Element

I spent most of this last week in Atlanta for work, and had the opportunity to eat at some great spots. The highlight had to be Element, a "Gastro Lounge + Food Lab" from Chef Richard Blais. My dinner companion is a vegetarian, and although they never got my email about requesting a special menu for her, the kitchen agreed to improvise a tasting menu for the two of us on the spot. But vegetarians take note - they've got a vegan working in the kitchen, so if you gave them the 24-48 hours notice they prefer for vegetarians, I bet you'd get a really amazing meal.


We started off with a couple of cocktails - the LN2 (liquid Nitrogen) Margarita and the Anti-Oxidant-Tini. At first we kind of blew off the idea of the margarita - it's just a frozen margarita with a different freezing method, right? But our (excellent) waiter pointed out that the LN2 allows them to freeze the margarita without adding water in the form of ice - so you get the straight up alcoholic goodness without the watery finish. The Anti-Oxidant-Tini was rather fruit punch-ish (but in a good way), with citrus vodka, pomegranate juice and green tea.


Then we were off to the races with Bread and Butter - a thin crisp of bread topped with butter powder. Pretty standard molecular gastronomy stuff.


Next in the series of our many, many amuse bouches and "gifts from the chef" was a chorizo chip topped with chorizo powder, chocolate and cilantro. I loved the combination of the really excellent quality dark chocolate and the spicy salty chorizo. The veggie alternative for this was a taro chip with olive oil powder with the same chocolate and cilantro. Not quite as good, I was told, since it lacked the salty counterpoint. But we were really willing to give them quite a bit of leeway on the veggie menu, since we knew they were having to improvise.


Watermelon caviar with smoked salt. And some little bits of something herbal and green that we were never able to recognize. While fun, and not unpleasant, this was probably the least interesting thing we ate, and didn't actually taste much like watermelon. Fortunately, things went way up hill from there.


I wish I could show you the tomato ravioli, but alas, all you get is an empty bowl with the remnants of a glorious vinaigrette (olive oil and yuzu, i'm guessing). This was simple, but oh-so-delicious - a thin sheet of jicama around a cherry tomato, topped with the aforementioned glorious vinaigrette and fresh coriander. I assume this is a variation of the summer tomato "lasagna" listed on the a la carte menu. Have I mentioned that it was delicious?


Another "gift from the chef." As you can see, someone's having fun with the anti-griddle! A tangy and creamy frozen yogurt blini topped with a perfectly julienned slice each of black cherry and green olive, and a cilantro leaf. Yum. And since my friend was new to the whole "food science" universe, this and the watermelon caviar were good from the perspective of showing her some of the common tricks of the trade.


Oysters + Pearls. A raw kumamoto oyster topped with cantaloupe dipping dots. I thought the dots were a little too firmly frozen - I didn't like the icy crunch in my teeth. But once the warmed up a bit in my mouth, the combination of flavors was good. I don't much like cantaloupe as a fruit, but I've appreciated it in most of the savory applications I've had the opportunity to try. My friend just got a bowl of canteloupe dipping dots, but she felt they stood quite well on their own and appreciated that they were slightly salty as well as sweet.


A New Caprese Salad + Mozzarella Ravioli + Freeze Dried Pesto - red and yellow heirloom tomatoes, with spheres of soft melty mozzarella on top, balsamic drizzle and a nice freeze dried pesto. All the flavor of a good caprese salad, with a few food science twists. Tasty.


California Roll. This was one of my favorites. The roll was wrapped in soy paper, filled with blue crab in a mayonnaise sauce, crunchy tempura flakes and rich avocado and filled with an extraordinary honey mustard sauce. Delicious. Mmmm.


Bluefin Toro. A rich piece of fatty tuna, topped with some thinly sliced cucumber and microgreens, and dressed with a Thai influenced sauce with that balance of sour sweet salt and heat. The little red bits you see in the picture are tiny chili slices and packed a powerful (but not overpowering). The sauce was a creamy wasabi sauce of some sort. My friend got a watermelon steak in place of the fish and thought that was a great combination, as it emphasized that sweet source hot salt balance really well.


Grilled Octopus + Tandoori Spices + Egg Salad. Yum, yum, yum. The flavor of that grilled octopus (served atop a cube of cucumber) was great. As was the cherry chipotle dipping sauce. The egg (and potato salad) was good for mouth cooling purposes, but not especially interesting on its own. My friend had a piece of similarly seasoned tofu in place of the octopus, and was raving over it for the next couple of courses. She's always impressed by places that can season and cook tofu directly, and i expect this is what pushed her over to definitely wanting to come back to see what Element can do with advance notice.


