Month: February 2006

My favorite place to eat Korean in Boston is Wu Chon House in Somerville. That is where i first encountered my favorite food, their version of tofu kimchi bokum. So you can imagine the shrieking and jumping up and down that occurred when I drove past a place called Woo Chon Restaurant here in Chicago.
I had to try it, just for the amusement value alone. I’d been twice to Hai Woon Dae, just because that was the only one I could remember both times I was called on to get a group of people to a Korean BBQ. So when tallasiandude was in town recently and had a yen for kalbi & soju, we decided to try Woo Chon. (particularly appropriate since he knows and loves the Somerville Wu Chon also) All we needed was adequate eats and we would have been happy, but Woo Chon smacked it out of the park — it was WAY better than the already-good Hai Woon Dae. There must be a law in the universe that all restaurants called Woo Chon totally rule.

We tried to order kalbi and some crazy black-pepper dish I forget exactly, but we couldn’t have that because it wasn’t cooked on the coals like the kalbi, so we ended up with kalbi and giant prawns for the grill, and a dish of kimchi bokum to start. We had barely ordered and gotten some very nice barley tea before the best scallion pancake I’ve ever had arrived at the table for no charge. (free! crunchy! eggy! oh yeah!)

The kimchi bokum is my second favorite version — my heart still belongs to Wu Chon’s back home, but this version is very fresh and light in flavor, tangy and bright and full of lovely fatty pork and spicy vegetables. Quite different in style from my beloved, but very definitely yummy. Very happy to have found a worthy version of this here in Chicago.
And then the main course arrived. I don’t usually post really big photos here, but behold the glory of a Woo Chon bbq spread:

Head-on prawns. Glorious kalbi. More fucking pan chan than I have ever seen in one place, and ALL OF THEM freaking amazing. Holy crap. YUM. They use the inside leaves of the lettuce that can’t be used as bbq wraps in a salad topped with fabulous dressing. They make a couple awesome kimchi styles. Two kinds of sweet daikon pickle (be still my heart). An insanely good pickled oyster mushroom, of which they kindly brought us a refill dish when we’d demolished the first one. Spectacular cucumber pickle slices. Bean sprouts, garlic, fish cake, dried silver fishies, the ubiquitous potato salad. Crazy good sweet red dried squid. A sesame oil + black pepper dipping sauce for the prawns, and a spicy bean paste for the kalbi. Dear god, we ate until we couldn’t eat no more, and then we ate more. And knocked back a bottle of soju, ’cause that always seems like the right thing to do.

Very late in the meal, tallasiandude (a self-proclaimed “damn rice eater”) recovered enough from the kalbi euphoria to crave some rice, and asked the waitress for a bowl. She looked mildly confused and told us it was already coming, and moments later a bowl of pretty purple rice arrived along with another bowl of spicy miso stew. We had no idea it was coming (free, again) or we might have considered a) not letting our gluttony run completely amok, or b) not ordering that kimchi bokum. We tried valiantly to eat it all, it was so good, but we just couldn’t. But since we are totally going back there, we can do it right next time.
To top off an already perfect meal, they brought us the little tiny bottles of fruity yogurt drink that we love so much, that seem only to appear in Korean restaurants, and that are the most perfect thing after a big spicy meal.
Random afternote: LTHForum has a recent thread about korean bbq, and says there’s a kalbi special at Kang Nam through end of February – I guess i will have to try it, but after that I am going straight back to Woo Chon.

There’s a new cafe very near my office called Cafe Ciao, and I’ve pretty much assumed it wasn’t open yet, but apparently it has been since September. There are restrictions on the signage, the owner says, and so she’s having trouble generating traffic. So here’s my little bit to help:
For lunch today I had a very delicious, extremely crunchy and light grilled chicken pesto panini, with hot-spicy Jay’s chips on the side. The place is comfortable and full of light, a very nice spot for a business or social lunch, or a drink after work perhaps, since there’s a full bar.
Julie, the owner, is very nice (and drop-dead gorgeous, my goodness) and does a great job with the food and the service. She’s also got some clever ideas to build good-will, like a raffle (each customer gets an entry) and a grab-bag of freebie coupons on the way out the door. I have “won” a free beer, so I will return — which means her ideas are working.
So if you live or work in the West Loop, get yourself over to the corner of Madison & Sangamon, and have something to eat or drink at Cafe Ciao.

As FoodNerd has mentioned, I’m visiting Chicago for a few days between classes, and as such, I’m working from her place during the day. When we got to her neighborhood last night after picking me up at the Ashland train stop, she mentioned that the local Vietnamese fresh roll / bahn mi store had started offering pho (pronounced “fuh”) — the vietnamese style beef noodle soup that I’ve learned to appreciate as something wholly different from my beloved nu ro mian, but just as delightful (and far more available in the New England area). I love me all manner of soup noodles, so I had pretty much decided last night what I was going to get for lunch today.

Fan Si Pan is a sort of upscale hippie/hipster joint, a bright space decked out in spring green and light wood with colorful highlights, and it seems to be trying to cater to a different clientele than the Pho shops I’m used to visiting in the Boston area. (I do wonder what kind of traffic they get in this largely Hispanic neighborhood: around 12:45pm there was a signle group of four sitting at the table in the window and a lone woman waiting for takeout.)

