I’m going to focus on restaurants this year– I ate a lot of good stuff around Chicago, the burbs, and out of town. As for cooking exploits, I feel like I’ve shared plenty on other media throughout the year– food porn from the catering kitchen over on the ‘gram + if you’re looking for recipes, the cookbook I compiled for Ox-Bow, which has been almost a decade in the making, was finally released!
If I had to track trends, an
immediate one of the past few years would be the expanded field of “food halls”,
which should seem up my alley as a child of 80s mall food courts. Three opened
in the West Loop alone (and hey, I like one of them, more on that below.) But
more often, you’ll find me haunting old school food courts adjacent to suburban
Asian grocery stores or the subterranean mall in China town, more on that below
too.
What a time to be alive if you like Asian food. Finally there’s great Indonesian and Burmese, and ever expanding regional Chinese (+ In-on Thai is back!) And a new generation of Asian-American chefs and restaurateurs is opening places outside of historical cultural neighborhood enclaves. Two great examples opened recently in my old neighborhood. Phodega on Ashland just south of North, an appropriately diminutive storefront amusingly dressed up like a corner store you might find on, well, Argyle street is slinging, for sure, the best bowl of pho south of Argyle, if not one of the best in town. And Lao Peng You in a serene space on Chicago Ave at Damen is serving lovingly scratch made Northern Chinese dumplings and noodles, rarities even for Chinatown.
Another spot I loved this
year (though only got to once, so I didn’t feel like I could comprehensibly represent
on the list) is Hermosa Restaurant, a media favorite of the past few months.
Run by the talented and humble Ethan Lim, who comes from a family of Asian
American restaurateurs, this modest sandwich counter presents as a hot dog and
Italian beef spot. But pick up the paper menu and you’ll discover a set of
sandwiches featuring Southeast Asian flavors including scarce-in-Chicago
Cambodian preparations like prakoh khtiss, fermented mudfish paste with pork.
These sandwiches have explosive flavors that don’t shy away from funk or heat. Chef
Lim’s was, for sure, the best chicken sandwich I ate this year (though I do
think Popeyes’ is a good deal at $3.99)
Indian food seems to finally be having its moment in Chicago, with a handful of high profile openings ranging in concept and price point. I’ll go more in depth into my favorite of these new options below, but would like to give a nod to Superkhana International in Logan Square. Lots of people I like have their hand in this place and the playful, colorful lounge-feel of the space is worth a trip. I especially love the huge mural presiding over the bar painted by my favorite Indian American painter, Kaveri Raina. I thought the chow was great too especially the blistered bread on the butter chicken calzone. Though I wouldn’t exactly call it Indian food– more in line with the kind of casual, globally riffing, ingredient forward grub found around that neighborhood.
Mostly, if you know me, I’m
always on the hunt for mom-and-pop, hole in the wall type joints. And you gotta
leave the West Loop and Logan Square to find the good stuff sometimes, so buckle
up as we head to Belmont-Craigin, Wheaton, and Michigan City.
Egg-O-Holic
In the year of Indian openings, this one was my fave. I had encountered an ersatz hard boiled egg half in a biryani before, but who knew about this entire cuisine of egg-focused late night street food from Gujarat? This second outpost (the OG is in Schaumburg) on Chicago Ave, not far from a cropping of cabbie Indo-Pak places, slings an overwhelming array of ovular curries, rice, omelets, wraps, and sandwiches. And the eggs themselves take many forms in the dishes, boiled and shredded, fried, scrambled, poached into sauces, etc.
As the name implies, this is drinking food, meant to sop up the sauce at the end of a bender. This is heavy-duty stuff, both spice and calorie-wise. Which also makes it ideal winter food– surti gotalo is a shakshuk-ian dish of jiggling sunny sides in a volcanic garlicky tomato gravy, perfectly delivered hand to mouth with flaky roti bread. The queso-esque lachko eats like a dip of sorts– a smooth blend of mild green chilies, cheese, and eggs. Green egg rice is another fave, rice fried with a garden’s worth of verdant herbs including mint and curry leaves. And don’t sleep on the “Anda” sandwiches, double decker club sandwiches with curried egg salad and melted cheese, a trippy East-West mash up which might just lead to a nap afterwards. Also don’t miss their excellent chai, which is intoxicatingly aromatic, slightly bitter in its astringent tea-ness, and lusciously viscous. It’ll perk you back up after the heavy food and fortify your bones for the wintery windswept wrath of Chicago Avenue.
