Hopewell Brewing - Monday Night Dinner with Flat and Point

 

I really like Hopewell Brewing.  They are good people that do some good and interesting beers.  Periodically, on a Monday night (when they are normally closed), they will invite a neighborhood restaurant who they are friends with and will host a Monday Night Dinner.  It gives them a chance to feature their beer with some different and interesting food served family-style, and it gives their friends a chance to try something that might not normally do.  For this Monday Night Dinner, they invited Flat & Point, a neighborhood restaurant that is similar to a barbecue restaurant.  The food is locally sourced and whole animals are used, though they feature things other than smoked meat.  The Hopewell Taproom is big and open with a bar on one side and three long communal tables in the center of the room.  Besides the large windows in the front, the space is lit with hanging light bulbs.  The walls also feature hanging art, which changes periodically.  The art that is now hanging was interesting and bright and if I were to add descriptors, I would say that it looked to me like Psychedelic and Robotic Aztec Art.  As in previous dinners, there was a Hopewell cooler sitting in the back of the room filled with beer to welcome us.  To be hospitable, I grabbed one, a Lil Buddy Lager, a light and crisp beer served in 8 oz cans and is very easy drinking.  Because I was dining solo, I was seated with another group which was fine because it made it easier to serve things family-style and it gave me a chance to socialize somewhat.

 

After everyone had arrived, was seated and had a beer, we started.  Our first beer was a favorite of mine, Table Salt Gose which is made with French Gray Sea Salt, Lemongrass, Lime Leaf, and Cardamom.  It's tart with a nice lemon-lime flavor and a salty finish.  This was paired with Charcuterie.  We were served Leberkase (literally Liver Cheese, it is a Sausage made with finely ground Corned Beef, Pork and Bacon), with Smoked Ricotta Cheese, and Pickled Radishes, on Sourdough Bread.  This was not what I expected as far as charcuterie was concerned, but it perfectly fit in with what Flat & Point does.  It was smoky and meaty, with the creamy ricotta, and dense and flavorful sourdough.

 

From the appetizer we went to the salad and what better beer to serve with salad then a Saison.  Great News Saison is a classic saison providing flavors of fruit, pepper, and citrus, and went very well with those things green.  Our salad wasn't completely colored green, but because it was all plant-based, I will use green as a generic descriptor instead of the color.  Our salad was a Winter Salad with Smoked Delicata Squash, Wilted Baby Kale, Carrots, Pumpkin Seeds, and Honey Dijon.  I really liked this salad because it had a lot of flavors and textures.  I am generally not a huge fan of Kale, because texturally, it's generally a bit stiff.  Wilting it, did soften it up, but with the squash and carrots, there was enough to chew on.

 

Our next course was lasagna, though it was lasagna with a definite twist.  It was a Veggie Lasagna with Parsnips, Sweet Potatoes, Kale, and a Truffle and Creamy Mushroom Sauce.  It was served with Off Black, Hopewell's Schwarzbier (Black Lager), which is both earthy and crisp.  The Lasagna was layered with Sweet Potatoes and Parsnips, sliced, laid on its side, and covered in the amazing Mushroom and Truffle Gravy.  It was tender and very flavorful, and the earthiness of the sweet potatoes and parsnips went well with the earthiness of the Schwarzbier.

 

 

After the excellent lasagna, many of us would have been happy to finish, but we still had our entree and dessert to go, so on we plowed.  Our final beer was a seasonal beer that they have made since the beginning, 24:37 Red IPA (24:37 is the length of a day on Mars, the red planet).  It's good and a bit unusual, being both malty and hoppy.  It was served with a Thuringer Porchetta (a spiced Pork Sausage made largely from Pork Shoulder) with Red Cabbage and 24:37 Red IPA Gravy, it was also served with a big bowl of Polenta.  This was really good, though it was tender and flavorful, it was also heavy and it was hard to get through after the rest of the food.

