On a parchingly hot summer morning, I weighed whether it was better to wear shorts to a nice restaurant, or find myself slowly cooked to a roast on my day about town. So I don't know if it was just the day's weather, or the natural state of the restaurant, but when I showed up at Balena well-ventilated, I didn't find myself feeling out of place. At least that day, it seemed the sort of restaurant where you'd feel as comfortable in sandals as blazer/ties or Saturday girls'-night-out dresses. This is in part because of the service, carried out with warm humor and natural grace, as well as the food, which will no doubt has people reaching for thesauruses for words like "unfussy", "rustic", "peasant", and "damned tasty."
The space is the third part of that trifecta, a lofty-ceiling Italian barn-style (I imagine. I've never been in an Italian barn.) divided room, with homey-chic light fixtures, leather chairs, and a warm, earthy palette that never nears drab. There are a few minor issues, the up-front area by the bar and wide-glass doors are a little less exciting, a little less comfortably intimate than the back and second room. And sometimes you feel you're about to topple off the high chairs, along with the somewhat cramped tables. But for the most part, this is enviable ambiance and interior. In fact, the whole place screams for a patio; I'd be chowing down brunch on their rooftop or in their courtyard in a hearbeat.
But imaginary major renovations aside, the chow is the draw. We order the "Balena" cheese and salumi platter first, along with a couple of glasses from an interesting list. Let me tell you: the Balena is not meant to be shared for two. It's a literal smorgasbord of breads, spreads, meat and cheese, including a funky blue oregonzola and a terribly, terribly creamy robiola I would rub all over myself if this were a horror story and not a review. Aside from a few tough breads (Why do people like hard bread?), the platter is a fun mix-and-match game that you will win, and perfect for a table of four. The only thing I regret about this dish is how full it left me.
So we continued lightly. The smoked mackerel starter is meaty despite its clean and sushi-like appearance as well as quite small and expensive. Regardless though, it's a lovely dish, if not quite transcendent. The soft-cooked egg and pangrattato are wonderful, but the aioli could use more salt.
The tagliolini nero is similarly subtle. It's really a whole study in subtlety. Oftentimes, I am loathe to go to Italian restaurants. I love Italian food. But it's hard to make pasta, meat, and cheese taste bad, and harder still to justify the mark-up for such simple cooking. Only, the tagliolini falls nimbly between simple and complex. It tastes like the best ramen I've ever had. Oh, I wish the uni was a little bit brinier, a little bit stronger, and that big, sweet chunks of lobster were used instead of the crab, which is a touch washed out. And yet, the dish is a marvel of tiny, balanced, nuanced flavors: the smooth creaminess, the squid ink, the spice and the sea. The dish kept revealing more and more as I ate it, and the plot twists were good ones.
I wish I had had the room for one of the big meat dishes, but by this time I was dying. We had to back our way into dessert, a tiramisu and a Kir Royale sorbetto. The latter was fruity, cool, the right choice for a hot day, but it was sadly strong-armed by the alcohol. The tiramisu however was simultaneously light and dense, married to an appealing crumble and a espresso-roasted pear I wish was better integrated into the dish. Yet I left thinking Amanda Rockman's work was a breath of new life into an old stand-by.
All the nitpicking aside, Balena was the right choice for that night, and the right choice for many other nights. Laid back but convivial, casual yet elegant. It was somewhere between the wine, the fun little bites, and the stupid, ridiculous stories we were telling each other as I was being slowly and dangerously and entirely-voluntarily packed with meat and cheese and pasta that I was thinking Balena was a fun night out. Take advantage.
4.5/5 stars
Monday, May 28, 2012
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Blokes & Birds: Brunch Review
At a faux-Irish restaurant-bar, a friend recently ordered bangers and mash. She wanted to see the hype, she explained, and I watched with grim anticipation as she received, stared, ate, and sighed. I don't understand bangers and mash, delicious as a marriage of sausage and potatoes sound. I am similarly torn about eating brunch in gastropubs, as much as I love the idea of pubs with a real sense of place, style, and a bar that takes as much pride in the food they turn out as in the drinks they shill.
Brunch is a place of sunlight-thick windows, of airy rooms and airier hollandaises. But eating brunch at Blokes & Birds is a bit like eating in someone's hangover. It's dark, the tables are awkwardly placed, and running TVs are an incongruity. More importantly, a few of the chairs are dirty and sticky. The only thing worse than experiencing someone else's hangover is experiencing their walk of shame.