833 W Chicago Ave. Chicago, IL 60642
Minna’s
Minna’s blipped on the foodie radar last year, likely since they are next door to Morena’s (best fried chicken in Chicago, Dominican style, which made last year’s list.) And the reason why Minna’s is on my 19 list and not my 18 list is because I could never find it in my heart to cheat on Morena when I parked my car at the intersection of Grand and Armitage. But Morena was closed for a few months this year, graduating to bigger digs from her tiny storefront, so I finally checked out Minna’s.
Minna’s lunch counter is a
beckoning sight, wo-manned by a team of several generations of masa makers
patting out tortillas and other goodies “a mano”. The place is always packed
with a cross section of Chicagoans, I’ve had some pretty authentic encounters
with folks at that counter, including a memorable lunch shared with a vegan
biker.
I ate a lot of great antojitos made with fresh masa this year, but Minna’s are the best in class. Golden crispy on the outside, steaming with supple corny richness inside. You can’t go wrong whichever format or topping you choose– piquant chicken tinga stuffed in a crisp gordita, saucy flor de calabaza folded with cheese in a quesadilla, or a veritable salad of nopal cactus topping a plate sized huarache. My favorite though is a simple taco–salty cecina, partially dried, grilled beef adorned with grilled onions and poblano peppers and gilded with an avocado slice, my favorite taco of the year.
5046 W Armitage Ave, Chicago, IL 60639
Bumbu Roux and Thattu at Politan Row
All my favorite foods are brown piles
Okay, about that food hall in the West Loop. On the ground floor of McDonald’s corporate HQ nonetheless (as an aside, RIP to their OG HQ, my favorite Brutalist building on my commute on I-88.) I mistakenly thought Politan Row was operated by the clown and co., but it’s actually a chain of concepts from the south. Anyway, if you look at the offerings at most food halls around town, they all have pretty similar line ups consisting of scaled down versions of established, mostly well funded, and publicized restaurants like Antique Taco, Budlong Chicken, Aloha Poke, Smoque. All of these brands turn out fine product and for downtown day jobbers, I imagine they make for a pretty decent set of lunch options.
However, if you get around much, in many major cities around the world and even as nearby as Richland Center in Chinatown, you’ve experienced a different breed of food court– offering unique, handcrafted, and regional cultural food products. And from an urban economic standpoint, these markets can function as incubators for start up businesses with modest resources. So you have to ask why Chicago doesn’t offer more centralized or visible food markets like this, though if you have any experience with the city’s department of business affairs and the red tape of their licensing and costly fee structuring, you know the answer.
So one of the shiny, fancy
new food halls is doing it right. I have no idea what their rent costs and of
course there’s no getting around the city, but Politan Row has a refreshing
line up of new vendors with concepts you won’t find at other food halls, or
even other stand-alone restaurants around the city. Big flavored cuisines made
largely by people of color representing their respective cultures. My two
favorite vendors are Bumbu Roux and Thattu:
Bumbu Roux is an unorthodox concept from chef Chris Reed, who has run the Rice Table Indonesian pop up dinners for years. Although Chef Reed and I orbit a similar intersection of the art and food worlds (I know his partner from nonprofit art stuff), I still have yet to sample his epic Rijstaffel family-style buffet dinners. So I was pretty stoked when he opened Bumbu Roux, where I can waltz in any old weekday to sample his heady, spicy cooking.
Reed’s biography drives his concept. His father is from New Orleans and he began to sneak Cajun/Creole dishes at the pop ups with the Indonesian fare that he cooks with his Dutch-Indonesian mother. And the menu at Bumbu Roux represents both sides of his family. There’s little in the way of fusion, so to speak, there’s no lemongrass in the gumbo or roux in the rendang. I prefer it that way, leaving it up to the diner to find differences and similarities between the two cuisines and perhaps enjoy an unexpected mouthful of noodles and red beans. It’s pretty exciting having access to two of my favorite cuisines in one transaction, let alone under one roof. The beef rendang was the number one thing I ate this year. Chicago has a dearth of Indonesian food and rendang is one of my favorite curries from anywhere, so just its very existence makes me happy. But this stuff goes beyond– an insanely rich, reduced coconut milk gravy popping with lemongrass, sweet spices, and unrestrained chili heat enveloping fork tender hunks of beef.
