Le Coq, Oak Park, Almost Perfect

I have a post almost done on a few recent meals at perfect restaurants. Until I reveal what I makes a restaurant perfect, I shall say of Oak Park's Le Coq, it is not. Still a place I enjoy greatly. The tight room looks about as picture perfect as possible, exact without the hyper-realism of say Lettuce Entertain You or Vegas. The changing menu always offers more more than one dish that sounds exactly what I want, and the choices are always so good that I have never gone for the bistro fall-back, the steak-frites. The service tries very hard and there is a sense of professionalism and savior faire that approaches continental. Finally, everything I have eaten there tastes very good.

On the other hand, I would prefer not to see asparagus on a menu in late August. I would like to see a couple of dishes, well at least one be a little risky. Not foam-food risky but bistro classic risky, kidneys in mustard sauce or pig's feet risky. My dish the other night came with french fries, really great, fresh cut french fries, but you know what they fries tasted most of? Parky's nearby. The same thin, brown, salty wonders sold at Parky's (ah if Parky's could have other food as good). Great fries, but I like my Parky's fries at Parky's and at a French place, I would like exceedingly classic, double-fried in suet, blonde French fries. And because of the very nature of Le Coq, it occasionally stumbles in its execution. The staff tries but occasional blunders, and can also get a bit testy. Sometimes a dish comes out too cold, something that has happened the last two times we visited Le Coq.

Luckily, I do not seek perfect restaurants. I seek meals like we had the other night at Le Coq. I have honestly never had a better Lyonaise salad than I had that night. A salad to convert Hat Hammond, the way Halina's soup converted him to soup. Garlic chicken with preserved lemons equaled the intensity of the salad, and buttery-crust apple tart made it a bistro ending. I like this place a lot.

Le Coq
734 Lake Street
Oak Park, IL
(708) 848-2233

Silver Seafood

I have a tendency to pick my favorite restaurants by the amount of stuff served as well as the quality of stuff served. I do not mean big portions, although that helps. I mean stuff. For instance, I prefer Steve's Shish Kebab House for Middle-Eastern Food as much for the hand-chopped kefta and fresh made falafal as I do for the relish tray with Arabian giardianara, blop of vegetables over rice, and other things that come with the dinners. For Cantonese, Happy Chef makes the best head-on salt and pepper shrimps, but that is not why it is my favorite. It is my favorite for the always tasty left-over dim sum soup served before each dinner (no really conch slices and chicken feet make good soup) and the really not that tasty sweet and gritty bean soup served for dessert. I favor the places with the extras, but sometimes I favor a place without a bunch of extras. Just one thing special. Not even a dish. Just a sauce.

That was Silver Seafood at lunch today. We ordered steam clams. With this came the most wondrous of sauces. Any idiot could make this sauce: soy, sesame oil, jalepenos, ginger, scallion, a touch of black vinegar, but only an expert could make it as good as Silver Seafood did. Spicy, salty and oily, it stood as the perfect foil to the sea-ness of the clams. Only a few stray bits of shell and a touch of grit possibly halted the pleasure. When I finished the clams, I drank some sauce plain.

The rest was all done well too. We had "hollow vegetable" in garlic, not a light version. The vegetable sat in a pool of liquid similar in color and heft to pot likker from Southern greens. Softshell crabs in spicy-salt benefited from a huge amount of jalepenos and some very crabby soft-shells. The irony of lunch today is that I passed on the always delicious Thai Avenue for Silver Seafood because I had a bit of a gyppy tummy, and we ended up eating some spicy stuff--not Thai Avenue spicy--but spicy at Silver Seafood.

I am not an expert of the gradations of quality at Silver Seafood, but both times I have went, today included, it was about as good as I want (absent the dim sum soup).

Silver Seafood
4829 N. Broadway
Chicago, IL
773-784-0668

India by London in Chicago

Of all the great treats on Da'Bomb, one of the most impressive is the chicken chagra at Sabri Nehari. Quite unconventional, but surely a tribute to its hometown, Chicago. Like many an urban chicken shack, Sabri fries a chicken and then fresh from the fryer, doses it with Louisiana hot sauce. Now, at Harold's you will always find your chicken cut into parts unlike the whole fried chicken at Sabri, and at Harold's there is never a heavy hand of sub-continental spices to add a finishing touch to the chicken. Still, Sabri must have conceived their dish as a homage to their home town. I know and love the Chicago style South-Asian food.

What about London style right here in Chicago? While my thoughts of Ambla have been percolating in my mind for over a week, Lill on Chowhound scooped me. What she sez, especially the part about generous sampling. The halwa that we purchased had about the most ideal texture I seek in food. The way you chewed it yet did not crunch it. Unlike the other chat shops on Da'Bomb, Ambla is strictly take-out. To keep our afternoon thematically consistent, we followed up a visit to Ambla with a visit to Kabbabish of London.

While I am not going to look up or cite past Kabbabish reports, my memory is that it did not get raving reviews. And the store was empty near five, giving us even less incentive to enter. Really, if only because I organize my chowing as fodder for the blog, did we decided to try Kabbabish of London. And it turns out that fodder worked. We liked all this London style South Asian food. Now, while I can easily see how Sabri's Harold's influenced chicken chagra IS Chicago, I can less see how this was London style. Sure, the dishes had names like London Gosht and Birmingham chicken, but in execution, they did not seem that different. The individual dishes are pretty cheap, allowing us to order a fair amount. We liked everything we ordered, especially the seek kebabs that had a nice hacked meat texture instead of being finely ground. We also really liked the wet dishes, although you have to have a strong stomach for ghee, clarified butter. The nan and parantha were much better than the so called specialist loved by some a few blocks away. Like my friends at the Bangladeshi restaurant, the owners of Kabbabish of London eagerly engaged us.

