OyChicago articles

Zed451
739 N. Clark St.
(312) 266-6691
www.zed451.com

Rating: Three Stars

  

Stacey's dining companion wants to live here

Zed is the British/French pronunciation of the last letter of the alphabet. 451 is the number of degrees (in Fahrenheit) needed for fire to ignite. So, one would imagine that somehow the creators of this new restaurant are implying that their concept is a culminating point, the end all be all, the point of combustion.

Instead, what works best about this spacious and comfortable space is that ultimately, it is basic--it celebrates the beginning of things and is the starting place. At a time in dining where American Chefs are borrowing the best ideas from other cultures and claiming them as our own, it should be no surprise that the marketing of Zed451 doesn’t ever invoke Italian antipasto, Spanish Tapas, Greek Mezes, or Argentinean churrascuro, (the traditional steakhouse format that has become popularized here with places like Fogo De Chao).  And yet, it is the intersection of those dining formats, simply a large salad bar and starter tables followed by an all-you-can-eat festival of meats, grilled on large skewers, and carved tableside, that the team at Zed is doing.

But if the devil is in the details, so is the divine.

My date for the evening is a goddess with a biblical name, who has given me the ultimate gift, a brilliantly blonde and blue-eyed porcelain-skinned goddaughter, who has a 30-something’s vocabulary at the age of three and is dutifully learning the Four Questions for next year’s Passover Seder. She greets me when I visit with a hug and the phrase, “Can I get you a glass of wine or something?” Rachel is a props master and set dresser with impeccable taste, so when she meets me at the expansive central bar and says, “I want to live here” I know that architect Chris Smith, in his first Chicago project, has been extraordinarily successful in creating a comfortable and attractive place, not easy to do in a cavernous space such as this.

Groups gather in Zed's cozy nooks

But cozy nooks abound, the seating at the bar is comfortable enough that you can imagine lingering, and natural touches like warm woods, leather and stone are very welcoming.  There is a focus on the ‘fresh’ here, which is highlighted everywhere including on the drinks menu.  We start with the bartender’s recommendation, the cucumber sage martini.  A blend of freshly muddled cucumber with lemon simple syrup, sage, and Hendrick’s gin, this martini tasted neither of cucumber nor of sage, but was still yummy...slightly sweet and lemony, but not overpowering the smooth piney gin.

We moved to the dining room, a bright and airy space with a round central set of serving tables hugging the circular fire pit, banquettes and tables radiating out from it like a starfish. A small candle, a tiny nosegay of blissfully scentless flowers, a flat-brushed aluminum disc containing two agate river stones rest atop the simple table. We are immediately attended to by Ilyas, a genial gent of Moroccan origin, who indicates that he is there to “explain the experience.”

Again deftly avoiding the use of the words “salad bar” and “Argentinean Steakhouse,” Ilyas explains, (as a fresh set of warm three-cheese biscuits arrive in a cast iron pan with an accompaniment of  tangerine butter), that we will begin at the “Harvest Tables,” the circular set of tables we passed en route to our seats. These have soups, charcuterie and cheeses, and prepared salads that we should ‘enjoy to our hearts content’ (read: all you can eat).  Once we decide to move on to the entrée portion of the evening, we should move our stones from the metal disc onto the corner of the table, which will indicate to the numerous chefs that we are ready to begin sampling their fares. When we want to take a breather, we should simply move the stones back to their home base, and we will be left to eat in peace until we choose to re-start.

Hot buns! The delightful three-cheese biscuits

Neither Rachel or I are exactly fans of the general idea of a salad bar, associating them with sneeze guards, badly parented children fondling the beets, inexplicable chocolate pudding and big bowls of lettuce swimming in pools of tepid water. But we were pleasantly surprised to find that the Harvest Tables banished those fears. Laid out more like an expansive antipasto bar, the simple white rectangular plates hold interesting options that feel more like serve-it-yourself tapas. The simple cheese platter is nothing new, the charcuterie consists of spicy sopressatta, smooth mortadella, and meaty guianciale, and all are highlighted by house-cured bread-and-butter pickles and fresh baby artichokes, as well as grilled vegetables.