I know less personally about the wife/husband chef/owner team behind Thattu (you should just read Sula’s piece.) I do know that I had never sampled the food of Kerala before I tucked into their bowls of rich curries scooped up with the ethereal fermented rice flour based crepes, appam. Of the big year in Indian, my favorite bite was their vegan Kadala Curry (with appam of course). Coconut features prevalent in this food from the tropical southern state of India, so this dal of black chick peas offers a rich and aromatic coconut gravy. The appam also features coconut (milk in this case), which is just one of those foods you can’t help but giggle a little after popping your first bite, light and bubbly texture with a rich mouthfeel. It’s amazing by itself, but like Ethiopian injera bread, all those little air pockets make for a perfect sop with saucy curries.
111 N Aberdeen St, Chicago, IL 60607
Tong’s (and Chengdu Taste)RIP
And speaking of suburban Asian food courts, many favorite bites were had at two of them out in my west suburban stomping grounds. And such is the transitional nature of these places, the two vendors of my favorite snacks unfortunately closed up shop within a year of opening.
International Mall in Westmont is a throwback– 80s food court vibes intact, ground floor of a kind of office mall adjacent to a dusky Chinese grocery. Most notably it was home to the elevated Korean mastery of hanbun (on my ’16 list) whose owners went on to open a refined, proper sit down, Jeong in the old Green Zebra space this year (still haven’t been, sorry Dave & Jen!) Taking their place was Chengdu Taste who served up face meltingly spicy bowls of Sichuan classics with a not-for-the-gringos lunch special. Those in the know (Titus) spotted rare items on their extensive menu like wanza mian, a cousin of dan dan noodles fortified with yellow peas. I thought their noodles were fine (not home made) but the dish that topped my list, which I consider a benchmark of Sichuan cooking, was boiled fish, a volcanic brew of slippery fish filets, glass noodles, and vegetation that cleared the sinuses. But within a few months they were gone.
About 10 miles west off Ogden from the International Mall, is Naperville’s outpost of H-Mart. I’ve always found that their food court kinda sucks. So I was thrilled when I heard that Tong’s, a purveyor of Beijing style street food, had resurfaced after closing up at Chinatown’s Richland Center food court a few years ago. The online food cognoscenti were most hyped for Tong’s jiagbing, a popular street snack of folded crepes, crispy omelet, and condiments, which is a huge hit in foodie scenes like Portland. But not common here and I suspect it’s another case of scarcity preceding hype. I like it fine– texturally interesting, but a pretty plain snack overall. Tong’s dumplings though… At any given time you could spy a team of women rolling and filling them in the back. They were the best I’ve had in Chicagoland– delicate, but chewy skins encasing fresh, juicy, and, aromatic fillings. Tong’s nailed another foodie holy grail– the lattice potsticker. While the pan is hot, a slurry of cornstarch is poured into the negative space around the dumplings, bubbling up and frying crisp into an ethereal web, interlocking the pot stickers. Dramatically beautiful and delicious, Tong’s filled theirs with a popping mix of shrimp and scallions. Unceremoniously, Tong vanished once again sometime over the summer. Avery and I very much miss those dumps. I miss Tong the human too, a beacon of warmth and hospitality, who always put the needs of my kiddo first. I’ve heard rumors there might be a spiffy new food court opening in Chinatown, so fingers crossed for Tong’s third act.
Pa Lian, Wheaton, IL
Burmese food has come up in my year end lists before, but in all due respect, I think its kinda over-hyped by foodies, likely due to its scarcity in the States. In the same breath, I need to acknowledge that, like every non-Western cuisine, Burmese is not here for us. Immigrant owned restaurants serve their communities a taste of home.
But is that enough of a customer base to keep a business open and thriving? That’s a question Pa Lian, now the only Burmese restaurant in Illinois, begs to ask– is there a market for a little-known-to-Western-tastes cuisine in conservative Wheaton, IL of all places?