I would offer that, from one afternoon on Da'Bomb, London is well represented in Chicago.

Sabri Nehari
2511 W. Devon Ave
Chicago

Ambla Sweets
2741 W. Devon
Chicago

Kabbabish of London
2437 W Devon
Chicago, IL

Harold's Fried Chicken
Multuple locations

Mysore Woodlands vs. Udupi Palace

Da'Bomb hosts two South Indian restaurants of almost exact menu, the way dim sum places vary by only a bun or two.  I've tended to favor Udupi on the south side of the street instead of Mysore on the north, but Mysore has many fans.  We decided to give Mysore a shot last night.  Right now, I'd say that I like the cooking a bit better at Udupi, but the portions are larger at Mysore and that might give it an advantage.

We ordered across the menu, in a way that probably no South Indian would, but there is too much good food to try at Mysore (or Udupi) and we just do not make it to these places enough to sample everything.  So, we got an order of samosas, essentially for the chowhounditas, who have settled in pretty comfortably to the samosa as their single favorite food to eat.  We got the thicker pancake, utthapam, loaded with soft cooked onions and topped with frozen peas and carrots, because that was what they were eating a lot in the Condiment Queen's book.  We got the thinner, crisper pancake, dosai, with the standard yellow potato inside, because that is probably the dish of the house.  Chicago Magazine once ran a picture of a boa constrictor sized dosai offered at Mysore.  We got the channa (chick pea curry) battura because Dad loves the deflated basketball (as food God Jonathan Gold expertly describes them) puffy baturas.  We got a non-regional bread, parantha stuffed with potatoes just because, and we got curd rice 'cause it sounded so good and well, what's a doggy bag for?  Everything was good enough, although the batura was not quite as special as Udupi.  Lighter, drier, it did not have that dual skin as much, of crisp and chew, that makes batura such a special bread.  The samosas were thick and tasty, very tasty inside, but they seemed on their 3rd fry of the day.  Still, as I say, the portions were generous and these are minor quibbles.

With this Atkin's nightmare come an assortment of sauces, dips and condiments: mint chutney, bracing and sneaking hot; coconut chutney, cool, grainy but also heavily spiced; a raita or yoghurt that had, we swear, pickles in it, not Indian pickles, but regular pickles; there was sambar, the soupy stuff with all sorts of things swimming inside, here a woody vegetable/herb that I mistakenly bit and then spent five minutes extracting stems from my mouth, and actual Indian pickle, a mixed breed with peppers and wonderful pieces of garlic that were whole but softened up by the process.  You mix and match all these flavors with all scoopers.  

The curd rice came out last, nearly after we had finished everything else.  I guess it takes longest to prepare.  I like that it came out last for a couple of reasons.  First, this dish of rice, hidden bits of ginger and intense, probably home made curd, nails your tongue.  Eat this and you are not really ready to eat another five courses.  It finished the meal off well, dessert like in appearance, so creamy, but not sweet at all.  Finally, it was, I am sure, the easiest dish to bring home, so of all the things to have a bit extra of, this was it.  I would say, however, that it is the best dish in the house--and waiting for Zim to tell me where the best curd rice is on Da'bomb as I have not made a survey. 

Mysore Woodlands
2548 W. Devon Ave.
Chicago, IL
773.338.8160

Udupi Palace (the batura is much better)
2543 W Devon Av
Chicago, IL

Bombacigno's J & C Restaurant - One for Another Beefathon (fer sure)

I had to meet someone for lunch yesterday in the West Loop.  You know you are not with Chowhounds when they suggest eating in Union Station.  I countered with J&C's Bombacigno's.  Actually, this was my counter to his counter.  I originally suggested Lou Mitchell's, which had been countered with Union Station.  Maybe it was clever subconscious negotiating on my part, because once I thought of J&C, I knew that was where I really wanted to go. 

And boy was it worth it.  J&C's beef is one of the few that is a variation on a theme, the way Al's is.  That is, there is the standard version of Chicago beef, which is epitomized by Johnnies, and then there is the distinctly different beef that is Al's.  J&C's while not exactly like Al's, tastes a lot closer to Al's than any other beef I've had in Chicago.  They also use a different bun, from Dakota Pride.  It is a crisper, lighter roll, almost like a New Orleans po' boy roll.  The effect of this roll is that it both falls apart at the seams yet stays very crusty on top.  In fact the J&C sammy is a big mess, and the best way to eat it is with scoops of bread, the way, say you would eat Moroccan or Ethiopian food.

The other outstanding thing about J&C's is the cottage fries.  Made to order, they also remind me slightly of Al's, with the same sweet flavor achieved from nearly burning the potatoes.  The gilding of the lily here, thought, is that the gravy from the beef seeps all over your basket, rendering a lot of the fries limp, but infused with essence of beef.

Finally, like Al's, J&C's aint cheap.  My beef, hot, fries, and bottomless cup of pop ran to nearly $10.  Still, one of the best lunches in a while.

Bombacigno's J & C Restaurant
558 W. Van Buren Ave. 
Chicago, IL
312-663-4114

Movie Critics, Restaurant Critics or Jimmy Johns and Tasty Dog

There are two essential differences between movie critics and restaurant critics, or maybe better put, movie criticism and restaurant criticism. Movie critics, at least the mainstream ones like Roger Ebert (my trusted source), see pretty much every movie coming out. And while a good critic like Ebert has some subjectivity to his ratings (a good dumb comedy), he rates every movie against a golden mean. So, we know, which are good, which dreck. Food critics of equal stature, say a Phil Vettel, take an opposite approach. Of all the new places opened, they pick and choose which to report on, and many food writers state they just do not report on the bad places. These, we are left to find our own. Now, the other difference, obviously, is, as I have discussed in the past, foodie experiences vary so much. Did you get the "real" food, the VIP treatment. One person's damn favorite restaurant can be viewed by another as hardly worth the calories. That does not mean your opinion does not count, and we need to get them.

