "The turtles can cause major problems in the net."
(Wild American Shrimp is a trade organization that certifies that the shrimp bearing its label were indeed caught in American waters and processed according to the highest standards. For a list of certified grocery retail brands, go to wildamericanshrimp.com.)
It's true that other countries do not necessarily enforce by-catch excluder regulations, but the vast majority of wild shrimp consumed in the United States is caught by American shrimpers.
However, the vast majority of all shrimp consumed in the United States -- 80 to 90 percent -- is not wild, but farmed, and imported at that. Once South America dominated shrimp aquaculture, but now Asia has emerged as the leader.
Shrimp are farmed in shallow ponds adjacent to the shore and fed by the sea. Less intensively farmed shrimps may enjoy an environment similar to their natural habitat, with a wild, seaborne diet and tides flushing the ponds. Intensively farmed shrimp are fed processed shrimp feed and their smaller ponds are artificially flushed and aerated. The quality of the shrimp depends on the farm.
The establishment of and effluence (sewage) from shrimp farms has been a contributor to the destruction of coastal mangrove forests worldwide, but newer farms are designed to preserve existing habitats. "In the last 10 years, the number of mangrove trees has increased," said Bill More, vice president of the Aquaculture Certification Council, a third-party organization that inspects fish farms and bestows its "Best Aquaculture Practices" (BAP) label on facilities that respect "food safety, environmental and social responsibility."
Farmed shrimp, he said, "is a lot safer than it was even two years ago." – NewsDay, N.Y.
Business Toolbox: Your competition
Shrimp farming called disaster for the poor
The cultivation of shrimp and fish in tropical coastal areas is often described as an environmentally friendly way to alleviate poverty, but in fact this cultivation has negative consequences for both the local population and the environment. Daniel A. Bergquist of Uppsala University, Sweden, has studied how policies for sustainable development can go so wrong.
The cultivating of fish and shellfish in artificial ponds has increased dramatically in the last few decades, apace with the ever greater depletion of fish stocks in the oceans.
International aid organizations, working with local governments, have made major commitments to expanding aquaculture in the hope that such activities would alleviate poverty and spur economic growth in these areas.
But the Swedish human geographer Daniel A. Bergquist has shown, using Sri Lanka and the Philippines as examples, that a major portion of the local population is excluded from these activities and continue to be just as poor as ever. "The winners are the local elites," he says.
What's more, aquaculture entails serious consequences for the environment. When mangrove forests are cut down to make way for shrimp and fish ponds, the ecosystem is affected. These environmental problems, in turn, impact aquaculture, and entire harvests can be lost.
A large part of the explanation for today's situation, according to Daniel A. Bergquist, can be sought in the methods that are used to evaluate what it really costs to cultivate shrimp and fish. These methods are faulty, leading to underestimations of the input from people and nature and therefore to excessively low prices. By using methods that factor in all costs, he is able to show, for instance, that the price of tiger shrimp would need to be more than five times higher than it is today for the environment and the local population to receive fair compensation for their input. -- Science Daily, adapted from materials provided by Uppsala University
Business Toolbox: Dept. of Unintended Consequences
Protect fish, and tomato prices go up
Growers of processing tomatoes, people vital to the creation of pizza, ketchup and salsa, expect a fairly good 2008. Most canneries in California’s Central Valley have agreed to pay $70 per ton for this year's crop.
That's up from $63 last year and $50 to $58 earlier this decade, when many growers did not turn a profit. "Compared to the last couple of years, the tomato industry looks a lot healthier," said Aaron Barcellos, a grower near Los Banos.
Several thousand people work from July to October at the canneries, some of them in and near Stanislaus County. The product is distinct from fresh market tomatoes, a smaller but higher-priced crop. The state grew 12.08 million tons of processing tomatoes last year, second only to the 12.24 million in 1999, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The 2008 crop is projected at 11.8 million tons, which would be the third-largest on record. The price increase and rising demand reflect a dramatic turnaround for the industry, which had struggled in the past couple of decades. Per ton prices were sluggish, and overproduction contributed to the 2000 bankruptcy of the Tri Valley Growers canning cooperative.
The higher price this year will have little effect on consumers, though, because raw tomatoes are a small part of the retail price, said Chuck Cox, a grower near Westley. The $20 a ton increase in recent years amounts to just a penny per pound. Still, that's enough to allow a typical grower to cover farming costs and make about an 8 percent profit this year, said
Those costs, including seeds, water, fertilizer, pesticides, fuel and labor have been rising. "I think the processors realized the growers needed a higher price," Siragusa said. "I don't think they were terribly thrilled about it." The canneries face increased costs of their own, especially for the energy needed to haul, cook and can the tomatoes, said Ed Yates, president and chief executive officer of the California League of Food Processors in Sacramento.
