Girl &the Goat

There have been many thousands of words written about Stephanie Izard and her new restaurant, Girl & the Goat, the vast majority of them raving. Most people who know who she is know her as the Season 4 winner of Top Chef though Chef Izard does have a significant history before Top Chef. Born in Evanston, IL and raised in Stamford, CT, she developed a love of food at an early age. Before entering the culinary world, she earned a BS in Sociology from the University of Michigan. Shortly after however, she decided to she had to follow her muse and with her parents blessing, went to Scottsdale Culinary Institute and received a culinary degree. Working her way up in the kitchen she worked at La Tache and as a Sous Chef for Shawn McClain at Spring before opening her first restaurant to critical acclaim, Scylla, in Bucktown which she ran for 3 years before selling to Takashi Nagahashi in 2007 and entering Top Chef. With the help of Rob Katz and Kevin Boehm of the Boka Group, she opened Girl and the Goat last summer and is now in the running for Best New Restaurant from the James Beard Foundation.

I made a reservation to celebrate my birthday with a few people but it was a tough reservation to get so it was a week later. Because it was a tough reservation to get, even though I had several cancellations, I wasn't going to give it up and ended up going by myself. The space is very big and airy feeling with an open kitchen and high ceilings. There is a lot of reclaimed wood on the walls and the furniture and a big flame oven in the kitchen. The restaurant has a nice but not overpowering smell of wood smoke as you walk in.

The menu is divided into 3 sections, Vegetables, Fish, and Meat to designate the major focus of a particular dish. This is a shared plate restaurant so everything is served family style and everything is fairly reasonably priced. I decided that if I wanted to get a feel for the food, I should try something from every section.
For my vegetable course, I went with the Kabocha Squash Ravioli with Broccoli, Brussel Sprouts, Shiitake, Trumpet, and Baby Portobello Mushrooms, and Raisin Ragout and a Mushroom Creme Fraiche. It was very good and if I thought I could have gotten away with it, I would have licked my plate and the serving bowl.

My fish course wasn't actually fish and it did have a significant meat element but that was fine. I ordered Lamb Sausage Stuffed Calamari. When I saw it on the menu, I was put in mind of an old Mom and Pop Italian Restaurant near my hometown in Michigan that has since closed down. I remember once seeing veal stuffed calamari on the menu and ordering it with out really knowing what to expect. What I received were the bodies of the squid that were stuffed with meat kind of like big pasta shells. I remember that it was a bit annerving the first time I saw it but it was pretty good. This dish was very similar except that it used lamb instead of veal. Lamb does have a stronger taste than veal and some people do have a philosophical aversion to eating lamb so I could see how someone might not care for it but I like lamb and thought that this was very good.My final non-dessert course could have been a pretty simple dish (in theory) but the complexity added to the dish. The dish was a sugo over pappardelle pasta. Pappardelle is a very broad fettucini and sugo is a traditional Italian sauce using tomato sauce, guanciale, and pecorino cheese. This dish replaced the guanciale with pork, veal, and goat much in excess (there was a lot more meat than sauce) and added yellow cherries. This was a very good dish that I think any meat eater would have liked.At this point, I could have finished and been satisfied but I figured that since I was originally coming for my birthday, I needed to have dessert. I mentioned this to my waitress and found that she was celebrating her birthday on that day. So when she brought my dessert out, it had a lit candle in it. I have mentioned before that I like to challenge myself and if I see something that sounds really weird, I have to try it. I had heard that savories were used in the desserts here and looking over the menu, I saw that was the case. There was something on the dessert menu that employed a savory item in such a way that it sounded so weird that I couldn't pass it up. I don't remember what the main portion of the dessert was called but it was a bittersweet chocolate cake that seemed part lava cake and part brownie. It was served with a shiitake gelato and a salted caramel sauce. It was sweet and very creamy as a gelato should be but it had a very mushroomy aftertaste which would probably have been offputting if I hadn't expected it. Combining it with the cake, it brought a richness and earthiness to it that was very good.

Overall, while I thought that the menu would be difficult for a timid eater, the flavors were excellent. Her food really reminded me of Shawn McClain's food who I think is one of the top innovators in American cuisine today. I will be happy to come back here to share with others if I can manage to get a reservation.