Restaurant critics should be a bit more like movie critics. Let's get the good with the dreck. Maybe then I would have never thought, well let's give Jimmy Johns a try. We had just left a pleasant few hours at family swim in Oak Park. We needed a quick meal and connoisseurship was not a priority. We planned on the nearby Tasty Dog, not a great hot dog stand, but edible enough. Then, we noticed the newer Oak Park Jimmy Johns, and given the hold that Tasty Dog has on us, we said, how 'bout Jimmy Johns.

I could tell from first glances that this was a stupid choice, I could see the turkey and roast beef had an unnatural pink glow, and the bread just looked squishy, but the chowhounditas were already cooing over the place (for some odd reason). It only got worse. As I told the kidz later on, it's no Subway. I mean at least Subway has a bunch of things to put on the sub to kill the taste. Jimmy Johns had only lettuce, tomato and some useless banana peppers to kill the cheap, over-processed meat. Not only that, the lettuce and tomatoes were so cold, it was almost as if eating the famous frozen salad at Trio.

Desperate to please our suffering palate, we crossed the street to Tasty Dog, victims to sign advertising: "We now serve softserve". Well, it was cold like the lettuce was cold. The lettuce had crunch though. I could have put an ice cube on an ice cream cone and got about the same experience as the Tasty Dog softserve.

VI eats AND writes about it, so you do not have to.

If you really need to mimic these experiences, both Tasty Dog and Jimmy Johns are on Lake Street in Oak Park just east of Oak Park Avenue.

Make that 8 Courses of Beef

The Condiment Queen is a varied, voracious and especially multi-culti reader. And luckily for me, her reading habits dovetail nicely with my eating habits (which are varied, voracious and multi-culti). When she reads an Indian book, well, its off to da'bomb for us. When it's like now, reading a Vietnamese book, well it was not soon before we made it too Argyle.

Not only did she have a hankering for Vietnamese, moments after we sat down at Nhu Hoa, our favorite combo Vietnamese-Laotian spot on Argyle, than she surprised me by stating she also had a hankering for the seven course of beef. Am I lucky or what. I'm no expert on 7 course of beef, having only had it once before on Argyle, but of the two, this was my favorite, if nothing else, the portions were bigger. Plus, I was spoiled, by the 8th course of beef.

I have helped widely disseminate (I think [ed. you hope]) the notion that Nhu Hoa makes the best papaya salad in Chicago. Yesterday's 8th course, papaya salad and beef jerky, exceedingly hot, confirmed my belief. Irregularly hacked papaya, some not fully loose so that they were papaya shards not papaya shreds, way too much fish sauce, way, way too much hot peppers (but Julie of Nhu Hoa loves to reward those who ask for their papaya salad hot) and really way too much food as we had seven more courses to follow.

Here they are, quickly, in the order they appeared: beef papaya salad, much different from the other papaya salad, tasting maybe a bit too much of perfume from a lavender like herb, the meat as soft as the jerky was hard; ground beef in la lot leaves, thin steak wrapped around pineapple. Both of these dishes are meant to be eaten with tons of accessories, lettuce, daikon, carrots, mint, basil, cilantro, you mix and match so much, no two bites taste quite the same; small meatballs presented in dishes about the size and shape as the condiment bowls at dim sum. Like all Vietnamese meatballs, these were a rubbery, but this delicious broth that bathed them well overcame that. Our favorite course, cubes of tenderloin, grilled (very well, it really picked up the grill flavor) on a bed of lettuce, cucumber and much better than usual tomatoes. Beef fondue, a plate of raw beef, flavored with ginger and a hot pot of onion scented broth. Finally, rice-beef soup, very Iron-Chefy, the way that it was both simple and artistic, the best congee, and actually, perhaps the 2nd best dish of the 7 (but they were all good).

It's $14.95 and its one of the best deals in town, even if you skip the 8th course.

Nhu Hoa
1020 W. Argyle
Chicago, IL

Tasting Taste of Chicago

OK, I am gonna say, flat out, I love Taste of Chicago. I've been going for years, hell I've been going since I was getting into tussles at the Willie Dixon show when it was the (better) Chicagofest. So, I get to gripe a bit, which I will, but first let me report on what we had, and nearly all of it was good.

For those of you looking for the VI on where to eat, this post obviously does you no good. Sorry. I did 25 background investigations over the last ten days, hardly enough time to get all my postings done. Maybe some of this will help next year.

What we ate:

Samosa - Arya Bhavan - This is THE ethnic dish for the chowhounditas (except when Dad makes them get Samosa chaat at Sukhadia), and they pronounced this version as good as it gets. They ate it before I could even nibble.

Roti canai - Penang - The roti or pancake seemed a bit different than what you get in the shop. This was thick and flaky, like a really good scallion pancake instead of the airy and thin pancakes that I remember, but the portion of pancake also seemed bigger (at Penang, we always seemed to run out of pancake before the chicken curry). The curry here was deep and intense, reminding me of the stuff I love at the food court at Mitsuwa, that is to say probably from a box, but god I love that boxed curry.

Mustard Fried Catfish with 2 dipping sauces (hot and sweet mustard) - BJ's Market - Well, duh!

Toasted Ravioli - Tuscany - I know my peeves come in a sec., but toasted ravioli is a St. Lois thing. Do the Cardinals play at Wrigley. On the other hand, they tasted good, and the sauce was quite nice.

Cheese Pizza (thin) - Lou Malnati's - Hannah marveled at the fact that the cheese and tomato sauce were transposed.