Fresh Linguine + Sous Vide Egg Yolk + Smoked Bacon. I had been hoping we'd get this item off the regular menu, so I was pleased to see it come out of the kitchen. The portion was really too big for course number 11, but it was so tasty that I finished it all anyway. Perfectly cooked pasta, lovely lardons of bacon, bits of tomato, and of course, the perfectly cooked creamy runny egg yolk to make a tasty sauce.

And then we had our only serious gaffe of the night, which was a really unusually long wait between the linguine and our next course. At least a 20 minute wait. Now, given the heaviness of the linguine, this kind of worked to our benefit, but up until then the pacing had been perfect, so we had to wonder what had happened in the kitchen. But eventually our next course arrived.


And Aged Beef + Corn Puree + Lobster Mushroom + Blue Cheese Foam was well worth the wait. The dark line is a red wine reduction, and next to that, the intensely flavorful and quite substantial blue cheese foam. The corn puree was the highlight of this course - sweet and creamy and rich and delicious. We weren't quite sure it went with the rest of the flavors, but it was so damn good on its own, we weren't complaining. We especially appreciated the whimsy of the baby food jar and tiny spoon. My friend got two big pieces of lobster mushroom with hers instead of the meat.


Finally, onto dessert. We got a single plate of two different desserts, with sharing expected. (Perfectly fine with us.) First up, the Yuzu Tart + Sweet Tea Ice Cream + Mint Flavor. I love, love, love yuzu. So I was all over this dessert. All the flavors and textures played perfectly well together.


Chocolate Sorbet + Banana Guacamole was also lovely. Another liquid nitrogen trick, the chocolate sorbet had a hard frozen shell but a soft liquidy mousse inside. You can't go wrong with caramelized banana in my book, so that was a nice addition to the plate. The banana guacamole was finely diced slightly under ripe banana, so it had a nice sour tang and then quite a bit of heat from some other ingredient. It was a great combination on its own, and only improved when mixed with the chocolate sorbet. A very unique dessert, but a big winner.

Stuffed at this point, we paid the bill and started thinking about rolling ourselves out the door. When this glorious cheese plate comes out of the kitchen and is delivered to the table behind us, compliments of the chef. (They were friends of his.) "We can't eat this!" they exclaimed - he didn't like cheese, she was too full. Being the food geeks that we are, we were ogling this beautiful cheese selection, so they invited us to come and join them in nibbling at it. And even as full as we were, this was clearly an offer that could not be refused. So thanks again, Mike and Heather!



From bottom to top: fresh mozzarella + mango sauce (mango puree, dulce de leche and white truffle), Vallo Nostra + bagel chip and pine oile, Salted Ricotta + green olives + dried capers + parsley sauce, Queso de Mano + microgrees + cherry tomato + cherry chipotle sauce , Tennerone sprinkled with Ras el Nanut + coffee chocolate sauce, Matias + lingonberry preserves, and Valdeon sprinkled with Thai peppercorn + figs + red wine reduction.

This is by far the most beautiful cheese plate I've seen in my life. The menu has the words "ubiquitous cheese plate" scribbled in the margin beside it, but if only all cheese plates were like this one! If i lived in Atlanta, I'd be visiting Element often for a cocktail and cheese with friends. It will certainly be a must-do on my next trip, for dinner and cheese if I can manage it.

Prices are really reasonable - the tasting menu was only $65, and the a la carte menu has small plates starting at $7, and entrees are mostly in the high teens. That beautiful cheese course was only $17. The atmosphere is funky - dark lighting, hip music, waiters with piercings and cooks with blue hair and tattoos. We didn't check out the lounge upstairs, but I bet it's a good time too. Everybody went out of their way to make sure we had a good time - when I took a picture of the LN2 tank on our way out the door, our waiter insisted on making it a little more exciting for us.

