Fat Tommy's has reopened at the former location of Veggie Bite at 3031 W. 111th St.

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By Bridget Macdonald
Medill Reports - Chicago

Every year just before Lent begins a faded movie replays in my memory, a movie that’s been on repeat like a thousand episodes of “Law & Order” during a TNT marathon.

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The Little Caesars restaurant in Beverly was shut down Wednesday after a customer called 311 to report that he had found insects on his pizza.

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Starbucks Corp. has announced that of the 18 Chicago-area locations slated to close within the year, two are local: the Beverly store at 2347 W. 95th Street, and the Evergreen Park store at 87th and Kedzie.

The company intends to close 600 company-operated stores nationwide (8% of its portfolio) to help alleviate the effects of the slowing economy. The shutdowns will begin March 2009 and will cut the company's global workforce by as many as 12,000.

By Kelsey C. Blackwell
Medill Reports - Chicago

By Evan Swan
Medill News Service

It ain't nothin' but a chicken wing for Patrick "Deep Dish" Bertoletti, the 22-year-old Mohawk-wearing Morgan Park Academy grad who ate his way to victory on the Major League Eating Tour in the Chicken Wing Showdown in Las Vegas late Tuesday morning.

Along with the prize, he claimed the $25,000 purse after defeating international and hot dog-eating legend, Takeru Kobayashi, and this year's Nathan's Hot Dog Eating champion, Joey Chestnut.

Patrick Bertoletti, a 2003 graduate from Morgan Park Academy finished in third place at the 92nd Annual Nathan's Hot Dog Eating contest on July 4 in Brooklyn, NY. Bertoletti ate 49 hot dogs and buns (HDBs) in twelve minutes.

Bertoletti only trailed the champion Joey Chestnut (66 HDB) and six-time champion Takero Kobayashi (63 HDB). Both Chestnut and Kobayashi set records with their numbers.

Bertoletti is one of the few eaters who have beaten Chestnut, as he defeated him in a jalepeno eating contest earlier this year at the St. Patrick's Day Chowdown in Savannah, GA.