Author: foodnerd

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.

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.)

Ate lunch at Bombon Cafe today after a client meeting. Had a chicken adobado torta, with caramelized onions and chihuahua cheese and mesclun, on a crunchy but featherlight round bun. Very yum. Perhaps a bit foofy, and definitely expensive ($7), but still yum.
Got some mini quesadillas to go for dinner later — bacalao (surprisingly boring), chorizo & bean (yum), and huitlacoche & squash blossom (best of the 3). Also spendy but tasty. The pastry I got for dessert was pretty good too — bland in that mexican-pastry way, but interesting and tasty: it was some soft lemony yellow cake, wrapped in a girdle of crispy pie pastry topped with sugar crystals. Good coffee (i stopped in on the way TO the meeting also, i am such a nerd).
Bombon Cafe
36 S. Ashland
Chicago, IL 60607
312-733-8717

After the game, the ELF, Mr. S & I tried to go to Perez, so they could experience the yummy mexican cooking that so consumes me these days, but it was CLOSED. Oh the horror! the trauma! What to do? QUICKLY, internet, where to eat?
The Silver Palm. Eating inside a restored train car is never a bad idea, and this one has the advantage of having excellent french fries. The food is nothing truly spectacular, but I will go back for the fries alone, and to go with them, the deep-fried perch was very nice, the ribs were decent, the grilled calamari starter perfectly fine, and the roasted-vegetable sandwich a nice change of pace, with parsnips and beets instead of peppers and zucchini. And they have a good selection of belgian and other european beers, which is always appreciated.
In related news, the jumbo dogs at the United Center are really good — I haven’t had a full-on chicago dog since I moved here, and I remember anew how much celery salt and two kinds of pickles can do for a hot dog. Mmmmm.

This weekend my friend ELF showed up with her fiance Mr. S and some charity-auction hockey tickets (uh, go Blackhawks!), and wanted to get a little taste of what Chicago could offer a traveling foodwhore. Not just any foodwhore, but one that’s been living in Manhattan the last few years, making good progress through the restaurants there — she’s got a long list of places I must go when I next visit. So, duh, I took them to Blackbird.
Which did not disappoint. (At this point, after C’s eaten there probably 10 times, maybe, I knew there was nothing to worry about.) ELF & Mr. S were digging the tasty deliciousness, and agreed with me about the atmosphere being strangely cozy despite the stark lines and cold color palette of the decor. Perhaps the Allman Brothers Greatest Hits on the CD player helped that along — ELF’s favorite part was that not only was she eating spectacularly delicious scallops and pork and fried capers, she was singing along to “Jessica” and bouncing in her seat. The restaurant gods were totally in the haus working their mojo for the ELF last night. And there’s also the thought that Blackbird is in Chicago, not NYC, and simply by virtue of that fact we lose a lot of the more egregious pretentiousness that can afflict a restaurant as good as this one is. (I certainly couldn’t say for sure, since my fine-dining in NYC consists only of a few trips to Babbo.)
We took a page from C’s playbook and got a first course of the charcuterie plate to share, which was even more delicious this time than last: enough cocktails were consumed yesterday that I don’t remember exactly what things were, but there was a savory salty sausage, a country-style pate with pistachios & a rim of lovely white fat, and crispy lamb’s tongue, with some fabulous pickles cut into julienne. ELF & Mr. S are digging the extra starter course concept, and I suspect it may be repeated sometime in their near future. 🙂
Second course was the venison pastrami again, equally spectacular as last time; another scallop dish, this time smoked scallops seared with brown butter, a couple shavings of black truffle, and marcona almonds, which were the flavor pairing that pushed this version over the edge — chuck a few chopped marconas over your next seared scallop and see for yourselves, yum; and a seared foie gras with duck confit wrapped in crepes, with sweet bits of things alongside: a molasses-y schmear of sauce, some fruits & sweet winter veggies. And two homemade marshmallows — too sweet really to go with the dish, but hilarious anyway, and delicious as a mini/early dessert course. They brought us a little glass of sauternes to go with this last dish — we weren’t sure if they do that for everyone, or if they just liked us for some reason, but it was very much appreciated, as it went perfectly with the dish.
We were drinking a chateauneuf de pape, which was good, but I am a lightweight these days and couldn’t drink much of it since we’d spent the afternoon hanging out in the Green Mill and the fancy sky-bar in the W having cocktails and conversation. Maybe ELF will remember what the hell it was, so I can tell you all.
For mains we — and I do mean we, since we did full-on plate rotation so everyone got some quality time with each dish; these are my kind of people, ELF & Mr. S — had a pork combo dish with sauerkraut, involving braised pork belly, a sausage of some kind, tiny potatoes, slices of pink apple & quince, and some tasty mustard. We had lamb t-bones, which are adorably wee versions of cow t-bones, but just as thick, and perfectly rare inside and crispy outside, and surrounded by cranberry beans, a spiced yogurt sauce, some crumbled sausage that tasted like merguez, and fantastic sweet-pickled red onions. And we had the guinea hen in yuzu glaze, because I remembered how fucking fantastic was the one bite I had had of C’s the last time I was at Blackbird. Oh my god. This dish is so so SO good, it’s just ridiculous. The yuzu is like a meyer lemon only even more floral and a bit stronger, so it’s perfect with the delicate bird and crunchy skin. The cauliflower was whole this time, not pureed, and there were also some fresh baby artichokes underneath, which were delicious — is it baby artichoke time already in California?? Hot damn. Everything we had was great, but this poultry dish is the star, as far as I am concerned — I couldn’t get enough. Our server agreed with me; she said it was her favorite by far… and she was diggin’ the Allman Brothers too, so clearly she is a woman of discernment and taste.
The waffles with chocolate and bacon were still on the menu — the woman next to us got them, at which point I got all excited and barged in on her meal to tell her how yummy it was going to be — but we ended up with papaya & coconut sorbets (with some marmeladed limes underneath, mmm), gingerbread blini with brandied cherries and buttermilk ice cream, and churros with peanut butter and fried bananas. And a glass of moscato di asti, because the ELF *hearts* moscato di asti.
I don’t know how they do it at Blackbird, but whatever it is, just don’t ever stop. YUM.