Element
1051 West Peachtree Street
Atlanta, GA 30309
404-745-3001

Moto

When I was in Chicago last week, I finally got to try out Moto. This is another restaurant in the "molecular gastronomy" movement which I'm somewhat enamored with. Despite positive reviews from people, I'd been hesitant about going to Moto. It just seemed too gimmicky - and for me, as someone who's eaten food hanging off an antenna before, that's saying a lot. But then I saw the chef, Homaru Cantu, on Iron Chef America, and when all the judges oohed and ahhed over the flavor of his food, I was sold. So, when I had to spend three days in Chicago for work, I posted on eGullet to find some company for a dinner at Moto. Here's the write-up I just posted to eGullet:

Short version: I went in with the same fears as jesteinf, and was also pleasantly surprised. Everything tasted great, and the gimmicks were used to further that, not distract from it. The wine pairings were spectacular.

Long version:
Our (customized) menu was printed on a cracker that was flavored like foccacia - sundried tomatoes, parmesan, etc. That was on top of a lovely salad with fennel and kumquat. We ordered the 10 course menu, then got to eat our crackers - yum.

SALMON & sesame: raw salmon, dusted with the Japanese spice mixture of a name I can't remember or spell (something -rashi), and topped with a crispy yuba skin. Our server held a copper pot of bubbling liquid nitrogen and scooped from it some freeze dried sesame oil (which became a powder) to top off the salmon. Yum.
Wine: Ruinart Blanc de Blanc, Reims, Brut, NV

BEET with bacon: Okay, you'd really have to love beets to like this one, but luckily we all did. This looked like a piece of yellow cake, but was actually a frozen aerated beet concoction - it was surprisingly cold, and had a texture that reminded me of semi-freddo. It was topped with some little bacon bits, and surrounded by a beautifully plated goat cheese sauce and swirls of red and yellow beet sauce as well as bits of beets.
Wine: C. Schmitt-Wagner, Longuichen Maximiner Herrenberg Spatlese, Riesling, M-S-R, 2005

SKATE & popcorn: the popcorn was in the form of a lovely yellow sauce that did indeed taste kind of like popcorn if you thought about it. There was also a bright green shiso mint sauce, some absolutely fabulous passion fruit noodles and quite a bit of coconut powder. And a little piece of seared skate wing. Beautifully plated, and best when you mixed all the bits together - this was definitely a "sum of the parts" dish.
Wine: Stone Paddock, Sauvignon Blanc, Hawkes Bay, 2005 (the passion fruit in the nose was spot on with those passion fruit noodles - excellent pairing)

CUCUMBER with lemon & basil: A palate cleanser of some picked cucumber and a shot of cucumber/basil/lemon juice. Tasty, and certainly palate cleans-y.

SMOKED PORK with frozen fried rice: Wow. Just wow. Even jesteinf's fiance (who doesn't particularly like pork) liked this. This was a piece of pork shoulder dusted with Thai spices and smoked. It was perfectly cooked, with lovely unctuous melting fat. It was served with some kind of sauteed green and some frozen noodles that, yes, tasted like fried rice.
Wine: Barboursville, Reserve, Cabernet Franc, Virginia 2005 (Yes, that's the US state of Virginia. It was great, and another amazing pairing.)

PASTA & quail: Introduced to us as "chicken-fried quail," this was a very twisty twist on mac and cheese. The pasta had been freeze dried or something, so it was crunchy. Meanwhile, the quail managed to have exactly the texture one would expect from pasta. And it was all topped with an amazing white truffle cheese sauce. Someone at the table christened it "haute trash." But man, I'd totally eat that again.
Wine: Betts & Scholl, The Chronique, Grenache, Barossa, 2005

FRUIT & bubbles: Ah, at last I get to try the famous carbonated fruit! We had two pieces of carbonated watermelon, served on either side of what we heard as "white chocolate and exploratory cheese sauce." We were wondering what was exploratory about it, but then someone told us no, it was "explorateur cheese sauce". Whatever it was, it was amazing. Also on the plate were some granulated black walnuts, a rice puff cracker thing flavored like strawberry daiquiri, and some cinnamon apples. From the texture and flavor, I believe the apples had been cooked sous vide or something unusual. This was just so tasty - we were all oohing and ahhing over that cheese sauce, and now I'm pondering incorporating it into a white chocolate truffle sometime, it was such and intriguing combination.
Wine: Meinklang, Ice Wine, Pinot Blanc, Burgenland, 2003.

2 & 3 dimensional truffle: The three dimensional truffle was a white chocolate truffle filled with a completely liquid cotton candy flavored center. The 2 dimensional version was a piece of rice paper that was flavored like cotton candy and printed with a cartoon drawing of a cone of cotton candy. A very familiar flavor in a new and (for me anyway) preferable form.