Rachel samples a roasted eggplant soup, adding feta cheese and toasted pine nuts to garnish, which she declares to be like a velvet hug. Some other highlights include a tiny wedge salad, boson lettuce topped with diced tomatoes, a blue cheese dressing, and garlic chips; a salad of roasted peaches with new potatoes, grilled red onion and blanched green beans; vanilla poached baby carrots with honey yogurt; and fresh pineapple with Madagascar vanilla and pepper, which I could probably eat forty-two portions of if no one stopped me. And frankly, at Zed, no one will stop you.

"Fresh" is the main ingredient

There are some misses here as well, a bland cheese ravioli where the filling is so flavorless that it is literally indistinguishable from the pasta that contains it. An uninspired tri-color pasta salad with creamy Italian dressing, while a slightly upscale version of what you see in your local deli case, nevertheless adds nothing of interest.  And the genius of poaching carrots in vanilla is not so genius when used on green beans.

There's something for everyone at the non-salad bar

The wine list here has some good choices, although Ilyas was hesitant to make specific recommendations and it was clear that if you want to do any kind of wine pairings, you are on your own.  For the Harvest Tables, we ordered Sofia Coppola’s take on champagne, which adorably comes in little pink cans, although we opted out of the included tiny straws, and asked for flutes because Rachel sees enough juice-boxes with a three-year old at home, and I think that champagne thru a plastic straw is about as appealing as beer in a funnel.

The amuse bouche of the night was a shot of chilled yellow pepper soup with lemongrass and chive oil, a nice and refreshing mouthful that was balanced and flavorful. We were clearly the only guests who had thought to request that the parade of skewered proteins we were about to receive begin with seafood and poultry and then move to game and red meats. (It is a touch I might recommend as a standard practice, since it helps with wine ordering, and also preps the palate.)  They were happy to accommodate us, and we ordered a glass of buttery Bouterra Viognier  and one of Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc, a fruity white from New Zealand, both of which would stand up well to both fish and poultry. Ilyas placed our stones on the corner of the table, and let us know that “With the rocks out, you’re rockin’!” and reminded us that the chefs are there to please and serve, and special requests are encouraged.

The true genius of Zed451 is its fixed price. If you went to any decent restaurant and ordered a starter, a salad, an entrée and side dishes, you would easily spend more than the $50 per person cost here. And if you ordered wrong, you’d be stuck with your choices. Even at a tapas bar, you pay for every decision, and if you have a budget, it can limit your willingness to taste and try. But with this concept in place, you enjoy your fill of any and all offerings; be adventurous, if something doesn’t satisfy, push it aside and wait for the next morsel.

That was a plan that turned out to be necessary. Some of the food that came to us was absolutely fantastic.  A citrus-crusted salmon was Rachel’s favorite thing of the evening, while I was torn between the succulent rib eye and the glorious rump roast, both perfectly seasoned top quality beef, cooked to buttery perfection. Other delights were a seared tuna loin with a citrus soy sauce, pistachio crusted duck breast, (marred only minimally by the use of canned mandarin oranges on top), a sweet and smoky spare rib, spicy Portuguese linguica sausage, juicy and fragrant, and a lovely little lamb chop with herbed goat cheese butter and crisp bread crumb crust.

There were however, some problem dishes as well. What would have been a great tempura mahi mahi was sauced well before it came to the table, and while the fish within was flaky and flavorful, the desired balancing crispiness of the batter was absent, having gotten soggy on the way to the table. Both chicken offerings, an herbed breast and roasted leg, were lackluster, the leg under-seasoned, and the breast both over-marinated and overcooked, way too dry to even bother with. Likewise, pork loin with parmesan had all the moistness cooked out of it, rendering it the texture of pressed wood, and the cheese was an off-putting pairing for what should have been sweet and tender meat. The leg of lamb had also suffered from over-marinating, penetrating so far into the meat so that it lost all of its wonderful soft gaminess and tasted only of salt.

