(from chicagoist.com)

Celebrity chef Rick Bayless is coming out with a new line of frozen meals under his Frontera brand. The company, known for its chips and salsas, was purchased by ConAgra Foods last year for $109 million. The frozen meals will have a health-food focus and are inspired by Mexican cuisine; three flavors, chicken fajita, barbacoa taco and veggie taco, pictured above, feature “braised beef and black beans, three-chile barbacoa sauce, fire-roasted peppers,” among other ingredients. “Foodies around the country know Rick Bayless as the premier authority on gourmet Mexican cuisine,” ConAgra CEO Sean Connolly told the Tribune of the move. (MORE HERE)

(from timeout.com)

Local musician and DePaul alum Joe Keery has been staying busy since his breakout role as douchey heartthrob Steve Harrington in Netflix’s ’80s-indebted sci-fi series Stranger Things. The well-coiffed young actor has continued performing with his psych-rock band Post Animal, poked fun at his resemblance to Parks & Recreation actor Ben Schwartz and has (presumably) reunited with the Hawkins, Indiana gang in the forthcoming second season of Stranger Things.

Keery exudes an effortless sense of ’80s cool, so it should come as no surprise that he was enlisted to recreate the the climactic chase scene from John Hughes’s suburban-Chicago-set film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. (MORE HERE)

(from chicago.eater.com)

What does a rapper who’s beefed with Eminem, who’s also a comedy writer—working on Key & Peele, Funny or Die, and 50 Shades of Black—really want to do? Chicago native Raymond Jones came back to the South Side after nine years to open up a Mexican restaurant. Love Taco, which features movie posters of RomComs decorating the restaurant, opened earlier this month at 109 E. 51st St. Jones, who goes by Raydio G as a member of the hip-hop trio HotStylz, immediately admitted that it’s a rarity for a black guy to open up a Mexican restaurant. But he really likes Mexican food, visits Mexico and practices recipes as a home cook. “I am probably the biggest Mexican food enthusiast you know,” Jones said.

The premise for Love Taco seems like it could be from a sit-com. That’s not lost on Jones, who contributed to a few Comedy Central TV shows, including sketch comedy Key & Peele and Workaholics. Friends encouraged him to ditch the entertainment industry and open a restaurant. When he got serious, he enlisted a friend, Seth Rushing, to help with his menu. Rushing is a pastry chef who graduated from Le Cordon Bleu: “He took the menu to the next level,” Jones said. (MORE HERE)