GRAHAM CRACKER & blueberry: My note taking fell to pieces on this one, as there was just too much. The twist on this one was that the graham cracker component was as a smooth mousse, with blueberry "dots" and ginger "dots" adding some crunchy texture. There was some strawberry sorbet in there too. Tasty.

KIWI, mint & maize: This looked for all the world like a plate of nachos. There were sweetened corn chips. There was ground beef made out of chocolate (but looking exactly like ground beef). There was a green salsa of kiwis. Then shaved mango sorbet that looked exactly like cheese. And a little pile of lime cream in the corner as the sour cream. The illusion was impeccable. So impeccable in fact, that I had to close my eyes to taste it properly. If I had my eyes open I just couldn't make my tastebuds cooperate. Awesome.
Wine: Elio Perrone, Sourgal, Moscato d'Asti, Italy 2006 (this might have come out with the previous course, I can't remember)

STRAWBERRY shortcake: Edible packing peanuts flavored with strawberry and sandwiching some sort of cream.

After we'd finished up and were chatting about what a lovely meal it had been, a waiter walked by with the cart they used to prepare a course on the GTM at tableside. Seeing that he had a little bit of batter left in his syringe, I called out "Hey, do you have enough there to make us some?" "I'll see what I can do."

And sure enough, a few minutes later out he came, wheeling the cart again for:

FLAPJACKS prepared tableside: A metal sheet is frozen in liquid nitrogen. Pancakes are cooked, then turned back into a batter, and that batter is "cooked" into pancakes on the anti-griddle, and served in a spoon with some BLiS bourbon-barrel-aged maple syrup. Man, that was good.

And then we were really done. And it was a great meal, and a lot of fun. Josh and Marisa were great company. I would absolutely go back.

Some additional comments:
Service: Service was really quite good and friendly. They made a couple of mistakes, the biggest of which was ignoring our telling them that Marisa didn't like dark chocolate (they could easily have left it off her "nachos"). I had requested a short pour for the wine pairings, which they said they were happy to do, but then my pours were pretty much the same size as Josh and Marisa's. BUT, they only charged me for the half pour, so I'm not actually complaining. Lastly, they made a mistake handling the gratuity on our split bill (charging me 1/2 instead of 1/3 of the total 18% service charge) but we just dealt with it between ourselves rather than making them run it again.

Freezing: Cantu definitely likes his freezer! 6 out of what ended up being 12 courses had something frozen about them.

Plating: The Beet and Skate courses had some of the best plating I've had in a restaurant meal in recent memory. Just gorgeous to look at.

Different menu, different name: Looking at the three menus, you would assume that there was no overlap across them. But in fact, as we discovered by carefully observing and talking to the the GTM-eating couple beside us, it's just that they use a different description depending on the menu.

BEET with bacon = RED/YELLOW beet cake
CUCUMBER with lemon & basil = LEMON, basil & pickled cucumber
SMOKED PORK with frozen fried rice = BBQ PORK with the fixin's
PASTA & quail = CHICKEN FRIED mac-n-cheese
FRUIT & bubbles = C O-two fruit
2 & 3 dimensional truffle = 3 COTTON candy stages (they got one more than we did)
KIWI, mint & maize = CHILI-CHEESE nachos

Moto
945 W Fulton Market
Chicago, IL 60607
312-491-0058

Blackbird

Blackbird has been on my Chicago to-eat list for quite a while now. But I get to Chicago so infrequently that there's always been something above it. So having a Monday night in Chicago was a blessing in disguise - most of the top tier restaurants are closed, and Blackbird was one of the few that was open. One look at the aintriguing menu and it quickly jumped to the top of my list.

I'm pleased to say the menu was as delicious as it was intriguing. And the location was certainly convenient - after 20 or 30 minute taxi rides to most of my Chicago dining destinations last time, this was just a few minutes ride from my Magnificent Mile hotel.

One of the reasons that I hadn't been to Blackbird before is that I usually seek out restaurants with tasting menus. That way I don't have to make those hard decisions, and I get to try a whole bunch of different things. Blackbird doesn't have a tasting menu, but that was another hidden blessing, as it was nice to walk out NOT stuffed to the gills. But it was hard to decide, since nearly every appetizer and entree looked tasty. We finally settled on two entrees and two appetizers, then each ate half and switched for maximum tasting opportunity.

The amuse was a split pea soup with a piece of perfectly seared salmon, some smoky bacon, and tiny cubes of tart apple. Very nice.

