→ August 21, 2012
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Chicago eats.

I wrote about Bryce Harper’s struggles today for Insiders, and about Twins prospects Miguel Sano and Eddie Rosario yesterday. My post on Saturday’s Under Armour game should go up in the next 24 hours.

If you follow me on Twitter, you saw my photograph of 2 Sparrows‘ maple bacon donut, which is on the short list of the best things I’ve ever eaten, not just for the bacon, but for the absolutely perfect donut at the heart of the $4 dish. The maple glaze is very sweet, like pure maple sugar, so the donut beneath it has little to no sweetness of its own, instead shining for the crispy exterior and a soft, light interior. The bacon crumbled over the top is house-cured, with the salt well balanced with the glaze’s sweetness, and some texture contrast with the soft donut. I admit the plate seemed a little gimmicky, but the execution across the board is tremendous.

The duck confit hash was less successful, however, primarily because of texture – every item in the hash, which is mostly duck and sweet potatoes, is soft, with the duck actually the least so, even slightly tough in comparison to everything else in the dish. I also find duck meat in general and confit in particular slightly sweet, at least relative to any other protein, so the combination with sweet potatoes felt unbalanced.

My dinner with Old Hoss Radbourn on Saturday night was also a huge hit, as we went to The Purple Pig, a restaurant that promises “cheese, swine, and wine.” We went heavy on the swine, going for pork liver paté, fried pig ears, and the “JLT,” with pig jowl standing in for the bacon – as well as two vegetable dishes and dessert. Dish by dish:

* The pork liver paté was unreal – as smooth as a dessert mousse, with a pronounced smoky undertone and a thin layer of high-quality olive oil on top, served with thick slices of grilled country bread. The server even brought more bread so we could finish every last bit of the paté, and even though I’m not even a huge fan of liver, I’d order this again in a heartbeat. The dish is one of a handful of “smears” they offer, including one made from lardo, cured pork fat that melts into whatever hot item is underneath it.

* I would never have guessed I was eating fried pig ears if I didn’t know going in what we had ordered. They’re slow-cooked, julienned, then quickly fried like french-fried onion rings, served with fried kale, pickled cherry peppers, and a fried egg on top. The pig ears have just a hint of tooth to them, but aren’t tough, and the frying makes the kale crispy while setting its deep green hue. It’s like the perfect bar snack for food snobs like me – and with a Belhaven stout in front of me I had no trouble finishing my half of the dish. You can find the recipe if you want to try this at home.

* The JLT was incredibly awkward to eat, but when I could get all the flavors into one bite, it was masterful, with huge flavors all in perfect balance. The jowl is the pig’s cheek meat, cured like bacon but thicker and much more tender; those of you familiar with regional Italian cooking may have had it as guanciale. The heirloom tomatoes are sliced nearly an inch thick, which contributed to the construction issues, although they were extremely bright and provided the one sweet element in the dish. The duck egg … perhaps I’m a philistine, but I doubt I could have identified this as a duck egg rather than a chicken egg, and either way, a runny egg makes every dish better. The lemon aioli tasted more like a cold bearnaise sauce, providing the one acidic element, while frisee adds a slightly bitter note. As a whole, the dish has a complex mixture of colors, textures, and flavors, and if it was a little easier to eat it would have scored an 80 for me.

* The broccoli with roasted garlic and anchovy vinaigrette was another winner, with the broccoli also roasted and the umami-filled vinaigrette coating the vegetables (florets and I believe julienned stalks) perfectly, but without the fishy taste the description might lead you to expect. The charred cauliflower with toasted breadcrumbs, cornichons, and parsley was our least favorite of the five dishes, even though it might have been the prettiest thanks to the use of green and purple florets; the flavors were all muted and compared to the strong flavors in every other dish it felt bland.

* Both desserts were excellent; the mixed berry crostada had a textbook flaky/tender crust that could have stood on its own, while the salted caramel soft-serve ice cream was very smooth and had the complexity you expect from that flavor, even if it’s become a little hackneyed at this point. I’d take the crostada over the ice cream just because it was more unusual. Good call by Hoss on this place, especially since I figured there was even money we’d end up at a brothel.

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→ August 19, 2008
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Chicago and Ann Arbor.

Ann Sather is a small Chicago chain known, with good cause, for its cinnamon rolls. I went to the 70-year-old Ann Sather restaurant one El stop south of Wrigley Field (it’s right outside the Belmont station off the Red Line) before the Under Armour Game on Sunday for breakfast. The cinnamon rolls – two constitute a single side order – are very good, with a soft dough that’s somewhere between cake and brioche in texture. The cinnamon-sugar-butter filling was heavy on the cinnamon (good), although it tasted a bit like cheap cinnamon (not good, but, in their defense, it’s cheap). Every egg plate comes with your choice of two sides, and two cinnamon rolls constitute one side, so it’s a pretty good deal. I went with two eggs scrambled, which were prepared without the slightest adulteration from salt; the hash browns “well done” (my waitress’ suggestion), which means they have a crisp brown crust that breakfast potatoes should be required by federal law to have; and the “Swedish potato sausage.” I asked my waitress what that sausage contained and was told pork, veal, and potatoes, and that “it’s pink.” I’m thinking, okay, pork sausage usually has a pink hue to it, but what came to the table was dead pink in the center, and in my book, that’s raw. I didn’t eat them. That platter plus tea came to about $11.50 before tip.

