Chicago Comfort

Chicago Comfort 640 480 David Rosengarten

This is an out-and-out love song to Chicago…but first I have to make sure you don’t take it as an insider’s insult.

When I plan a gastro-trip to the Windy City, I take its serious restaurants as seriously as I do the serious restaurants in any other major urban center: Paris, Rome, New Orleans, San Francisco, etc. But if you know me, you know that I’m always more than usually interested in the underbelly of a city as well! I’m perennially storming the barricades of choucroute places in Paris, salumi pile-ups in Rome, po’ boy joints in New Orleans, and burrito bodegas in San Francisco.

In Chicago, this special feel I have for “real food” gets ratcheted up even a few notches more. It probably has to do with what I love about Chicago in general: its big, non-pretentious heart. Yeah yeah…my first big-deal meal in Chicago, in 1976, at the legendary Le Perroquet, showed me that these guys can wear a tux as beautifully as the staff in any other city. But what really got my juices going when Gerald Ford was making a campaign stop here were Chicago hot dogs, Italian beef, tacos, etc.

It’s not just that people in Chicago are welcoming…they’re comforting too, even in food terms, with a steaming pile of Polish sausages and sauerkraut at the ready.

To this New Yorker, Chicago has all the cultural advantages of New York–but a gentler, sweeter, more comforting environment in which they’re set. I like bringing foreign visitors to Chicago; idealized though my vision may be, I like to saying to them “this is America. This is where America went right. This is where the great Americans of America’s center came to raise their families. This is where the gleaming buildings of the pre-crash 1920s still rest on a bedrock of warmth and joy.”

And somewhere in my addled brain…deconstructed Miyazaki Beef Cheek with Five Reduction Sauces and Hoja Santa Soufflé on a Bed of Indiana Puntarelli is not the perfect expression of that.

If “comfort” is your theme…as it is mine in this town…, the “comfort” can even start at your hotel.

Exterior Night - WebChicago is blessed with a number of world-class luxury hotels (like the Four Seasons and the Ritz-Carlton), either of which I would recommend in a Chicago minute. However, on a “comfort food” trip I took to Chicago just before Thanksgiving, 2013, I was looking for something a little more “local,” a little less expensive, a little more with an idiosyncratic touch of comfort about it (for comfort should always be idiosyncratic!)

When I discovered that Zagat had just named The Talbott Hotel #1 in Chicago…and when I saw the photos, and spoke to the people…I knew I had met my match.

Approach the bustle of exterior doormen…but laid-back exterior doormen. There are Midwestern classical arches on the front of the graceful building (right on Delaware Place, mere steps from Rush), with a long and lovely old-fashioned awning that protects you from the rain.121023 shot4-edit-ipad

 

Inside the charming lobby, with its sparkling 1940s feel, there’s wood and leather everywhere. These public rooms are small, so you feel cosseted, not overwhelmed at entry. Plush materials and Americana bric-a-brac are abundant, echoing my view of comfort: filled-in, but not cluttered.

 

That goes double for the rooms. My suite was unbelievably spacious for this day and age, a real luxury–with a fairly sparse collection of soft-and-comforting furniture. No modern concepts under and above your head, lots of steamy old bathroom fixtures, service people that really respond…this is what I want to walk into on a cold Chicago day.

 

 

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I also want to walk into restaurants that feed my soul in a particularly Chicagoan way. During the four days of this trip, I sampled many soulful places–helped along in many cases by a local chef, Michael Mech, who decided to epitomize the generous Chicago spirit…and help me out with restaurants and neighborhoods!

The first neighborhood he took me to was a wonderful new hot spot in Chicago, the Fulton Market area, on the West Side near West Loop. “This is our equivalent of New York’s Meatpacking District,” said Mech. He pointed out a central restaurant there called The Publican, and the menu looked like a wild ride through a modern, high-quality butcher shop. We did not dine–but we crossed the street and inhaled the same metaphoric aroma–at their actual butcher shop, Publican Quality Meats, replete with light café. What an empire this is! I got to taste a million little things at the shop–amazing cured meats and sausages, lamb bacon, head cheeses, blood mortadella, home-baked bread–and I was sold right away. The meat case with luminous, carefully identified raw meats with wild-sounding local provenances also blew my mind.

