Eleven restaurants with Kendall-trained chefs

看板Chicago (芝加哥)作者eertllams (Tree666)時間16年前 (2009/06/04 03:50)推噓0(0推 0噓 0→)

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[ 轉自Chicago Reader ] Food (F), Service (S), and ambience (A) are rated on a scale of 1-10, with 10 representing best. The dinner-menu price of a typical entree: $ = less than $10, $$ = $10-15, $$$ = $15-20, $$$$ = $20-$30, $$$$$ = more than $30. Green Zebra 1460 W. Chicago | 312-243-7100 F 9 | S 8.6 | A 7.5 | $$$ (25 reports) Small Plates, Vegetarian/Healthy, American Contemporary/Regional | Dinner: seven days | Sunday brunch rrr It’s been a while since chef Shawn McClain transformed a dilapidated East Village storefront known to me and my neighbors as the “pigeon palace” into a sleek haven for vegetarian dining, but I’m still impressed with the number he did on the space, all cool earth tones, warm low lights, and bursts of greenery. The seasonally changing menu currently features Thai- spiced carrot soup, ricotta gnocchi with Spence Farms ramps and green garlic, and a poached duck egg with smoked potato puree and country sourdough. Among the desserts are vegan chocolate cake and a rhubarb crisp with candied ginger and white chocolate ice cream. After-dinner options include French-press coffee and wildly exotic teas—for example, one that according to the menu was once harvested by monkeys. —Martha Bayne Hot Chocolate 1747 N. Damen | 773-489-1747 F 8.7 | S 6.4 | A 7.8 | $$$ (11 reports) American Contemporary/Regional | Lunch: Wednesday-Friday; Dinner: Sunday, Tuesday-Saturday | Saturday & Sunday brunch | Closed Monday | Open late: Friday & Saturday till midnight, Thursday till 11 Mindy Segal was initially known for her stints as pastry chef at MK, MK North, Marché, Charlie Trotter’s, and Spago, but at her restaurant Hot Chocolate executive chef Mark Steuer oversees a small, perpetually rotating dinner menu of locally grown and seasonally inspired creations—Gunthorp Farms chicken, roasted rack of lamb with baby artichokes, fiddlehead ferns, and spring garlic barigoule, Israeli couscous, and Green Acres sorrel butter. Of course, Segal’s credentials guarantee an impressive dessert list, with confections such as a warm chocolate souffle tart served with house-made chocolate-caramel ice cream and pretzels. At brunch there’s brioche French toast and an egg sandwich made with fresh ricotta. There’s hot chocolate as well, offered in four varieties along with “black and tans” (two-thirds hot chocolate, one-third hot fudge) and “half and halfs” (half espresso, half dark hot chocolate). Segal swears she wasn’t thinking of cocoa when she named the place, but the decor is pure Hershey’s—even the occasional white accents in the warm brown room evoke lush marshmallows floating in a mug. — Anne Ford Hot Doug’s 3324 N. California | 773-279-9550 F 8.9 | S 8.2 | A 8.2 | $ (12 reports)American | Lunch: Monday-Saturday | Closed Sunday | Reservations not accepted | Cash only | BYO rrr Most afternoons people line out the door of Doug Sohn’s wildly successful emporium, willing to wait as long as an hour for the Crown Prince of Tube Steak’s Polishes, brats, Thuringers, andouille, and Chicago-style dogs, dressed and cooked to customer preference—whether char-grilled, deep-fried, steamed, or fried then grilled. There are daily gourmet specials with silly names and a “game of the week” sausage—gator, boar, rattlesnake, rabbit, duck, kangaroo, duck sausage with foie gras, or cognac-infused pheasant with aioli and white truffle cheese. Fridays and Saturdays fresh-cut fries are cooked in duck fat, and the only request Sohn will refuse is to smother them in cheese sauce. Sohn has duplicated the goofy decor of his previous place, the victim of a fire; the newer spot is chockablock with Elvibilia and hot-dog-related kitsch, and there’s outdoor seating and plenty of street parking. If he’s offering the chicken sausage with Carlos’s mole and manchego cheese, don’t miss it. —Mike Sula Jack’s on Halsted 3201 N. Halsted | 773-244-9191 F 7.8 | S 7.6 | A 7.1 | $$$ (9 reports)American Contemporary/Regional, Global/Fusion/Eclectic | Dinner: seven days | Open late: Friday & Saturday till 11:30 rrr The decor at chef-owner Jack Jones’s namesake place is looking a little dated these days, but the food is as unpretentious and appealing as ever. Appetizers might include panko-crusted baked crab cakes with chive oil and spicy mayo; butternut squash ravioli with sage brown butter and candied pecans; and braised lamb risotto with mushrooms and asparagus; entrees range from fusion creations (seared coriander-crusted ahi tuna with wasabi mashed potatoes) to a simple but perfectly prepared roasted