Chicago Foodies

Lure – "Modern Izakaya"

I love the izakaya format. It's basically a Japanese-pub. You can expect cheap beer, sake and small bites of food, grilled and otherwise. My favorite example is in midtown Manhattan basically in the basement next to the Hawaiian Tropic restaurant (!). It's Sake Bar Hagi and I ALWAYS leave there stuffed and tipsy. It's a truly wonderful thing.

I was walking through the Chinatown mall and saw that Lure was opening soon and sure enough I caught wind of their soft launch and went with a friend. It was only a day after they started taking customers and with one exception they are kicking butt. That said it's not the izakaya I pictured... It's more the nightclub-izakaya vs pub-izakaya. Nothing simple about it.

The decor is glowing, color-changing neon lights that overshadow nearly everything. It's a more-is-more philosophy. When they include Geisha-clad waitstaff (after 10pm) and give discounts for costumed diners, it's sure to be sheer madness... and certainly bears no resemblance to an izakaya.

Ken Kee

Although Chicago's Chinatown offers cuisine spanning from Beijing to Yunnan, my Chinese comfort food standby is still the Hong Kong-style Cantonese food at Ken Kee.

This isn't your standard 1950s Cantonese-American chop suey joint, however. Ken Kee can be best described as a Hong Kong diner. Its vast selection of authentic menu options range from fried noodles and rice dishes to more exotic fare like duck tongue and pork intestine. Ken Kee also offers a Hong Kong take on Western food, with dishes like condensed milk & peanut butter toast and spaghetti with ham in tomato sauce.

Lest you can't decide what to eat, the menu features pictures of many of Ken Kee's offerings. No matter what you order, the food is generally good, fast, and cheap—and it's open late!

Beef short ribs in honey & black pepper sauce

Lao Sze Chuan, Hotpot Edition

Recently, I've been reading Fuchsia Dunlop's Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper, her memoirs as the first Westerner to enroll at the Sichuan Culinary Institute. The novel is a fascinating page-turner for anyone interested in food or China and its accompanying history. As Dunlop wrote about the half a dozen ways to stir fry, or the canon of 23 complex flavors of Sichuan cuisine, I was struck by how little I actually know about Chinese cooking. Even the phrase "Chinese cooking" is a misnomer because the regional schools of cuisine vary tremendously. Aside from her experiences as a student and researcher, Dunlop weaves in anecdotes on the history of Chinese cuisine and food culture. If you are confused by the use of MSG in Chinese cooking, or don't understand the appeal of chicken feet or other offal items, do take a peek for insights into the Chinese mindset.

Of course, all this means that I have been ravenously craving Sichuan food for the last few days. And what better place to satiate that craving than perennial Chicago favorite Lao Sze Chuan? As a matter of fact, owner/chef Tony Hu is also a graduate of the aforementioned Sichuan Culinary Institute, though he was probably long gone by the time Dunlop arrived.

Lao Shanghai

 Previously Reviewed May 18th 2008

For the last week or so, I've been seriously jonesing for some xiao long bao, or soup dumplings. What's that, you say? The xiao long bao is a Shanghai specialty, a bite-size morsel of fatty pork in a semi-transluscent dough wrapper. These are typically steamed over napa leaves in bamboo steamers, and as a result, the dumpling contains a rich, meaty broth that explodes in your mouth as you bite in. The trick is to carefully pick up the dumpling and place it in a soup spoon, so that you don't lose any of the broth inside. Cut with vinegared soy sauce, I could easily make an entire meal out of only soup dumplings. By far the best dumplings I have tasted come from Joe's Shanghai in New York. (If you stop by Joe's, I recommend braving the crowds and going to the Chinatown location.) Hoping to find a substitute closer to home, I decided to stop by Lao Shanghai to check out their offerings. How does Lao Shanghai hold up against its East-coast competition?

Your Soy Sauce Might NOT Be Soy Sauce!