If I lived in Chicago, it would also blow my bank account.

 

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OK, I was thinking quite honestly about what I’d IMG_5920have to do to move to Chicago. So moved was I.

Frankly, I have had those thoughts before…particularly every time I get a Chicago hot dog in Chicago. As a New Yorker, I was trained to disdain these puppies. “Whaaat????” (you’re supposed to say). “That ain’t a hot dog…that’s a salad on a roll!” But I outgrew that nattering New York noise 20 years ago. The pile-up of a garlicky beef dog on a poppy seed roll with tomatoes, onions, pickles, cucumbers, fluorescent relish, pickled peppers (known as “sport peppers”), mustard and a sprinkle of celery salt is WAY more than the sum of its parts.

On this trip, I returned of course to my all-time favorite Chicago hot dog place, Superdawg, with its Happy-Days kind of 1950s merriment.

But it was my first visit to their new place in Wheeling, a Chicago suburb…a place set up really efficiently for ordering.IMG_3719 Americas dog

AND…as soon as I got off the plane at O’Hare, I couldn’t resist getting a Chicago Hot Dog at the airport…which was surprisingly good! You should know about it! The place is called America’s Dog, and it sits in Concourse C of Terminal 1.

Another Chicago “street” specialty I must devour when in Chicago is Italian Beef–kinda like an Italian “French dip,” juicy sliced beef on a wet roll, with Italian herbal flavors and, if you like, the famous “giardineira,” or pickled vegetables, on top.

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I’ve been down this road many times before–and though I keep going back to the famous ones, like Al’s Beef (as we did on this trip), nothing has ever topped a place I found in the suburbs called Johnnie’s Beef, in Elmwood Park. This is undoubtedly the best Italian Beef I’ve ever had. Johnnie’s is a triangular, retro-like roadside stand with a few outdoor tables–but its amazingly sweet beef has a kind of stickiness to it, is the most intrinsically juicy (it’s not just the gravy that’s wet, it’s the beef itself!), and comes on a slightly yellow roll that has a little more texture to it than most, holding the double-dip even better (make sure to ask for double-dip). These are subtle things–but the effect on the whole is readily discernible!IMG_5974

IMG_5975Another great Chicago street food, for me, is tacos. Yes it’s true! Had I grown up in Texas, I might not have felt that way. But I’m a New Yorker…and in my 1970s-1980s New York, tacos were hard to find. That’s why my first trips to Chicago–a city with many more Mexican immigrants than New York!–blew my taco mind!

So…where to go in 2014 for a great Chicago taco? If you want a Chicago taco at its most basic, and inexpensive, La Pasadita (hole-in-the-wall-ish) has excellent selections.

More upscale is Antique Taco (right near Al’s Beef!)–a yuppified solution to the taco question, with ingredients that are excellent in quality.

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My street-food soul makes me lean towards the much funkier La Pasadita–but this game ain’t over yet. I received so many suggestions to drive down to the way South Side of Chicago for carnitas at Paco’s Tacos–that I’m going to withhold my opinion on tacos in Chicago until I get to Paco’s. But, truly, based on what I heard (and I know how to gather info like this)…you’re in no danger of mediocrity whatsoever if you simply scurry to Paco’s right now, even before I weigh in!

The jewel in the crown of funky Chicago food, however…is undoubtedly Au Cheval, the hot-as-a-pistol upscale diner.

A bar. A diner. Dark and brown, but with comforting old-fashioned details. (Working image for Au Cheval: a place where a bunch of Chicago sportswriters in the 1940s might have cried in their beer about the fortunes of the Chicago Cubs.)

The owner is anything but old enough to have remembered that. He is the restaurant wunderkind of Chicago, Brendan Sodikoff, still in his thirties–and with a bottomless passion for detail that has spread across Chicagoland in multiple restaurants with runaway success. The Chicago Sun-Times even compared the “ideology and effort” of Au Cheval to the ideology and effort of Next…. the big-deal fancy place opened last year by Chicago’s god of fine dining, Grant Achatz!

