Chicago, Chicago You're My Kinda Town - Restaurant Roundup

I recently traveled to Chicago for a training at work and had enough time to take in some of the sights and check out some of the restaurants around the downtown area known as the Miracle Mile.

Armed with a new Android-powered phone, I was able to track down some pretty good grub in the short three days that I spent there. Let's start with the one that everybody knows about...

You probably recognize the Top Chef Master Season winner Rick Bayless - traditional Mexican fare is his niche and it all started with Frontera. On a Tuesday night the wait for a table was 1 hour, that's how popular this place is. We waited patiently for a spot to open up and the the bar; if it hadn't been for the kindness of a pair of British tourists who allowed us to claim their spot before they got up, we would've been waiting at least 15 minutes more.

A friend of mine and his wife regularly visit Chicago and always make sure to stop in here for a meal - in fact, he's the one who gave me the tip to forget the table and order from the bar...you'll get the full menu without the wait and the hassle. What you've got here is a good collection of Mexican flavors - the sopes, fried discs of masa dough topped with slow-braised pork were excellent - the spicy shrimp & corn soup was unusual and refreshingly spicy - in the foreground was a tortilla topped with black-bean mash, pork belly, avocado and a heap of cilantro..another contrast between deep, umami flavors with a clean, green & herbaceous finish.

The wait isn't for everyone and the crowds can be discouraging but the I'm glad we tried some of those flavor combos - it reminded me alot of a meal at Xochitl with attention paid to the layering of flavors.

The Publican!!! (located in Fulton Market) 

This place belongs in Philly. It's focused on three things....Oysters...Excellent Beer...and nose-to-tail cooking, preferably of the porcine variety. The restaurant itself is decorated like an upscale barn, with diners sitting in penned in booths like livestock or seated around large communal tables farm-style.  The lyrics for the Beatles song Piggies kept popping into my head when I saw happy diners tucking into massive plates of food

Everywhere there's lots of piggies 
Living piggy lives 
You can see them out for dinner 
With their piggy wives 
Clutching forks and knives 
to eat their bacon 

This wasn't bacon or pork belly or tongue or any number of interesting cuts on the menu - this is a lamb neck that is slow-braised then dusted and fry-crusted before being served in a broth alongside lemony potatoes & yogurt.  A little heavy for August, but unctuous and rich with flavor, a sweet dark meat being braised for so long right on the bone. 

This is my favorite fun dish of the trip...fried spicy pork rinds.  These were still hot from the frying oil and coated with a spicy, cheesy powder coating...think Cheetos meets chichirrones. I found out later that this dish was featured on the schlocky "Best Thing I Ever Ate" time-filler show on the Food Network...grrr...it deserves better.

I found the Purple Pig online in a search for tapas on the Miracle Mile. The website & menu looked pretty good and I'd even considered it for a dinner, but as luck would have it, we got to Chicago early so we chose to go there for a late lunch.

I was a little worried as we approached the place - what had looked like a gastro-pub/tapas bar online had all the appearance of a ladies-who-lunch/post-shopping trip wine bar - the kind that serves up $15 glasses of chardonnay to go with uninspired bruscetta.

The Purple Pig was somewhere in between the two expectations - the food was clever and had a few interesting flavors. I especially enjoyed the chorizo-stuffed fried olives.  Some of the food was on the edge of being too oily or salty.

Always looking to compare Chicago to Philly, we decided that the Purple Pig was similar to the small plates from Amis, albeit a cut below in terms of execution. This dish was the most evocative of Vetri's Italian tapas - a mousse of mortadella spread on delicious crusty bread and topped with pistachio, arugula and quality balsamic vinegar.

I'm glad we went there for a late lunch - I think I would've been disappointed with a dinner there as the menu seemed to promise flavors that never seemed to peak on the plate.

Speaking of ladies-who-lunch, another meal the next day took us deep into the so-called "Viagra Triangle" - a term for the high-end shopping/restaurant/bar district that sat just off the north end of the Miracle Mile. I'm guessing the large amount of middle-aged shoppers and diners strolling about contributed to the moniker.

Welcome to the Luxbar! Take away the D&G clad grannies pecking away at their chicken salads and you could see the bones of a decent gastropub here - a smattering of decent craft beers and options like truffled fries and sliders had me thinking I was back in Philly sitting outside Varga watching the the world go by and 10th & Spruce.