Mitsuwa

My birthday was last week but because I took off work a couple of my co-workers decided to take me out today to a restaurant of my choice. My first thought was sushi because I hadn't had it in a while but after thinking about it, I decided to go with Japanese in general. There is a lot more to Japanese food than simply sushi and because some of the friends I was going with were a little leery of raw fish, I decided to do some exploring and go to Mitsuwa. Mitsuwa is actually a chain grocery and specialty store based in Southern California but with stores also in Chicago and New Jersey with a several "restaurant" food court focusing on different parts of Japanese cuisine. THe different Mitsuwas actually have different restaurants. The one that we went to had sushi (of course), bubble tea, ramen, a sweet shop, a Korean shop and a Japanese hamburger place. I looked at the different offerings in the different shops and decided that I can get sushi at any number of places and the ramen at the Japanese specialty shop had to be much better than the bags of dried ramen that most college students live on. While ramen at its most basic is a noodle soup, there are different bases: soy, miso, salt and different toppings. There were also different combo meals with different sides, one of which was a dish that was used in The Reader's Key Ingredient Series, Natto. The meal also included a soy egg which was simply a hard boiled egg soaked in soy sauce. My meal consisted of a miso ramen with pork, mushrooms, pickled bamboo shoots, and a piece of fish that I am unsure how it was prepared, natto on rice, and a soy egg. The soy egg was pretty good. As one might expect, it is pretty salty but most people salt their hard boiled eggs anyway. The ramen was a LOT better than the stuff that you find in a grocery store. It would be like comparing a can of spaggettios to the spaghetti you might get in an Italian restaurant. The noodles and broth were good but the pork, mushrooms, and fish just added to it. The natto will take some explanation. Natto is fermented soybeans and it is a traditional Japanese dish. It is often served as a breakfast food but it is also served with rice and green onions. From the reading I had done, I have read that natto smells rather strong but that really wasn't the issue with me. While I had never seen it in real life when I did see it, I recognized it immediately because it looked as if it was coated in slime. I like to challenge myself so I had to try this. It looked pretty strange and working the beans into the rice made it look even stranger because the slime was getting worse. In talking about the taste, I will first say that it is an acquired taste. The first bite it had a strong nutty flavor in the fore and main taste but I have to say that I really didn't care for the aftertaste. The after taste was slimy and slightly spoiled tasting. There was some horseradish mustard that was offered on the side so I added that (and increased the slime by stirring it in). It did help though not enough. I enjoyed my meal and will return sometime. I was glad I tried the natto but I don't think I will ever try it again especially when there are so many other things on the menu that are actually appetizing.

Provenance Food and Wine

I really should stay away from gourmet food stores. I will almost invariably spend too much money on a bunch of stuff that I find irresistible. I was looking for some interesting items to put into an Easter basket and went to Provenance Food and Wine. The store is a neighborhood store that carries a wide variety of specialty items and reasonably priced wines. Some of these items include bread, cheese, bacon, prosciutto, ice cream, granolas, and any number of condiments. While there were a wide variety of things that I was interested in, I ended up buying Coconut Roche from B True Bakery, Sea Salt and Honey Pecan Truffles and Pub Bark with Pretzels, Peanuts, and Corn Chips from Rich's Chocolate and Candies. These are going into the Easter Basket but I had to also get something for me so I got Queen City Cayenne Ice Cream from Jeni's Ice Cream and River Valley Kitchens Garlic Pickled Mushrooms. While I can't speak specifically to the taste of the sweets, I have had other Rich's Chocolates before and they are really good. As for the Roche, I can't imagine it being any less good if it is stocked at Provenance. I can speak to the quality of the mushrooms and the ice cream though (although not together). The mushrooms are nice and crisp and the garlic pickle provides a bright and fresh flavor to them. The ice cream is some of the best that I have ever had. The ice cream I bought was a chocolate ice cream with a lot of cinnamon and cayenne with no preservatives or artificial flavors. It is very creamy with a good chocolate flavor which follows in quick succession with some good cinnamon and the slow burn of the cayenne pepper. I will definitely get some more of this in the future. I really thought about buying a bottle of wine as well but I generally don't like committing to a whole bottle of wine. In any case, there is a lot of great stuff here and I will have to avoid it like the plague if I want to have any money at all.