Fried Chicken Wings - Harold's - There is no Harold's nearby, and when it has been ages since you had that dirty tasting bird, here really well fried too, well it really, really tastes good.

Jerk Chicken and rice and peas - VeeVee's - Not so hot. The jerk was dry and not so jerky, and the rice was dry and well not jerky either (and no dough bread, which is worth half the price anyways).

Cheesecake - Eli's Cheesecake - See Harold's above - When its ages between slices, it tastes really good.

Frozen banana - Aunt Diana's - I have a thing against frozen bananas, just do not like the flavor. In fact, as I told the chowhounditas, fresh bananas, banana flavor or banana flavored things (like banana cake) and frozen bananas all taste different. I'm really only keen on the middle. The Condiment Queen ate it.

Corn - one of the corn roasters - No elote

Curry fries - Abbey Pub - Really diligent readers of Vital Information will know that I carry around only a few great taste memories of my year in Cardiff, Wales. One of them is curry fries. Thick, double cooked, fresh potatoes with that slightly off taste that anyone who's been in a chip shop knows, covered with a sauce of commercial curry (see Penang above), and usually eaten with a tiny wooden fork. And, of course, these were so far from that, it made me rue every nostalgic thought in my body.

Cheezeburger - Billy Goat Tavern - Count me generally as a lover of these things, but it would have been better if it was hotter.

Bread steak sammy - Ricobene's - The best deal of the show. The taste portion of pretty darn fresh breaded steak was about as big as a regular portion. And you think that was a good deal, well they comped one of the kidz a portion of fries for helping them shanghai a runaway ketchup bottle. These were awesome fries too.

Pretty good score, huh? Here's the thing. I know I could have had nearly all of the stuff in better versions if I shopped around town. Hell, if I hung around the bar long enough at the Berghoff, ReneG would pop in with jerk 11 times better. But this was all in one day, one night actually. It was all over the world. Maybe a lot of fried stuff and too much curry, but I like fried stuff. I love curry. I'm back next year.

Now, my annual gripe. It can so easily be better, no? All the city needs to do is grab 1/2 the vendors at Maxwell Street. Something like the fresh made churros, well people would be thronging for that. It was cool that Penang was there, as Singapore has maybe the number one street food culture in the world. Why cannot Taste of Chicago borrow from all these street foods. Why cannot the Thai places make papaya salad or any of the other things commonly found on every street there. For RST, why could not Tuscany sell tripe sammy's? And a real eloterio, that would be cool...

Cold Stone Creamery

Damn if I wanted to like this place. It is so corporate. Seems so much like the product of numerous market tests. On top of that, if has been blessed with several shots of publicity on TV Food Network. And did I mention, the staff had that Starbucks like zombie efficiency and nice-ness? Wait, it gets even worse, the location I tried was on Halsted in the heart of the destroyed Maxwell Street neighborhood, nearly on the spot where Jim's Hot Dog existed, talking about haunted, but, take all that dark-side stuff away, and you'll find some pretty damn good ice cream.

For those who have not been caught by the Cold Stone lure, the main shtick is mix-ins done on the cold stone. The cold stone is super-cooled so that the staff can play with your ice cream, mixing in things, without ever loosing too much. There are about 20 mix-ins including fudge and caramel sauces. Everyone gets one free mix-in. Still, in some ways, the mix-ins detract from the goodness of the ice cream. I found the ice cream expertly straddled typical fatty American ice cream with softer, more intense Euro or gelato style ice cream.

I've updated the ice cream list to include my thoughts on Stone Cold Creamery.

Morning Toast

I had forsaken morning toast for a few weeks, not so much because of fealty to Dr. Atkins (perchance, never!), but for lack of good bread in the house. Mostly I was using our bread for the field special sandwiches, and Welsh rabbits and such discussed below. Well, this week got back to normal, with some very good morning toast.

Bread: Whole Foods round white loaf. It's not my favorite Whole Foods' bread. This bread after day one is really only good for toast, as the crust all but evaporates, but it does toast up fine, with a dense texture and light crumb.

Butter and Jelly: At the same time, I unwrapped a new butter and a new jelly. The former was Kerrygold Irish imported butter, the latter was Ararat Amermenian sour cherry jelly, which like the Condiment Queen's signature clafouti, contains pits. Now, what a mix, just absolute pure chemical combination, producing utter satisfaction. Yet, I was somewhat stumped. Was it the butter base or the jelly topping. Which was driving the joy. I am sure a lot has to do with the ideal mix of ingredients--I hear Armenians and Irish are great friends, but eventual the CQ sussed out some secrets. I buy, often, my jelly based on the ingredients, and I ascribe to the rule, the fewer the better (and an odd side note, it is often the cheaper, less yuppie jellies, especially the imported ones, that will be free of citric acid, pectin and such; I adore the label, like this Ararat: sour cherry, sugar.) Still, it turns out there was a mystery ingredient. Like the bracing green nam prik dip sold at Thai Grocery on Broadway, the Ararat jelly label was not purely true to what was inside. Turns out there is a hint of cinnamon and maybe some nutmeg or other spice too. It is this spice, floating ably in this soupy jelly, that combines with pools of butter (for the Kerrygold seems to always melt into pools) that I now realize produces in the palate.

Really Good Average Mexican Food

Or is it really average good Mexican food? You know things are really crankin' in Chicago's Mexican food scene when you can walk away from a place with hand-made huraches, hand-made tortillas for tacos en canasta and, well not the advertised 10 salsas to try, but 4 very nice ones, and you walk away saying, pretty good. You think about the deliciousness of fresh masa, but you also wonder, were the walls of the gordita just a bit too thick. The hurache is broad and flat and filled with beans that taste better than they look, but the huarache also tastes a bit thin in the mouth. It is not the robust pleasure of chew that is the rico huarache at Maxwell Street. Those crated up tacos have semi-exotic fillings like chicharron in a surprising spicy sauce, whipped potatoes and chorizo blended into one modern contraption and a mixed dice, that included, I believe, hot dogs, but the homemade tortillas were also dunked just a few seconds too long in the grease before hitting the griddle.

