Chicago Foodies

The Economics of Imported Cask-Conditioned Beer

On my day off from working at Owen & Engine, I decide to stop by to try the Nethergate’s cask-conditioned beer that is imported from Suffolk, England, and selling by the nonic pint (20 oz.). These beers are rare, and they’re larger pours. In addition to Nethergate, there’s the Old Growler English Porter (milder flavor, lighter body, and a hint of smoke) and Azzarat Blonde (creamy finish with a pleasant citric tartness—like an Orange Creamsicle).  These beers are rare stateside because Nethergate only does cask-conditioned beer, and most American bars don’t have beer engines. 

Cask ale, cask-conditioned beer, and real ale are all the same thing: beer brewed with traditional ingredients and techniques, meaning that yeast metabolizing a malted grain resulting in carbon dioxide and alcohol.  Unlike draft beer, cask ale isn’t pasteurized or artificially carbonated, resulting in a creamier texture. 

I often compare cask beer to a red wine in the sense that wine changes for the better with aeration.  The mouthfeel of aerated wine is softer, as is real ale.  That’s the best way I can describe the difference between draft and cask beer.  A big IPA on draft will have a firm, aggressive mouthfeel.  The same beer on cask tends to have that recognizable hoppy flavor but is softer because of the lower level of carbon dioxide.         

Snag a Seat for Something Sweet at Prasino

Lucky for us Midwesterners, temperatures are supposed to climb into the 70's this week and near the 80's this weekend, which can mean only one thing: outdoor brunch. It's the perfect meal to catch up on your Vitamin D and eat an incredible amount of food all at once. There are few better patios in the city than Wicker Park's new organic eatery Prasino, 1846 W. Division St.

Not only is the patio huge, but so is the brunch and lunch menu available on weekends. Well, it's not that the menu is that large. You're just going to want to eat everything on it. From scramblers using fresh veggies, to vegan tacos, to delectable pancakes and crepes you'll want to eat off the table next to you (guilty), they've got it all.

The most impressive fare has to be the inventive sweet offerings. The carrot cake pancakes are just as good as they sound. Topped with pecans and a sweet cream that perfectly mimics cream cheese frosting, they surprisingly aren't too rich. Plus, they offer that perfect carroty flavor that works well with a whole wheat batter. The banana bread french toast is next on my list to order.

Pairing Wine with Sushi

The staff of Chicago Foodies was generously invited to a sushi and wine pairing at Usagi Ya (meaning "rabbit house"), located on 1178 N. Milwaukee on the intersection with Division and Ashland.   The purpose of this was to try different types of wines with sushi and go beyond the usual pairings of saki, beer, and light white or sparkling wines.   Today many sushi places have red wine on their lists, which perhaps appeal more to people who have hang-ups about drinking whites.  I would typically bring or order a sparkling or white wine, but my hypothesis nonetheless deserved to be challenged.

Our pairings were conducted by the congenial and engaging Juan Guardia, from the importer Eric Solomon Selections/European Cellars. They wanted to introduce people to the range of wines normally paired with sushi.  The first pairing was a prosecco with escolar, a white tuna with banana wasabi puree and basil oil sauce.   The prosecco was perhaps a bit dry; the group unanimously felt that a slightly sweeter sparkler would balance the dish perfectly and complement the wasabi in the puree.

Tacos on Ashland: La Pasadita and Tierra Caliente

Chicago's food scene has won plenty of attention for its pizza and hot dogs, but I have often thought that the city's greatest unsung achievement is its Mexican food. Sure, we may not be in Texas or Southern California, but it is nearly impossible to throw a rock without hitting a corner taqueria in this town. We have legions of roving Tamale Guys who satiate our drunken cravings for tamales out of ziplock bags. We have Maxwell Street Market, where street food is served with the excitement of an open-air bazaar. Then, we have Mexican titan Rick Bayless to cover the haute gourmet end of things as well. Take that, San Diego.