Objects on the blog may appear larger than they are on the plate! Luxbar had a mix of sliders to choose from - here's a lineup of the mini-dog, BBQ, Kobe and Fried Chicken sliders. Nowhere near as good as the Varga sliders - the Kobe was dried out and the BBQ was disgracefully sweet and without a smidge of heat or tartness.

Again, decent lunch option but I'm glad that we didn't spend an evening in the Viagra Triangle.

Located several blocks away from the Triangle and closer to Loyola Law School was the strangest Spanish restaurant I've ever eaten at - Cafe Iberico.

Now, don't get me wrong, I really wanted to like this place but everything about it was cringe inducing to the poor sucker like me whom after reading several online reviews, was expecting something closer to Amada or Washington D.C.'s Jaleo.

Was it the laminated accordion-like menus that displayed a washed-out photo of every dish on the menu? Was is the cavernous interior, designed to simultaneously feed 300+ people in one sitting which made me worry about the attention to quality that inevitably goes out the window when you're hitting that many covers a night? How about the TVs on an endless loop of sports-news-weather, just like the airport terminal we'd left behind at O'Hare?

Well, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. This was tuna cannelloni, tuna wrapped in pasta and topped with a thin 'white wine' sauce which resembled yogurt.  Assembled together, it looked pretty much like more of the same goofiness we'd witnessed, but the taste was actually spot-on...the tuna was flavorful, not a mushy paste, and the tomatoes were fresh and vibrant in a dressing of olive oil and lemon.  Looks like a case of the sum of the parts being greater than the whole here.

This dish just had me in stitches - I chuckled when our served delivered the Pulpo a la Plancha - a pile of grilled octopus & french fries...yes, french fries....about as Spanish as the french fries you find at Chinese buffets. I joked with Elizabeth that this was Sandra Lee's recipe from some never-aired episode...a 'Spanish Siesta' complete with a paella made with Uncle Ben's and kielbasa braised in Sunny Delight.

Again, the saving grace for Cafe Iberico was that I'll be darned if the octopus wasn't cooked perfectly. And the fries, also perfectly done, actually worked in the dish. When I asked the waiter about the dish and the odd inclusion of fries, he kind of sighed and said 'American-style'. I was not lying when I told him that I enjoyed it and the octopus was perfect.

So to summarize - Cafe Iberico is a great deal for decent food...like a chips&salsa on-the-table 'Mexican' restaurant for Spanish themed dishes.

OK, if you've made it this far, you really must be interested in some of the dining options in Chicago so I've saved the surprise favorite for those of you that have scrolled your way through to here.

We arrived at Quartino very late in the evening, just as the restaurant was winding down. having been hopping from place to place all night, we were in the mood for a late-night snack before headed back to the hotel and I had notived Quartino came up in nearly every search I did on the Droid for wine or tapas.

We had a seat at the bar and chose from an excellent selection of charcuterie and accoutrement - we opted for some olives, speck, and a slaw of pickled fennel. 

In another Philly comparison, not only is the menu similar to the Garces Trading Post, but the decor also has the same retro butcher/soda fountain/general store feel, with white subway tiles, reclaimed wooden timbers and a gargantuan bar.

The polenta fries were over the top in late-night bar snack - served piping hot, still crunchy and without any gumminess, these were another one of those dishes I hope will appear on a menu in Philly sometime soon...perfect replacement football-friendly finger foods like fried cheese sticks. We had them, along with a marinara veal meatball slider.

Looking back on all this great food I suddenly feel the need to take the stairs instead of the elevator at work for the next 2 months. Overall I was impressed with Chicago and I look forward to going back for more good stuff as we missed out on a few places due to the the timing of the trip.  The problem with having an early-week trip is that many of the restaurant were closed Monday & Tuesday...so plan your trips accordingly.

Marc Vetri's Porcini Crusted Halibut & Blackberry Sauce

I noticed a lone little baggie of dried porcini mushrooms sitting in the far back of the pantry last week and decided that today was the day that I'd do something other than re-hydrate and give to Elizabeth to add to one of her risottos. Actually she was working late that night and I don't have what it takes to make a risotto as good as hers
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Grabbing my latest library loaned cookbook, Marc Vetri's Il Viaggio, I spotted a recipe that used porcinis and blueberries...so unusual sounding that I had to try it.