 

Happily we made it to the end and while dessert was nice and sweet, it wasn't exceptionally heavy.  Our beer was a Cold Brew Imperial Coffee Stout made with the coffee of a local roaster and featuring flavors of Dark Chocolate and Coffee.  What better to match a stout with than a Double Chocolate Crinkle Cookie which was made with Glazed and Made with Dark Chocolate.  It was sweet, bitter, and made for an excellent finish for a great meal.  I was happy to talk to both the owners of Hopewell and the Chef/Owner of Flat & Point.  I will continue to go to Hopewell's Monday Night Dinners and will definitely visit flat & Point for dinner some night. 

Flat & Point

 

 

There are many barbecue joints in Chicago.  Most don't do a single style, but at least most of them now smoke their meat.  A new restaurant opened up in my neighborhood, that, while they serve meat from a smoker, and use a variety of sauces to go with the meat, doesn't call itself a BBQ joint.  Called Flat + Point, which refers to the to sides of a piece of brisket, they don't refer to themselves as a barbecue joint because, as the chef said, there are only two slabs of rib from each animal and there is a lot more than that from each animal that they also serve.  The outside of the space looked very modern.  The inside has hardwood furniture and floors and an open kitchen with wood stacked in front where you can see the smoker.  I came, with Tasting Collective, for a 6 course whole animal dinner, the animal, of course, being a pig.  Before dinner started, I started things off with a Mezcal Negroni.  Negronis are generally a gin cocktail, made with Campari, Vermouth, and garnished with an orange peel.  While I like gin, I generally tend away from Negronis because I am picky about the combinations and they will frequently come out too bitter (for me).  I have never met a Mezcal Negroni, though, that I have not liked.  The sweetness and smoke from the mezcal makes the drink more than just bitter and I like it a lot.  This was very good and a nice start for a meal that would have lots of smoked meats.

 

 Our first course was a charcuterie plate, which is a logical and easy way to use offal.  Our plate included a Head Cheese with Pig Ear, Noes, Jowl, Feet, and Tail, Pork Loin, Pickles, Hard boiled Eggs, Barbecue Sauce, and a Seeded Lavash (Cracker).  I had had head cheese before, it 's basically a pressed meat that includes leftover parts.  This was pretty good.  The loin was very tender and everything tasted very good.  The Lavash was delicate but flavorful and went well with the charcuterie. 

The second course was the salad, but it was also similar to a Bruschetta.  It was Pastrami Tongue Endive Salad with Candied Walnuts and Chive Vinaigrette.  The endives were served as single pieces with the tender pastrami tongue on top.  The walnuts provided some sweetness and a crunch and the vinaigrette added some sour.

Course three was pasta.  It was a Pork Shoulder Canneloni with Pork Jus, Mushroom Duxelle, and Pea Shoots.  It was kind of funny when the dish came out, with the color and shape of the pasta, it reminded me of a plate of bones topped with greens.  Despite what the menu said, I thought we were going to have a marrow dish.  Duxelle is a dish of minced mushrooms and herbs cooked down to a paste.  With the pork shoulder being pulled, it looked like everything inside the pasta shell had been through a grinder (which contributed to the look of a bone and the thought that we would be eating marrow).  In any case it was all very flavorful and I liked it a lot.

Our next course featured pork (like every other course),  though it wasn't a major part of the dish.  It started with Creamy Polenta topped with Grilled Asparagus and Crispy Pig Skin.  Polenta is interesting.  It is simply boiled corn meal with butter, similar to grits, but it seems to come in a variety of textures.  This polenta was firm, about the texture of oatmeal, and very flavorful.  The Asparagus was plentiful and very fresh.  The Pig Skin was broken into small pieces about the size of croutons and sprinkled over the top, like croutons, that added to the flavor.

By the time our entree arrived, we were starting to get full.  It looked a little overwhelming, especially after all that we he had so far eaten.  The meat was a roulade that was actually a Porchetta that was made with everything, Pork Belly, Ham Sausage, Liver, Kidney, and Fat Back, and served over Shredded Rutabaga (done in a sauerkraut style) and Apple Butter.  While everything on this plate was eaten, it definitely went slower than the early plates.