The Oregon Pinot Noir and Beaulieu Reserve Red we ordered were both delicious, and necessary on the one hand to enhance the taste of some dishes, and sadly, occasionally to eliminate the flavor of  others.  Sides too, were somewhat inconsistent.  The mashed potato gratin was passable but boring, the butter in the dish leached out into greasiness in the re-baking, but the ratatouille, with chunks of fresh zucchini, yellow squash, eggplant, onions and peppers, was light and tasted of summer, and went well with most of the meat offerings. The desserts were hit or miss as well. The highly recommended butterscotch bread pudding tasted mostly of the synthetic butterscotch-flavored chips scattered throughout, and we ended up scraping the delicious house-made toasted marshmallow off the top and abandoning the rest. But the cherry cobbler with cheesecake ice cream had a great base of sweet-tart cherries in an unctuous sauce, which was taken to a whole new level with the rich creamy ice cream, but the cobbles were more like bricks, too thick and with too much cinnamon, so again, we pushed them aside.  Our neighbors had the lemon tart, which they raved about, and we saw the chocolate trio walk by and it looked promising.

But ultimately, the inconsistency doesn’t really matter that much here.  The price is reasonable, the food that works is better than good, it is delicious, which more than makes up for the missteps.  And more importantly, the staff is impeccable.  They were present but not obtrusive, accommodating without being obsequious.  When we expressed a desire for fresh plates, they arrived in a flash. And even better, with Ilyas guiding our meal and attending to the details, we also got to meet a large cadre of personable chefs, who were uniformly passionate about the food they were bringing us, eager to tempt us with their particular offerings, and desirous of enriching our experience by offering to personally craft off-menu items at our will.

When Rachel jokingly wondered how they might get her scrambled eggs on a skewer, she was asked if she liked her eggs dry or runny and if she would like bacon as well. We both believe that if she had been serious, scrambled eggs would have indeed been forthcoming.  Don’t like a seasoning or sauce?  Ask for a different one.  Want something to have a Middle Eastern or Indian flair? Just let them know. The group is mostly current culinary school students or recent grads, and they truly do want you to challenge them to cook specifically for you and your palate.

For whatever occasional flaws appear on the plates, Corporate Chef John Radcliff, (who checked in periodically with all diners during their meals to ensure that everyone was happy) in his Chicago debut, has put together a wonderful team, and I am sure that as they all find their way, the overall food quality will go nowhere but up. In the meantime, it is a place worth visiting and a fun dining experience, especially for groups. The spectacular roof deck is already part of the see-and-be-seen scene here in Chicago, and was packed to the gills when we visited, but it is a really lovely space, so I’d get there early and snag a table.

And for all you single 20-something gals, be sure to ask for Jory Zimmerman, one of the wandering chefs. He’s a recent culinary school grad who is looking for a nice Jewish girl to cook for.

Yours in good taste,
Stacey

www.staceyballis.com

NOSH of the week:  We are in the height of summer, so be sure to support your local farmer’s markets!  Some good ones:  Green City Market 1750 N. Clark at Stockton, W/SA. 7-1:30, Lincoln Park, 2001 N Orchard in the LPHS parking lot, SA. 7-2, City Farm, 1240 N Clybourn, TU/TH/SA 3-6, Daley Plaza TH 7-3, Logan Square 3107 W. Logan Blvd. SU 10-3, Conuco 2800 W. Division, SA 9-2, Lawndale 3555 W. Ogden Ave. W 7-2  And many more….if you love the one near you, be sure to post the details below for the rest of us!

NOSH food read of the week:   The Soul of a Chef  by Michael Ruhlman (also The Making of a Chef, and The Reach of a Chef, and pretty much anything Mr. Ruhlman writes….check out his blog at www.ruhlman.com )

It’s 9:30 p.m. on a sticky July evening and I’m standing outside Lillstreet Art Studio in Ravenswood. I’ve parked the Prius I’m borrowing from a friend and I’ve used my iPhone to call local artist (and old friend) Rebecca Zemans and let her know I have arrived.

It’s a fitting, if not ironic, start to the rest of my evening, which will be spent in Rebecca’s studio learning about her current body of work, “a critique on our culture and how it has progressed in its evolution, specifically with technology and nature.”