Porcini-Crusted Halibut & Blueberry Sauce (link to recipe)

Although this blueberry-'shroom combo may not be so odd after all...somebody I met at a party told me that they saw a mushroom & blueberry risotto on a local menu recently. We also sampled a blueberry & basil compound butter that was savory and delicious, another unexpected blueberry matchup that works.

Looking in the fridge, we spied our blueberry supply was gone...we used blackberries instead. I'm thinking the subtler blueberry would play even better with the porcini crust (which, by the way, is very delicate, so once you get the fish in the pan, be gentle!).

OK, I knew there was no way we were going to have time to really give it that fussy-clean look on a Wednesday night after we both got home from work late, but I still wanted to give the dish a partner to the dance that wasn't plain.



Here's a Yukon Gold I halved then punched out with a small biscuit cutter, slicing the cylinders & rings into coins. Put the potatoes in a thin layer of olive oil in a hot pan, let them begin to brown , then salt & pepper, flip, then throw in 1/2 cup of water to make an instant pillar of steam.

This may be common knowledge around the rest of the culinary world, but I just figured out that if you shut your lid on tight when you dump the water, the steam action will cook the potatoes through before they burn to a crisp. When you're about ready to pull the fish or whatever meat you've got on, pull the lid off the potatoes and let the steam cook off...you're left with seared potatoes that are cooked through.

We didn't have blueberries laying around for the sauce so we used blackberries and blood oranges...I think it ended up looking like a fish that wanted to be a bloody rare steak, but it tasted alot better than it looked. The oil & mushroom-dust crust were aromatic and deep, while the berry helped to brighten up and keep moist the meatier halibut...the white-fleshed fish soaked up the flavor beneath the browned crust.

We served this with a warm spinach salad & citrus-bacon vinaigrette; I bought some Pink Navel oranges from WFM that had the firmness of a grapefruit, which made for perfect supremes, but had the seedless & juicy character of the navel orange.

Marc Vetri's Ricotta Gnocchi & Crispy Artichoke

I've been working my way through the more interesting yet simple recipes in Marc Vetri's Il Viaggo and this seemed like one that was right up our alley.

Ricotta Gnocchi & Crispy Artichoke (follow for the detailed recipe)



Of course we use nothing but the creamiest stock ricotta around...at $4.00 #, Claudio's ricotta is a staple in our pantry.

Mix:
1lb Ricotta Cheese
1/2 large egg
1/2 cup flour, all purpose (reserve 1 cup for dusting your board as you roll the dough out)
2tblsp kosher salt

Read the procedure here ....



The 'chokes were $1 ea. at the Italian Market. I cleaned them, then slivered into thin matchsticks so they would fry up similar to Durkee Onions



Here you see Elizabeth in action cutting the gnocchi 'snake' into the little pillows that are ricotta gnocchi. These little guys are much fluffier than potato gnocchi and you need to handle them gently as you roll, cut, boil until floating and then transfer to a warmed plate.



The finished result is a very clean presentation; Vetri simply has you transfer the gnocchi to a plate, sprinkle with Parmesan, drizzle with the oil the artichokes cooked in and then top with your crisped artichoke bits.

Mark Vetri's Rustic Chicken Liver Pate

I've been reading Marc Vetri's Il Viaggio di Vetri cookbook for the last few weeks and came upon a recipe that looked like a good party dish; we were planning on attending the latest Philly food bloggers potluck but I came down with a cold right around then, so this dish ended up being a practice attempt.



Here's a link to the recipe, Rustic Chicken Liver Pate on Crostini. If you don't like chicken livers but want to try them to see what all the fuss is about, I'd reccommend this recipe...Vetri's got enough port, Cognac and panchetta and truffle oil in this to elevate the chicken liver to flavor heaven...ironically they named it 'd'Angelo or from the Angel (although he points out this is because of the restaurant's namesake where he had this dish).



The most time-consuming step was pushing the liver puree through a sieve to give it that smooth texture and catch any herb chunks or liver bits. Here you can see me using the backside of a large spoon to smear spoonfuls of pate through the mesh screen and into a bowl below.

If I had to do this over again I wouldn't have bothered with the puree and simple rough-chopped the liver mix and smeared it on the crostini before serving to give it more texture...then again, I like lumps in my mashed potatoes.

The end result was smooth and very earthy, but I couldn't appreciate the flavor combination fully due to the fact that my cold was making those powerful flavors very hard to distinguish.