Chicago eats, 2024, part one.

I’d been to Little Goat at least three times over the last ten-plus years, but had never eaten at Top Chef winner Stephanie Izzard’s flagship restaurant The Girl & the Goat … until now. I kept it pretty simple, with some advice from the bartender, ordering the sautéed green beans, the wood-fired broccoli, and a brand-new item at the time, the strawberry salmon poke. The green beans have been on the menu since the doors opened, or so I was told, and come with a fish sauce vinaigrette and a lot of cashews. The vinaigrette seemed more like an aioli, but regardless of the actual recipe it was the best part of the dish and something I’ll try to replicate at home. There were, however, too many cashews. I know that’s an odd comment, especially since I love cashews, but the ratio of beans to nuts was too low and I ended up with a lot of the cashews in the dish. The wood-fired broccoli came with a harissa dill vinaigrette that was an actual vinaigrette and a Moody Blue labneh underneath. Moody Blue is a smoked blue cheese from Wisconsin and very mild for a blue; the labneh here tasted pretty much like a labneh with a little smoke flavor, but even that could just have come from the broccoli itself, which had a nice level of char from the grill. The star of the three dishes was that ora king salmon poke, featuring maybe the best raw salmon I’ve ever had, just incredibly tender and, I hate to use the hackneyed term, buttery. The poke also had strawberries, cherry tomatoes, avocado, and chili crunch sprinkled on top. It shouldn’t work, but it does – it was perfectly balanced in every way, faintly sweet, just acidic enough, plenty of fat from the salmon and the avocado, and exactly the right amount of heat and salt from the chili crunch. They appear to do a salmon poke riff at least every summer, so you may not get the same version I did, but damn this was spectacular in every way. For a cocktail, I did their house version of an old fashioned, which was just average and came with a glass full of small ice cubes rather than one large one; I should have asked for it neat. I didn’t get dessert, as the menu was actually kind of unappealing – there was a chocolate and ginger concoction, two great tastes that do not taste great together, and a hazelnut thing, and nothing I wanted for $15 a pop. I walked across the intersection and got some gelato at BomboBar instead.

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The food at Rose Mary was rich, and in pieces it was very well executed, but both savory dishes I had were a little overdone. The radiatore cacio e pepe had too much black pepper, and way too much sauce; the pasta itself was excellent, perfectly al dente, but there were several tablespoons of sauce left on the plate once I’d eaten the pasta, and that ratio is off. There should be very little sauce left over – my rule of thumb is that there shouldn’t be any more than you can sop up with one piece of bread, and this was several times that. The duck sausage with polenta, giardiniera, and broccolini was also somewhat out of proportion – for one thing, there was too little of the non-sausage bits for the amount of meat on the plate, including a microscopic amount of broccolini; and for another, the sausage itself had too much black pepper. I actually like black pepper and use it liberally at home, but these two dishes overdid it. The meal was salvaged by the chocolate budino with coffee gelato and pizzelle crumble; I would gladly die in a vat of that gelato, which had the flavor of a perfectly made cappuccino. I was a fan of the Giant Orchid cocktail, which I’d compare to a souped-up daiquiri but with a lemon profile in place of lime.

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I’ve raved about Monteverde in the past, but this was my first visit there post-pandemic, and I’m pleased to say that it remains my favorite Italian restaurant in the country. I danced around the menu a little bit because I wanted to try so many things, and ended up with the Nduja arancini, the sicilian tuna not-quite-crudo, tortelli with sheep’s milk ricotta, and a butterscotch budino. (Yes, I ate too much.) The tuna almost-crudo was really interesting, in a good way, as it had such a broad mix of flavors from the other ingredients – salsa verde, charred olives, celery, capers, mandarin EVOO – but the flavor of the tuna still came through. I might have preferred it totally crudo, but I’ve also never been a huge fan of seared tuna anyway so that’s probably my own bias. The tortelli, like all of the pastas I’ve ever had at Monteverde, was spectacular, freshly made, perfectly al dente, with the brightness of the ricotta balanced by a mint-pistachio pesto. The budino is a can’t-miss, with whipper mascarpone and buttered pecan toffee on top.

To drink, I tried their limonini, a sort of twist on a negroni that replaces the Campari with acqua di cedro, a grappa -based liqueur that uses the peel of a specific lemon to impart a pronounced lemon flavor without the sweetness of a limoncello, along with a white vermouth instead of red; it was exactly what it promised to be, lemony and herbal and pleasantly bitter, but I switched to a traditional negroni for a second drink because I didn’t want that flavor profile with dessert.

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Obélix is indeed a character in the Astérix comics, but also a French restaurant in Chicago with a focus on my favorite protein, duck, so I had to get the duck confit salad lyonnaise, along with the just barely still in season ramp tart, which turned out to be more than enough for a meal. The confit salad came with the confit and crispy skin on top of a mixture of frisée and escarole, with a poached duck egg and duck-fat croutons. The confit meat itself was excellent, tender and flavorful without becoming tough through the reheating, but the whole salad ended up really heavy and the greens couldn’t stand up to the huge flavors of everything duck all at once. The ramp tart was just what it sounds like, with Comté cheese, but was also on the heavy side (less surprising) and I couldn’t even finish it. I did hang out for a while because I ended up in a very interesting conversation with the gentleman sitting next to me at the bar, long enough that I decided to try their house-made ice cream, but it was just okay (I got the crème brûlée flavor) I’d probably skip that given all of the other dessert options around Chicago.

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La Serre pitches itself as a Mediterranean restaurant, but come on, it’s French, the name is French, the menu is French, the décor is French. It’s a French restaurant. And it’s quite good.