Thinking about that dichotomy that has kept Rebecca busy this past year, during which time she served as Artist-in-Residence in metalsmithing at Lillstreet. Her artistic goal during that time, when she had the luxury of time to focus solely on her work was “to connect the idea of technology in the cell and technology in our outer, larger, macroscopic world, comparing and contrasting the two.” The residency culminates this month with Natural Progressions, a show of original work by Rebecca and the other resident artists.



Rebecca and her heavy metal

With a BA in anthropology and a BFA in metalsmithing, both from the University of Michigan, Rebecca considers herself a current, contemporary anthropologist. “[I’ve got] that archaeology thing going on in the back of my mind,” she says. She uses ancient techniques for clay-work and metalwork to try to figure out how machines have affected us as a society and how we are evolving along with them.

“These original art forms–clay, metal–these materials found in our environment have progressed to allow us to have computers and TVs and telephones. They’re all made of metal, essentially, and you need copper wires and steel wires to transmit information.”

In addition to gaining inspiration from nature and man-made machines, for the last few years Rebecca has been flirting with the idea of the cell as a major theme of both her sculpture and her jewelry. “The biological cell is this fundamental building block that I believe works like a machine. It is the most efficient machine possible. It creates human beings.”

Much of her recent work, including the piece below entitled Vat in the Brain, Rebecca notes is “modern but ancient; it has plastic.” She says this particular piece satisfies her need to create. “I’m going to put a circuit board in as the nucleus, because that’s what a nucleus is; it runs the show. It’s a play on the question of are we machines? Do we really run ourselves? Or is someone else controlling us?”



Vat in the Brain

Just as the materials she uses have evolved in their use, so has Rebecca’s artistic process and focus. Her previous body of work used the same materials–ceramic, metal, rubber, and concrete materials–but was more allegorically themed and centered around things found in the natural world, like flowers, figures and animals.

The Cycle was inspired by Rebecca’s birthright trip to Israel, and incorporates found materials from her time there. She was there when the war broke out in July 2006 and having decided to extend her trip beyond the 10 days, she “pretty much spent the next two weeks hiding out in Herzliya.” She brought home ball bearings she picked up off the ground and integrated them into her design.



The Cycle

Of course, not everyone sees what Rebecca sees when they look at her work. And she’s okay with that.

“For me it’s my own psychological sublimation,” she says. “I look at the news and I get really upset… the process of making [art] helps me to deal with that. But I’m very grateful that other people get lots of different things out of it.  One of my friends says ‘you always make ovum. That’s all you do.’ I guess that’s right, I do! I’m a woman artist! And a lot of people see sea creatures, I don’t know if that’s subconsciously because I’m a Pisces… But I’m just glad that they like it!”



After the JCC where she was working received a donated Torah, Rebecca was commissioned to create this ner tamid -- which she calls Burning Bush -- for above the ark 

In addition to being a woman artist and a Pisces, Rebecca’s Judaism also very much informs her work. She believes part of the reason she is drawn to the abstract, organic shapes she often creates is because of the Jewish idea that we are not supposed to recreate the human form.

Moving forward, Rebecca will continue teaching art classes, which has been her main source of income for the last several years. For her next projects, she hopes to hone in on the concepts of networks and mapping and the transference of information. She is particularly interested in nerve cells and skin cells, because “those two types of cells are related to sense and instinct, and processing information.” She has also started her own line of retail jewelry, still playing off the cell and the nucleus. “But it’s all ovum, too. Women like circles.”



A sample of Rebecca's jewelry

I drive Rebecca home in the futuristic hybrid push-button car while listening to a band from the past. We reminisce about growing up in Hyde Park and I admit how big a crush I had on her brother while we laugh about how not my type he is now. Plenty has changed since we were elementary school kids playing four square and watching episodes of 90210 during her parents’ annual Rosh Hashanah party. Rebecca has evolved from an all-star volleyball player to an accomplished artist. Natural progression? Not necessarily. Good fortune for those of us who get to see the fruits of her labor? Definitely.

Natural Progressions runs at the  Lillstreet Art Center  through August 28, 2008. Samples of Rebecca’s work and her contact information can be found on her website,  www.rebeccazemans.com .

