Category: Restaurants & Stores

My friend the ELF was in town for a big, important, stressful work event, and we made plans to go out for dinner the night she wrapped it all up. She brought along her friend and colleague Tha Directah from Jersey, and we all had a hell of a time, drinking just a little too much and eating a lot too much. I love Blackbird. 🙂
I haven’t decided if Tha Directah needs to become an acronym or not (TDFJ?). However, she can eat with me anytime, because anyone who can do this in a public place is A-OK with me:

The girls were running a little late because of work, so I was lurking at the bar waiting for them, drinking a perfect vodka gimlet that fabulous bartender Paul made for me just the way I like it, with half Rose’s and half fresh-squeezed lime juice. ELF joined me, and Tha Directah sweet-talked Paul into making his signature drink, which he refused to name but was his own variant on the French 75. Big points to the ELF for recognizing the resemblance on sight!

The amuse-bouche was a cup of sunchoke bisque with home-cured salmon belly. Not just salmon. Salmon belly. And it was a perfect little explosion of salty fattiness against the creamy nutty soup. It occurred to me that I like the bellies of lots of creatures: salmons, tunas, pigs, clams…

Then, inspired by tales of C the WineNerd, we ordered two rounds of appetizers. We were at least one sheet to the wind by this time, so it was all a little haphazard inasmuch as we could only agree on the contents of the course at hand at any given moment — but that made it more fun. So we got a salmon tartare with blood oranges and avocado and arbol chilies, which was very nice and perfect for summer — I liked it as a nice break from the meat-stravaganza that my dinners at Blackbird inevitably become, but the girls have had a few too many salmon tartare dishes in NYC, where they seem to be on every menu for all those skinny New York girls to order. And we got the succulent, i mean suckling, pig confit with blood oranges & balsamic, which was to die for as it always is, and the charcuterie plate, which is different every time and dreamy in all its guises. The crispy lamb’s tongues were my favorite this time, which took some doing because the country pate was pretty spectactular on its little brioche triangles, and the pickles this time were adorable little enoki mushrooms.

For the second appetizer course we got the diver scallops, with peas and preserved lemon, which was as close to failure as I’ve seen Blackbird get, which is to say that it was utterly delicious but the flavors seemed to exist on their own rather than blending together harmoniously into something even greater than the sum of the parts. And we got a walleye pike with pickled vegetables that may have been ramps, I don’t remember exactly, which was another light, fresh dish that wasn’t particularly challenging but for that I am grateful, because I don’t always want to work when I’m eating. And we got the green garlic soup topped with battered and fried frogs’ legs, which was ELF’s favorite. The soup was simple and fresh, and the little leggies were awfully nice, little salty crunchy mild meaty bites to contrast with the soft green soup. I don’t think I’d ever had a frog’s leg before, and it does taste a little bit like chicken, but somehow softer and more delicate.

A rose champagne materialized in there somewhere, courtesy of the ELF, which got the other two sheets flapping in the breeze. We didn’t have enough gas for three entrees, and sadly the pork rib had run out, so we shared the sturgeon with peas, onions and sorrel, which was very good but sturgeon just always tends to taste like dirt to me, and veal flank steak with morels and ramps and a sweet-tart vinegar sauce, which was more the sort of springtime dish I prefer. Yum.
Tha Directah hit the wall somewhere between the second and third course, once the adrenaline of the week’s work started to wane and the cocktails started to wax, so we skipped dessert entirely and took ourselves home to bed. There wasn’t any Allman Brothers this time, but I think they still had a good time. They’re coming back this week, and if schedules allow, we’ll do some more high-quality eating real soon.

I was up visiting my friend H for a bit of rainy-day thrifting, during which neither of us was particularly thrifty (but we got some fabulous stuff — big white ’70s ‘badass superphones’ for H’s husband, some 1960s french sunglasses for H, and for me the prettiest rhinestone necklace I have ever seen), and by the end of all that I was ravenous. There’s a little pocket of Persian/Turkish cuisine up that way, and H highly recommended the Middle East Bakery on Foster between Clark & Ashland. I followed her suggestion and got a tasty spinach & cheese pie, and I followed my own gluttony and got a meat kibbe wrapped in a creamy starch (bulgur?) and deep fried to a greasy crunchy delight. They were both good, but that crunchy kibbe was really spectacular.
They have lots of greatlooking breads (it is a bakery after all) — i got two long flat loaves of soft white bread with sesame seeds, and some 7-grain pitas — and a cold case chockablock with homemade prepared foods. Their hummus is good, thin & nutty but a little too strong of tahini and not enough garlic & lemon for my taste. (Easily fixed at home, so no worries there.) The baba ganoush is super-smoky and really great, and the fool moudammas tastes strongly of green pepper, which is a little off-putting for me but the overall tangy & hot-peppery flavor won me over. There are two flavors of fresh labneh balls rolled with herbs and served in olive oil; i tried the mint-and-red-pepper version, which is addictively sheepy, creamy and spicy. There is something about middle-eastern dairy products that I just adore — labneh is one of my most favorite things to spread on bread, and the salted yogurt drink ayran is astoundingly refreshing on a hot summer day, though everyone else seems to think it’s weird. But then, I like drinking buttermilk too, so I guess it’s a thing.