free-range chicken to a “pork tasting”: Asian barbecued baby back ribs, grilled pork tenderloin, and Memphis pulled pork on focaccia with maple-whipped sweet potatoes and sweet-and-sour cabbage. Dishes are moderately priced, portions generous. Sit at the bar and you may be offered more than a well-prepared dirty martini—I once had a guy insist that I have a bite of his Door County cherry pie a la mode. —Kate Schmidt Kroll’s South Loop 1736 S. Michigan | 312-235-1400 $$ American | Lunch, dinner: seven days | Open late: Friday & Saturday till 2, Sunday-Thursday till midnight Can a Packers bar survive in a Bears town? Kroll’s, a Green Bay institution since 1931, is best known for its location across from Lambeau Field, where it gets stormed by burger-jonesing cheeseheads on game days. Now the youngest generation of the family has set up shop in the South Loop, hard by Soldier Field. More than 20 flat-screen TVs line the spacious room and bar, there are daily drink specials and shuffleboard, and in addition to chef Mark Rimkus’s roster of apps, sandwiches, and wraps, there are some specialties that seem appropriately alien to Chicago: chili with spaghetti, a Reuben pizza, and even the much-vaunted charcoal-grilled burger, which is served on a toasted bun with ketchup, pickles, raw onion, and butter. Yep, they’re from Wisconsin, all right. —Kate Schmidt Magnolia Cafe 1224 W. Wilson | 773-728-8785 F 8.4 | S 8.2 A | A 8.1 | $$$ (19 reports) contemporary American, global/fusion/eclectic | Dinner: Sunday, Tuesday-Saturday | Sunday brunch | Closed Monday rrr Chef Kasra Medhat’s frequently changing menu makes occasional global nods —for example, there might be duck-confit spring rolls with grilled red onions, watercress, and a sweet soy glaze. For meat lovers there are several good options such as braised beef short ribs over sauteed spinach with bacon-and-cheddar mac ’n’ cheese and onion rings. Desserts are an event: gianduja-chocolate bread pudding is served with creme anglaise, vanilla ice cream, and caramel sauce, while the caramelized banana split is homemade ice cream topped with chocolate and caramel sauces and whipped cream. Servers aim to please, and the wine list has some fine selections. —Laura Levy Shatkin Mercat a la Planxa 638 S. Michigan | 312-765-0524 $$$$ Tapas/Spanish | Breakfast, lunch, dinner: seven days | Open late: Friday & Saturday till midnight Jose Garces’s splashy homecoming from Philadelphia—where the Chicago-bred celeb launched two successful tapas restaurants in as many years—marks him as a sort of Spanish imperialist. But the chef isn’t stamping out his empire with a giant cookie cutter shaped like the Iberian Penin- sula; at Mercat a la Planxa, signifiers of Catalan cuisine dot the menu: Spanish scallions (cal çots), charred and served with romesco sauce (salbitxada); cured sausages like butifarra and fuet; and pa amb tomaquet, grilled tomato-garlic bread, to name a few. The menu is a bit intimidating in its depth and pricing, especially considering that these are small plates, but most were pretty darn good. I couldn’t get my mind off the inky black, superrich fideua negra— angel-hair and baby squid topped with saffron aioli—and even an old standby like bacon-wrapped dates was distinguished by a tiny pitcher of blue cheese and skewered over a small bowl of frisee that helped cut the richness. Ordering the kitchen’s much-talked-about roasted suckling pig (cochinillo asado) is a bit like adopting a child, requiring 72 hours’ advance notice and a faxed form. Chef de cuisine Michael Fiorello escorts the little guy to your table and carves him up there, separating the delectable crispy skin and the fatty cheek tissue from the rest of meat, and, at our request, going so far as to remove the tiny, creamy gray matter from the skull, grill it, and plate it with a rich sherry reduction. It includes sides of calçots, roasted fingerling potatoes, and two particularly fantastic dishes—sauteed spinach with raisins, pine nuts, and julienned apples, and a cassouletlike crock of white beans with bacon. Even at $440 for a whole order ($220 for a half), this might be the best value in the restaurant, and it’s well worth the effort. —Mike Sula Opera1301 S. Wabash | 312-461-0161 F 7.6 | S 6.7 | A 8.4 | $$$$ (18 reports)Chinese, Asian | Lunch: Monday-Friday; Dinner: seven days | Open late: Friday & Saturday till midnight As he did at Red Light, Paul Wildermuth consulted with Arun Sampanthavivat on the menu for this swank spot in the South Loop. In fact, the whole concept rings a bell: stylized Asian food with powerful flavors served in an over-the-top space. The food, executed by Kendall College grad Erica Fisher, is