The projected yield depends on water. Ross Siragusa, president and chief executive officer of the California Tomato Growers Association in Sacramento, said the 11.8 million ton projection could be hard to meet. He cited the possibility of water cutbacks on the West Side to protect fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, and the high prices growers can get for alternative crops such as corn, wheat and alfalfa.
The result could be a drawdown in the processed tomato inventory carried over from 2007, most of it in vats of paste. Demand is fairly strong, especially in export markets, so that stockpile could move fast, industry leaders said. Planting of the 2008 crop has started near the south end of the state and will move up the valley in late winter and early spring. The wet January was ideal, moistening the ground and leaving a heavy mountain snowpack. Growers hope for a few more storms and for a summer free of severe heat waves. – Modesto Bee
Business Toolbox: Your supply
Maybe Gulf is better off than we first thought
A new analysis of fish in the Gulf of Mexico suggests that previous estimates of fishery collapse were vastly overestimated.
In particular, a study from 2006 provoked widespread concern after concluding that between 1950 and 2001, nearly 80 percent of all fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico, from the Northern red snapper to the Atlantic croaker, collapsed. The new analysis suggests the accurate figure for collapsed fisheries is closer to 20 percent.
"We all recognize the threat of overfishing to sustainability, but we have to be very careful when we generate these doom-and-gloom prophecies," said James Cowan Jr., a coastal fisheries expert at Louisiana State University and co-author of the new study.
"If we keep saying those kinds of things, and it turns out they're not true, then people are going to get numb to those kinds of calls, and they're going to ignore severe threats to the environment."
The new study, published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concludes that previous methods of estimating fish populations relied too heavily on so-called "landings data" from the catches of fishermen, which may not adequately reflect the overall numbers of fish.
Despite the seemingly rosier picture, however, problems remain in the Gulf, said Roger Zimmerman, director of a Galveston-based lab within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Service.
Certain species such as the red snapper have definitely been overfished, and the loss of wetlands could have a serious long-term impact on Gulf fisheries, Zimmerman said.
"Although we're not severely overfished, there are problems, and certainly we need to address those problems," he said.
The 2006 study, led by Boris Worm at Halifax, Nova Scotia-based Dalhousie University, sparked much attention among the public and in the marine biology community as it found that fish populations around the world were in decline.
The new work led by Cowan and LSU's Kim de Mutsert does not undermine the conclusion that, globally, fisheries are severely threatened, Worm said.
"The Gulf of Mexico is, of course, a cherry-picked example, as this is one of the few regions in the world where there are strong legal instruments to stop overfishing, and many stocks are under heavy regulation that are limiting catches," Worm said. "Global fisheries are in bad shape and getting worse."
Worm's study was based upon "landings" data, which is the primary means used by regulators and scientists to assess fish stocks primarily because it provides the only widely available data. – Houston Chronicle
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Business Toolbox: WYour fishermen
Cold, wet, a few bucks: A good day
NANTUCKET -- Matt Herr had a good day out on the harbor.
It took five hours of towing and unloading dredges, then sifting through seaweed, crabs, and muck, but he had made his five-bushel daily limit of bay scallops.
Now, with a cold breeze beginning to bite through layers of clothing and gale-force winds on the way, he was pushing to get back in before noon.
"It can get nasty in a hurry," said Herr, 41, who has been scalloping on Nantucket for 20 years.
If New England's fickle weather were the only uncertainty in Nantucket's commercial bay scallop season, which runs from Nov. 1 to March 31, this 6-mile-long harbor might be more jammed than Route 128. But Nantucket scallopers, whose haul has accounted for more than half of the state's bay scallop harvest over the past decade, face boom-and-bust cycles that can drive less hardy souls to despair.
This season has been going strong, but over the past three decades the world-famous Nantucket bay scallop fishery's catches have dwindled and fewer young people are getting involved.
No one knows exactly what has caused the decline in harvests or what drives the occasional spikes. But Nantucket's catches were at a record low last season, raising a red flag over what, even in reduced years, is generally the most robust bay scallop population in the Northeast.
"We're pretty much the Alamo here," said Sarah Oktay, managing director of a Nantucket field station operated by the University of Massachusetts at Boston. "We're trying to be the last group that survives, that doesn't have to depend 100 percent on things like aquaculture."
Among possible causes cited by specialists for the ebbing bay scallop population off Nantucket, where summer and year-round human populations have soared and real estate values have skyrocketed, are the proliferation of invasive predators such as the green crab and the reduction of eelgrass.
Eelgrass, a crucial component of scallop habitat, has thinned for a variety of reasons, including the blooming of algae that are nourished by nutrients from fertilizers, septic systems, and boats. Eelgrass, which is shaded out by the algae, can also be ripped up by anchors, mooring chains, and fishermen's dredges.