I definitely got the impression that they specialized in the sandwich/roll-up market with their bahn mi and spring roll menu, but I couldn’t tell you how they measure up since that’s never really been my thing. (Perhaps FoodNerd has an opinion.) The Pho, which was recently added to the menu (ideal, really, for this time of year), comes in small, medium and large; I got the large for six and change after tax.

Frankly, I was a bit disappointed.

I was already a little disappointed that even ordering in, the soup came in a 32 oz. disposable styrofoam cup/bowl. I want my soup in a real bowl, but I guess it’s a testament to their focus on quick, takeout, eat-with-your-hands sandwiches and spring rolls that they appear to specialize in. They used the skinny rice noodle that is more common to bun (vermicelli) and, of course, which you find in Bahn Mi. There wasn’t much beef to speak of (unsurprisingly, no tripe, but also none of the yummy tendon that I love so much), and only a few bits of beansprout mixed in, nothing like the pile of beansprouts and basil that I’ve come to expect to accompany my soup. Also missing was the plum sauce that adds an extra layer of richness to the soup, although they did have a bottle of Sriracha chili sauce on the table along with… soy and wasabi? Weird, but I knew going in that this wasn’t going to be a traditional Vietnamese dining experience. The broth was actually quite good — good hearty beefiness but seemingly without the MSG that is common to this dish (perhaps one positive in its less traditional style).

Ah well, live and learn. On the one hand, I need to curb my expectations, but on the other, I need to be more cognizant of where I’m going and try to play to their strengths. The soup was still a good thing on a cold winter day, but maybe I should take a page out of FoodNerd’s book and pick up some Mexican soup next time around.

The tallasiandude is in town for a visit, and he arrived hungry. Since last time he was here we were thwarted in our attempts to get him an Italian beef sandwich, we thought that might be a nice little snack. Man-Jo-Vin was our first thought, but the phone’s been disconnected and it seems like it’s closed; dunno what happened there. Plan B was Al’s on Taylor St.
I’ve had a couple of mass-market Italian beefs (*cough* Portillo’s *cough*) since my initiation into the joys of that fine Chicago sammich at Johnnie’s, and they were sad, dry, polite, pathetic echoes of the real thing. I was psyched about finally getting another sandwich from one of the acknowledged masters, and I was not disappointed. It’s quite different from Johnnie’s — spicier, pepperier, fattier gravy, a heftier meatiness of flavor, and a finer chop on the giardiniera — but just as good in its own way. It’s kind of comforting, actually, that the stylistic difference is so pronounced, rather than one just being simply better.
Good homemade fries, good lemonade, and completely dumpy atmosphere. Perfect for huddling over the steel sandwich ledge, licking beef gravy off your hands as you make short work of that soggy, savory pile of bread and beef. And someone has a good sense of humor: look closely at the photo. Ha!

C is in town again, and we both had fairly stressful workdays, so we went to Frontera again to get some cocktails with our dinner (and so C could have another try matching wines to spicy mexican foods).
The mezcal margarita remains spectacular. We tried a special also, of reposado tequila, lime, pear nectar, and a bit of oloroso sherry, which was rich and nutty, like a pear tart in hazelnut crust. I always thought the celebrity bartender concept was kind of bogus, but whoever is concocting these drink recipes knows what they are doing, for sure.
Then we had enchiladas nortenas, beef in a warm tomatoey sauce covered with melty cheese, utterly comforting and delicious, and a plate of empanadas filled with huitlacoche and served with peppery tomatillo salsa and some shredded radishes. Very nice indeed. For mains we dawdled too long and missed out on the sablefish, but we drowned our sorrow in pork loin atop stewed pork and potatoes in a tinga poblano sauce, and in lamb stewed in guajillo chile sauce topped with charcoal grilled green beans. Jill the fabulous sommelier helped us pick out a spanish wine, which god damn it, i’ve forgotten already, but C wrote it down so i’m sure he’ll help me out.
And then we went a little batshit, ordering kaffir lime goat cheese flan and chocolate cheesecake, plus mezcal hot chocolate and cafe de olla. Chocolate cheesecake = good, but the flan was awesome, very rich and thick from the goat cheese, and then after the cheese dissipated on the tongue, fabulous kaffir lime flavor. When eaten with the mint garnish, even better, a sort of thai flan. YUM.
We had a great waiter, who picked up immediately on the fact that we were sharing the starters, and brought us the mains split into two dishes each, and also let us have a “split” order of the two dessert drinks (which was really one drink apiece of each) — and he brought us some rolls of the spiced-sugar they use to make the cafe de olla, because C was only planning on having a sip of the coffee (so he wouldn’t be up all night) but it was so delicious he actually had nearly a whole cupful, and asked the waiter how it was made. Needless to say, BIG FAT TIP.
Another fine meal at Frontera, and another evening in which I roll home stuffed to the eyeballs, groaning from the pleasure and pain of it all. 🙂
(I have a photo on my phone of the nummy and photogenic lamb stew, but who knows when I’ll manage to get it downloaded and onto the net.)