They have several large mains that include various steaks (not for me) and two dishes that are for two people (including a duck dish, which made me sad), so I stuck with the smaller plates, ordering one amuse, one crudo, and one pasta dish. The crudo was tuna with osetra caviar, tomato, shallot, and yuzu, and I’m probably going to sound like a philistine but I don’t think the caviar added anything to the dish but prestige, and, as the clerical workers at my alma mater will tell you, you can’t eat prestige. The tuna itself was exceptional in every way, from freshness to texture to flavor, boosted by the acidity of the three other ingredients and something not listed that gave it a little kick – I think chili oil, but I’m just guessing. It was one of those dishes that I could have ordered twice with nothing else and been totally satisfied. For the amuse, I went with the duck profiterole, a small choux pastry with a filling of duck confit, foie gras mousse, and a sweet earthy sauce that reminded me of char siu marinade (from Cantonese BBQ pork bao). It was two bites’ worth, and delivered plenty of duck flavor, even with the foie gras a threat to overwhelm the duck confit, although I didn’t see or taste any of the duck cracklings promised on the menu.

For the pasta, I was leaning towards the gnocchi Parisienne, and my server recommended it, but it didn’t quite meet up to expectations – or to the same dish at Le Cavalier in Wilmington, which still makes the best Parisian gnocchi I’ve had. This style of gnocchi differs from traditional Italian gnocchi by skipping potatoes, instead using choux paste that’s piped into a line, cut into individual pieces, and then lightly poached. For one thing, these were very dense for Parisian gnocchi, so either they were overworked (creating gluten and removing some of the air in the mixture), or they included potato, or both. For another, they weren’t finished by frying or broiling them to add some texture to the outside; they were served in a basil pistou with “semi-dried cherry tomato” and pine nuts. The basil pistou was just a looser version of pesto with a fancy name, and the whole dish just felt a little flat. I actually enjoyed the very crusty bread they brought me dipped in the pistou more than the gnocchi. That’s not to say these were bad, but I’m holding them to a high standard because I love gnocchi, I’m Italian, and I’ve had this dish done much better.

For drinks, I had a very interesting house cocktail they call the Gold Fashioned, with a brown-butter wash, Old Forester bourbon, Lillet Rouge, and a hint of allspice. It’s less an Old Fashioned than a Manhattan-adjacent drink, as Lillet Rouge is a French aperitif wine that has much in common with sweet vermouth but is more complex. It came smoking, literally, which I always think is just showy, and which disappeared a minute after I got the drink so I didn’t get much benefit from it. The core of the drink was quite good though – I would definitely do a whiskey/Lillet Rouge drink again.

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The most recent meal on the list was at Aba, which I think one of you recommended back in April, and which I saw last week while eating at La Serre. It’s “Mediterranean” cuisine, because that’s the neutral term for it, but this is Levantine food – the cuisine of Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, and so on. I kept it light this time around, ordering the muhammara; the Brussels sprouts with almonds, cashews, and honey harissa; and, at the bartender’s suggestion, the truffled salmon crudo. Muhammara is a traditional meze made from roasted red peppers, walnuts, pomegranate molasses, bread crumbs olive oil, and some kind of acid; it’s pureed or pounded into a dip, served as you might serve hummus (of which Aba has at least five varieties on the menu). Aba’s muhammara is moderately spicy, and very, very smoky (I think there was smoked paprika in it), with a chunkier consistency than you’d get if you pureed the ingredients. It comes with warm, soft flatbread, not enough because I could eat a pound of that bread at a sitting and still want more. I ate more than half of the muhammara before the spice level started to bother me a little bit, but the dish is meant to be shared, so, you know, FAFO.

The Brussels sprouts were fried, but not greasy in the least, and if anything they were a little dry; the honey was at the bottom of the bowl, which may be to keep the halved sprouts from losing their crunch but did leave the dish lacking something on the palate. The truffled salmon with fried leek, roasted garlic, and cilantro was excellent because the fish was extremely fresh, but I barely noticed the truffle flavor and really don’t know why it was necessary except so they could call it “truffled.” A plate of this same raw salmon with some EVOO and sherry vinegar would have been just as good. Let the ingredients speak!

Also, I liked their “summer Negroni” with peach. I don’t usually do drinks with fruit, but it was a hot summery night and I love both peaches and Negronis.

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I did eat at Publican when this whole adventure started in April, but I 1) don’t remember a ton of details about what I ate and 2) had a LOT to drink that night, because the bartender offered me a free shot and I’d already had two cocktails, so my memory’s a bit hazy. I remember the bread plate was huge and one of the two breads, the multi-grain one, was delicious; and that I got the swordfish, something I rarely make at home, and loved the fish itself but didn’t care especially for what came with it. Two drinks and a shot is more than I can handle, or probably ever will be able to handle, although I did get back to the hotel in one piece.

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Bonci Pizza has been lauded by chefs and food writers, but it’s just decent pizza al taglio, a Roman style of pizza that’s sold by weight or by length. The cool part about Bonci is that you can buy just a tiny sliver of something to see if you like it, and get a whole bunch of different slices for variation, but I also found nearly all of their pizzas a little too salty and a little too oily. Good place to fill up for less than $20, but not a destination for me.

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Finally, a cocktail bar recommendation: Lazy Bird, in the basement of the Hoxton hotel in Chicago, offering a very broad array of classic cocktails done right, with an extensive menu that helps you navigate through the various drinks and see how they’re connected to each other. My bartender was extremely knowledgeable, asking what spirits I preferred and whether I was open to trying a cocktail I’d never had before.