I was enjoying my Wing Hoe takeout the other day and for some reason I was looking at the soy sauce packets. I noticed the MSG and then looked a bit closer. It didn't even register but then I tasted it again and immediately grabbed the Kikomann from the cupboard. Hmmm.

It's an MSG salt water packet. WTF? It's even made in Chicago. Not to get into the whole MSG thing, isn't it weird that salt, MSG and food coloring (caramel color) passes so easily, and for so long, as soy sauce? Granted, I usually don't use the stuff but a simple taste of the genuine article and you see what you're missing.

I don't know really how they can call it "Soy Sauce" either. Granted duck sauce isn't duck and oyster sauce isn't oyster so I don't think they're trying to pull a fast one necessarily, but come on.

Bottom line is that in addition to the ketchup, mustard and mayo, get yourself a nice bottle of Soy sauce, you might end up needing it.

The packet ingredients: water, salt, caramel color, sugar, monosodium glutamate, 1/10 or 1% sodium benzoate.

Real soy sauce ingredients: water, soybeans, salt, alcohol, organic wheat.

Or is this just news to me?

Lao Sze Chuan

So I've been confusing Lao Shanghai with Lao Sze Chuan. It was really embarassing when I wanted to take friends to try soup dumplings and arranged dinner at the wrong place. I actually wrote Lao Shanghai up as Lao Sze Chuan... talk about editorial error. It's since been corrected but the upside was that I got to try another great spot in Chinatown.

Lao Shanghai: Xiao Long Bao!

At the beginning of this year I spent some time in Shanghai and since have been ingratiating myself on unsuspecting Chinese waitstaff looking for xiao long bao – the single best tasting morsel of food I had on my travels. Lao Shanghai is the only place in Chicago to try this dish.

One of my pet peeves is messy food. For some reason my reaction is completely out of my control. Why I ordered the plum short ribs AND the spicy whole-shrimp and tofu was beyond me. My "issue" nearly trumped the fact that I finally got my chopsticks on some Xiao Long Bao!

Lao Shanghai is in the mall on Archer and Cermak. There are tons of restaurants from Spring World to Joy Yee. In light of the earthquake they all have Sichuan Relief Fund collection boxes as well.  The small restaurant tightly fits 52 at capacity. It's snug but not too loud and doesn't seem to suffer any service or kitchen problems.

We ordered too quickly. Once I saw the soup dumplings I resorted to auto-pilot. Short ribs? Hell yeah. Tofu and Shrimp. Done. I give my wife crap about her reticence to eat things that are on-the-bone. That said we both enjoyed the short ribs. The sweet plum sauce was wonderful. The deep fried goodness was a diet-meltdown but none-the-less tasty. The shrimp and tofu dish came in a mini-wok and I had to blow out the sterno a few minutes later to keep it from burning. The whole shrimp covered in sauce looked wonderful but I quickly gave that up. I'd need about 17 napkins, a lobster bib and an after-dinner bath to make that work. It's in the fridge for dinner tomorrow.

Spring World - $3.95 Lunch!

Spring World in Chinatown has top notch food and they offer a fantastic $3.95 lunch special. The restaurant is in the mall off of Archer and is next to a couple of great wrapped candy stores.  See the Mapquest (link below) for directions.

Mr. Eatchicago.net went down with me a few months ago and I've been back several times since. Included in the lunch is a selection from list A - meat dishes, one from list B - veggies/tofu but served in equal quanity, tea and soup

Dim-Sum (Little) Three Happiness

Far be it from me to drop a nasty review on the namesake of the LTHforum.com. Not many Chicago restaurants have the ardent support of so many knowing restaurant-goers. There is a reason.

I have gone to Chinatown for Dim-Sum several times with friends, out-of-towners or just the wife and have seen the weekend brouhah. I avoided it, mostly, this time.

Having been to Three Happiness - across from the Insane-O parking lot, Phoenix and Won Kow I have partook in the cart system, the waiting in line to park then to eat, then the guessing game of what I'm about to eat, then the wishing I could get me some ______. And on top of it I tend to find Dim Sum meerly average.