Chicago Foodies

Las Islas Marias

There's a really neat Mexican seafood place on Grand and Cicero that I've been meaning to try. A big delay came when I found out that they opened a new location, basically in my neighborhood. After trying that spot I was having a hard time justifying giving a second chance to their Grand location which is supposedly a great place. But I'm glad I did.

Pizzeria Uno vs. "Uno Chicago Grill"

First there was Uno. Now it's "Uno Chicago Grill." When I was a kid I remember loving dinners at Uno. The walk down to the eating area, the scratched up tables... the pizza. Then I left town and reminisced for many years. Imagine my surprise one day, in Madison Wisconsin, seeing on the corner an Uno's. I dragged my then girlfriend inside. Oops. The long and the short is that it wasn't Pizzeria Uno. It was an Edwardo's or a Gino's or a Giordano's or a _____. It was not an Uno. It's part of the reason I won't recommend any place other than Unos or Dues on Wabash and Ohio...  Looking at their website... www.unos.com I cringe at the language:

"The new Uno Chicago Grill menu, introduced in fall 2005, offers hip and intense new tastes that are built on Uno's history of artisanal fare."

What? The place made freakin Pizza. It wasn't an Italian gourmet restaurant. There were no wood burning ovens, no artisianal ingredients. Mozzarella. Tomatoes... a handcrafted bread we all call "crust."

Avec

Right next to Blackbird, the big brother (or sugar daddy) of Avec, is a simple rectangular restaurant that seems to want to stress form over function. The 1-room has a row of tables running the length of one half of the restaurant and a bar/counter and kitchen along the other. It looks like something out of Dwell magazine. The irony is that the food is fairly complicated with a traditional grounding. While the food fattens your ass, the stool will flatten it.

And the food is good. The menu is an assortment of small plates, that aren't too small, and large plates that we didn't try. When you get knee-deep into the menu you might also have the desire for variety. Dishes like the crispy duck confit with blood oranges in a blood orange vinaigrette and crispy short ribs with red peppers, cilantro, red onion and harissa aioli were ones that, as I left, I wish I tried.

James Beard 2006 Nominees

Congrats to the Chicago nominees for the 2006 James Beard awards. Check out the James Beard Foundation website for general info. It's like the Oscars for the food industry except the industry actually cares.

OUTSTANDING RESTAURANT:
Everest & Spiaggia
That's 2 restaurants in Chicago!

BEST NEW RESTAURANT
Alinea

RISING STAR CHEF OF THE YEAR
Graham Elliot Bowles, Avenues

OUTSTANDING SERVICE
Tru

BEST CHEF MIDWEST
Carie Nahabedian, Naha & Shawn McClain, Spring

BOOK AWARD: FOOD OF THE AMERICAS
Mexican Everyday, Rick and Deann Groen Bayless

TELEVISION SHOW, NATIONAL
The Kitchen Sessions with Charlie Trotter

RADIO SHOW

The Hidden Kitchens Project, WBEZ Chicago Davia Nelson, Nikki Silva, Jay Allison

Sai Cafe

Some time ago a friend from Japan was in town to visit.  He was here for several days and one evening my husband suggested the one thing I was dreading - taking him out for sushi.  To me it seemed like the equivalent of visiting Tokyo and going out for burgers.  You know it just isn't going to be as good as it is at home so why not stick to the things you can't get at home.  Anyway, my Japanese friend was really into the idea so we took him to a place we enjoyed... Sai Cafe.

Unfortunately, as I suspected, it didn't go well.  He insisted that it was a Chinese restaurant.  The sushi chefs where Chinese, the owner was Chinese, the name was Chinese, certain things were spelled wrong on the menu and the Saki was from California.  No matter what the food tasted like my friend was not going to like it - he had made up his mind. Subsequently, we decided to attempt a sushi dinner two more times, once at Torajiro in Lakeview and once at Sushi Samba.  Both visits were very much enjoyed.  I had heard from several people that many of the sushi restaurants in Chicago are owned by Chinese chefs that were trained in Japan, like Torajiro, which was news to me.

Tank Noodle / Tank Restaurant

Tank Noodle is held in wide regard. I've been past it many, many times so last weekend, since we were in the neighborhood, we went for lunch.

It's a pretty big place that was bustling, even at 2:30. We ended up sitting at a large round table with another group of 3 ladies. Most of the clientele is Asian and the menu, while extensive, is largely focused on soup. Pho is the big thing on Argyle. It's apparently becoming something of a fast food item in California. I enjoy it from time to time but also given the likely hood of finding a chunk of tripe or many chunks of beef fat I'm not completely nuts for it. But they have many many varieties at Tank of Pho or other soups. I got a big bowl of Chao, a rice congee soup and we ordered a chicken and noodle dish that was NOT soup.

Ghareeb Nawaz - Awesome Cheap Eats!

Ghareeb Nawaz literally means "sustainer of the poor." In the search for good cheap eats that's a good sign. It's just West of Ridge on Devon and there's usually a line waiting for nan. It's basically a Pakistani taqueria. The food's great and cheap but the trade-off is the dining room. For take-out it can't be beat. Instead of dropping $50 for dinner further West on Devon, $15 is more than enough to splurge for dinner... for four.

Taqueria Uptown - Tacos al Pastor

Tacos al Pastor is something some people crave. Like good french onion soup or the perfect pastrami sandwich... the perfect burger even. It's the type of thing that takes kitchen space and a rotisserie, not to mention a big hunk of pork.