Anyway… they also have a wide selection of nice-looking and well-priced bulk-packaged nuts, seeds, grains, legumes, spices and other staples like sugar and tea and coffee. I got some date sugar for TNR, 2 pounds of raw organic sugar, and a packet of pine nuts, along with a nice small jar of tahini. I hate having to buy a huge tub of tahini, because I can never use it up fast enough.
I also got a jar of the electric-pink turnip pickles that I have enjoyed with my kebabs & pilafs at several middle-eastern restaurants. Unfortunately, the jarred version isn’t that great — the texture of many of the pickles is soft and rubbery, and they have that weird undertaste that turnips have when they’re a bit too old, and the pickling brine is a little harsh. I think I might try making my own, since there’s a recipe in the new issue of Saveur.
I might try the black bean hummus recipe in there too, while I’m at it, and I have an eggplant waiting in the fridge… mmmmmm…..
oh right, this post was supposed to be about the persian market too — Pars Persian Market on Clark — it’s okay, but the bakery is better by a long shot, and friendlier as well. The Persian Market has more dishes and cookware, though, and you can get little wasp-waisted tea glasses and saucers, and several types of the long flat metal skewers for kebab kubideh, and tiny coffee cup sets, and hookahs, and it looks like the upstairs has belly dancing outfits. I did see some canned foods I’d never seen before, like a pomegranate soup made with split peas, and a huge selection of waters, like orange blossom water, but also cress water, borage water, peppermint water, dill water, and several with no english words on them at all.
Persian cookery, and Turkish and the other surrounding nations’, is just so extraordinarily delicious and combines flavors in such interesting ways, and even beyond that it’s very healthful in that mediterranean legumes-and-olive oil mode. It seems to me it should be taking off much more than it is, the way that Italian cooking did a while ago and Spanish cooking is now. Perhaps it’s coming soon… in the meantime I am going to sit happily and stuff my face with smoky eggplant and sheep cheese, and start planning my kebab kubideh cookout party. Seriously. I just need to get a grill….

tallasiandude is visiting this week, and this morning – er, this afternoon – we went out in search of pancakes or waffles. Since I am mildly obsessing about Humboldt Park these days, i thought we might try out Flying Saucer, particularly since we drove past it last night on our way home from my new favorite bar, the California Clipper. (well-worn seemingly-original vintage art-deco bar, rockabilly-ish live bands, relaxed atmosphere, linoleum floor, pinups on the wall of the back room — the only flaw is not having good bourbons on the shelf)

Anyway, I digress. Flying Saucer is all hipster vintage low-rent coolness, and the food is pretty good. The mesclun salads that come with things are very fresh and good, and everything was quite tasty, including the coffee, thank god. I had a cracked-pepper crepe stuffed with remarkably light scrambled eggs, ham, ricotta & asparagus, and tallasiandude had a “what would cheeses do?” omelet in honor of easter, full of more asparagus, cream cheese, swiss and i think cheddar, with home fries spiced up with some sort of spice powder that was clearly commercial but still tasted good. For dessert we had a small plate of the ricotta-stuffed french toast with strawberries & whipped cream, which was a mite dry but that didn’t matter once the ricotta and cream and syrup got into the mix.

The best part, though, is the slice of bacon matted on a quilted paper towel, framed, and propped up next to the cash register. I am convinced that a cooked slice of bacon would keep just fine in a frame, but tallasiandude is doubting. If I ever open a restaurant, I am totally framing the first piece of bacon fried in my kitchen. That is badass.
And all of this has reminded me that the last time tallasiandude was here, we had brunch at Lula Cafe but I never got around to blogging it. That was another hipster-infested spot with extremely good food and annoying teacups. (The teapot fits into the teacup, which is very clever but causes the cup’s handle to be in an awkward position, so every sip is either an acrobatic maneuver or you burn your fingers.)