Appetizer #1: confit baby octopus and duck prosciutto with cocos beans, jerusalem artichoke and perserved lemon. The texture of the octopus confit was fascinating. Not rubbery at all, and somehow firm and soft all at the same time. The jersualem artichoke puree was delightful, and the duck prosciutto was swoonworthy. It all just came together beautifully.

Appetizer #2: crispy confit of swan creek farm suckling pig with cavollo nero, shaved winter radish, horseradish and banylus vinegar. On the menu, the words "suckling pig" were bolded, which was certainly eye catching. Some of the bits of confit were a little dry, but other bits were moister, and while I preferred the octopus, this was certainly no clunker.

Entree #1: seared loin of venison with parsnip, artichokes, smoked grapes and bacon caramel. This was wonderful, and a good example of what appealed to me so much about Blackbird's menu. I've been to lots of "food science" restaurants, and Blackbird strikes a good balance of using some excellent techniques from molecular gastronomy without making it the focus of hte meal. In this case, the bacon caramel and smoked grapes - wouldn't have been out of place at Alinea or WD-50, but they also worked with a fairly straightforward presentation. The venison was perfectly cooked. The smoked grapes were a wonder - still crisp, but surprisingly smoky. Excellent.

Entree #2: fried leg and slow-roasted loin of royer's farm rabbit with white corn panisse, fresh huckleberries, brussels sprouts and caraway. Lots of fun little bits to this one. The white corn panisse was really lovely, and the huckleberries worked really well. The coating on the fried leg came slipped off and was soft rather than crunchy, but all in all this was another winner.

The room is clean and modern, and unusually (but pleasantly) bright. The tables are quite close together - they're making the most of a tight space. The music is a little funky, but not so incongruous as at Schwa. Service was just right.

I wouldn't proclaim anything I ate as one of my "best dishes ever." But everything was very solid, very tasty, and very nicely presented. Quietly innovative. It was just an all around great meal, and I'd go back to Blackbird in a heartbeat.

Blackbird
619 W Randolph
Chicago, IL 60606
312-715-0708

Eating El Paso

Last week my travels took me to the city of El Paso. I had a couple days of great meetings, and my contact there, José, was an excellent tour guide who was totally willing to indulge my foodblogging idiosyncrasies.

After a very long day of meetings on Wednesday, we wanted to go out to dinner. I showed him the list of restaurants that I'd assembled from my pre-trip research, and he picked out GeoGeskes. We actually ended up at Geskes Fire Grill, which is the sister restaurant to GeoGeskes and was much closer to where we were.

Despite the five TVs surrounding the bar, this would be a good restaurant to go to with a date, as there are a lot booths that really encourage sitting next to the person you're with. In fact, it was a little difficult in one of those booths to find a seating configuration that worked for a business meeting sort of dinner. But we managed.

My initial impression of the menu was fairly "eh." Burgers and other sandwiches, some not very exciting sounding entrees (although if I was a lobster fan I definitely would have been enticed by "The 'L' Pasta - Linguine, lobster, lemon, leeks.") I was also still recovering from the giant burrito I'd grabbed in the airport for lunch, so I think food just wasn't very appealing, and the idea of ordering an entree was overwhelming. So instead I ordered the sashimi appetizer and a house salad. José ordered a bacon cheeseburger with margarita fries.

As you can see in the pic, what they call sashimi isn't - it's a seared but still very rare piece of nice tuna. This happens to be just how I like my tuna, and the menu did state that it was seared, so I knew what I was getting myself into. It was drizzled with a sweet tamari glaze and sprinkled with sesame seeds and was all in all a delightful appetizer. The house salad was similarly well executed. Despite being an awfully busy salad - blue cheese, cashew bits, parmesan crackers, dried cranberries - it actually worked really well. It was perfectly dressed - a nice light coating of balsalmic vinaigrette on every leaf and not at all soggy.

José raved at length about his burger, but I didn't taste it so can't comment. I can, however, give huge raves to the margarita fries. This huge mound of shoestring fries with citrus salt would have fed at least two more people, and they were perfectly hot and crispy with a salty-sweet-sour tang. Excellent.

Service was not so good as the food, and at times it was actually overbearing. And my mojito was perhaps a little watery. Still, the food was much better than I expected from the menu, and I suspect those margarita french fries could be downright addictive.