Josie is always cooking up new recipes for Jewish life in Chicago 

A Bay Area transplant, Josie A.G. Shapiro spends her days as the Membership and Program Director at Temple Sholom of Chicago.  She helps members connect to the things that interest them, whether that might be spiritual discussions with rabbis or social gatherings like sushi Shabbat. Her goal is to make sure newcomers—40% of new members are in the 20s and 30s— feel comfortable calling Sholom Chicago home.

So whether you like fish on Fridays, remember all the words to your camp songs or enjoy entering contests, Josie A.G. Shapiro is a Jew You Should Know!

1. What did you want to be when you grew up?
I was really shy and my teacher nicknamed me Miss Mousey. I had a fantasy of growing up to be a clown because they make people happy—well, not everyone. Some people are scared of them. But I took some clowning classes and wasn’t physically coordinated enough. Since then, I have wanted to own my own B+B— a Bed + Bistro. Breakfast is too early and dinner is more fun anyway.

2. What do you love about what you do today?
In terms of my professional life, I have way outgrown Miss Mousey! I do a lot of schmoozing and I enjoy meeting new people talking to them about what makes them tick in terms of their Jewish identity. My job is all about building connections for people, helping them find what they are looking for.

I also love making up recipes and entering contests that have a restrictions of some kind, like you have to use a certain brand of products or meet a time constraint. I like figuring out ways to move within the rules and come up with something unique and original.

3. What are you reading?
I’m reading everything by Geraldine Brooks. Right now I’m reading  The People of the Book . I’m also reading Anne-Marie McDonalds— The Way the Crow Flies . It is deliciously dark and takes place in a 1960s Air force base in Canada. I read  Fall On Your Knees  about a month ago. She has a real sense of humanity. It’s that moment when you’re reading and you’re like, “Yes I know that feeling! Yes I know that one too!"

4. What’s your favorite place to eat in Chicago?
I am a food fanatic, so I love food adventures! My friends and I took the Amtrak to Kansas City for BBQ weekend and ate BBQ three times a day. In Chicago, I love Marigold, an upscale Indian place with a great wine list. And I really like Demera, an Ethiopian place across the street from Marigold. Basically, I like any restaurant I can walk to.

5. If money and logistical reality played no part, what would you invent?
If money was no object I probably should want to invent something that could help do good in the world, but all I can think about is how much I hate to fold laundry and how much clean laundry is piled up at home, and how neat it would be if there was a dryer that sorted and folded clothes after they were clean.

6. Would you rather have the ability to fly or the ability to be invisible?
Invisible. The mouse in me likes to be silent and observe.

7. If I scrolled through your iPod, what guilty pleasure song would I find?
I don’t own an iPod… I know, I Know. I like singing old camp songs, I just unleashed my whole repertoire on the husband on a car trip;. He turned off his iPod and listened graciously.

8.What’s your favorite Jewish thing to do in Chicago—in other words, how do you Jew?
Since I work in a synagogue and I am a professional Jew, you can find me at temple on most Friday nights. My favorite Jewish phenomenon is when I see people from Sholom’s Jewish community when I’m out walking around the neighborhood. It makes me feel like I’m in a small little shtetl and like I know people in the city, which is pretty cool for someone, who has only been here for four years.

Three’s company in the Follmer household

“Why are you writing about that? People always think being a triplet is interesting and cool. But it’s not.”

That encouraging morsel of cheer came from my brother Daniel when I called to ask whether I was allowed to use his real name in this article. “I concur,” echoed my brother Max a few minutes later.

For much of our lives, my brothers and I have gone to great lengths to avoid being known as “one of the triplets.” We’d cringe when referred to collectively as “the Follmer triplets.” You’d have thought the single pet hermit crab John Stern had given us for our fourth birthday (seriously, we have to share one damned hermit crab?) had crawled out of its shell and bitten our big toes off.

It was tedious to constantly hear, “Oh, you’re a triplet? That’s so cool! What’s that like?” because we didn’t think it was that cool. And we couldn’t say what being a triplet was like because we didn’t know what not being a triplet was like. To this day, I can’t see the difference between my having Max and Daniel around and my friend Katie having three sisters of different ages. Built-in playmate? Check. Someone else to blame when you take the liberty of taping the Miss Teen USA Pageant over Mom’s Dallas episodes? Double check.



