Category: Restaurants & Stores

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.)

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.

C and I went to Naha last week [really it was early december, i’m lame. -fn], since we couldn’t get a table at Topolobampo.




The space is beautifully serene, in a just-hip-enough sort of way, but it did make me think that it was carefully designed to be fashionable-but-bland in just the right way as to make your haute-couture outfit really stand out to best advantage. So, you know, not really my scene, but I can dig it, and the room dividers made of crazy branches stuck into planters were really great.
Our first courses were both terrific, my mixed-beet salad with blue cheese and C’s romaine with red pepper & serrano ham. Simple but interesting on the tongue, and very well executed. We’d both had separate evenings of wretched, wretched meat-laden excess a few days previously, so we craved salad, rather uncharacteristically. 🙂
The mains were less successful. The bay scallops were tasty enough, but a bit soggy of crust in their buttery sauce, and almost too rich, or too numerous. I like my scallops crusty and crunchy on their exterior, and nearly raw inside, and these little guys were perilously close to overcooked. Still, not a BAD dish, just not a raving success. C’s dish was night and day — a boring bland piece of monkfish sitting next to what may be the single most delicious bit of porkbelly I’ve ever tasted, and that includes the Tung Po pork i had in LA last year, which put me into paroxysms of joy. Weird, and we couldn’t quite figure out what the idea was in combining the two.
The desserts all sounded good, but what i really wanted was the goat-cheese cheesecake from one item and the lemon-verbena icecream from another item. Being greedy and unwilling to compromise, I asked the waiter if I could combine them (I recognize that sometimes the kitchen has very specific quantities on hand and mix-matching can screw up the logistics). He came back and told me that the chef said I could mix them, but that he strongly recommended against it. As if I’d let THAT stop me. Pshaw. The two together were SO GOOD, two sides of a dairy coin, both light but creamy, one with a floral tartness and the other with a savory undertone. I think these might be on the menu frequently, since H had the goat cheesecake also on her trip to Naha, and loved it just as much. If you find yourself there, on a business dinner or a fancy date or whatever, the best way to proceed is to get a salad and the goat cheesecake (or the lemon verbena ice cream, or both), and a nice bottle of wine, and either ignore or laugh at the expensively-dressed yuppies all around you.

Went out to La Bonita last night with H&J and H’s mom LL, and had some high-quality mexican eats. The strength of this place is its sauces: the mole on the enchiladas pollo was rich with anise, and the rough tomatoey sauce pooled around my lamb chops was much spicier than it looked. Really I think the lamb was the best, but that’s very much personal preference, and a testament not only to the sauce but also to the perfection of the cooking of those little chops — succulent and tender, with lots of crispy salty edge bits to gnaw off the bone. Oof – yummy.
Everything was delicious, from the creamy avocado sauce swaddling the seafood cocktail to the tangy tomatillo sauce on LL’s chile relleno to the desserts: fresh coconut-nut-caramel pie, coffee-tinged flan, chocolate pecan bars, pineapple upside down cake. (One weird thing was the large bits of cinnamon stick apparently stuck into the coconut pie as garnish — they blended in with the nuts & caramel and you ended up eating them by mistake, which wasn’t so pleasant.) Avoid the creamy fruit-tequila after-dinner drinks that taste like Nestle Quik, and stick with the excellent before-dinner margaritas & tequilas — we should have known better than to try something called “Tequila Rose.”
But don’t let my harshing on the silly drinks put you off — the cooking is excellent and worth a trip.

Not long before the roommate upped stakes to Florida, I went with him and some of his friends to Siam Rice & Noodle House for some Thai food reputed to be the genuine article. (The roommate and one of the friends are of Thai extraction, so their standards are high — I just look for the yum, they look for “like mom makes.”)
The big draw is the traditional sticky rice, which arrives in a little woven steamer with a lid. It is seriously sticky, and the way you eat it is to pick some up in your hand and roll it into a little ball, just like you did with Wonder Bread when you were a kid. This is, as you might imagine, intensely satisfying to do. It’s also very tasty rice, kind of nutty, and with a chewy elasticity to it that is fun to eat. You dip your little rice nugget into whatever else it is you’re eating — we had spicy beef salad, some chicken larb that didn’t pass muster with the Thais in the group (but i thought was not too bad), and some grilled chicken wings. The food is excellent, better than pretty much any Thai food I’ve had so far — less sweet, more savory, which is how I think it’s supposed to be, based on my experiences watching the roommate eat, and learning to cook pad thai from a Thai woman in Boston a few years ago, who said that no Thai food in the entire Boston area was worth eating.
A word of warning: do not be confused by the other place named Siam Cafe up the street. That place seemed pretty good too, since we stumbled in and read the menu before getting a cell phone call from our friends waiting for us in the correct restaurant, but the place we ate was called Siam Rice & Noodle House.
There’s also a banh mi place a few blocks north on Sheridan that I’ve heard is awesome, better than Ba Le, so I will have to head back up there sometime soon.

My friend M came to visit last weekend, and on the way home from Midway we were reading the Reader trying to find a place to eat breakfast (brunch really, since it was after 11am by that time). I’d sort of set my heart on Pilsen, since the Ashland bus goes right through it and what a perfect excuse. Happily the Reader did part II of its regional-mexican feature that week, and we settled on Sabas Vega Carnitas, at Ashland & 18th.
Oh my heavens to betsy. Yum. Yum. Did I mention, yum? We were the only gringas in the place, but everyone there is friendly and there’s enough english spoken to get the job done. It’s mostly a takeout place, which means that you can walk in there and buy two pounds of top-notch carnitas or barbacoa for your next party, or tubs of birria and menudo, for which I will be returning sometime soon — readers of this blog know about my minor obsession with birria and posole — and on weekends they do table-service also. We had two tacos apiece, plus some pickled nopalitos and some velvety soft refritos. Every table gets some homemade tortilla chips & bowls of very good thin red and green salsas, plus some pickled carrots & jalapenos. I got coffee, the cinnamon-infused mexican kind I am growing very attached to, and our lovely waitress kept that mug full — for which I am endlessly grateful, since I stayed up the night before till 3am reading the new Neil Gaiman novel.
There’s pretty much two taco choices, carnitas & barbacoa, both fantastic. The barbacoa is redder and saucier than some that I have had, moist and delicious. The carnitas is savory & rich, toothsome pork cooked in its own fat but in no way greasy, and if you order it in a taco be prepared for its glorious immensity. That thing was the biggest taco I’ve ever seen, practically a small burrito.
THAT is my kinda fuckin’ breakfast. YUM.
Sabas Vega Carnitas & Restaurant
1808 S. Ashland Ave.
Chicago, IL 60608
312-666-5180
www.carnitasdonrafa.com