Geske's Fire Grill
1506 Lee Treviño, Suite C
El Paso, TX
915-593-3473

When I told José that I wanted to go to H&H Car Wash for lunch the next day, he was a little croggled. "No, really," I told him, "it's supposed to have really great food!" Later, as we walked past the people handwashing and detailing cars and into this divey little lunch counter, he made sure to remind me that he was doing this for me.

This was the first place I'd come across when I was searching for places to eat in El Paso. It seemed to be pretty high up on the lists of all the food cognoscenti. Here's a sample review from Chowhound. I knew I'd want to try some good Mexican food while I was in El Paso, so I decided to go for it. Lunch in a car wash - that would be a first!

As you'd expect, it's not much to look at. 3 tables and a bunch of stools at the counter. A stove covered in pots of this and that, which get moved out of the way to make room for other things. Menu posted on the wall.

We opted to try the chile rellenos and huevos rancheros. Both were good, although the chile rellenos were my favorite. José said they were almost as good as his mom's - high praise, indeed. He especially praised the beans, and when I asked him why, he told me that Mexican food is meant to be simple, and should taste like itself. Beans, cooked simply, mashed, and topped with just a little bit of cheese are the perfect example.

A pitcher full of potent salsa verdé added an extra kick to anything that needed it, and by the time we finished lunch, my face was bright red. A basket of fresh flour and corn tortillas on the side was the perfect accompaniment, and provided me with a fabulous revelation. Trying to tame the burn in my mouth, I finished up my lunch with a plain corn tortilla. It was amazing. I've had corn tortillas before, but they've been nothing to write home about. This one - just a locally made commercial one, not even handmade - tasted like pure, fresh sweet corn. A lovely finish to a lovely lunch.

H & H Car Wash and Coffee Shop
701 East Yandell Drive
El Paso, TX 79902
915-533-1144

A dinner at Keyah Grande

I've written here before about Ideas in Food, one of the most exciting and cutting edge food blogs out there. The authors, Chefs Aki Kamozawa and H. Alexander Talbot, cook at a resort/lodge kind of place in the middle of nowhere Colorado. It's so off the beaten track that reviews of the food are almost nonexistent - even the diehardest of culinary tourists haven't made it there. If you've ever checked out the blog, you know that the food looks awesome (their photographic skills are incredible), but you can't help but wonder how it all tastes. Clear buttermilk. Foie gras cotton candy. Black radish chow fun. Some of it sounds good, some of it sounds just plain odd.

Well, finally our curiousity can be satisfied. Dedicated foodie Eliot Wexler took one for the team and made the trek. His extensive write up, with lots of great pictures, is posted on eGullet. In short, the answer is - yes, the food is as good as it looks. Maybe even better.

I doubt I'll ever get to Keyah Grande, but Aki and Alex have been pretty open about their plan to eventually set up shop on one or another coast, and that will be a much liklier prospect for me.

Hot Chocolate

My last night in Chicago, I went out for dinner with 10 people from eGullet to Hot Chocolate. Hot Chocolate is the restaurant of well known Chicago pastry chef Mindy Segal (pictured at left, whipping us up some milkshakes). I first had her desserts at an otherwise disappointing meal at MK, and not wanting to go back to MK, I was thrilled to hear she'd opened her own restaurant.

Thanks to Ronnie's previous visits to the restaurant for dessert, he was able to talk directly to Mindy and let her know we'd be coming in. They set us up at the kitchen table - just outside of the kitchen, actually, but with a good view of the pass and the activity going on.

The menu is pretty relaxed - five or six starters, four salads, a few sandwiches, and a handful of entrees. With such a large group, we managed to try nearly everything on the starters and entrees lists. The starters were mostly pretty good - with my brandade ("a classic French dish of salt cod, potato and garlic puree") being a highlight. The entrees, on the other hand, were nearly all disappointing - some oversalted, some underseasoned, some cold, some overcooked. Which was too bad. I'm not sure if the kitchen just wasn't used to serving that number of people at once, or if this is a more general problem (I have heard the accusations of oversalting in other forums).

But then there were the desserts. When it came time for dessert, Ronnie asked Mindy to just take care of us. And that's how I managed to fulfill one of my lifelong dreams - tasting every dessert on the menu. I'll admit to being a dessert junky, and I find it so hard to pick just one! This was one night that I didn't have to. Mindy sent out 11 desserts - one per person - and we passed them around in a hilarious frenzy of chocolate and sugar. We were all laughing from the sheer extravagence of so much dessert excess. It was truly awesome.