Obviously, I’m the perfect audience for a place like this, though my global cosmopolitan palate might be a bit of an anomaly in western DuPage county. I love this restaurant and its thoughtful owner Tawk Zalian, who I’ve gotten to know in my semi-monthly visits. Tawk is open about his experience as a refugee in the area. I did not know that there’s a community of 2000+ Burmese refugees settled in Wheaton, who Tawk proudly serves. He’s a member of an immigrant chamber of commerce who has the ear of our recently elected Democrat congressman, Sean Casten (who I am a fan of.) And we share more than politics– Tawk is about my age and has toddlers at home too.
I take Avery out to lunch
about once a month on Tuesdays, both to broaden his palate and refine our table
manners, we call our dates the “Lil Chompers Club”. Pa Lian is one of his
faves, he especially loves the golden fried chick pea “tofu”. Burmese food is
not super spicy, full of noodles (a kiddo staple), but is also texturally
dynamic with bold flavors. His other fave is Kauk Swe Thoke, a room temp noodle
dish, wonderfully creamy from the addition of chick pea flour to the dressing +
crunchy fried bits.
My more grown up favorite dishes include Laphet thoke, the famous tea leaf salad, a symphony of crunchy fried lentils and fresh cabbage, with a funky bass note of fermented tea leaves. And Wetthar pon-ye-gyi chat, a simple curry of jiggly chunks of pork belly in a deeply savory gravy. Burmese food, like its geography, is a crossroads of Southeast Asia– the slow cooked aromatic sauces of Indian food, the noodles and stir fry techniques of Chinese, and the lime dressed salads of Thailand. Yet entirely its own thing.
So is Wheaton ready for this? Chatting with my local
librarian ladies, Pa Lian has been the talk of a Wheaton mom’s Facebook group. Tawk
confirmed that this ladies-who-lunch posse has been driving his business.
Nonetheless, he laments that he needs to connect with a broader customer base.
If you are reading this and inspired to make the 40 minute trek out to Dupage
county, Avery and I will gladly welcome you to Lil Chompers Club on a Tuesday.
I have faith that Tawk will succeed, his food is delicious and approachable, as seemingly exotic as it may seem in the suburban bland-scape. Heck, my three year old loves it. And Tawk is a hospitable human doing his best to make America work for him, while enriching his community.
254 E Geneva Rd, Wheaton, IL 60187
Cool Runnings, Michigan City, IN
This is another fine example of hugely flavored global cuisine that popped up in a place that desperately needed it. My parents have a home in the Michiana area, where I spent most summers of my youth, and continues to be a regular getaway for the fam. The dining scene on both sides of the Michigan/Indiana border has always been rather uninspiring.
Over a fish taco wrap one
summertime lunch at Bridges, a funky riverside dock bar and grill that I am
fond of, across the river I spied unexpected colors for LaPorte County, the
black, green and gold colors of the Jamaican flag. Some disorienting mapping led
us over the Washington Street bridge past the Blue Chip Casino and around the
old Pioneer Lumber Yard to a corner in an old residential neighborhood. And
there was Cool Runnings– bar in front, very laid back patio in back with a
mural of patron saint Bob Marley smiling down on the diners, some Bobo Ashanti
dancehall bumping on the speakers.
Owner and chef Jermaine Miller got his start with an award-winning food truck before landing in his now impeccably chill digs. In my handful of trips, I have not made it past his jerk chicken, which in all honesty might be my favorite chicken preparation (over fried chicken, whaaa?!) And this is the best I’ve had at a restaurant– smoky, juicy, exploding with the aromatic trio of thyme, allspice, and ginger. The sauce is on the thicker side, the way I like it, with the serious Scoville kick of Scotch Bonnet peppers. And the sides, so flavorful and homestyle that they hold up to the huge flavors of the bird. Now there’s proper food to match weekend trips filled with sun and sand.
501 Center St, Michigan City, IN 46360
Bitter Ends, Pittsburgh, PA
Our besties moved to Pittsburgh, so now we go to Pittsburgh, which we’ve found to be a lovely, under-rated town. While I ate my way across the city on my first trip there a few years ago (which I recount on my 2016 best list), now we mostly hunker down for QT with Elizabeth and Brian (& hi baby Abe, haven’t met you yet!) in their stately Victorian. This spring, Elizabeth turned us on to this gem of a diner on rollicking Liberty Ave. in the charming Bloomfield neighborhood, which is now a must stop.