On a weekend walk about where we found ourselves on Ridge and Broadway we looked at El Norte but it seemed really empty and there, across the street, was "Taqueria Uptown" a more non-descript name I could not invent. It's a bar counter and a few tables and sits on the North East corner of the Broadway/Bryn Mawr/Ridge corner.

Green Zebra

It's tough to get a table at Green Zebra. I was able to swing a day-of reservation but at 5:30. I happened to have my camera that day and, lucky me, I was able to get into the kitchen and snap some pix.

Zebra serves mostly vegetarian dishes. Some meat exceptions and plenty of dairy/egg dishes are also on the menu. The plates are small and broken up into three sections:  light, semi-light and main course-ish though all are small plates. They're priced roughly between $9 and $15 and the menu changes often. The restaurant is stark, seating about 40 (guessing). The tables aren't too close together and the service is attentive, well informed, and helpful.

It's the type of place that serves dishes so specific and unusual it's very hard to describe them with any success and impossible to figure out every component or ingredient. I was surprised that the flavors and ingredients were so unusual and that most of the dishes were quite challenging.

Chef de cuisine - Christine Kim is pictured.

Hamantash/Hamantaschen

This also could be called "never butter the pan when making cookies."

Hamantash or Hamantashen are Purim cookies. Purim is this week. It's scary when there's a hamantash.com but there is...

There is a great recipe for hamantashen that serves as a starting point from which I unfortunately deviated. As the potentially groundbreaking triangular cookie is baking I have some confidence that they might turn out and I'm not yet embarrassed by the result to not mention them. (NOTE: having tasted them - I am ashamed) The additions and switches include incorporating 1/2 wholewheat flour into the mix, using brown sugar and succanat instead of white sugar... adding more vanilla and a sprinkle of cinnamon and then getting some frou-frou black currant preserves and apricot marmalade to fill them with in addition to the traditional poppy-seed and berries.

I really do wonder if Solo sells more poppy-seed filling this week. It's like Superbowl Sunday for poppy-seed filling.

X/O Chicago

After a really neat small theatre production called Baker & Huff performed in a bar (8pm at the Town Hall Pub 3340 N. Halsted running through April 8th- $10 well spent - Box Office 773-345-0726). We headed north on Halsted to X/O (3441 N. Halsted) hoping for a good bite. I'll admit 11:30pm rolls around and Taco Bell gets more and more appealing.

X/O has an abbreviated menu after 11pm. In the interest of keeping it simple we ordered two dishes and following up beers at the pub, we were sticking with water. The place is pretty trendy and the crowd was dressed for Saturday night in Boys Town.

We were seated right away and our waiter was very helpful making suggestions. We ordered the braised oxtail and the scallops. They arrived and were pretty and very tasty.

Long John Silver's Lobster Bites - Langostino

Through driving rain I took a fairly significant detour to snag a box (two really- snack size) of the brand-new "Buttered Lobster Bites." Well they were worth the drive. To be quite honest they could be the salvation of the franchise. They're that good.

On the downside it is yet ANOTHER fried item on a menuboard that's virtually completely fried. While the flavor of the langostino is evident and completely satisfying, the "butter" flavoring when combined with the seasoned breading almost competes too much. It almost hides the langostino flavor that you want.

The Pasta Shoppe & Café

I was in Oak Park this past Sunday and went door-to-door at 3pm-ish looking for lunch. We actually walked in and out of several spots... we were really just checking things out. Then we came to the Pasta Shoppe and on walking in saw fresh pasta in a chiller case and desserts... and sauces... and things I've never seen before - Arancini, which are saffron rice balls stuffed with spinach and cheese. The Shoppe does catering, trays, carry out, and there's a Café to eat in. We ate in.

So we sat down in the back. We ordered an appetizer portion of the arancini - three smaller sized balls instead of the slightly oversized baseballs upfront. They were crispy with creamy rice, mozzerella and spinach inside. They were delicious in a fresh tomato marinara.

Three Brothers

Three Brothers, which opened in 1956 in Bay View, is perfect this wintry time of year. It's in one of the original Schlitz taverns and is a perfect setup for traditional Serbian food.

It's on the South side of Milwaukee and it's a 2002 James Beard award winner. Considering Chicago traffic, if you're in the Northern suburbs a jaunt to South Milwaukee may be a quicker evening out than a venture downtown. It's worth it.

Langostine (or Langostino, or Langoustine): What is it?

OK... I have been on a quest for langostino. It's come up several times in the past few weeks. A tv show about Iceland had a bit about them as a local delicacy (though not sure exactly what they were). The proprietor/chef at the Richmond Inn likes to use them and I had a plate of them a few weeks back at Las Islas Marias on Clark north of Devon. So I did some looking around.

It turns out last week that a restaurant, Rubios,  in California which was serving langostino instead of lobster in their "lobster burrito" has been allowed to – the courts said it was OK to call it that since it tastes the same...?! Needless to say spellcheck doesn't recognize it either.

And funny how my guilty pleasure - Long John Silver's just started serving lobster bites with Langostino. Red Lobster uses it in their lobster bisque...  See what happens when you start digging? It's like the Truman Show. My life revolves around a crustacean of some sort. Even though it's not shrimp, and not lobster either... at least not really.

I started calling fish markets, super markets, and eventually got several "Yeah we have that" answers prices varying from $32/lb to 2lbs for $15. So my escapade for seafood oddity began.