The desserts (descriptions are from the menu):

Apples - warm heirloom apple turnovers, roasted apple ice cream and brown butter-cider "buerre blanc"

Raspberry Preserve - house-made brioche pudding with raspberry preserve, fresh whipped cream, and vanilla bean clementine orange sorbet

Pear - roasted bartlett pear "cobbler," ginger snap ice cream, port wine and tapioca broth

Pumpkin/Pecan - "Cinderella pumpkin" pie in a graham cracker crust with maple-pecan ice cream and toffee sauce

Banana (Volume VII) - "banana split": chocolate brownie, caramelized bananas, banana sherbet, cocoa nib chocolate chip ice cream, chocolate sorbet, chocolate sauce and butterscotch

Mocha Milk Chocolate 38% - Mocha mousse "dome" with a dulce de leche caramel espresso shortbread and tiramisu creme

Chocolate (64%) - A warm souffle tart, salted caramel ice cream and pretzels

Chocolate (72%) Cake and Shake - "all American chocolate cake." Layers of chocolate buttermilk cake, bittersweet chocolate mousse, chocolate ganache butter cream and served with a vanilla bean milk shake

Creme Brulee - A classic custard infused with vanilla bean and a caramelized crust served with fresh figs

Warm Brioche Donuts - Warm and delicious, served with hot fudge (thanks to Ronnie for the picture - I managed to miss this one)

Cookies and Vanilla Bean Milkshakes - An assortment of cookies, and a little shotglass sized milkshake for each of us.

Living in a town with a sad lack of restaurants doing interesting *plated* desserts, this was like heaven for me. Everything was great, and in the flurry of eating it was hard to take notes or remember details. Some of my favorites were the seasonal desserts - the pumpkin/pecan, apples, and pear. Of the "signatures" the mocha milk dome and the chocolate (64%) were slightly more awesome than the rest. All of the ice creams and sorbets were great, and if I go back, I'll certainly be tempted to just go for a flight of those.

If I lived in Chicago, I'd probably go for dessert here once a week. (Although maybe on a weekday - we were there on a Friday night, and the music was louder and the atmosphere more "clubby" than we would have liked.) Given our dissappointing entrees, however, I'd probably get dinner elsewhere. Or better yet - just grab a salad or starter (all of which were good) and maybe a cheese course (the cheese list looks great) before heading into dessert, which is where the star of Hot Chocolate shines most brightly.

Hot Chocolate
1747 Damen Ave
Chicago, IL 60647
773-489-1747

Schwa

I'm not alone in thinking that the food at Schwa is as good as any restaurant in the city. (Even Alinea.) Chef Michael Carlson was named one of Food and Wine Magazine's Best New Chefs for 2006, and Chicago Magazine named him Best New Chef as well. And the restaurant received three stars from Phil Vettel at the Chicago Tribune.

What makes all this a little unusual is the setting. Schwa is a tiny restaurant - just 26 seats. It's located on the edge of Wicker Park, on a stretch of Ashland that's not exactly what one would call "gentrified." (If you're having trouble finding the restaurant, just look for the neon palm trees from the tire rim place across the street.) It doesn't have a liquor license, or even any glassware other than tumblers for BYOB. The staff is minimal - Chef Carlson and Sous-Chef Nathan Klingbail, one server, and a dishwasher.

But what it's lacking in amenties, it makes up for in fabulous food and a funky atmosphere. The music is a little loud, the decor is minimalist, and the chefs are making your food and delivering it right to your table. It ends up being a very intimate restaurant.

Okay, enough with the background, on to the food. I apologize in advance for the photos - the lighting in the restaurant is very indirect and pretty dim, and these required quite a bit of post-processing to be useable. The real thing looks much better!

Amuse: Candy Apple
A little unusual to have something sweet as an amuse, but it was certainly a seasonal way to get things moving!

Panzanella: tomato, brioche, basil
This deconstructed riff on the classic bread salad was quite complex. Elements included (peeled) heirloom cherry tomatoes, a brioche bread pudding topped with a tomato sorbet, basil puree, caramelized fennel puree, and some shaved fennel. And some parmesan and basalmic too. The picture doesn't at all adequately express what a beautiful plate this was. And interesting - there were bits that didn't work really well for me (like the bread pudding), but the concepts were all really neat.