I wonder now if I'd be as picky about say, Dona Lois, the very first Mexican place I touted on Chowhound. It's a slightly similar store that also combines folded fresh masa with a bit of grease, but the fact that I can be so picky is a pretty nice thing.

La Chilangueada
5131 W. Fullerton
Chicago, IL
773-237-6638

Eat Local!

Let us count the ways...

Via The Chicago Tribune (registration required):

The Guide to Eating Organic In and Around Chicago," recently issued by the Organic Food Network, offers a resource for diners and cooks on the prowl for organic foodstuffs. The listing includes farms, farmers markets, restaurants and supermarkets. Also included is the "Summer 2004 Guide to Local Organic Produce." (Some information is online at organicfoodnetwork.net.) For a copy send a check or money order for $6 payable to Organic Food Network, P.O. Box 4086, Wheaton, IL 60189. You will see that organic/local produce, meat, etc. is out there and not just at the Green City Market or Evanston. According to the Organic Food Network, local organic farm stuff can be found at farmer's markets in Naperville, Orland Park, Kankakee, Woodstock, Crystal Lake, Wilmette, Park Forest, and Wheaton (and more).

This is an amazing resource of things available in Illinois, I bet you had no idea so much was out there.

Terra Brockman can often be found selling the wares from her brother Henry's farm at the Evanston Farmer's Market. Her organization, Land Connection, is a great resource.

Seven Generations Ahead works on environmental issues as well as sustainable food issues, but just for us foodies helps bring local produce such as organic meat to Oak Park. I am in the process of joining. You should too!

How local is London? Still, Fergus Henderson is my idol and role model. I look at his menu daily to see how I should eat.

There's Always Room for Salt n' Pepper Shrimps!

My dearly departed grandmother was in no way the inspiration for my obsession with food. One could say I am a foodie in spite of my grandmother instead of because of my grandmother. I have strong memories of her particular way of cooking skirt steak in the toaster oven, particularly bad that is, and I also have strong memories of dishes I really did not partake, but learned about through my dad, especially her vile cornflake chicken and her viler brisket. To this day, with just a bit of egging, my dad will describe in loving detail the three day process of over-cooking, soaking with whole onion, and leaving in grease that produced the treat that was my grandmother's brisket. Ask him. Yet, yet, as I say, everyone has a dish, their cole slaw, their source of redemption. My grandmother's was jello, preferably en mold. Her motto was, you always have room for jello. Well, yesterday, as we were wrapping up an ample sampling of the dim sum at Happy Chef, they came around with plates of whole, head-on, salt and pepper shrimps. And of course, who does not have room for Happy Chef's salt and pepper shrimps, head-on.

I've always known, of the places I have tried in Chicago, that Happy Chef's were the best salt and pepper shrimps. These are shrimps to make you crave shrimp head. Fresh, crisp, slightly spicy, not marred by grease. You eat everything but the last bits of tail. I've not know about the dim sum at Happy Chef until yesterday. I would say that not everything rose to the satisfaction of the whole shrimps, but it was a very well done dim sum nonetheless. Solid. It is a hybrid dim sum. There is a sheet to fill, with choices, like most of these sheets, that do not make full sense. There is shrimp dumpling and steamed shrimp dumpling (both in the steamed category); baked egg tart and baked custard egg tart, pan fried pork bun and pan fried pork dumpling. And you think that's confusing, there is also a 2 page listing of mysterious noodles with offerings like hong tol e-fu noodle and ha-moon rice stick noodle. We got the hong tol e-fu noodle just to see what it was (not big deal at $3.88) Still, there are a few things in plates, off menu, that get paraded around the room.

We had filled up pretty well. From the sheet we got some really good shrimp with pea pod green dumpling in a yellow wrapper and ultra hot steamed shrimp dumpling puffing with shrimp air. I liked the eggplant slices with black bean more than the Condiment Queen that came from the pass-arounds. Sesame balls, also off-menu, were chewy and big. We passed on the Chinese broccoli in oyster sauce because, based on sight and aroma, we mimicked a nearby table and got a big plate of Chinese broccoli showered with garlic. Those hong tol-e-fu noodles were a big old bowl of thick chewy noodles underneath a layer of egg white. It turned out to be a good way to get some protein into the chowhoundita who was with us (the other on a birthday jaunt to Navy Pier). We were past full when they started passing the salt and pepper shrimps around the room. Who, however, does not have room for Happy Chef's salt and pepper shrimps. The great news, especially for the chowhoundita, was the extra ten minutes needed to eat the shrimps also kept us there for some very hot, very fresh, very delicious custard filled, sweet top buns.

Happy Chef may be a great, probably the best, Cantonese style place in Chinatown, but do not go there for creature comforts or atmosphere. Ms. VI complained all morning about the plastic tablecloths sticking to her knees. A small price, alas for making room for salt and pepper shrimps.

Happy Chef
2164-2166A S. Archer (in the Chinatown Mall)
Chicago, IL
312-808-3689

PS
It has been sadly reported that the delicious Mandarin Kitchen recently closed. Well, a restaurant has recently opened in its place. It is called, well in English, it is still called Mandarin Kitchen, yet in place of the former Szechuan style place, is a Shanghai style place. There is the full range of typical Shanghai stuff on the English menu including two kinds of soup dumplings, various cold dishes, pork leg, lion's head meatballs and eel. There is also a nice sounding deal of 3 dishes for $22.95. The women I chatted up were very nice. I'll give it a scout and if its good, maybe arrange a group meal.

