Tag: restaurant week

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Chicago Restaurant Week

Restaurant Week 2013: Vermilion and Cafe Spiaggia

This is part of a series of posts about Chicago Restaurant Week, held February 1–10, 2013.

Dinner at Vermilion

Mango-cardamom flan, Vermilion
Mango-cardamom flan, Vermilion

Best Bite: I was partial to dessert, a mango-cardamom flan that made for a creamy, aromatic finish to our Latin-Indian fusion meal. The lychee and tart cranberry garnishes set off the flan nicely, though I wish there had been more than one piece of lychee. See full menu.

Other notes: Also enjoyed the caldeirada de peixe (Brazilian seafood stew), loaded with seafood and the right amount of heat, and artichoke pakoras made a nice, street food-inspired starter. Service was a little off, though, and the setup of the menu itself wasn’t the best value – an $11 upgrade to normal entree portions made the tasting almost cost more than the sum of the courses. Liked the lighting and red decor.

Brazilian seafood stew with tomato rice, Vermilion
Brazilian seafood stew with tomato rice, Vermilion

The details: Vermilion, 10 W Hubbard St., Chicago.

Lunch at Cafe Spiaggia

Gnocchi with pork and beef ragu, Cafe Spiaggia
Gnocchi with pork and beef ragu, Cafe Spiaggia

Best Bite: This one was a tie. My entree’s gnocchi were impossibly fluffy, perhaps the best texture of any gnocchi I’ve tasted, with a meaty ragu that wasn’t too thick. And then there were the bomboloni, a heavenly trio of Italian doughnuts for dessert. Again, I was impressed by the airy texture (they weren’t greasy at all!) and the apple-cinnamon compote and poppyseed sugar recalled all the comfort of cider doughnuts from my local orchard growing up – just in a more refined package. See full menu.

Other notes: Lovely first-course ribollita soup, with tomatoes, kale, and cannellini beans. Excellent service and pleasant view of Michigan Avenue and the lake, even on a gray, slushy day.

Bomboloni with apple-cinnamon compote, Cafe Spiaggia
Bomboloni with apple-cinnamon compote, Cafe Spiaggia

The details: Cafe Spiaggia, 980 N Michigan Ave., Chicago.

Categories
Chicago Restaurant Week

Restaurant Week 2013: Blackbird and Carriage House

This is part of a series of posts about Chicago Restaurant Week, held February 1–10, 2013.

Lunch at Blackbird

Smoked Arctic char appetizer, Blackbird
Smoked Arctic char appetizer, Blackbird

Best Bite: While no dish was less than excellent, I was most wowed by the starter, a superbly delicate piece of smoked Arctic char. I loved the crunch from cauliflower and pear, and just enough meatiness from the tiny dollop of ‘nduja, a type of spreadable salami. It set the tone for the other unique flavor combinations to follow. See full menu.

Other notes: Gorgeous plating, quiet space, surprising main course accompaniments (onion noodles and buttermilk sauce to go with grilled sturgeon), and decadent dessert (an elegant Nutella-banana mash-up) with coffee service.

Chocolate hazelnut bread pudding dessert, Blackbird
Chocolate hazelnut bread pudding dessert, Blackbird

The details: Blackbird, 619 W Randolph St., Chicago.

Dinner at Carriage House

Crispy braised pork shoulder
Crispy braised pork shoulder entree, Carriage House

Best Bite: The entree best showed off the restaurant’s upscale take on low-country cuisine. The melt-in-your-mouth pork shoulder came with a host of balanced companions: smoked plums, pickled peppers, and celery hearts, atop grits and pork jus. With prevalent vinegar to cut through the richness, it was a pleasantly refined Southern dish. See full menu.

Other notes: Outstanding side of skillet cornbread, divine coffee-fudge dipping sauce for the beignets at dessert, tasty (and strong) rum punch, colorful ceramic dishware, and a table in the cozy porch area, with plaid flannel blankets over the chairs and plenty of candles.