In the mini-mall attached to the Renaissance Hotel on West Wacker is a fast food-ish place called Wow Bao which I really had to try. I’ve had authentic Chinese dumpings – both bao zi and xiao long jiao zi – in Taiwan and in the U.S., and I think they’re out of this word, particularly the latter kind. Bao zi are giant puffs of a simple yeast dough usually stuffed with a meat filling and steamed; the texture of the dough is very soft, almost pillowy. Jiao zi are smaller dumplings with a thinner dough and a higher filling-to-dough ratio; the fillings are juicier and part of the experience of eating one is getting the burst of liquid that comes with the first bite. (Think of jiao zi as a Hershey’s Kiss: the dough is the foil wrapper and the filling is the chocolate. That gives you a rough idea of the construction, at least.)

Anyway, Wow Bao serves enormous bao zi for $1.39 apiece or $7.99 for a six-pack; I tried several kinds, the barbecue pork being the best if a bit too sweet, the whole wheat with edamame being the worst with an overpowering taste of scallions, and the chicken and curry also scoring well despite perhaps a lack of authenticity. I highly approve of their homemade ginger ale, which tastes like … ginger. One big negative was a poor ratio of dough to filling, which, since the dough on most of the dumplings comprised only white flour, meant for a bit of a food coma not long after I ate.

Shifting locales, I’ve been remiss in not writing up Zingerman’s Roadhouse in Ann Arbor, Michigan, from my trip to see the Tigers and White Sox last month. The fried eggs were cooked flawlessly (over medium) while the thickly sliced bacon was excellent and also correctly cooked. The grits … well, I’m not a huge grits fan, but these were pretty good, with a fair amount of salt in them. Not as good as even mediocre polenta, of course, but good for grits. The big bonuses for me: real tea; and a small plate of donut holes for us to try, obviously just fried and out of this world, as just-fried donuts usually are. There were five of us there and the waitress was absolutely hellbent on splitting the check for us – she wouldn’t take no for an answer – but I suppose that’s better than the waitress who takes your order and disappears for an hour.

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→ August 31, 2007
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Chicago eats.

So I had some ups and downs in Chicago, but I’m glad to say that after some mediocre meals to start, I finished strong.

The Oak Tree Room is in the same building as the Four Seasons, at 900 N Michigan Ave. I had read that they offered excellent cranberry-pecan pancakes, and I wanted to get some exercise, so I walked up there … and was disappointed. The pancakes were dry and flat, and the dried cranberries tasted more like candied fruit than dried.

Vong’s Thai Kitchen on Hubbard (near the Billy Goat Tavern) was another disappointment, not least because the service was comically bad. I still have no idea who my server was, and I ended up waiting about ten minutes to order (past the point where my menu was closed) and ten or fifteen minutes for someone to realize I was done and offer me the check. A waitress, maybe “my” waitress, did eventually come and ask if I wanted to try one of their “mini” desserts (which are apparently about $1.50) each, but by that point I was annoyed enough to just want to leave. Plus I had a gelateria in my sights for the afternoon.

Anyway, the food at Vong’s was also disappointing, since it’s not so much Thai food as haute cuisine served on a bed of Thai food. I skipped the pad thai, my usual bellwether dish for Thai restaurants, fearing it would be too sweet – let’s face it, there were no Thai customers in the place, and that’s not a good sign for the authenticity of the food. I ordered panang curry with “pulled” chicken, and the chicken part was very good, still moist and indeed resembling pulled chicken. But the peanut-dominated sauce was heavy and slightly bitter, and there wasn’t much else in the sauce besides the chicken and some peas. The complimentary salad of shredded daikon and carrots in a “Szechuan” vinaigrette (can we just call it a sesame vinaigrette? Is that so freaking hard? And why would I want a Szechuan vinaigrette in a Thai restaurant?) was very good, but a poor harbinger of what was to come.

Just across the street from the Oak Tree Room is an Italian deli called L’Appetito that purports to sell gelato. They don’t. That stuff is ice cream, a claim I can support by pointing out that I couldn’t get my plastic spoon into the stuff. Next.

I had dinner with a longtime email correspondent and regular on Baseball Think Factory, who goes by the handle “Shredder.” He suggested La Creperie on Clark, which is close to Wrigley Field without being right on top of it. Their savory crepes are all made with buckwheat, and I went with a chicken, goat cheese, and tomato crepe. It was delicious; the goat cheese was the dominant flavor, and it worked nicely with the béchamel sauce that filled the crepe. The chicken was white meat, a little overcooked (I assume it was cooked first before it was added to the crepe), but since it was sitting in the sauce it wasn’t a big deal. The tomatoes were fresh, but really, I could take or leave tomatoes. This was about the goat cheese, and the crepe itself, which was delicious, slightly nutty but not overwhelmingly buckwheaty.