VI's Retro Kitchen

I do not usually write about my kitchen exploits, well mainly 'cause there aint much to write about. Lately, however, I've been on a roll, so I thought I'd share.

First, came this dish inspired by the kidz and the Condiment Queen. Seems she can create for them, perfectly wonderful dinners from bread, cheese and microwave. And even though this rather cheesy cheddar seemed fine as is, I got to idea to, well, rarebit it, or as I was to later learn, rabbit it. One of those Musso and Frank/Fergus Henderson (its on the St. John menu pretty much daily) that I adore but never think to make. I knew instantly where to look: Joy of Cooking, which I forever think of as the joy of eating because I think it less a book on cooking as a book on eating well. Sure enough, there was a Welsh Rabbit recipe, and a simple and easy one at that. With makeshift double boiler from a stainless steel bowl and saucepan, I went to work on grating a pound of cheddar. Lucky me, the chowhounditas soon thought that a fun job, and took over. They also took over the job of pulverizing the mustard seed (Penzy's) into ground mustard. So, I mixed the royale, as we chefs would call it, one egg, a bit of worcestershire sauce, a tiny shake of curry powder (Penzy's hot), a slightly heavier shake of paprika (Penzy's half-sharp), that mustard dust, and a small pour of Valentina brand hot sauce. The process goes like this: in the double-boler, melt a tab of butter, add the grated cheese, melt, add beer, I used 3/4 bottle of Berghoff dark, traditionally it should be stale ale, keep mixing, there is some rules about wooden spoons and mixing directions but I used a whisk and went wily-nily, finally, add the royale and mix until incorporated. I ate on toasted, buttered, English Muffin (Trader Joe's). Only later did I learn, in research, that I was only supposed to toast only one side of the bread. I should note, as good as the kidz plain melted cheese was, this was better.

Second, inspired by a big bag of shrimps the CQ had boiled up, I got the idea to make shrimp louie, which is really just an excuse to eat Russian dressing. Ah, I love Russian dressing, as much for its taste as for its pure alchemy and the way it allows me to partake in two less favorite foods, mayonnaise and catsup. Would you eat your salad with plain catsup or plain mayo? Would you put catsup on a turkey sammy? Yet, combine the ingredients and you would (I would). Here's how I did. I took about 5 Trader Joe's cornichons and minced them. I took glops of mayo, ketchapeno, cocktail sauce, and Tapatio hot sauce and combined. I tasted and refined until it tasted "right", but in fact it did not taste right. It tasted a hell of a lot better than most Russian dressing. My shrimp louie was also a lot better because we had pretty large shrimps and Ms. VI boiled them up with some interesting spices. For the bedding, I used Trader Joe's baby romaine. I garnished with a hot house tomato that came with one of our CSAs. Great.

Third, inspired by what to do with extra Welsh Rabbit, I made a hot brown sammy. Using the easiest cooking method known, I microwaved excellent Niman Ranch bacon (made at least some of the time with pork from my friends the Wettsteins). I took a thick slice of Fox and Obel semolina bread (thanks Aaron), added F&O turkey (the best I know), then the leftover cheese sauce. I nuked to melt the cheese, then stuck it under the broiler, or salamander as us chef's say. Unfortunately, the cheese did not brown up, but it surely tasted fine. Even better because I completely surrounded the sammy with fresh shelled, buttered farmer's market peas. I was so awed by my creation, that even though I was eating alone, I kept to my knife and fork, euro style.

Fourth, now we have extra Russian dressing, I think a Field's Special Sandwich, that great, not always on the menu dish, of the Walnut Room. Eerily, a CSA box we got yesterday (which I have some gripes about, but that's for another post), contained a head of iceberg lettuce. Perfect. So it went, buttered semolina bread (thanks Aaron), Jarglesburg cheese, F&O turkey, 1/2 head of lettuce, overflowing dressing (as per Field's), and two strips of Niman bacon. We had no hard boiled egg, but I forgot to put on some of the olives that we had (Trader Joes). Needless to say, great as the above.

Sukhadia Update

The other day, as I was stuffing myself with samosa chat, bhel puri and other things from the recently re-opened Sukhadia Sweet Shop on da'Bomb, I mentioned to the Condiment Queen my growing belief that Indian-Pakistani-Bangladeshi (shall we call it Sub-Continental?) food was the world's greatest. Yes, there is no truffled Bresse chicken which some foodies will argue is the greatest treatment of food and the reason behind France's superiority, nor is there (is there?) any Michelin starred restaurants in India, Pakistan, or Bangladesh, another standard for cuisine greatness. But I measure my cuisines (to the extent I do) on quantity over quality. I love Sub-Continental food because there is so much of it. I mean so many kinds of it. Just compare the assortment of food at Sukhadia to say, Wiener Circle.

Sukhadia is one of several snack or "chat" shops on da'Bomb. Chat shops come in two varieties based on the religion of their owners. Muslim owned shops, like Tahoora Sweets, feature plenty of meat, for instance you can get your samosas filled with ground beef. Hindu owned shops fill you up with grains and vegetables. Sukhadia is the latter. The grains include small cakes made of corn flour and chickpea flour, buttery pancakes stuffed with vegetables (parantha's), puffy fried bread with sides, puri, and crunchy grains drenched in sauces, bhel puri. Vegetables are mainly spicy chick peas and sauteed potatoes. Since everything is really cheap, you can try a lot. Order as in a Mexican bakery. As to knowing what things are, ask, the people behind the counter will explain, and when in doubt, just point to the food displayed behind the counters or on the color menu.