When we reached dessert, it was like a challenge as to whether we would be able to finish it or not.  When our plates arrived, the challenge was readily accepted.  We were served Pork Fat Brioche Chocolate Bread Pudding with Dulce de Leche.  This was very good, but pretty heavy, and I was glad that I was able to walk here because riding my bike would have been uncomfortable.  I really enjoyed my dinner here and am glad that it's really close.  I will definitely return with friends.        

The Bristol - Tasting Collective Dinner

It's funny, while I have been to The Bristol several times, I've never written about their dinner.  I've been here and written about Brunch and events, but never their dinner menu.  While this dinner with Tasting Collective was a group dinner, it did feature kind of a greatest hits selection from their dinner menu.  The plates at The Bristol are meant to be shared anyway, so other than having to serve everything at once, it shouldn't have been a huge difference for the kitchen.  We were seated upstairs in a room that used to be a bar area that served no food, but is now a private dining room and event space (with it's own bar).  For the dinner, there was one long communal table set up and we shared plates with three people sitting close to us.  I started things off with an Old Fashioned, made with Very Old Barton Bourbon, Demerara Sugar (raw sugar from sugar cane), Bitters, and an Orange Rind garnish.  An Old Fashioned, as the name implies, has been around for a long time.  It isn't difficult to make, but the ingredients used make an enormous difference.  This was a very good Old Fashioned that was sweet, bitter, and very smooth.  I am generally not a bourbon drinker, but this was very good.

Our First Course was very much a pre-dinner, cocktail hour-style appetizer.  It was Smoked Catfish Dip, topped with Trout Roe, and served with Housemade Potato Chips.  The catfish dip was ver flavorful and topped with a lot of roe.  It was very good, though the one complaint that I might have had was that we could have used more potato chips which were very crisp and salty and very good themselves.

After our appetizer, we had a classic salad combination:  Roasted Beets with Feta Cheese.  To add to this, there were Honey Roasted Cashews and Persillade (a parsley and garlic sauce).  The beets were tender and had a sweet and bitter flavor, the goat cheese brings a slightly sour creamy flavor, the cashews added a honey, nutty crunch, and the persillade added a green and garlicky flavor.  It all came together in a wild and yet familiar combination of flavors and textures.

After the salad began our savory courses with one of my favorites, Fried Pork Rillettes with Pepper Jam.  Served on a wood board, it was a very simple presentation, but it made it easy for the four of us to easily get one rillette.  They were like breaded meatballs with a very tender interior and a sweet and spicy Pepper Jam that the rillettes were both topped with and sat in.

Our second savory course was a Duck Confit Cavatelli with Shiitake Mushrooms and Mint.  Many might think that this would be my favorite dish.  It had many things going for it, the duck confit, which was plentiful, the mushrooms, which added texture and a nice earthy flavor, and the mint.  It was very good, but I liked the Pork Rillettes better.

Our final savory course was brisket, which I also love, though not as much as the pork rillettes.  The Brisket was Miso Smoked, which added an extra savory flavor and served with Pickled Turnips, Mashed Potatoes, and Mustard Greens.  I loved the brisket part of this and the potatoes and the mustard greens were fine, but I was not excited about the turnips.  They weren't bad, they just didn't get it for me.

The final dish, dessert, is a dessert for which they are fairly well known for, the Basque Cake.  Again served on a board, the cakes were sized for individual consumption and topped with Chantlly Cream as is traditional for a Basque Cake.  It also had a Seasonal Jam, in this case, Blackberry, and a large Pecan.  I have had several Basque Cakes recently and this one still remains at the top.  I really enjoyed dinner hear again.  The food is very high quality and I like the seasonality of it.  The service is also very good and I got to meet the chef.  I have enjoyed it every time I have come here, and I am sure I will enjoy it again when I return.