Once, twice, three times the babies!

Blaming each other was an art we perfected very early in life. Once we mastered shouting, “Max did it” whenever our parents would call out to us from another room, we moved onto more advanced methods. All kids draw on the walls with crayons, right? But how many are sly enough to sign their siblings’ names underneath? Casual observers might have thought we had the next Picasso in the house with all of “Max’s” drawings on the walls. Poor Max was always the scapegoat.

Not that our entire childhood was spent plotting each other’s demise. When the three of us found a shared interest, life was a blast. Today I can’t dance to save my life, but the three of us choreographed some great crotch-grabbing dances to Eagles songs. And who can forget the great modeling clay massacre of 1991? I think that without a team of accomplices, most only children wouldn’t think to throw modeling clay onto the dining room ceiling to see how long it will stay, whether red sticks longer than blue or green, or how long it will take before Mom and Dad notice the stains.

It was really the loss of our own individual identities that bothered us most. Being “the Follmer triplets” meant that people didn’t actually have to remember all three of our names (to this day I’m still “Max’s sister” or “one of the Follmers”); that they could just buy three of the same birthday present and call it a day; or that they could just buy one present and make us split it (see: hermit crab).



The smiling Follmer triplets—just don’t make them share one hermit crab

I think it was this forced togetherness and presumed similarity that led us to keep each other at arm’s length. We had to assert ourselves as individuals with distinct styles and personalities, and in order to do that we could not ally ourselves too closely with each other.

Much to the shock of my singlet friends, I would not consider the three of us “close.” I don’t know when one of them is dating someone or when they have the flu. I only found out a few months ago that Daniel is allergic to cats, and other than a gift card to a coffee shop I couldn’t begin to tell you what Max would like for Chanukah.

And yet, we’re always there for each other when it matters. Even as a toddler when I would get upset I’d sob, “I want Max,” and Max would come running to give me a hug. After I ended a three-year relationship, Daniel was there to listen from 1500 miles away, even though he and I had never explicitly discussed the existence of the relationship.

Don’t worry, the irony is not lost on me that nearly every sentence I’ve written thus far has used plural pronouns, or that I’ve been basically speaking for my brothers without giving them a voice. No, I’m not using our triplet ESP to confirm that they feel exactly as I do; I’m simply guessing. But I bet I’m right.

Because yeah, sometimes the similarities in the ways we think are just too hard-wired to ignore. Senior year of high school we all three took the same English class. After reading each of our essays on The Odyssey my mother discovered that, completely coincidentally, we had all three written a nearly identical sentence (never mind that the teacher loved it in Daniel’s paper, thought Max could’ve said it better, and told me it didn’t work at all).

We all scored within ten points of each other on the SAT and were each in the top six of our high school class. We’d likely go Cain and Abel on each other if we found out that one of our siblings had voted for the political party that could have Dumbo as its mascot. We’ve probably all given our mother birthday cards with all manner of animals from Noah’s ark dressed up in tiaras and feather boas. But I’m likely the only one to find myself humming Adon Olam on a random Tuesday morning; though Daniel helped lead Shabbat services during college, I’m not convinced Max has set foot in services since we’ve been old enough to legally drink the Kiddush wine.

So I guess it’s a lie to say that there isn’t anything interesting about being a triplet. But the intrigue and the good times were not a product of my brothers and me being yanked from our mother’s womb in rapid succession on that fateful November morning; you could probably have put me in a room with any two random kids my age and I would have had a fine time. But at the end of the day, I’d still call out “I want Max (and Daniel).” Because for better or for worse, we are the Follmer triplets.

Ted Perlstein’s future is in the cards

Last year, Ted Perlstein was having drinks with friends, a couple who had recently tied the knot.

While sipping beer, the newlyweds griped about the chore of writing their wedding thank-you notes. Hearing his friends’ post-nuptial grievances got Perlstein, a Jewish Chicago-based entrepreneur, thinking about the act of sending greeting cards. “This process should be something that you look forward to,” he thought. “It should be fun.”