Thursday’s breakfast was at Lou Mitchell’s on W Jackson St, near Canal. They’re known for their homemade pastries, so I asked the waitress what one pastry I should order, and I got this answer: “They’re all good.” Yeah, you’re a big help, sweetheart. I can see why you’re not in sales. I went with a coconut donut, which was one of the daily specials; it was a cake donut, very moist, but the glaze was sickeningly sweet and I only ate about a third of it. The Greek bread that came with the meal was a much bigger success, almost like a challah bread with a soft interior and a very crumbly exterior. As for the meal itself, I went with my usual EMPT, going for two eggs scrambled with bacon. The “two eggs” bit is a joke; the meal came in a seven- or eight-inch skillet, and the scrambled eggs took up half the skillet, which has to be at least four eggs considering how thick they were. They were cooked through, a touch dry, but good overall. The potatoes were sliced very thinly and appeared to be cooked solely on the flat-top in a pile, so that some were just steamed while others were nicely browned. Total $10.42 before tip.

Lunch was at the Frontera Grill, accompanied by Jayson Stark. I went with the tacos al carbon, and asked the waiter whether I should get the skirt steak (traditional) or the duck, and he said it was a coin flip but he’d take the duck. Thank God for someone with the cojones to answer one freaking question. Anyway, before the meal came we had some chips and two salsas, one green, the other a dark red with some sort of roasted peppers in it, and both were outstanding, with the red salsa spicy but not at all hot, and both boasting gorgeous bright colors. The tacos al carbon ($15) came with a delicious and clearly fresh guacamole that had never seen the inside of a food processor, with good chunks of avocado still in it and hints of garlic and cilantro that didn’t overwhelm the fresh avocado flavor. The duck was delicious, but unfortunately had some gristle in it, something I haven’t encountered before, although to be fair I usually go with duck leg rather than breast. The meat was medium-rare, but more rare in some parts (where the gristle was) and medium in others. The best part of the dish was something I can only call a Mexican version of baked beans (frijoles charros), with red beans perfectly cooked (soft but al dente) in a reduced, smoky-sweet sauce redolent of bacon. Jayson ordered a shrimp dish ( camarones en salsa verde con hongos) that he said was one of the best things he had ever tasted.

My last meal in Chicago was probably the most interesting of the trip, mostly good, some less good. The place is called Twist, and it’s a tapas bar (tapas here meaning “small plates,” not Spanish food) down Sheffield, a block or two south of Wrigley Field. Overall the food was good, made from fresh ingredients and prepared right in front of anyone who sits at the bar (as I did). I ordered three dishes: braised beef tenderloin on a corn cake with feta and a spicy aioli, dates wrapped in bacon, and grilled “vegetables” (zucchini and yellow squash, as it turns out) on crostini with goat cheese. The last dish was the biggest hit for me; the bread used for the crostini was delicious, and there was just a dab of goat cheese sitting on a small spread of roasted red pepper purée sitting on the slab of squash. It was perfect, with accent flavors from the toppings complementing but not overwhelming the flavor of the squash, finished with a nice crunch.

The dates wrapped in bacon were excellent, except for one thing: the dates themselves were sugared, making for a bizarre, sweet note to finish the dish, not a flavor I’m used to experiencing in a savory dish. The bacon was perfectly cooked, and the dish came with a thick balsamic-based sauce with a gravy-like consistency, although I couldn’t tell you how much it contributed since “sweet” was the dominant flavor.

The big question mark for me was the beef tenderloin. The beef was marinated in something strong and acidic, most likely a red wine concoction, and was served shredded in a mound on a corn cake (very soft, with a consistency more like grits than polenta, and oddly enough, no actual corn kernels), with large hunks of feta cheese, chopped red onion and tomatoes, and then lines of a spicy “aioli” that was really mayonnaise with chili oil or hot sauce added. (True aioli doesn’t have egg yolks in it, but this sauce did.) Think about that flavor combination: the beef, cheese, onions, and tomatoes are all acidic and tangy, pleasant flavors in small doses but overwhelming in large doses. The only other flavor in the dish is the heat from the spicy aioli. The corn cakes weren’t sweet, and weren’t really salty, although it’s possible that all the sour/tangy/spicy numbed my mouth to the point where I couldn’t taste what they offered. The shame of it all is that the ingredients in the dish were good and the concept was as well: a piece of braised beef tenderloin, preferably served whole, on a sweet corn cake with corn in it, with a spicy aioli or mayo would have been perfect, simpler, cheaper to make, and less of a mess on the plate. There was a good dish hiding in here, but I couldn’t make it out because they went overboard with the additions.

All that said, I’d definitely recommend Twist as a pre-Cubs game hideout. At 5:40 on a Thursday game night, there was no wait, and the place wasn’t full when I left. The food was good, the place is nice, and you don’t have to deal with Cubs fans or tourists who view the game as an excuse to get hammered. I’m just hoping that the Twist chefs simplify some of their dishes to let the clean flavors of the ingredients come through.

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