And in some parts of Nantucket's main harbor, where about 75 percent of the bay scallop fleet fishes, an invasive seaweed known as Codium, or dead man's fingers, is crowding out eelgrass.
The bay scallops' short lifespan, two to three years at most, makes the shellfish hypersensitive to environmental changes but also enables stocks to rebound quickly.
"The scallop, they have said, is like the canary in the coalmine," said Herr, a member of the town's Shellfish and Harbor Advisory Board. "If you start to see a decline in your scallop populations, you know that there's something going on with your water."
Nantucket's catches, measured in plastic bushel boxes that each hold about 400 scallops and about 8 pounds of shellfish for market, rose to 117,000 bushels in 1980-81. The harvests dropped from there, falling last year to 3,800 bushels.
"I guess disturbing is the best word for that," said Dave Fronzuto, the town's marine superintendent, who emphasized his concern for the scallopers' welfare.
About 60 boats were out on opening day last season. By the end of March, scalloper Neil Cocker said: "I think there were five of us. It was pretty quiet out there."
But this season, with catches back up, the harbor has been bustling. Heading into this week, about 15,500 bushels had been landed, according to Fronzuto, who added that about 30 bay scallop boats have been working on a daily basis.
Nantucket's scallopers are not alone in suffering meager harvests. "Generally, they have fared better than anybody else, but they are definitely following the statewide trend, and the state is following the coastwide trend," said Michael Hickey, chief shellfish biologist for the state's Division of Marine Fisheries.
Last year, Nantucket's Marine and Coastal Resources Department sent 100 adult scallops from Nantucket to a state-certified hatchery on Cape Cod, which returned a million seeds, each the size of a grain of sand. In October, they were placed in a seed sanctuary in the harbor, in an effort to bolster the fishery by using a form of aquaculture. The town has sent scallops off-island to be spawned about a half-dozen times and plans to do so again this year, Fronzuto said.
The bay scallop, smaller, sweeter, and more expensive than the sea scallop harvested offshore, is Nantucket's largest commercial fishery and a crucial source of income for many of the 11,100 year-round residents on this island 30 miles south of Cape Cod. – Boston Globe
Business Toolbox: David vs. Goliath
Seafood joint wins legal joust with Yale
NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- Yale University produces presidents and Supreme Court justices, but it just lost a battle with a popular restaurant that produces chorizo-encrusted cod and lobster cassoulette.
A judge has ruled that the Ivy League school, which has a $22 billion endowment, cannot back out of an agreement it reached in 2006 that was supposed to resolve a long-running property dispute with the owners of Bespoke restaurant.
"It's clearly a David vs. Goliath case," Hugh Keefe, the restaurant's attorney, said. "Sometimes David wins, which happened here. I think the judge saw through the hocus-pocus."
A telephone message was left Tuesday for a Yale spokesman.
Yale purchased the vacant lot behind Bespoke in 1999 and says it owns an area that includes a walkway and storage shed. But the restaurant owners, Arturo and Suzette Franco-Camacho, claim access rights to the area.
Yale, which owns dozens of storefronts and is New Haven's largest retail landlord, at one point blocked Bespoke's back door by building a fence along what it says is its property line, inches from the restaurant's back door.
After four years of negotiations, the two sides reached a settlement that gave Bespoke access to the disputed area for at least two years. But Yale wanted to back out, saying the agreement did not acknowledge Yale's ownership of the property and arguing that its own attorney did not have authority to enter into part of the agreement.
New Haven Superior Court Judge Juliett Crawford ruled Friday that Yale failed to prove its attorney lacked authority. -- Stamford Advocate, Connecticut
Business Toolbox: Your competition
Ruth’s steak house buys fish market
Ruth's Chris Steak House Inc. announced that it has completed its acquisition of all the operating assets and intellectual property of Columbus, Ohio, based Mitchell's Fish Market, which operates under the names Mitchell's Fish Market and Columbus Fish Market.
The acquisition also includes Cameron's Steakhouse which operates under the names Cameron's Steakhouse and Mitchell's Steakhouse. The operating assets and intellectual property were purchased from Cameron Mitchell Restaurants LLC (CMR) for approximately $92.0 million, which Ruth's Chris Steak House funded through its senior credit facility. – Press Release
Business Toolbox: Your competition
Ruth’s steak house buys fish market
Ruth's Chris Steak House Inc. announced that it has completed its acquisition of all the operating assets and intellectual property of Columbus, Ohio, based Mitchell's Fish Market, which operates under the names Mitchell's Fish Market and Columbus Fish Market.
