avec - Dinner Review

I have visited the Holy Grail of foodies and come out clean. I have finally been to avec. It was not always a sure thing.

While I respect the laws of supply and demand, and the urge for restaurants like Next, Ruxbin, and Davanti Enoteca to carve out as great a profit margin as they can, there is something antithetical about restaurants boasting an amazing diner-oriented experience and impeccable service when we have to spend hours of our lives and precious sanity trying to buy dinner tickets that sell precisely online at 4:27a.m. on the third Tuesday of every month each time there is a harvest moon. Do I sound bitter? If I don't, you're either incredibly sweet, or incredibly naive. What happened to taking a simple reservation?

So it was with great and fearful joy that I managed to convince an out-of-town friend to drive with me through Chicago rush hour on an early Monday evening to possibly, potentially, maybe wait an hour and a half for a table? I'm exaggerating, I called ahead. I just didn't want to disappoint the guy. Luckily, after we finally pinpointed the half-hidden entrance and stepped inside this charmingly stylish walk-in closet of a restaurant, we had an immediate seat at the bar. I breathed a sigh of relief. Whatever's been said about the acoustics has already been said. It's kind of like being at a concert: packed, ragingly loud, and everyone is having a good time in spite of (because of?) it. 

On this boilingly 100-degree summer day, we decided that small plates and some rose would be a good idea. The introductory burrata is a dazzlingly creamy thing, something you imagine celebrities use to moisturize after exfoliating. And the accompanying beets (pickled into delicious edibility) join with ramps (also pickled, but already delicious) to make a wonderfully light balancing act. Add in some Italian rose, and things get even better. A baba ghanoush crostini with radishes, salmon roe, and sumac vinaigrette is less memorable, though a pleasant distraction. The roe pop with a delicate salinity, but you imagine that a touch richer roe, something more defiantly saline, should be sprinkled atop to counterpunch with the acid.

"The dates?" you ask. The bacon-wrapped dates of avec have almost become an urban legend themselves. You almost roll your eyes each time someone mentions them, they're such a cliche unto themselves. Then you eat them, and your eyes roll for another reason. Crispy, salt-packed bacon. Sweet, smoky Spanish chorizo mixed in a simultaneously loose-dense alchemy with dates and a spicy tomato piquillo pepper sauce. The recipe's online, and it's kind of like Walter White posting the recipe for blue sky meth for any junky to make. Cliches survive for a reason.

Unfortunately, the hangar steak with cremini, shaved artichokes, and kale chips is a bit of a disappointment. Despite its friendly color, it goes down a bit tough, and its accoutrements seem less the delicate chemistry of avec's other dishes and more like someone dumped the contents of a box labeled "umami" on top. I kick myself for not going a few weeks earlier during avec's leek-mascarpone version, but that's the sort of roulette you play with when you dedicate yourself to seasonality. Most times, though, you win. A final additional order (a sign of confidence from my eating-averse friend) brings a charred flatbread to the table. It's leaking mustard oil (in a good way), packed with thin-sliced cucumbers and powerfully pungent bursts of pure flavor masquerading as anchovies. It makes sense in my head, but it's a bit unbalanced by the strength of the fish, and this comes from someone who thinks of "pungent" as a compliment.

Even still, I enjoyed the eating of it. Which is sort of the magic of avec and its big sister Blackbird. All of their dishes feel like little experiments, carefully honed, edited, and lovingly worried over time and time again until they're perfect. Even the ones that don't ring my bell feel far less like failures and more like experiments just a version or two before the "Eureka!" moment. So I will be back, to eat their trademark pork shoulder and taleggio come hell or high water, whether I have to wait till a blizzard or 11th hour Monday just to thin the crowds. Because eating at avec isn't an act of masochism, it's straight, pure hedonism.

4.5/5 stars