A photo my son Liam took of the zoology building at the University of Chicago.

From the news our food scene seems like it’s entering a more corporate-concept phase— steak houses and ramen shops from the best-known restaurant groups, every day something interesting closes to reconcept as standard Italian, and so on. It would be easy to think that we weren’t going to see much in the way of personal restaurants this year.

And yet somehow we’ve had three restaurants open within the past year that seem about as good as they can be at giving three chefs who’ve been around the scene a while a platform for the expression of their mature selves, personal and without significant compromise. One is The Radler, for longtime Vie #2 Nathan Sears, representing his notion of a German beer hall with fresh food, meaty yet light and winning. One is Parachute, from Beverly Kim and her husband Johnny Clark, a Fat Rice-like hipster cafe with Korean flavors and fine dining execution. And surprisingly, the third is Matthias Merges’ A10, in Hyde Park.

The surprising part is not that Merges was capable of such a thing— as the guy who ran the kitchen at Charlie Trotter’s for 14 years, he seems capable of pretty much anything. But his first two concepts were just that, concepts, and that seemed to be the direction he was going. Yusho seemed very smartly thought out as a kind of refined-Japanese-comfort-foody bar, and the concept was independent enough of who was actually cooking there that it would be possible to replicate at least a few times without losing quality— and so there’s one in Las Vegas, and one coming soon to the same stretch of Hyde Park as A10. His second place, Billy Sunday, seems less well thought out— I liked the drinks (a tonic-based cocktail program) a lot, but the food (helmed by John Vermiglio, formerly of Table 52 and G.E.B.) seemed a weird mess of things that didn’t go together, or with the setting.

But the point is they both seemed conceived in terms of how to market them to a certain audience in Logan Square. Very smartly so, but still. A10 also originated in a business deal— Merges was approached by the University of Chicago, which is trying to redevelop 53rd Street to help make Hyde Park more attractive to prospective students and job candidates. (You see U of C security all over the street at night, giving the entire neighborhood a kind of Universal City Walk feel even though there are plenty of non-U of C businesses along there.)

So A10 seemed like a smart concept for the neighborhood, contemporary Italian with French and just plain modern touches. (The A10 is the highway that connects Italy and southern France, so the French part is more like the Rhone and the Riviera than Paris or Burgundy.) But it’s a surprise that it also turns out to be one of the best Italian restaurants in town, and the clearest example yet of how Merges’ Trotter heritage translates to more accessible and reasonably priced food.

I should say that Vermiglio is the official chef here as well, so I have no idea who’s responsible for what exactly, but Merges did walk in soon after we arrived on Friday night, incidentally blowing my cover (I’ve interviewed him and videoed him for Key Ingredient; he sent us a couple of extra things and stopped by to say hi). In any case let’s assume a meeting of minds between the two of them on an approach to food. The salads seemed like pure Trotter’s, with hair just mussed a little for Italian rusticity— a blend of cucumber, melon, red pepper puree and grilled onions, or kohlrabi and apple slices shaved with downy parmigiano, the kohlrabi sourced, we were told, from the Cook County Jail’s gardens. Simple height-of-summer produce dressed just enough and no more, and despite the efforts at seeming more casual, nearly as perfect-looking as they would have at Trotter’s (note the spacing of the tiny bits of chopped green whatever on the kohlrabi salad above). I should note, though, that there was an exception to this that didn’t delight in the same way, a kale salad with tonnato dressing and pumpernickel (pumpernickel is the new Italian bread, apparently, to judge by this and Cicchetti). It was heavy and wintry, but that’s our fault for ordering it I guess, more than theirs for having the apparently-inevitable-at-the-moment kale salad on the menu.

More than one restaurant has gone downhill after the salad course in peak season, but not this one— the pastas, made in house, were superb. The best was this gemelli with some kind of sauce involving oil-cured sun-dried tomatoes, some kind of roe (bottarga maybe, under another name?), saffron (I think that was in the pasta itself) and lemon. I’m not sure of the precise composition of it, all I know is that it sang, it absolutely shone of lemony brightness with an undercurrent of brine and cello-deep notes of tomato. I want it for an alarm o’clock every morning, to jolt me into the light.