So why all the fuss?

For starters, the choice of name at this place says a lot. “Au Cheval” literally means “on horseback”…but in France, if a food on a menu is described with that phrase, it means “a fried egg on top.”

Fried eggs waiting for action near Au Cheval's griddle

Fried eggs waiting for action near Au Cheval’s griddle

The eggs, fried one at a time in individual pans, are crispy, eggy, delicious. But I like them most as dominant metaphor: “whatever rich, juicy, runny food you’re eating…Au Cheval will make it richer, juicier, more runny by adding a sunny-side-up fried egg!”

Everything here coheres in this way. If for some reason you’re fat-shy…don’t get anywhere near this place! Au Cheval offers more animal-fat mouth-satisfaction than a bevy of steakhouses…and in a dazzling variety of ways…all inextricably linked with New Food America’s burgeoning quality imperative.

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The “single” hamburger at Au Cheval

Of course, the most famous fried-egg garnished dish is the hamburger…simply described on the menu as “single cheeseburger.” I’m not trying to hyperbolize my hyperbole…but this may well be the best burger in America. For starters, forget about this “single” crap. A “single cheeseburger” is two amazing patties (and a “double cheeseburger” is three). The darling grill of California is denied here, in favor of hot sheet metal, which, in the opinion of many, creates a beefier-tasting burger. This one is all loose beef-and-butter. Your waiter will immediately ask you if you want a fried egg and bacon on the sandwich, and you’d be crazy to say no. The bacon alone is a masterpiece: thick, very cured, very tender, sweet slices of it. The cheese runs like Velveeta gone to heaven. The soft-fluffy-flavorful bun is there to accommodate the burger, not to establish bragging rights. And the house throws on its own whim-list of condiments, including the perfect bread-and-butter pickles (with tossed onions and red peppers) made right on de premises.

But you can get your egg in a variety of supernal ways: on a toasted open-faced ham & cheese fondue sandwich; on crispy fries with mornay sauce and garlic aioli; on chilaquiles (only after midnight); and…my favorite…on crispy potato hash with duck heart gravy.

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Fried egg on potato hash with duck heart gravy

Then, the menu offers any number of wacky things turned into obsession. On my second visit I was initiated into the rites of the fried-bologna sandwich…

The fried bologna sandwich arrives

The fried bologna sandwich arrives

The fried bologna ready for delectation

The fried bologna ready for delectation

Each thin slice does a slippery foie-gras number in your mouth, the sexiest bologna in history to be sure. And the flavors are subtle, porky, farm-y…not the industrially-spiced flavors that bologna usually brings.

I cannot wait to go back (worth a flight to Chicago!) for the chopped chicken liver, the foie gras terrine (another form of chopped liver!), the 32-ounce pork porterhouse with foie gras, the griddled bratwurst with roasted garlic gravy, and many more.

When your tooth turns sweet, there are manifold choices in Chicago–particularly today, in that tradition-enlightened-by-modern-spin kinda way.

 

 

A great choice is Hoosier Mama Pie Company…

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This is a fairly new artisanal shop; they describe themselves as “striving to be a great ‘old’ pie company. We make our pies by hand with the best ingredients we can find. It’s that great piece of diner pie you’ve never had.”

A coupla pies

A coupla pies

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When I arrived just before the Thanksgiving holiday, many pies were sold out…but the ones I tasted, particularly the Chocolate Chess Pie, and the Fat Elvis, were outstanding.

 

 

 

 

If, however, you’re saving up for one sweet indulgence…I’d give it up to the great doughnuts at Glazed and Infused, right back in the trendy Fulton Market district. The extraordinary thing here is not only the range of flavors…but also the range of textures in these donuts! I loved the Maple Long John with Bacon, the Pumpkin Creme Brulée, the Vanilla Bean, the Chocolate, and the Peanut Butter and Jelly.

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