There’s been a turn back
toward a style of California cuisine with roots undoubtedly in 1960s & 70s
coops and Bay Area slow food, that was in full bloom in the 90s– hippie
crunchy, health food-store-y, veggie-forward eating that has recently been
championed by pretentiously hip eateries like LA’s Squirl (or Cellar Door
Provisions locally.) I find this style eating a bit precious, its like stuff I
whip up at home for breakfast on the cheap, but with tweezed-out microgreens
for Instagram.
One thing I like about these
places is that they’ve brought bread back (take that gluten intolerance!),
which is the bedrock of Bitter Ends’ chow. The menu consists of a tight
selection of sandwiches and toasts, built on naturally leavened house baked
sourdough featuring seasonal produce grown on the café’s own farm outside of
town. Its simple eating that clearly has a big audience of folks lining up for
it each day.
The vibes are what get me though. It’s a shoebox sized lunch counter, every square inch optimized for storage, bread cooling on racks folded down from the ceiling overhead. The décor is tidy and carefully curated, decked in a 90s thrifted aesthetic. Its kinda just like the dearly departed Leo’s Lunchroom, that hipster greasy spoon that anchored and nourished Wicker Park back when it was still cool. The vibe is also not far off from the hippy punk look of the Ox-Bow kitchen when I first landed there in 1998, all granny dresses and patchouli. The staff looks the part, art school scruff but all smiles and bleary eyes in the morning. And since it’s Pittsburgh, Girl Talk blasting on the stereo. A throwback to simpler times, long live the punk diner!
4613 Liberty Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15224
Honorable mention- Gnarly Knots, Winfield, IL
Five years into living in a tiny village on the outskirts of the Western burbs, I’m ready to declare Gnarly Knots the best place to eat in town. A mostly to-go operation in a little shack, Avery and I love it in the warm months since its walking distance from the house and you can take your scratch-made giant soft pretzels out back to enjoy with the yellowjackets at a picnic table.
Seriously though, what a genius concept for the burbs, who doesn’t love soft pretzels! They’re only open five hours a day and there is a perpetual line (that thankfully moves at a brisk clip.) It’s better than it has to be, everything is made in house, including decent to good soups, a stable of topped pretzels both savory and sweet, and a fatty Vienna frank stuffed in a tubular pretzel. Every day they also offer special stuffed pretzels often filled with ostentatious things like mac and cheese and Italian beef. The latter is really good, which may seem strange coming from me, who stubbornly tracks the authenticity of this native sacred cow. The beef is legit– tender and juicy, giardiniera and extra jus are served on the side. Bulging from the bottom arch of a perfect crunchy/soft teddy bear brown pretzel.
Food 2019
I’m going to focus on restaurants this year– I ate a lot of good stuff around Chicago, the burbs, and out of town. As for cooking exploits, I feel like I’ve shared plenty on other media throughout the year– food porn from the catering kitchen over on the ‘gram + if you’re looking for recipes, the cookbook I compiled for Ox-Bow, which has been almost a decade in the making, was finally released!
If I had to track trends, an immediate one of the past few years would be the expanded field of “food halls”, which should seem up my alley as a child of 80s mall food courts. Three opened in the West Loop alone (and hey, I like one of them, more on that below.) But more often, you’ll find me haunting old school food courts adjacent to suburban Asian grocery stores or the subterranean mall in China town, more on that below too.
What a time to be alive if you like Asian food. Finally there’s great Indonesian and Burmese, and ever expanding regional Chinese (+ In-on Thai is back!) And a new generation of Asian-American chefs and restaurateurs is opening places outside of historical cultural neighborhood enclaves. Two great examples opened recently in my old neighborhood. Phodega on Ashland just south of North, an appropriately diminutive storefront amusingly dressed up like a corner store you might find on, well, Argyle street is slinging, for sure, the best bowl of pho south of Argyle, if not one of the best in town. And Lao Peng You in a serene space on Chicago Ave at Damen is serving lovingly scratch made Northern Chinese dumplings and noodles, rarities even for Chinatown.