My son Liam had bucatini carbonara, which he pronounced excellent (I’ve made it many times; he quizzed the waitress to see if it was heavy on the pepper like mine is), and we also nibbled on green tomato lasagna with blue crab and bearnaise sauce— I wondered if green tomato lasagna would mean the pasta or what was in between them, but it proved to be the latter. I don’t think anything was either French or Italian about this, except the basic idea of lasagna, but what it did remind me of was the one thing that I had really liked among the food at Billy Sunday— their version of a hot brown, which was heavy on sliced tomato and mornay sauce, as I recall it. There was also a special of corned short ribs with cabbage, which turned out to be what that would make if you think about it— a reuben in a pan without bread, basically.

Desserts were a little anticlimactic, fine but not as creative-seeming as the savory courses; they included a nice coconut panna cotta and, as at Yusho, soft serve (chocolate malt, which had a lot of barley tang). One other thing I noted about A10— the staff seemed a little older and enthused to be there. A lot of people have wanted higher-end choices in Hyde Park, but I suspect servers from the other restaurants around the area have wanted it even more than most, hoping to make more money than you can at, say, Mellow Yellow or Ragin Cajun. For now, at least, A10 has very interactive and conscientious service which is happy to see you.

A10
1462 E. 53rd
773-288-1010
http://a10hydepark.com

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Salt for your fries?

When I ran across Ivy’s Burgers, Hot Dogs & Fries in Edgebrook, I thought I might have discovered a place right under the noses of many of the more active remaining LTHers who live on the northwest side. Turns out that Rene G, who lives in Hyde Park, had actually been there and eaten a Japanese dog with seaweed salad (!) there, and there are a handful of other mentions, though more about it opening soon (a year ago) than about how it actually turned out to be. Actually, you know who didn’t mention it? The guy who wrote the best hot dog in every neighborhood post at Thrillist, and tried to find every dog spot doing the Hot Doug thing of more exotic dogs. Oh well, it probably wouldn’t have beaten out Superdawg for that area anyway.

Still, let’s give it a nod, it’s always good to know a better dog and burger joint in every neighborhood, especially one close to something you might do, like bike on the forest preserve bike trails at Devon & Caldwell; and while I like the sleepy-50s feel of that area (I spent a few moments reading the 80s and 90s clippings on the front of the Filipino restaurant on Caldwell there), I can’t say it’s a bad thing that something from this century has opened up along there, too. Great smoky Polish, good-looking burgers (haven’t had one yet), the chili dog was decent but the homemade chili a little watery, eating it was a race against time before the bun fell apart; there are more exotic dogs on the menu, fresh-cut fries— served saltless so you can salt them yourself from the exotic salt bar— and good-looking shakes, plus a message about sustainability in the wood they used for their tables, or something like that. Always happy to know about one more dog spot that’s pushing the envelope and trying to do something unique.

Ivy’s Burgers, Hot Dogs & Fries
5419 W. Devon
773-775-2545
www.ivyschicago.com

Barbecue at Mariano’s. I wrote about the sushi bar at the Lawrence/Ravenswood Mariano’s recently, and after a couple of more visits around meal times, all I can say is Eataly missed a bet not being located here. The place gets packed every lunchtime and every night, it may not say the best things about a neighborhood if its local wine bar is where you also get toilet paper, but the neighborhood has embraced it for all those purposes. I’m going to be a little contrarian on barbecue though, at least contrary to my usual position vis-a-vis Mike Sula, who usually blasts a new barbecue place and then six months later I find it’s not bad. Sula had generally positive things to say about “Todd’s BBQ” here even if he could never find out if there actually was a Todd.

Me… well, sure, it’s high among supermarket barbecue, of that I have no doubt, because how much supermarket barbecue isn’t simply meat that’s been sauced and got no closer to smoke than the Pall Malls rolled in the meat cutter’s sleeve? They use a Southern Pride smoker, which has the potential to make real barbecue, so give them points for that right off the bat.