DMK Burger Bar

This is a really lousy picture but what it was supposed to be a picture of was pretty good. I braved the weather last night to go to DMK Burger Bar. DMK is a joint venture from David Morton, scion of the Morton's Restaurant Group/Morton Steakhouse and owner of Pompei Little Italy, and Michael Kornick of MK Restaurant. To describe the restaurant as a burger bar is correct but very simplified. They use grass fed beef and other artisanal ingredients to form a simple but good menu. There are 14 sandwiches on the menu with 9 being hamburgers. The others include salmon, turkey, lamb, and a veggie burger for the unenlightened. There are also 5 salads on the menu as well as mac and cheese but why would you eat a salad when you know you are coming to a burger joint? Even if the salads are good (which I am sure that they are), eating a salad at a burger joint completely misses the point. And what's a burger without fries? There are 6 types of fries starting with sea salt and pepper, and going to sweet potato with lemon tabasco aioli or fries with parmesan and truffle cream. We have talked about the burgers but if you are going to a place that calls itself a burger bar, you also have to talk about the beer. There are no macro brews on the menu (although Goose Island is there). There are six beers on tap mostly focusing on pale ales and wheats. But the bottle list is pretty interesting. There are 27 bottles on the list arranged from light to dark with some well known craft breweries.

The place has a simple design with hardwood floors with a long bar and several round tables but with enough room in the room to actually move around. It also has a very friendly feel to it. The music playing in the "background" was a lot of old funk and R&B. I sat at the bar where I was able to both watch the goings on of the place and the hockey game on one of the TVs behind the bar. My meal consisted of the #6 which is a burger with marinated portobello mushrooms, blue brie, and dijonnaise and fries with sea salt and black pepper with housemade ketchup. My beer was the appropriately named Sublimely Self Righteous Black IPA from Stone Brewing Company. The food and drink were all good. I like both stouts and IPAs and a black IPA brings the best of both. The fries were simple but very well prepared. They were very crispy and tender and actually reminded me of frites and the housemade ketchup was both tangy and spicy. The burger was well prepared. The beef was of good quality and the mushrooms, brie, and dijonnaise added to it but when you have already had the best burger in town, it is hard to give others their do. There are a few other things on the menu that I may need to try at a future visit.

Gaztro-Wagon

In many of the posts that I have written, I have talked about the aesthetic of the restaurant that I went to. With a food truck, you can only do this tangentially. The owner of the Gaztro-Wagon, Matt Maroni has been at the forefront of the food truck scene in Chicago, helping to guide the law that allowed food trucks to operate on Chicago's streets. Chicago is a beautiful city even on days like yesterday when the wind and rain did not want to let up. I have mentioned earlier that I found another food truck essentially by accident. How do you find a food truck when you are actually looking for them? As they are mobile and will move from place to place, this would seem like it could be a potential problem. Twitter to the rescue. The food trucks (including Gaztro-Wagon) all have twitter feeds to let potential customers know where they are going to be. So finding who you want to find should be pretty easy, right? It turns out that it isn't as easy as it sounds. I went to hunt down the Gaztro-Wagon for lunch yesterday. It said that it would be by the Wrigley Building around noon so that's where I went. The Wrigley Building is an easy to find landmark but roads run by it on two levels and on all four sides so it wasn't as obvious as it seemed to be. After waiting at the front for about 15 minutes, I went hunting. I found them on the lower level behind the building which apparently is as close as they could legally get.

In any case, I ended up getting a wild boar naan-wich with fig and bacon relish and artichokes and a side of plantain chips. As it is mobile, there were no seats and as it was raining, I had to find a place to eat this wondrous sounding feast. I walked to the el and rode over to Ogilvie Transportation Station where I then went to the French Market. As it was my birthday, I thought I deserved something sweet so I got a brownie from Sweet Miss Givings. I then had my lunch there.

The naan was nice and chewy, the boar was pulled and had a slightly sweet porky flavor to it, the relish really reminded me of the bacon jam that I made for Christmas and the artichokes were a nice surprise. The plantain chips were good although they were a little bit of a surprise because they were cut lengthwise instead of crosswise and the brownie was nice and dense and sweet as a brownie should be. It was a bit of an adventure to get my lunch but it was worth it and when I play hookie from work again they will be on my short list of places to go for lunch.