Skillet cornbread, Carriage House
Skillet cornbread, Carriage House

The details: Carriage House, 1700 W Division St., Chicago.

Categories
Restaurant Week

Restaurant Week 2013: The planning ritual

This is the first in a series of posts about Chicago Restaurant Week, which takes place February 1–10, 2013.

Banana wonton, my first dessert at last year's Restaurant Week
Banana wonton, my first dessert at last year’s Restaurant Week

As a foodie in Chicago, one of the best moments of every year is the day that Restaurant Week reservations open, usually in early January. Much like a first look at the NCAA bracket or the Lollapalooza lineup, it brings a serious rush of possibility and excitement for how this year’s event could unfold.

For the uninitiated, Restaurant Week is a dining event in which participating restaurants offer special prix-fixe menus for a set price of $22 at lunch and $33 or $44 at dinner, regardless of their normal pricing. At many of the city’s best restaurants, this is not only a great deal, but a fun way to get a more complete taste of what the restaurant offers. It’s also a great excuse to go to new or unfamiliar places and plan food-centric outings with friends. And this isn’t unique to Chicago – New York, Boston, DC, and other major cities also hold their own Restaurant Week once or twice a year.

Anyway, once I see Restaurant Week announcements take over my Twitter feed, it’s go time. In urgent research mode, I first pour over which new restaurants are participating from a lengthy, unfiltered list of more than 250, and then size up their menus one-by-one, strategizing which would be best for lunch and for dinner, and which reservations will fill up the fastest. I also start recruiting dining companions and laying out a potential schedule.

The best way to keep track of all this information? A Google spreadsheet, of course! (Full disclosure: this is coming from the same girl who, as a child, made a Excel file with a full inventory of her Halloween candy; and as a teen, documented online quiz results in PowerPoint for a presentation that would never actually occur.) Call me neurotic, but I’ve found it’s the best way to reference everything at once. Hopefully the Restaurant Week site will build out more customization for individual users in coming years – as in, logging in and creating your own favorites list and schedule, with built-in OpenTable reservation links – but for now, I’m happy to copy and paste.

Last year, I visited five restaurants for Restaurant Week. I’ve made three reservations so far, but am tempted to break my record and go for six. And don’t worry, I’ll be documenting my meals with Evernote Food, one of my favorite iPhone apps, and sharing the highlights here on hillaryproctor.com.

Have you ever participated in Restaurant Week? Have you made any reservations yet for this year?

Categories
Best Bites Chicago

2012 Best Bite #7: Red velvet cake (and miracle berries), iNG

Each day in December, I’m celebrating my best bites (and sips) in 2012, posted in chronological order.

Why it’s a Best Bite: This one requires a little more explanation. It was the last course of an exhilarating three-course Restaurant Week dinner with several of my coworkers. iNG is known for experimenting with wild, scientific techniques, and has been among the first to integrate “flavor-tripping” into its menu. Inducing that “trip” are miracle berries, whose properties tend to make sour or bitter foods taste sweet, among other taste-bud effects. So, before dessert arrived, our group was presented spoons that were filled to the brim with a pinkish powder. We were instructed to swallow the contents of the spoon, then taste the lemon and lime wedges served alongside it.

Miracle berry powder
Miracle berry powder

After downing the powder – about a third of which I blew onto my sleeve instead, in the heat of the moment – I tasted the lemon and lime, which indeed weren’t tart at all. It was surreal to know what a lemon wedge was supposed to taste like, and yet experience what seemed more like sugary lemonade. Soon after, dessert appeared: red velvet cake with a cheesecake nitrogen sphere and freeze-dried blood orange on top. The first few bites were delicious, but the real excitement was seeing the sphere slowly deflate, completely changing the texture and bringing the flavors together in a different way.

Red velvet cake
Red velvet cake

The photo doesn’t really do it justice, so definitely check out this video of the dessert in action.

The details: iNG, 951 W Fulton Market, Chicago.