Another spot I loved this year (though only got to once, so I didn’t feel like I could comprehensibly represent on the list) is Hermosa Restaurant, a media favorite of the past few months. Run by the talented and humble Ethan Lim, who comes from a family of Asian American restaurateurs, this modest sandwich counter presents as a hot dog and Italian beef spot. But pick up the paper menu and you’ll discover a set of sandwiches featuring Southeast Asian flavors including scarce-in-Chicago Cambodian preparations like prakoh khtiss, fermented mudfish paste with pork. These sandwiches have explosive flavors that don’t shy away from funk or heat. Chef Lim’s was, for sure, the best chicken sandwich I ate this year (though I do think Popeyes’ is a good deal at $3.99)
Indian food seems to finally be having its moment in Chicago, with a handful of high profile openings ranging in concept and price point. I’ll go more in depth into my favorite of these new options below, but would like to give a nod to Superkhana International in Logan Square. Lots of people I like have their hand in this place and the playful, colorful lounge-feel of the space is worth a trip. I especially love the huge mural presiding over the bar painted by my favorite Indian American painter, Kaveri Raina. I thought the chow was great too especially the blistered bread on the butter chicken calzone. Though I wouldn’t exactly call it Indian food– more in line with the kind of casual, globally riffing, ingredient forward grub found around that neighborhood.
Mostly, if you know me, I’m always on the hunt for mom-and-pop, hole in the wall type joints. And you gotta leave the West Loop and Logan Square to find the good stuff sometimes, so buckle up as we head to Belmont-Craigin, Wheaton, and Michigan City.
Egg-O-Holic
In the year of Indian openings, this one was my fave. I had encountered an ersatz hard boiled egg half in a biryani before, but who knew about this entire cuisine of egg-focused late night street food from Gujarat? This second outpost (the OG is in Schaumburg) on Chicago Ave, not far from a cropping of cabbie Indo-Pak places, slings an overwhelming array of ovular curries, rice, omelets, wraps, and sandwiches. And the eggs themselves take many forms in the dishes, boiled and shredded, fried, scrambled, poached into sauces, etc.
As the name implies, this is drinking food, meant to sop up the sauce at the end of a bender. This is heavy-duty stuff, both spice and calorie-wise. Which also makes it ideal winter food– surti gotalo is a shakshuk-ian dish of jiggling sunny sides in a volcanic garlicky tomato gravy, perfectly delivered hand to mouth with flaky roti bread. The queso-esque lachko eats like a dip of sorts– a smooth blend of mild green chilies, cheese, and eggs. Green egg rice is another fave, rice fried with a garden’s worth of verdant herbs including mint and curry leaves. And don’t sleep on the “Anda” sandwiches, double decker club sandwiches with curried egg salad and melted cheese, a trippy East-West mash up which might just lead to a nap afterwards. Also don’t miss their excellent chai, which is intoxicatingly aromatic, slightly bitter in its astringent tea-ness, and lusciously viscous. It’ll perk you back up after the heavy food and fortify your bones for the wintery windswept wrath of Chicago Avenue.
833 W Chicago Ave. Chicago, IL 60642
Minna’s
Minna’s blipped on the foodie radar last year, likely since they are next door to Morena’s (best fried chicken in Chicago, Dominican style, which made last year’s list.) And the reason why Minna’s is on my 19 list and not my 18 list is because I could never find it in my heart to cheat on Morena when I parked my car at the intersection of Grand and Armitage. But Morena was closed for a few months this year, graduating to bigger digs from her tiny storefront, so I finally checked out Minna’s.
Minna’s lunch counter is a beckoning sight, wo-manned by a team of several generations of masa makers patting out tortillas and other goodies “a mano”. The place is always packed with a cross section of Chicagoans, I’ve had some pretty authentic encounters with folks at that counter, including a memorable lunch shared with a vegan biker.
I ate a lot of great antojitos made with fresh masa this year, but Minna’s are the best in class. Golden crispy on the outside, steaming with supple corny richness inside. You can’t go wrong whichever format or topping you choose– piquant chicken tinga stuffed in a crisp gordita, saucy flor de calabaza folded with cheese in a quesadilla, or a veritable salad of nopal cactus topping a plate sized huarache. My favorite though is a simple taco–salty cecina, partially dried, grilled beef adorned with grilled onions and poblano peppers and gilded with an avocado slice, my favorite taco of the year.
5046 W Armitage Ave, Chicago, IL 60639
Bumbu Roux and Thattu at Politan Row
Okay, about that food hall in the West Loop. On the ground floor of McDonald’s corporate HQ nonetheless (as an aside, RIP to their OG HQ, my favorite Brutalist building on my commute on I-88.) I mistakenly thought Politan Row was operated by the clown and co., but it’s actually a chain of concepts from the south. Anyway, if you look at the offerings at most food halls around town, they all have pretty similar line ups consisting of scaled down versions of established, mostly well funded, and publicized restaurants like Antique Taco, Budlong Chicken, Aloha Poke, Smoque. All of these brands turn out fine product and for downtown day jobbers, I imagine they make for a pretty decent set of lunch options.