I ordered brisket and pulled pork; the brisket was pretty good, if awfully loose and floppy, like it had spent a lot of time in a warming drawer steaming itself. Still, I’d put it on the thumbs-up side. The pulled pork (which was, incidentally, chopped, not pulled) didn’t have enough smokiness and basically, like most supermarket pork it didn’t have much flavor, but what flavor it did have was a little off, industrially vaguely unpleasing. The sauces (in help yourself bottles at the counter) were all way too sweet, but that’s easily remedied, just buy your own of something better. There’s rotisserie chicken behind the same counter which doesn’t appear to get smoke, and some other chicken, it appears, going on a gas grill. Anyway, a fair showing but better really isn’t that far away; I will probably drive an extra mile or so for Smalls or somewhere instead. On the other hand, if one person wants barbecue and the other wants sushi, this is the place.

Tags: A10, Ivy's, Mariano's, Matthias Merges

I did two roundup lists for Thrillist lately, the first on hot dogs. I didn’t think there was really any way to rank hot dogs, given that you’re mostly using the same basic materials (a conclusion someone else came to shortly after), so I decided the sensible thing was to pick one good spot in 25 different neighborhoods. The north side I could pretty much cover from past experience, but it meant Son #2 and I had to make a couple of runs to the south side, trying one dog at each of several places.

Good news, bad news. The good news is that there is one glorious stretch for hot dog-dom on the south side, and that’s 35th street near Comiskey, not too surprisingly, with three joints— 35th Street Red Hots, Johnny O’s, and Morrie O’Malley’s— making as good a dog as can be found anywhere.

The bad news is: it was surprising how mediocre the rest of the south side was. In particular the natural casing dog, with its snap releasing the garlicky juices, was almost impossible to find at places you’d think would have them like Donald’s (pictured above), Parisi’s, Fat Johnnie’s (which somebody ranked as best in town once) and so on. I had a lot of lukewarm dogs in every sense, crowned a few tallest midgets like Fat Johnnie’s (at least it has atmosphere, same for Parisi’s; Donald’s didn’t make it), and am forced to the conclusion that the best dogs are mostly on the north side, except for that one great stretch of 35th.

Another list was southern and soul food. I only had to try a couple of places to fill out the list, but it was harder to do that, because you can’t go try four soul food places in one trip; more like try one, lay on the couch the rest of the day.

So it was a bummer when we went a long way for one that turned out not to be very good, like Dan’s Soul Food & Bakery on 79th. It had some good Yelp reviews and sounded promising from what they said. And it could have been if they’d ever discovered the salt shaker, or hadn’t discovered instant mashed potatoes. in other words, if it had more soul! But it was just bland, and used a couple of dispiriting shortcuts.

But I did try some better things, and I stand by all the soul food places on that list. Back on the north side, Carriage House is a place that didn’t get a fair shake the first time I went there. Son #2 basically didn’t want to eat anything, and it kind of ruined everyone’s evening. So I wanted to try it again and when he got invited to a baseball game the rest of us went. The idea is to evoke Carolina Low Country cuisine, more than the deep South food more common here, and when it does that it can be very good. The balls of braised pork topped with country ham above, for instance, were great, and so were smoked/glazed chicken wings and the fried chicken thigh (though at small plate prices of $9 for one piece of chicken, it makes any of our new fried chicken joints look like a bargain).

The problem came with things that just seemed like upscale food without any interesting southernness. A shrimp and pork belly pie sounds like a deep, savory pot pie kind of thing full of funky, fishy pork and shrimp goodness— but turns out to be two empanadas, basically, tasting mainly of dough, for an absurd $16. The menu needs an editor’s hand that says, does this one make your eyes roll back in your head with Southern flavors that sing of the heritage of the south, or could you imagine having this same experience, basically, in any kind of restaurant? There are enough things that do the first that the ones that do the second need to stop dragging them down.

Anyway, in the course of this piece there was one long trip down south that I was so happy I made. I had actually gone to Maple Tree Inn when I first moved here, somewhere around 1990. It was kind of a Cajun diner in Beverly then, run by a self-taught cook (who learned during the Cajun craze of the 80s) named Charlie Orr. It was one of my very rare trips that far into unknown territory for food back then, and memorable, though I assumed it was long gone in later years. I was surprised when LTHers remarked on it and it turned out to still exist in the southern suburb of Blue Island, in an old speakeasy building. Charlie passed away in 2010, but his family still runs it.