Spacca Napoli

There are generally two major schools of thought on how pizza should be prepared. The New York Style is a large thin crust pizza with a minimal amount of sauce and cheese. A piece is generally a bit unwieldy so they are frequently folded to be eaten. The Chicago Style pizza is a deep dish style that is formed and cooked in a cast iron pan. It is also derisively referred to as a pizza casserole. While opinions are very strong as to which of these is the "right" way to have pizza, they are actually both wrong. Pizza originated in Naples, Italy, and the "right way" is the original Neapolitan style. There are a few places in Chicago that do a Neapolitan pizza, but the best of them is the place I went to last Friday, Spacca Napoli. So what is a Neapolitan pizza? It is a small (about 8 inches) thin crust pizza that is flame roasted in a brick oven. The crust is chewy and usually has a little char. Pizzas are either Rosso or red and served with an Italian tomato sauce and olive oil and Bianco or white which is simply topped with olive oil. Toppings are fairly minimal with mozzarella cheese and generally one or two other things like sausage or mushrooms. To start our dinner, we started with a burrata for or appetizer. A burrata starts with a ball of fresh mozzarella. The center is removed, mixed with cream and returned to the ball which results in an usually creamy texture. Burrata is Italian for buttered (which is how it actually tastes) and is served with bread (although it does taste great all by itself). For our entrees, my companion and I each ordered a pizza. We ended up ordering a white and a red pizza although both featured mushrooms. The white pizza was called a Bianco Nero and had Pecorino Romano with Black Truffle, Fior di Latte Mozzarella, Porcini Mushrooms, and White Truffle Oil. It smelled strongly of truffles and it hit me as soon as it hit the table.














The red pizza was a Funghi and, as you might guess, featured mushrooms. It had Fior di Latte Mozzarella, Basil, and Mushrooms. Both pizzas were very good although admittedly, I liked the truffle pizza better.




As we were out at a nice restaurant and we were offered dessert, what could we do but order dessert? I had a Zabaglione which was a cramy custard made with Marsala wine and topped with raspberries. It was light and sweet and very good and while the wine could be tasted, it was subtle. Our other dessert was called with a Tartufo and started with a frozen zabaione (like the zabaglione) wrapped in a chocolate mousse gelato, hazelnuts, and cocoa powder. This is as decadent was as decadent as it looks and sounds. We really enjoyed our dinner but as we were leaving, we were given another surprise. Instead of mints that many other restaurants give at exit, they were giving cannolis. i love me some cannolis so of course I had to have one. It made a great end to a great dinner.

Xoco

I have friends that think that a chef who is not ethnic cannot make truly ethnic cuisine i.e. a Chef who is not Chinese cannot make truly Chinese food or someone who is not Mexican cannot make Mexican food. I believe that the argument goes that if you were not born part of that group, you cannot truly know their culture which does include their food. Personally I think that this argument is ridiculous but I bring it up because it has been brought up in the case of Rick Bayless. Bayless is an expert on Mexican culture (and their food) and was actually working on his doctorate in Anthropological Linguistics and living in Mexico when he decided to open his first restaurant, Frontera Grill in 1987. His parents were grocers and restaurateurs in Oklahoma (specializing in barbecue) so he was exposed to the life of a restaurateur from an early age and he both wrote a cookbook and worked as a sous chef for a restaurant in Cleveland so he was specifically familiar with Mexican cuisine. Frontera Grill specializes in modern regional Mexican cuisine. In 1989, he, and his wife Deann, opened Topolobampo, a Mexican fine dining restaurant. After numerous cookbooks and awards, and showing the world that their was more to Mexican food than tacos and burritos, they decided to explore street food and opened Xoco in 2009. While most people would think of tacos and burritos when street food is mentioned, that was too obvious and everyone else does that so they went with tortas and caldos as well as the churros and hot chocolate. The place is small and the lines are long but the wait is well worth it. There are two lines, one for takeout and one for seating. While you do order from a counter, if you are going to eat there, you don't order until a seat is available, most of which are counter seats. The line runs along the front of the restaurant in front of the kitchen so you can see the food being made which is kind of cool. On each of the inner walls of the deeply recessed windows, there are four, there is a chalkboard listing and thanking the farms and farmers that supply the restaurant.


This is one of them. I went to lunch on a Saturday afternoon (April 2nd) and stood in line for about 40 minutes. While there was a chalkboard menu by the cashier, they also gave menus to those standing in line so they could be ready when it came time for them to order. I got the menu and there was so much on it that looked good, that the longer that I looked at the menu, the harder it got. I ended up giving the menu back and decided to make a quick decision when I got to the cashier. I ended up ordering a pork belly fideo caldo with woodland mushrooms, zucchini, avocado, and salsa negra.


It was pretty spicy and the serving size was surprisingly big but it was really good. I could have been satisfied with this but I did have to get a churro and some of the hot chocolate.



The menu had 5 different chocolates. There was a type called Mexico City (Champurrado) which was described as thick and rich but that was an understatement. The chocolate was just ridiculous. When it was hot it was very thick but as it cooled, it became even thicker and was almost the consistency of pudding. The churro was crispy and chey and the chocolate went with it well. Bayless has done it again and this is a place that I will be coming to again.