part whimsical, part serious, and mostly enjoyable. Pork-and-ginger shumai are served with roast peanut-chile pesto and scallion-cilantro sauce; black tiger prawns with Singapore noodles, Jonah crab, and Chinese sausage. Dishes truer to form but just as nice include Szechuan dry-cooked green beans with ground pork and preserved vegetables, a stir-fry of sugar snap peas and mushrooms, and a deconstructed Peking duck that changes nightly. Raters praise the kitchen’s willingness to tailor dishes to vegetarians, and there’ s a recently expanded menu devoted to vegans. Half portions of some entrees are now available. —Laura Levy Shatkin Spring 2039 W. North | 773-395-7100 F 8.8 | S 9.1 | A 8.0 | $$$$ (9 reports)American Contemporary/Regional, Seafood | Dinner: Seven days rrr The first restaurant venture of executive chef Shawn McClain, now the overlord of a mini empire that includes Green Zebra and Custom House, Spring’ s more than a half-decade old and still fresh. The concept’s simple: clean, clever Asian-influenced seafood dishes, as in appetizers of a barbecued eel maki roll or short ribs with Japanese egg noodles and a fried quail egg in a Szechuan mushroom bouillon. The flavor of the fish dishes is usually kept pure; the corruption’s confined to the splendid sides and sauces. Maine skate wing, for example, came with artichokes, cipollini onions, tagliatelle, and toasted pumpkin-seed vinaigrette; grilled Hawaiian prawns with delectable pork belly dumplings and a Thai-spiced aromatic shellfish broth. Potato “ ravioli” tested the structural stability of potatoes, but the single seared scallop that accompanies it was pristine and a pungent mushroom-black truffle reduction was the perfect foil, like a gastronomic good cop-bad cop routine. —Nicholas Day Sun Wah Bar-B-Que 1134 W. Argyle | 773-769-1254 $$ Asian, Chinese | Breakfast, lunch, dinner: Sunday-wednesday, friday-saturday | Closed Thursday While the barbecue here is definitely worth trying, the seafood selections should not be ignored—they’re fresh, flavorful, and good-sized for the price. Stay away from the usual egg roll, sweet-and-sour whatever, and go for the more authentic dishes. Don’t forget the soups: there are a number of noodle varieties, plus more exotic ones like shredded duck with dried scallops. And as Gary Wiviott noted in picking Sun Wah as Best Bang for Your Buck for the Reader’s Best of Chicago 2009, “with a few hours’ advance notice, four people can eat like emperors for less than ten bucks apiece at Sun Wah, which offers a multicourse Beijing (aka Peking) duck dinner for $30, ” while “five bucks gets you your choice of succulent, crisp-skinned Hong Kong-style roast pork, deep-flavored soy sauce chicken, or barbecue ribs, each with rice, greens, and half a brined egg.” Sorbet made in-house by Kendall College grad Laura Cheng provides a refreshing end. —Claire Dolinar Urban Belly3053 N. California | 773-583-0500 $$ Asian, Noodles | Lunch, dinner: Sunday, Tuesday-Saturday | Closed Monday | Reservations not accepted | BYO Often with domestic attempts to popularize or synthesize Asian cuisines, one taste predominates: sweetness. To his credit, Bill Kim doesn’t try to lure babies with candy at his upscale neighborhood noodle joint Urban Belly. Instead he offers an array of pan-Asian-inspired dumplings and rice and noodle bowls with bold but occasionally wearying flavors. It’s a quick-serve, sometimes frenzied communal setting that’s clearly a winning business model. The dumplings alone could carry it; offered in five varieties, they’re tasty across the board. I particularly liked the ones stuffed with lamb and brandy, fragrant pork and cilantro, and duck with pho spices. But my excitement was quickly dampened by the other menu categories, particularly the greasy rice bowls—long-grain rice topped with a few small slabs of short rib, or tossed with pork belly and pineapple, pea shoots and basil, or a combination of all of the above. The noodles have a tendency to taste strikingly delicious in the first few slurps, but gradually exhaust the palate the closer you get to the bottom of the bowl. This is especially true of the saltier varieties—the rice cakes in Korean chile broth with katsu-style chicken breast, for instance, or the stir-fried egg noodles, which while nicely knotted and crispy were bathed in a broth not all that different. I did feel favorably toward the ramen, a chewy tangle with shiitake and thick slabs of pork belly. And in general, there’s a lot to like in these bowls: bonito flakes, Kim’s springy house-made fish cakes. — Mike Sula -- ※ 發信站: 批踢踢實業坊(ptt.cc) ◆ From: 131.193.195.152 ※ 編輯: eertllams 來自: 131.193.195.152 (06/04 03:53)