However, fancy 30-ingredient mole sauce is not the reason we are gathered here today. Instead, we are here to celebrate the classic taco, elegant in its simplicity, difficult to master. With all the taco joints around town, how do you separate the fresh tomatillos from the canned? I will not pretend to have exhaustive knowledge of the city's taquerias, but here are two of my favorites, which happen to be conveniently located within a couple blocks of each other.

Bongo Room

Bongo Room is one of those places that comes to mind when I need to wow visitors with an over-the-top brunch. This is not to say that you couldn't stop by for an average Tuesday breakfast, but your waistline may suffer as a result.

Their breakfast menu features a wide variety of items, but Bongo Room has garnered the most attention for their decadent pancakes and french toast. And as someone who owns a t-shirt labeled "I heart carbs," I have no problem with eating the nutritional equivalent of cake at 9 am, especially when presented with a slew of unique options. Blueberry pancakes? Pfft, save that for home. Here, you will spot everything from pineapple-rhubarb french toast to berry and banana cheesecake hotcakes.

Mana Food Bar

The Mana Food Bar on Division comes highly touted. It's a vegetarian spot in Wicker Park opened by the DeCero and Sushi Wabi owners. They have a full bar and their by-the-glass offerings include a few sake options (one sparkling). It took me a bit to think through this place. Eating with Tammy and Bridget from Chicago Bites, and our own Crystal Cun ensured that we tasted plenty of the menu.

First is from the cold menu. Pictured is the veggie maki. It's a maki roll made of blanched collards and filled with raw veggies: enoki mushrooms, asparagus, carrots, other green things... and dipped in ponzu sauce.

We also tried the assorted picked veggies: cauliflower, cabbage and okra as well as the chickpea salad with hearts of palm among other things, the beet dish with apple salad, and a lovely quinoa dish with raw corn and a light touch of chipotle.

The hot options included sesame noodles, mushrooms sauteed and served over polenta, the lentil soup special, a blue cheese tart, bi bim bap, pumpkin tamale, and finally, mushroom and brown rice sliders.

It's hard to knock Mana. Everything was good. Across the board the seasoning is light. I'd say bland but it seems like the intention is to let the ingredients be themselves. The lentil soup tasted simply like lentils... the pumpkin tamale was also light on spice but not on heat. I tasted the pumpkin. The sesame noodles also had more heat than flavor. But the beets were very pleasantly salty. The sliders were a disappointment here. The expectations for the mini-sliders that looked so very much like White Castle were high...  but they didn't have any deep flavor. The side cup of pickle slices tasted mildly sweet and cucumbery. That said I clearly tasted the mushrooms and brown rice but here I wanted more.

Map Room International Night and Bon Bon Sandwiches

The Map Room is well-known for its draft beers and extensive bottle list, but their International Night on Tuesdays deserves plenty of recognition of its own. Each week is a trip around the world, as a local restaurant is chosen to cater international food. To get food, you simply need to purchase two drinks and get your meal ticket stamped. Without a doubt, this is a giant step up from the "free wings" ploy of your average bar.

On this particular evening, the featured cuisine was Vietnamese, provided by Bon Bon Sandwiches. I'd been craving a banh mi sandwich for weeks but hadn't had time to trek to Argyle, so this was a welcome sight. If you are unfamiliar with the banh mi, it is the sublime lovechild of French and Asian influences, gestalt in sandwich form. Though there are many variations, the classic banh mi contains thinly sliced pork loaf, ham and pate layered on a baguette-like roll, topped with pickled carrots and daikon radish, a cucumber spear, cilantro and sliced jalapenos. Savory yet sweet and tangy, crunchy while soft, available for merely $3...you will rue all the times you ordered from Subway.

Schwa

I could begin this piece with ample amounts of whining about getting a table through one of America's most difficult reservation processes, but in all honesty, the process was fairly straight-forward. For several days, I called Schwa around the clock whenever I had a free moment. Each time, the voicemail box was invariably too full to record my message. After four days of wondering whether anyone was alive back there, the voicemail box was magically cleared and I gleefully left a message with my name and number. Then I waited. And waited. And woke up in a cold sweat from a nightmare that I'd left the wrong phone number. About three weeks later, just as I had given all hope of a call back, the phone rang. "Hey, what's up?" said Michael Carlson. "So I hear you want to come by for dinner?" And with that, I picked a date and was temporarily the owner of a table at Schwa.