Sukhadia closed for about 6 months. I believe they took over a small store next door. They used the extra space to move the open kitchen towards the back and spread out the tables. They made the place a bit more spacious, but there are still not that many tables--hence the sign advising 20 minute total per table, and the chaotic ordering system remains. It took 4 attempts to get our chai.

The gradients between da'Bomb chat shops may be subtle, but ordering aside, Sukhadia has no glaring problems. Now, it is possible to get some bad tea on da'Bomb. Zam-Zam's was so terrible we tossed it out, wasting the 75 cents. That's for another post.

Sukhadia Sweets
2559 W Devon Avenue
Chicago
(773) 338-5400

Real Meat in Chicago

Organic and local meat is easily available in Chicago.

The best bet, probably, is the weekly Green City Market on Wednesday's in Lincoln Park. On any given week, there are at least a few organic meat vendors such as Heartland and Joel Rissman. Last year, the product tended to be a lot of hamburger, but this year there are more vendors and the vendors are bringing more varieties of stuff.

The Wettstein's, who I mention below, make a few trips up to Chicago and Oak Park to deliver the meat. You can order in advance what you want or you can take what they have. They sell beef, pork, lamb, chicken (available June through December), turkey, duck and I bet if you plead your case, one of those guinea hens. They also make pork patties, pork sausage, brats, bacon and ham. Alternatively, instead of picking as you go, they are initiating a monthly CSA. Each package would contain a month or so worth of meat. Each month differs in what they bring, although I have to say, you're gonna have to like hamburger. Finally, you can purchase 1/2 cow or a 1/4 cow and get it processed yourself--they deliver it to one of 4 lockers in central Illinois, the rest is up to you. They will be at the Green City Market this week, but are not there every week. There number, BTW, is 309-376-7291

Rissman does a monthly delivery to Oak Park.

One of my fetishes/fantasies is to obtain the parts as well as the meat in this process. I've made the argument before about respecting the beast, but I also believe that if we order and eat the Fergus parts, nose to tail, we increase the profit for the farmers. Otherwise this stuff would probably just be sloughed off to the dog food people. I've got the Condiment Queen agreeing to make me chopped liver and perhaps even some pate--I know the same thing, but think of them as different recipes and different animals, but as I mentioned in another post, she's balking at the headcheese.

Rob

No Finer Shwarma

Then the chicken shwarma served at Pita Inn (is there?). Really, is there anything finer in the Chicago area for the price then Pita Inn's chicken shwarma? How so? They begin with chicken breasts skinned totally. No surprises of slime effect the eating. These breasts get enough marinade to turn them yellow and lend enough undertone to an essentially bland meat--I'll return to the condiments in a second. Pita Inn then cooks the shwarma ideally. Unlike some other stalwarts, including Salaam, which is still a really fine shwarma, this shwarma gets cooked totally on the vertical grill. When shwarma gets even some heat in a pan on the stove, it greases it up, and you lose crucial crust. With Pita Inn's method, each shard of shwarma gets plenty of crisp crust, but nary a piece gets dry and there is no residual grease. Finally, you dress the meat with as much of Pita Inn's two sauces as you want. There is white, tahini based, a bit gritty, and there is red, not Zim hot, but perky. There are all sorts of secret ingredients within the red sauce that it reminds me of a good Mexican salsa instead of the one note players that usually accompany Middle Eastern food (and do not get me wrong, those one noters, like Salaam's green sauce, are plenty good, what's wrong with one note if it is played well?) And could there really be a finer shwarma?

Wait, let me add, Pita Inn serves the shwarma two ways that I absolutely adore, and lucky me, the Condiment Queen adores these two ways as well, and I do not have to choose. First, they serve it on a bed of finely diced romaine lettuce with a bright vinaigrette. You get contrast between hot and cold and even more flavors to perk up the meat. Second, they serve the meat on a bed of hummus, which again adds more flavors and also a bit of moisture. I prefer these two options to Pita Inn's standard plates. I have nothing against their fluffy yellow rice, but the thin cuttings of iceberg lettuce are just plate wasters. The above two options present much better deals.

Pita Inn has other locations but I was at the Skokie branch:
3910 Dempster, Skokie
Tel: (847) 677-0211

Down on the Farm - Henry's and the Wettstein's

Before Sophia and I had a chance to dig into the pot luck lunch, a documentarian from Farm Aid asked if we could talk for his camera. He wanted to know what everyone was looking to get out of Saturday's tour. I told that since I was so into eating, I might as well understand a bit about the start of the whole cooking process. I never got a chance to tell him how great the day was and how much I learned.

As our tour guide, Tara (Henry's sister) correctly told us, we were in a bit of Eden in the middle of Illinois. The bulk of the ride down I-57 contains what you mostly expect of Illinois, a lot of nothing, and faux farms as Tara would tell us again and again, the huge anti-agriculture, bio-tech dependent, soil-less (and soul-less) farms planted with endless rows of soy and corn. The world changes as you approach Henry's Farm. You first encounter the county seat of Eureka. College home of RR, and if this town did not already exist, those endless processions would have surely created it. Outside of Eureka, the grounds turn decidedly un-Illinois, with many a rolling hill. Seems one of the last glaciers spent a few extra years here and carved up this land to look more like our state to the north. This accident of nature is one of the primary factors for Henry's Farm. One of the first things I learned on Saturday.