The acquisition also includes Cameron's Steakhouse which operates under the names Cameron's Steakhouse and Mitchell's Steakhouse. The operating assets and intellectual property were purchased from Cameron Mitchell Restaurants LLC (CMR) for approximately $92.0 million, which Ruth's Chris Steak House funded through its senior credit facility. – Press Release
Friday, February 22, 2008
Business Toolbox: Chinese products
From pollutants to human food
Chinese authorities are using algae-munching fish to clean up a polluted lake -- and after their diet of toxins they will be sold to consumers as food.
More than 50,000 silver carp fry have been introduced into Chaohu lake, one of China's most polluted bodies of water, and another 1.55 million will be added in the next 20 days, said Wu Changjun, from the Chaohu Fishery Administration.
Each carp is expected to have gobbled up to 110 pounds of blue algae by the time it reaches its adult weight.
Once the carp have matured, fishermen will be able to catch them and sell them in markets, at a price 15 times their original cost, boosting the fishing industry.
Chaohu, China's fifth biggest lake in the nation's eastern Anhui province, was last year overcome by the blue-green foul-smelling algae, threatening water supplies and destroying life in the lake.
Hundreds of factories discharge their waste into Chaohu.
More than 70 per cent of China's waterways and 90 per cent of its underground water are contaminated, according to government figures, often as the result of years of untreated sewage discharge and industrial pollution. – Melbourne Herald Sun, Australia
Business Toolbox: Your supply
No cod, so Newfoundland turning to shrimp
ST. JOHN'S, N.L. - Production value in the Newfoundland and Labrador seafood industry exceeded $1 billion in 2007.
Fisheries Minister Tom Rideout says a key highlight was the tremendous success of the snow crab fishery. The value of shrimp was also on the rise, according to figures released by the provincial government.
The landed value for snow crab increased 70 percent last year to $171.2 million, while the value of shrimp hit $155.1 million, a 14.9 percent increase.
Fisheries union president Earle McCurdy says the numbers for snow crab are a little deceiving.
But in the case of shrimp, McCurdy says the market has finally started to turn the corner.
"The supply and demand situation got more in balance," says McCurdy. "And then we had good news in terms of the improved tariff rules for product entering the European Union.
"So we finally got a brighter looking situation in the shrimp fishery, leading into the 2008 fishery." – Canadian Press
Business Toolbox: Fish and polka
Kinda makes you want to move to the Midwest
The Friends of Kinde are hosting a Polka Fish Fry on Friday. This event will take place at St. Mary’s Hall located at 1709 Moeller Road, two miles east of Kinde to Hellems Road then one mile north to Moeller Road and 1/2 mile east on Moeller Road.
Icelandic cod, coleslaw, fries, beverage, and dessert will be served from 4 to 8 p.m. The cost is $8 for adults, $4 for kids 10 and under.
Carry-out will be available. Live polka music will be provided by Benny and Gerald Prill from 5 to 8 p.m. All proceeds will be used for the 2008 Kinde Polka Fest to be conducted on Sept. 13-14. – Huron Daily Tribune, Michigan
Business Toolbox: Bowling for customers
Mesh your fare with ‘adult’s playground’
Every third Wednesday, Joan, Maureen, Linda and Liz -- the bocce ball babes, if you will -- are here, playing a couple of rounds of their favorite Italian sport, sipping wine and nibbling on pizza and salad.
Pretty much since Pinstripes in Northbrook opened, these four ladies who work together at Von Maur have been hanging out here, working on their game and having some good adult, sophisticated, after-work fun.
"I got the group of girls together and we started doing different, crazy things whenever we went out. I brought them here one night and they loved it. They loved it so much, they said let's just come here," says 55-year-old Joan Rowell of Glenview. "This is like an adult's playground."
And that sophisticated fun is really what happens at this large entertainment center. It's the kind of place where you'll feel at home in jeans, sipping on an Italian margarita made with limoncello, or dressed slightly better and attending a function in an upstairs space.
Somehow, it all makes sense. No hot dogs or hot wings on this menu; instead, it's a nice mix of upscale comfort food like the rich, flavorful seafood mac and cheese or the truffled cheese flatbread. And, OK, if at the end of the day you're really a burger-and-brew kind of gal, that's here too. The wine concept plays up on the Italian and American theme, serving only wines that were made domestically or in Italy. There's a nice array of specialty cocktails, and even homemade limoncello.
The entire place has a very upscale yet rustic feel, and if you were blindfolded and dropped off here, you might very well think you were in a quaint Italian spot. A beautiful, sweeping staircase and wrought-iron trims replace the usual bowling alley distractions of pinball machines and arcade games. Plasma televisions dot the bar space, but you'll rarely find the sound on, which adds to the romantic/single girlfriends-after-work feel. It can be cozy too, with comfy couches as you wait your turn on the lanes.
And plenty of play space: 18 bowling lanes, six bocce courts and a heated outdoor patio with a fireplace. – Chicago Tribune
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