However, if you get around much, in many major cities around the world and even as nearby as Richland Center in Chinatown, you’ve experienced a different breed of food court– offering unique, handcrafted, and regional cultural food products. And from an urban economic standpoint, these markets can function as incubators for start up businesses with modest resources. So you have to ask why Chicago doesn’t offer more centralized or visible food markets like this, though if you have any experience with the city’s department of business affairs and the red tape of their licensing and costly fee structuring, you know the answer.
So one of the shiny, fancy new food halls is doing it right. I have no idea what their rent costs and of course there’s no getting around the city, but Politan Row has a refreshing line up of new vendors with concepts you won’t find at other food halls, or even other stand-alone restaurants around the city. Big flavored cuisines made largely by people of color representing their respective cultures. My two favorite vendors are Bumbu Roux and Thattu:
Bumbu Roux is an unorthodox concept from chef Chris Reed, who has run the Rice Table Indonesian pop up dinners for years. Although Chef Reed and I orbit a similar intersection of the art and food worlds (I know his partner from nonprofit art stuff), I still have yet to sample his epic Rijstaffel family-style buffet dinners. So I was pretty stoked when he opened Bumbu Roux, where I can waltz in any old weekday to sample his heady, spicy cooking.
Reed’s biography drives his concept. His father is from New Orleans and he began to sneak Cajun/Creole dishes at the pop ups with the Indonesian fare that he cooks with his Dutch-Indonesian mother. And the menu at Bumbu Roux represents both sides of his family. There’s little in the way of fusion, so to speak, there’s no lemongrass in the gumbo or roux in the rendang. I prefer it that way, leaving it up to the diner to find differences and similarities between the two cuisines and perhaps enjoy an unexpected mouthful of noodles and red beans. It’s pretty exciting having access to two of my favorite cuisines in one transaction, let alone under one roof. The beef rendang was the number one thing I ate this year. Chicago has a dearth of Indonesian food and rendang is one of my favorite curries from anywhere, so just its very existence makes me happy. But this stuff goes beyond– an insanely rich, reduced coconut milk gravy popping with lemongrass, sweet spices, and unrestrained chili heat enveloping fork tender hunks of beef.
I know less personally about the wife/husband chef/owner team behind Thattu (you should just read Sula’s piece.) I do know that I had never sampled the food of Kerala before I tucked into their bowls of rich curries scooped up with the ethereal fermented rice flour based crepes, appam. Of the big year in Indian, my favorite bite was their vegan Kadala Curry (with appam of course). Coconut features prevalent in this food from the tropical southern state of India, so this dal of black chick peas offers a rich and aromatic coconut gravy. The appam also features coconut (milk in this case), which is just one of those foods you can’t help but giggle a little after popping your first bite, light and bubbly texture with a rich mouthfeel. It’s amazing by itself, but like Ethiopian injera bread, all those little air pockets make for a perfect sop with saucy curries.
111 N Aberdeen St, Chicago, IL 60607
Tong’s (and Chengdu Taste) RIP
And speaking of suburban Asian food courts, many favorite bites were had at two of them out in my west suburban stomping grounds. And such is the transitional nature of these places, the two vendors of my favorite snacks unfortunately closed up shop within a year of opening.
International Mall in Westmont is a throwback– 80s food court vibes intact, ground floor of a kind of office mall adjacent to a dusky Chinese grocery. Most notably it was home to the elevated Korean mastery of hanbun (on my ’16 list) whose owners went on to open a refined, proper sit down, Jeong in the old Green Zebra space this year (still haven’t been, sorry Dave & Jen!) Taking their place was Chengdu Taste who served up face meltingly spicy bowls of Sichuan classics with a not-for-the-gringos lunch special. Those in the know (Titus) spotted rare items on their extensive menu like wanza mian, a cousin of dan dan noodles fortified with yellow peas. I thought their noodles were fine (not home made) but the dish that topped my list, which I consider a benchmark of Sichuan cooking, was boiled fish, a volcanic brew of slippery fish filets, glass noodles, and vegetation that cleared the sinuses. But within a few months they were gone.