Hills and valleys are not very conducive to large scale agri-business. Perhaps even out of necessity, this county has been organic for a while. In fact, the second thing I learned was that neighboring Henry's Farm was several acres of organic wheat farmed by an octogenarian and his son. Now, did you even know that anyone grew wheat in Illinois, let along organic wheat. Oddly, though, the entire production of this organic wheat went last year to Canada. We did learn that a portion of Henry's farm, the upper, flatter fields, had once been farmed in the Illinois way. This is when we really learned what soil-less and souless soil meant. All our cides used by farmers drive the life out of their soul. With all the nasty critters and fungi and weeds go all the earthworms and bacteria and such that make the soil alive. Tara told us that when Henry first sought to plow his field for organic crops, he could not get an contraption through the hard soil. He had to use nature, hay crops with deep seeking roots, to turn the soil, bring it back to life. Henry's lower field, isolated by a stream and forest, never saw hard agriculture.

What a vista when you end the deerpath and gaze up the lower 40. My mind instantly replaced the crops with rows of grapes because this field looked like a classic European vineyard. Instead it was full of a portion of the 450 varieties grown yearly by Henry. As we poked around the fields we learned how the crops are rotated yearly, that nothing stays in the same spot, and that hay--which we learned was a generic term for any grass fed to animals in the winter--was included in the rotation. Firstly, the crops were moved to control pests. If certain worms attacked the tomatoes one year, they could be well controlled by planting the tomatoes somewhere else, fooling the dormant larvae when they arrived the next year. The hay attacked as fertilizer, getting that patch of soil rich in nitrogen for next year's vegetables. We got to sample some of the more unusual things growing down there including the peppery Madras podding radish (as it sounds you eat the pod not the root) and weeds like amaranth and lamb's quarter. We also learned, new to me at least, that cultivated dandelion was actually chicory bred to look like dandelion, but since this was totally organic pastures, we also got to try actual wild dandelion (as well as much more delicious actual wild raspberries). Another in the long line of things we learned was the reason for the dog houses around the fields. Come harvest time, spot and fido and the rest would be keeping the fields free of any unwanted guests.

We went up and down some of the biggest hills in Illinois to get to the storybook farm of the Wettstein's. With their 8 kids, 18 goats, tree swing, free-roaming chickens, pet raccoon (an interesting story), flock of sheep, flock of sheep protector llama, stray kitten, herds of cattle, boxes of bees, cages of rabbits, grain towers filled with their own organic feed, wandering ducks, suckling pigs and angry sows, barns a plenty, a few gardens, wells with nasty water, and assorted tractors parked here and there, this was THE storybook farm. I so admire what they are doing, and as Sophia and I later worked out, these folks could pretty much live off of their farm, needing perhaps salt and coffee extra. Even the fuel for their outdoor grill could come from their timber fields.

For me, the chowhound, it seemed like one big buffet. What did I want for supper? It was there. Incredulous that they simply released the guinea fowl and quail, I asked twice, about them. Do not you know guinea would command big bucks back in Chicago? I am going to do my best to order and eat their beef, chicken, turkey, eggs (what Henry's Farm sells at the Evanston Farmer's market), maybe even roast a goat. The Condiment Queen, will not, so far, agree to make me headcheese from one of their piggies even though there is a recipe in a Diana Kennedy book she just got at the Brandeiss bookfair. I'll post later on some ways to obtain the Wettstein's organic meat in Chicago.

The Sonargaon Restaurant - Chicago's Only Bangladeshi Place

When I compiled the Indian and Pakistani restaurants for the forthcoming Slow Food guide to Chicago, I also included Chicago's lone Bangladeshi place. I included Sonargaon not just because of its unique Bangledeshi/Bengali specialties, but because it did them so well. It also did the more ubiquitous tandoori specialties darn well too.

About a week ago, the VI family had another delicious, guide book worthy meal at Sonargaon. We went about 50-50 between Bangladeshi specialties and tandoor food. From the Bengal side, we got a dish I have been wanting for a while, the fish ball curry or fish kufta. Even the best fish balls often taste a bit too much like cat food. As the popular Yiddish proverb states, if gefilite fish was so good, why did God invent horseradish sauce? Alternatively, many a fish ball, especially those of the far east tend to be of the rubber variety. The ethereal pike quenelle is rarely encountered on local menus (although if chef's followed my urging to use more local products it *would be*). Anyways, that was a lot of words to say what these fish balls were not. There were instead airy without being unsubstantial. Fishy without being cheap. An orange thick sauce provided the proper counter. Our other fish dish was a simpler yet equally delicious grilled one. Sonargaon takes great pride in serving fish from Bengali waters. My instinct tells me that they should be seeking non-frozen things, but I cannot argue with the results.

They continue to put out dishes just as good from the tandoor. I really know of no better chicken tikka in Chicago. We followed Zim's recommendation for the tandoor cooked eggplant. And this is hardly anything more than tandoor cooked eggplant. The eggplants sit in the clay oven long enough to be pliable and then get worked with a hint of masala. Much denser and creamier than baba ganoush, but with a similar smokey taste. And of course, who does not think a fresh parantha a better scooper than mere pita?

It was a very quiet night at Sonargaon when we visited. Musharaf, one of the partners, spent a long time at our table, telling us about Bangladesh, Bangladeshi food, his wife who would be soon coming to America, and life at the Palmer House Hotel, where he also worked. An astute businessman, he asked for input on his restaurant. I offered the most sanguine of advice, I hope. Don't change. Do not take the lack of customers today as a sign that anything was wrong. Keep on doing it this way, and they will come. And I also said, add a few more Bangladeshi things to the menu (i.e., they were making their haleem, the grain and meat dish, in a Pakistani manner instead of the Bangladeshi way.) I hope he follows my ideas.

The Sonargaon Restaurant
2306 W. Devon
Chicago, IL
(773) 262-8008

LA Burgers

Much to the chagrin of my daughters, the chowhounditas, I tried to do a pretty definative tasting of LA burgers on my recent trips there (See here: and here). The LA Times recently weighed in with a bit more info
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