The house special Voodoo nuts, andouille sausage around garlic cloves.

And it’s pretty great. Not just for the extremely well-executed classic Cajun food— my crawfish etoufée was as good as I’ve ever had, well-balanced and full of life— but for the total package of being in a vintage building on a sleepy, stuck-in-the-50s strip in a small town. We sat on the veranda, which is newer and sunnier, but there’s an equal case to be made for the dark tavern front room which includes an 1890s original carved bar. If you ever want a getaway from the city that’s actually fairly speedy to get to (I thought it might take hours, but we zipped right down there at 5:30 on a weeknight), yet feels like you’ve gone off to Wisconsin with some New Orleans thrown in, it’s highly recommended.

Valois Cafeteria. You may think that I’ve been everywhere. I want people to think I’ve been everywhere! That’s part of the brand image! But there’s always another somewhere, isn’t there, and probably the most famous place left in Chicago I’d never been— famous enough that it had a book written about it— was Valois Cafeteria, the Greek steam table cafeteria line place not far from the U of C. I’d never been because everybody considers it a breakfast place, really (there is a conspicuous silence on the virtues of any other meal here), and the logistics of hauling yourself to breakfast all the way on the other side of town aren’t that favorable when you have hungry kids and plenty of places serving the same thing in between.

But Son #2 took a computer camp at U of C and he loves breakfast joints, so there we were one morning at last. How’s the food? Standard, I’d say. You could certainly have it elsewhere, and closer (to me), Greek diner food. But even on a fairly sleepy morning with not that many people in the place, you could see why it’s more than a diner, it’s the heart of a community. If you’re a college student, it feels like they’re going to take care of you and make sure you get fed. If you’re a working joe with just a few bucks for breakfast, the Greek guys behind the counter in their white uniforms look like the staff of the Ritz, ready to take care of you with military precision. I thought it was interesting that it has a reputation as the great integrated place in a segregated town, because I thought the staff was maybe the most clearly defined by race I’ve seen anywhere— the Greek guys cook, the black lady takes your money, the Mexican ladies clean up. Those lines don’t look like they ever get crossed. But it’s a well-oiled machine that helps a whole community run. God forbid anyone should ever look at that and decide it needs changing.

Life in the shadow of the Bomb at Valois.

Tags: Carriage House, hot dogs, Maple Tree Inn, soul food, Thrillist, Valois Cafeteria

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Airwaves Full of Bacon 12: Making Vodka at CH Distillery • Restaurant Designer Karen Herold • Lisa Shames on Chicago Social’s 2014 Restaurant Issue • Ramadan Dining With My Halal Kitchen’s Yvonne Maffei

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This is the episode whose theme is no theme! Well, I’ve just been doing a lot of interviews lately, and here’s some of them.

(2:04) First up, I go inside CH Distillery, Chicago’s first distillery and tasting room, in the West Loop, and learn what’s brewing and distilling there from owner Tremaine Atkinson. Although you expect whiskey and bourbon, it’s interesting to learn that vodka, rum and amaro also play significant roles.

(21:08) Next up I talk with restaurant designer Karen Herold about how she makes restaurants work for success and to keep people wanting to come back. We talk about the design for Balena in particular, but you can read more from her about specific restaurants in the second part of this interview at the Reader.

(39:26) In Episode 3 I talked with Chicago Social dining editor Lisa Shames about 2013’s restaurant issue, and she’s back this time to talk about 2014’s. Lots of restaurants get talked about in this including Cocello, Nico, Cicchetti, 42 Grams, Dusek’s, A10, Tanta and The Radler.

(54:48) And it’s Ramadan, so I talk about the fasting and the feasting that happens this month for Muslims with Yvonne Maffei, who has a halal food blog, My Halal Kitchen. We met at an event organized by Chicago Foodways Roundtable at Khan BBQ. Other restaurants she mentions include Usmania Chinese, Delhi Darbar (D.D. Kebab House), and Tahoora.

Finally, as I mentioned I’ve been on WGN Radio twice recently with guest host James VanOsdol; I appeared with Barry Sorkin to talk about BBQ, and solo to talk hot dogs.