We had another stuffed french toast that day, this one insanely decadent in a pool of creme anglaise, and a delicate omelet of smoked salmon, cream cheese and dill. Very nice indeed, and the little flyer describing their valentine’s day dinner offering sounded dreamier still, so i will try to go back for dinner sometime.
All of these things were very good, but I am still sad that the greasy spoon closest to my house, the one with the very good, very plain waffles and lovely thin strong diner coffee, has burned down and is no more. Sometimes you just want a nice, simple thing for brunch, without any foodieness and without any atmosphere.

“Ate at Blackbird last night. Choose your superlative: it was that. The
amuse was a chilled asparagus soup with peekytoe crab and scallops that
was just amazing. My main was grilled or broiled veal flank steak with
boudin blanc, morels and bitty little potatoes. Everything was sauced by
an umami-laden, slightly acidic jus. Fucking outstanding. We ate at Custom
House again (it’s so close to work!) on Monday, and it was really good.
But Blackbird kicks its ass, hard.”

At the spur of the moment last night I had dinner with JG at A Tavola, the italian restaurant in her neighborhood that has been touted as the best gnocchi in the city. The gnocchi are pretty good — a little marshmallowy in texture for my taste, but in a fabulous sauce of brown butter and lots of big crispy-fried sage leaves. We also had tagliatelle in a lamb ragu (yummy), a braised pork shank over white beans (yummy and huge), and braised beef short ribs over risotto (super-extra yummy).
However, this delicious straightforward-italian meal was eaten in a quiet little restaurant infested with at least 3 couples obviously having affairs. All the men were 50ish, all the women were skinny and 20ish, and ALL OF THEM were canoodling outrageously. Fingers were being sucked, two of them were actually making out at a corner table, and there was general fondling all around. JG saw one of the guys looking bored and yawning as his girl talked enthusiastically about something, then perked right back up again when the finger-licking resumed. EEEEW.
We just eyeballed them and laughed, in between admiring discussion of our short ribs. It was like fine dining in a deeply creepy junior high dance. It’s really the perfect restaurant for the setup: quiet and romantic, but in a young hipster neighborhood where those aging dudes can be utterly assured that they won’t see anyone they know on a Tuesday night.

My coworker JG got some lunch today at Hecky’s and its delightful aroma wafted into my cube and I was forced to investigate. She had a half chicken there nestled in the foil and styrofoam, covered and glistening in a red coat of bbq sauce. She ate all the dark meat and licked off her fingers, and told me she usually got too full to eat the white meat, which she didn’t like anyway, so she threw it out. I gave her The Look, whereupon she said she’d put it in the fridge for me. 🙂 She’s awesome that way.

And just now, after a really irritating bout of data cleanup for a client that should have done it themselves, weeks ago, I went and got that chicken breast and ate it and was happy. “it’s the sauce” is what it says on the menu from Hecky’s. The chicken’s fine, moist enough and so on, but the sauce really does make the difference.
I’ve never had a sauce like this, fragrant and frankly quite sweet — which usually I don’t like, but this is tempered by a strong vinegar tang and spicy heat that seems like a combination of a solid dose of Louisiana style hot sauce and cayenne powder. It’s fantastic stuff, worth licking off all your digits and eating with a spoon if you get the chance. Yum.

I was oot and aboot yesterday in Humboldt Park, riding my bike, when I grew peckish. I came upon a likely-looking place that said Jibaritos and Lechon Asado in big letters in the window, and when I peeked in, the place was mobbed, which I took to be a good sign. There’s takeout in the front, so at first I thought I had to wait in line, but there are two dining rooms, one to the left and one to the back, and I got a table right away. It’s a little divey, but homey and full of families and young people and old people — lots of people, eating lots of food, speaking lots of languages (or at least spanish and english). This is Borinquen Restaurant.
There are some cool looking appetizers — i saw a skewer of meat and a big fried ball of something (plantain I’d guess) going to another table — and mixed plates, but I got the headline dish, the jibarito with lechon asado. I’d had a jibarito at Rudy’s Taste, which I found hard to eat and ultimately disappointing, so the fabulousness that arrived on the plate here was truly heartwarming.