Prosciutto Consomme: melon, arugula
Another riff on a classic dish, this time cantaloupe wrapped with prosciutto. With prosciutto is actually the only way I can really tolerate melon, but even given that limitation I liked this dish. There was regular prosciutto, and some delightfully crispy prosciutto, and melon in various form. And the consomme, of course. Yum.

Quail Egg Ravioli: ricotta, brown butter, parmagiano reggianno
Schwa's signature dish, and in a dead heat for my favorite dish of the night. The raviolis are filled with ricotta cheese and a quail egg yolk. For best results, put the hole ravioli in your mouth and bite down, so you don't lose any of that luscious yolk. The brown butter sauce, parmesan and crispy sage leaf just push it over the top. This is the dish that makes me (and everyone else) regret that Schwa doesn't serve bread - you want something to collect the rest of that buttery goodness. BYOB = bring your own bread?

Illinois Sturgeon Caviar: avocado, cauliflower
My other contender for dish of the night. There's an avocado puree in the bottom of the dish, topped by a cauliflower puree, some finely chopped cooked cauliflower and a scoop of caviar on top. Simple, but soooo good. The flavors just combine beautifully.

Lobster: potatoes, gooseberries, lavender
Butter poached lobster, potato puree, roasted fingerling potatoes, and swiss chard, all topped off with a lavender emulsion (ie. foam). Pretty good. The roasted fingerling potatoes had the nicest texture.

Sweetbreads: rhubarb, humboldt fog
I'd never had sweetbreads before, and this was a great way to try them for the first time. Crispy veal sweetbreads and piece of red wine braised rhubarb, with some sort of sauce and a streak of creamy Humbolt Fog goat cheese.

Bonus Course: eggplant confit
This was an extra, not on our menu. Just a single bite. Pretty tasty, and I don't even like eggplant!

Beef: raw, pickled, braised
Bad picture, so I'll map it out for you. In the lower right on top of the cube, there's beef tartare topped with a raw quail egg. Yum. Below it on the plate is a smear of yuzu honey - out of this world, and a good combo with the tartare. In the center is a pickled beef tongue, with a garnish I can't recall. In the upper left is a lovely braised beef short rib, with a sweet potato puree beneath it. Great dish.

Cheese
An unusual take on the cheese course, this was a single spoonful of Morbier risotto. The green is summer savory (oil, I think), and there are dehydrated peach chips on top. Tasty, and interesting combination. The risotto texture was perfect. We liked this a lot, because as good as risotto is, typical portions on restaurant menus are often too large when served in conjunction with a lot of other food. (The lobster risotto at Tru is a notable example.)


Dessert
We had two different desserts, but the picture of the other one is REALLY bad, so you only get to see the strawberry-olive shortcake. Strawberry-WHAT? Yep. It was a little odd, but also tastier than you might think (and I say this as someone who's not so fond of olives). Nicoise olive shortcake, strawberry sauce, strawberry and olive oil ice cream, basil sauce, and some candied olives.

Our other dessert was better - a two chocolate brownies, one topped with a pie pumpkin sorbet, and the other with a pumpkin puree, with chocolate sauce, and pumpkin seeds and some creme fraiche. Very nice, seasonal dessert.

Wine: Since Schwa is BYOB, we couldn't do a different wine for each course, or we would have been staggering out of there! We brought a half bottle each of a red and a white wine. The white, which we drank from the amuse through to the lobster, was A & F Boudin, "Domaine de Chantmerle,' Chablis, 2000. This started off decidedly odd, with this weird kind of appley thing on the palate that had us wondering if the bottle was corked or something. Fortunately, that mostly blew off. Any failings in the Chablis were made up for in the red, however - a 1991 Ridge Monte Bello that was major big yum. As I said previously, Schwa provides only tumblers for wine, so if you're a wine geek, you'll probably want to bring your own glasses. (Tip for travelers - borrow some from your hotel!)


Because there are so few staff, the arrivals for the evening are staggered, so you might presume from the empty tables that the restaurant is underappreciated. But in fact, it's one of the hottest reservations in Chicago right now, with weekends filling up months in advance, and weeknights not much slower. The general feeling among Chicago foodies is that it's only a matter of time before Chefs Carlson and Klingbail get wooed away to something bigger and better-funded, so if you want to appreciate the intimate and exceptional simplicity that is Schwa, don't delay!

Schwa
1466 N. Ashland
Chicago, IL 60622
773-252-1466