Fortunately, the food helps brighten the place up a bit. A banana nut muffin and a danish arrive, strangely without accompanying plates, a mistake that is never addressed even as our party sweeps up our own wayward crumbs. But the pastries and cucumber water are simple and refreshing. Then the benedict, topped with chewy prosciutto. It's tasty, though it lacks an acid foil and the brioche it sits on could be a good deal lighter and fluffier. Same for the french toast with peaches and cherries. It's dry enough that the dearth of sauce and fruit practically wave their arms at you.
Moister is the meat of the duck hash. It's a hearty portion, and it should be at a still overpriced $16. It's an umami battle I wouldn't run away from: tangles of duck confit, truffle and mushroom. But it compares unfavorably to the one at Longman & Eagle's, one of my favorite bites of last year. That one had duck eggs rolling with rich, flavorful yolks, crispier potatoes, and a welcome shotgun of green onions. That dish was both rich and bright, Bloke's was just rich. Which pretty much sums up my time there: solid, hearty brunch fare that could use a touch more precision, and a lot more light with the dark.
2/5 stars
Brunch is a place of sunlight-thick windows, of airy rooms and airier hollandaises. But eating brunch at Blokes & Birds is a bit like eating in someone's hangover. It's dark, the tables are awkwardly placed, and running TVs are an incongruity. More importantly, a few of the chairs are dirty and sticky. The only thing worse than experiencing someone else's hangover is experiencing their walk of shame.
Fortunately, the food helps brighten the place up a bit. A banana nut muffin and a danish arrive, strangely without accompanying plates, a mistake that is never addressed even as our party sweeps up our own wayward crumbs. But the pastries and cucumber water are simple and refreshing. Then the benedict, topped with chewy prosciutto. It's tasty, though it lacks an acid foil and the brioche it sits on could be a good deal lighter and fluffier. Same for the french toast with peaches and cherries. It's dry enough that the dearth of sauce and fruit practically wave their arms at you.
Moister is the meat of the duck hash. It's a hearty portion, and it should be at a still overpriced $16. It's an umami battle I wouldn't run away from: tangles of duck confit, truffle and mushroom. But it compares unfavorably to the one at Longman & Eagle's, one of my favorite bites of last year. That one had duck eggs rolling with rich, flavorful yolks, crispier potatoes, and a welcome shotgun of green onions. That dish was both rich and bright, Bloke's was just rich. Which pretty much sums up my time there: solid, hearty brunch fare that could use a touch more precision, and a lot more light with the dark.
2/5 stars
Friday, May 18, 2012
Deleece: Brunch Review
Deleece is a pleasantly modest place in a pleasantly modest part of Lakeview. It's the sort of neighborhood spot that I wish was a few blocks closer and was cooking at a few levels higher. The space is airy and modern, the waitstaff friendly.
My lobster benedict, however, intended to be a luxurious overindulgence, was mildly disappointing. The lobster lacked the luscious sweetness necessary to slice through a truffle hollandaise that buries the dish. The thing about truffle, is that it belongs either as a gentle accent to more complex dishes, or as the aggressor to aggressively one-noters like fries. Every other bite I try, from the promising-sounding cinnamon caramel beignets and the steak and eggs are also similarly fine, somewhat comforting, and mildly disappointing.
It's a nice spot of town to waste a few sunny weekend hours. If only the food was made to match.
1.5/5 stars
My lobster benedict, however, intended to be a luxurious overindulgence, was mildly disappointing. The lobster lacked the luscious sweetness necessary to slice through a truffle hollandaise that buries the dish. The thing about truffle, is that it belongs either as a gentle accent to more complex dishes, or as the aggressor to aggressively one-noters like fries. Every other bite I try, from the promising-sounding cinnamon caramel beignets and the steak and eggs are also similarly fine, somewhat comforting, and mildly disappointing.
It's a nice spot of town to waste a few sunny weekend hours. If only the food was made to match.