Imagine some nice flavorful roast pork, in a sandwich with lettuce and tomato, glued together with a bit of cheese whiz and a generous dollop of mayo. Now imagine that instead of bread, there are two toothsome slabs of plantain, smashed flat and fried crisp in — wait for it, this where it gets really good — hot oil with so much garlic in it that globs of garlic stick to the outside of the sandwich. The garlicky goodness wafted up to me immediately, and I started thinking happy thoughts about the world and everyone in it (those of you who know me know how uncharacteristic that is). I am so grateful for all of the different kinds of people in the world, each of whom figures out these amazing and wonderful new things for me to eat. I mean, who thought this thing up? It’s brilliant.
It comes with a big pile of yellow rice, studded with beans and bits of ham and chorizo. Usually the rice in these situations is pretty dull stuff, just there to fill space, but this was really delicious. Happily, there’s a recipe for it on the website of the restaurant. 🙂 And they have Hawaiian Punch, for which I have a soft spot a mile wide, and I have to say, it goes really, really well with a savory treat like this jibarito.
It’s not on Metromix, which strikes me as bizarre, but that’s ok — we don’t want too many more people to find it, or we won’t be able to get a table.

There don’t seem to be too many food bloggers in Chicago, for whatever reason, but one whose blog I like a lot does live here, or at least occasionally she lives here, and last week I reached out of my usual reclusive misanthropic shell and met up with my first real live food blogger, Cindy from foodmigration. She’s awesome, and we made friends (yay!), and selflessly *ahem* explored the shanghainese offerings of Moon Palace, the only place I’ve been able to dig up that has anything on the menu remotely resembling what I’ve gotten used to at Wing’s in Boston.
We had xiao long bao, soup dumplings, which were delicious — they are bigger than usual, with a thicker wrapping, and with way more meat than soup, so they’re not in contention with top-notch soup dumplings, but they taste good and frankly a tasty nonstandard soup dumpling is better than no soup dumpling at all. Cindy’d never had any xiao long bao, and she loved these, so I can’t wait for her to get out to California and have soup dumplings at Din Tai Fung in Los Angeles. (WATCH OUT: The link plays music. Sigh.) She in for a TREAT. 🙂
The dumplings were the starter, along with some spare ribs steamed in spicy black bean sauce wrapped in a lotus leaf — good, but in no way spicy. We were distracted by trying to get to know each other and cross-examine the menu at the same time, but eventually we got ourselves sorted out enough to order more dishes.
We’d heard that Moon Palace had a braised pork shoulder, and from the photos on LTHforum it looked a lot like the dish at Wing’s that I call Pork As Big As Your Head. We ordered that, which Moon Palace calls braised pork thigh, along with rice cakes with pickled vegetable and bamboo shoots, and some clearly fried shrimp. The shrimp weren’t on the menu, and I had to try and explain what I wanted because I couldn’t remember the chinese words for it, but once we had established that the dish i was after was a) free of vegetables, b) not spicy, c) sauteed, and d) in a clear sauce, they knew what I wanted and told me i could have it. Yay! Cindy’d never had rice cakes, either, so I was thrilled to share my love for the chewy white pucks of joy, along with my recipe for cooking them with kimchi. Heh. The pucks here were delish, in a yummy dish of pickled salty veg, bamboo shoot slices, and pork, because no vegetarian dish is complete without pork, right? And the clearly fried shrimp were good too. The shrimps are regular shrimp, bigger than the special type of shrimp that you get on a good day at Wing’s and every day at Mandarin Chateau, and the sauce is somehow thicker and more visible, but I ain’t complaining — they were yummy. Tallasiandude says that I’ve been spoiled by starting out with the creme de la creme of the dish, and that most other versions of clearly fried shrimps come with that thicker sauce.
And the pork as big as your head? Perhaps not quite as big as my head, and it didn’t fall off the bone as soon as you glance at it sideways, but it was succulent and fatty and full of that lovely brown savory sauce, and we both liked it very much. Cindy had just made a big pot of veal stock and wasn’t up for more along the same lines, so I took the bone home and am going to make soup out of it, probably this weekend. (which i did – here’s a picture of it:)

So it still remains to be seen if Moon Palace passes the tallasiandude test, but so far it’s the best there is in these parts, and I will definitely go back — sometimes a girl just has to have soup dumplings and rice pucks and a big braised brown pork shoulder. And it’s nice to have a new friend in Chicago. 🙂
[photos are coming — camera pictures are hard b/c sometimes my download tool doesn’t work, and i am too cheap to pay 25 cents or whatever per picture.]

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.