If you are wondering why the reservation process is so drawn-out, the answer lies somewhere between Schwa's limited size (26 seats and a tiny kitchen) and owner-chef Carlson's stalwart resistance to technology (Alan Richman's profile of Carlson suggests that he is "inept at anything involving electronics"). Plus, the restaurant is staffed on a skeletal crew of just three chefs and an intern. There is no maitre d', no host, no servers, no bartenders, and conspicuously, no women. In the same article, chef Jonathan Ory said wryly, "We're like a pirate ship, man." Though it may not be the most profitable way to run a restaurant, this idiosyncratic approach is very good at filtering out diners who don't genuinely want to be there.

iCream

Continuing the trend of indulgent restaurants that allow you to "have it your way," iCream brings an experiment in free will and independent choice to your ice cream selection. A recent addition to Wicker Park, iCream turns the traditional ice cream shop model of a dozen static flavors on its head by giving you the option to engineer your own frozen concoction.

And I do mean engineer. With a sleek, soft white interior and staff members in white coats, ordering at iCream takes on the air of a grand scientific endeavor. Your first step is to choose a base of regular, light or soy ice cream, or frozen yogurt or sorbet. Then, pick one of the 30 or so flavors; there's a wide variety of choices, including burnt sugar, cinnamon and pomegranate. For an additional 50 cents, you can opt to add mix-ins like heath bar, granola or nutella. My final choices were regular hazelnut ice cream with cookie dough. But wait, we're not done yet, because you can color your creation any number of vivid hues! As I hesitated, the woman behind the counter encouraged me to add a fun color to my ice cream. I went for green.

Crust

The plan was to have dinner at our favorite pizza place, Spacca Napoli, but once we found out it was closed from Labor Day to September 16th, we quickly came up with a contingency plan. The emerging (actually, full-fledged) green/organic trend had introduced Crust to Chicago via Wicker Park, and we were eager to justify the amount of carb intake with "but we're eating well"!

Crust's slogan "Eat Real" boasts their status as the "Midwest's First Certified Organic Restaurant," with most ingredients promised as organic. The ones that aren't, are noted dutifully at the bottom of the menu. The restaurant uses bright welcoming colors with red chairs, and even a tented patio for rainy days like the one we experienced.

Saucisson Sec – Cook au Vin

Wow. Now I've raved about the lovely landjager sausages from Bobby Nelson and they sure have that handheld bite-ablilty but after several Spotted Cows while watching the Cubs game I remembered I had a nice small saucisson sec from Cook au Vin on Elston.  It's not what I expected. It's definitely a sawing process  – that's one hard salami... but it might be one of the best things I have ever tasted.

Bob San: Neighborhood Sushi

It used to be when you walked into Bob San on Division the sing-song greeting “irasshaimase” would bounce off the celery walls and land on the cement floor at your feet. A pioneer since 2000 on a strip of Division that now boasts a yoga boutique, a chocolatier and a parade of restaurants and bars, Bob San didn’t draw a crowd, initially.

Veggie Bite: Fast Food Vegan

Sometimes restaurants take a while to open. Blame it on the city, blame it on folks when reserves run dry. Hell, I don't know who to blame it on, but I do know a sign in the window promising food doesn't equal a restaurant open for you and me. It's been slow moving for fast food at Veggie Bite, the neon affair on the corner of Milwaukee and Paulina. Lots of signs, no food. This week you can go bite the veggie, they're finally open.

The concept: fast food for vegans. Chili dogs, Philly cheese steak, gyros, cheese burgers, buffalo wings--you name it, they've substituted it.

Free Ice Cream at Oberweiss in Wicker Park!

Oberweiss Ice Cream is giving away free cones at their Wicker Park location...
Click on coupon and print.