He did some research and found that the paper greeting card business hasn’t changed in 150 years. Here’s some random trivia for your next cocktail party: According to the Greeting Card Association, 1856 marked the start of the greeting card industry in America. For most of that time, according to Perlstein, cards were serious and pretty; the funny ones, like those ‘Over the Hill’ and couch potato cards, have only been around for a few decades.

Perlstein wanted to put his unique stamp on the industry by adding a different type of card to the mailbox. “Exchanging cards should really be more participatory. [Right now] you buy the card, you send it, and that’s it. It’s very one directional, a monologue,” he says. “On the receiving end, what do you do when you get the card? You smile, you laugh for a second, and then you have a big decision—do you throw it out, put it in a drawer, or hang it on the fridge? The process stops—it hasn’t evolved.”

In setting out to evolve the card business from monologue to dialogue, he dreamed up Fill In The Blank Greetings.

Launched last June, Fill In the Blank facilitates a personalized, playful dialogue between sender and receiver. Each card contains several cut-outs that correspond to blanks inside the card that the recipient is instructed to fill in before opening. For example, he/she might be prompted to write in “something you’d wish from a genie” or “a learned skill from elementary school.” Upon opening the card, the recipient discovers a message created with the help of their personalized responses. Then, the recipient may e-mail the creation back to the sender and family and friends on the company’s website.



Birthday cards

The cards are reminiscent of Mad Libs, the written and sometimes gross-out game—depending on who’s filling in the responses—that Perlstein played as a kid.

Growing up in a Reform Jewish household in Atlanta—in addition to Mad Libs—Perlstein also loved numbers, electronics, and learning how things work. In college, he was pre-med and majored in engineering but, upon graduating he changed his career track. “I had an epiphany that I wanted a personal life.” He and a friend started up an internet travel company, a site they ran for five years. Their business planted the entrepreneurial seed but, at the same time, the travel bug, which he’d been promoting to his clients, also bit Perlstein. So he left the company to travel on a Birthright Israel trip and then backpacked around the world for five months before returning to school to obtain his MBA.

Post-graduation, he settled in Chicago, and again worked for a stint in the travel industry, but again, his entrepreneurial spirit propelled him to go into business for himself. “I like creating things that a lot of people can use and be happy using,” he said.

Fast-forward a couple of years and a lot of work—‘”the adage everything takes longer than you think it will is so true,” says Perlstein—and Fill In the Blank Greetings was born.

Perlstein writes all the copy for the cards himself and works with freelance artists from around the country to design the cards. Currently, he works “25 feet from my bedroom” in River North, but plans to move to a downtown office soon and hire a couple of fulltime employees as well.

“The biggest challenge is creating a card that is conservative and edgy at the same time,” he said. “You don’t just want to be the guy who makes the edgy cards because you’ll alienate a whole slew of people.”

And a slew of people have bought the cards. Since its launch two months ago, the company has sold several million cards. The cards sell for about $3 a piece, but also sell in bulk for about $2.20 a card. People may order the cards online and, eventually, purchase them at retail outlets. The business also has a Facebook group. Card selection ranges from birthday greetings to bar/bat mitzvahs to “A just because card,” Perlstein’s favorite.



Sending a card “just because”

Political junkies can also have some fun filling in the _____ with election cards,” featured on the site. These cards enable people to reach out to friends to influence their vote before the presidential election—and choose Senators McCain and Obama’s favorite TV theme songs.

  

Filling in the ______for president

Perlstein hopes to expand the card selection to include Jewish cards celebrating the holidays, Jewish camping, and quotes from Jewish mothers. He also is working on a line of magnets featuring idioms and recognizable movie quotes like “You had me at _____” and “Go ahead, make my _____.” The idea is for the magnets to hold up take-out menus and invitations to create new quotes. For example, over a Japanese take-out menu, the magnet quote morphs into “Go ahead, make my sushi.”

He has some sage advice for fledgling entrepreneurs: “Don’t be afraid to fail. That’s what stops a lot of people from trying… [After all], last year at this time if you told me that I’d be a CEO of a greeting card company, I would have laughed in your face.”