1.5/5 stars
Bread and Wine: Dinner Review
I was asked to help choose a restaurant for a friend's birthday. My parameters: it had to be nice, not too expensive, and generally satisfy the tastes of six different people. When old friends gather to eat, choosing a restaurant becomes as pleasant as splitting the check: which is to say unpleasant. And the birthday girl doesn't eat pork, seafood, or anything cooked below a medium well. I'm not kidding---once she had a friend microwave a pink roast into well-done submission for her. Which is how we ended up at Bread and Wine, one of the more aggressively inoffensive restaurants we've been to.
I'd read the Sun Times' Michael Nagrant describe it as the sort of restaurant that you would take non-foodies to when they're taking their first few baby steps into the world of overpaying for tiny plates of food. Everything from the menu (steak, chicken, pasta) to the interior (farm-to-table chic) screams "crowd pleaser." It's extremely hard to hate it, and it's extremely hard to be blown away by it.
Things do get started off strangely though. When I ask our waitress which is a better money sink, the chicken liver spread or the panna cotta, she gives me a look of surprise and recommends the latter, which I go along with. She then doesn't hear my attempt to order the carbonara and brings me the panna cotta out with everyone else's entrees. An ordinary enough mistake, and a sometime fault of my quiet ordering, but most fine dining restaurants would've added a gesture in addition to the apology. And when we discover the mistake, she says, "I'll set it aside for you," and I do a double take. The very least she could've done was pretend the chef would whip up a fresh one for me. So this too separates Bread and Wine from fine dining.
But come on, how does the food taste? The herb salad and ricotta crostini is a surprisingly nice starter for someone who likes neither ricotta nor salad. But it's got a nice nuttiness to the ricotta and a bright, spring flavor, though I come to this dish by way of one of my companions, who ordered it and hated it. The stinging nettle carbonara has good texture, but lacks the lightness of the best-handled heavy dishes. The accompanying lardons taste surprisingly like Chinese barbecue pork, in a way that I don't love, but the poached egg and hedgehog mushrooms are nicely done. However, the portion size has one of my dining companions, who ordered similarly, staring in dismay, and I don't blame him.
And finally, my butterscotch panna cotta. Even sitting too long, it is cool and jiggly and delicious and incredibly sweet in a way that definitely does not offend me. It's an indulgence and shows a dash of brave brio that I wish the rest of the menu showed. But mission accomplished: the birthday girl enjoyed it. So without invoking the restaurant name too much, Bread and Wine is the place for a slow and gentle foodie conversion.
2.5/5 stars
I'd read the Sun Times' Michael Nagrant describe it as the sort of restaurant that you would take non-foodies to when they're taking their first few baby steps into the world of overpaying for tiny plates of food. Everything from the menu (steak, chicken, pasta) to the interior (farm-to-table chic) screams "crowd pleaser." It's extremely hard to hate it, and it's extremely hard to be blown away by it.
Things do get started off strangely though. When I ask our waitress which is a better money sink, the chicken liver spread or the panna cotta, she gives me a look of surprise and recommends the latter, which I go along with. She then doesn't hear my attempt to order the carbonara and brings me the panna cotta out with everyone else's entrees. An ordinary enough mistake, and a sometime fault of my quiet ordering, but most fine dining restaurants would've added a gesture in addition to the apology. And when we discover the mistake, she says, "I'll set it aside for you," and I do a double take. The very least she could've done was pretend the chef would whip up a fresh one for me. So this too separates Bread and Wine from fine dining.
But come on, how does the food taste? The herb salad and ricotta crostini is a surprisingly nice starter for someone who likes neither ricotta nor salad. But it's got a nice nuttiness to the ricotta and a bright, spring flavor, though I come to this dish by way of one of my companions, who ordered it and hated it. The stinging nettle carbonara has good texture, but lacks the lightness of the best-handled heavy dishes. The accompanying lardons taste surprisingly like Chinese barbecue pork, in a way that I don't love, but the poached egg and hedgehog mushrooms are nicely done. However, the portion size has one of my dining companions, who ordered similarly, staring in dismay, and I don't blame him.
And finally, my butterscotch panna cotta. Even sitting too long, it is cool and jiggly and delicious and incredibly sweet in a way that definitely does not offend me. It's an indulgence and shows a dash of brave brio that I wish the rest of the menu showed. But mission accomplished: the birthday girl enjoyed it. So without invoking the restaurant name too much, Bread and Wine is the place for a slow and gentle foodie conversion.
2.5/5 stars
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