About 10 miles west off Ogden from the International Mall, is Naperville’s outpost of H-Mart. I’ve always found that their food court kinda sucks. So I was thrilled when I heard that Tong’s, a purveyor of Beijing style street food, had resurfaced after closing up at Chinatown’s Richland Center food court a few years ago. The online food cognoscenti were most hyped for Tong’s jiagbing, a popular street snack of folded crepes, crispy omelet, and condiments, which is a huge hit in foodie scenes like Portland. But not common here and I suspect it’s another case of scarcity preceding hype. I like it fine– texturally interesting, but a pretty plain snack overall. Tong’s dumplings though… At any given time you could spy a team of women rolling and filling them in the back. They were the best I’ve had in Chicagoland– delicate, but chewy skins encasing fresh, juicy, and, aromatic fillings. Tong’s nailed another foodie holy grail– the lattice potsticker. While the pan is hot, a slurry of cornstarch is poured into the negative space around the dumplings, bubbling up and frying crisp into an ethereal web, interlocking the pot stickers. Dramatically beautiful and delicious, Tong’s filled theirs with a popping mix of shrimp and scallions. Unceremoniously, Tong vanished once again sometime over the summer. Avery and I very much miss those dumps. I miss Tong the human too, a beacon of warmth and hospitality, who always put the needs of my kiddo first. I’ve heard rumors there might be a spiffy new food court opening in Chinatown, so fingers crossed for Tong’s third act.
Pa Lian, Wheaton, IL
Burmese food has come up in my year end lists before, but in all due respect, I think its kinda over-hyped by foodies, likely due to its scarcity in the States. In the same breath, I need to acknowledge that, like every non-Western cuisine, Burmese is not here for us. Immigrant owned restaurants serve their communities a taste of home.
But is that enough of a customer base to keep a business open and thriving? That’s a question Pa Lian, now the only Burmese restaurant in Illinois, begs to ask– is there a market for a little-known-to-Western-tastes cuisine in conservative Wheaton, IL of all places?
Obviously, I’m the perfect audience for a place like this, though my global cosmopolitan palate might be a bit of an anomaly in western DuPage county. I love this restaurant and its thoughtful owner Tawk Zalian, who I’ve gotten to know in my semi-monthly visits. Tawk is open about his experience as a refugee in the area. I did not know that there’s a community of 2000+ Burmese refugees settled in Wheaton, who Tawk proudly serves. He’s a member of an immigrant chamber of commerce who has the ear of our recently elected Democrat congressman, Sean Casten (who I am a fan of.) And we share more than politics– Tawk is about my age and has toddlers at home too.
I take Avery out to lunch about once a month on Tuesdays, both to broaden his palate and refine our table manners, we call our dates the “Lil Chompers Club”. Pa Lian is one of his faves, he especially loves the golden fried chick pea “tofu”. Burmese food is not super spicy, full of noodles (a kiddo staple), but is also texturally dynamic with bold flavors. His other fave is Kauk Swe Thoke, a room temp noodle dish, wonderfully creamy from the addition of chick pea flour to the dressing + crunchy fried bits.
My more grown up favorite dishes include Laphet thoke, the famous tea leaf salad, a symphony of crunchy fried lentils and fresh cabbage, with a funky bass note of fermented tea leaves. And Wetthar pon-ye-gyi chat, a simple curry of jiggly chunks of pork belly in a deeply savory gravy. Burmese food, like its geography, is a crossroads of Southeast Asia– the slow cooked aromatic sauces of Indian food, the noodles and stir fry techniques of Chinese, and the lime dressed salads of Thailand. Yet entirely its own thing.
So is Wheaton ready for this? Chatting with my local librarian ladies, Pa Lian has been the talk of a Wheaton mom’s Facebook group. Tawk confirmed that this ladies-who-lunch posse has been driving his business. Nonetheless, he laments that he needs to connect with a broader customer base. If you are reading this and inspired to make the 40 minute trek out to Dupage county, Avery and I will gladly welcome you to Lil Chompers Club on a Tuesday.
I have faith that Tawk will succeed, his food is delicious and approachable, as seemingly exotic as it may seem in the suburban bland-scape. Heck, my three year old loves it. And Tawk is a hospitable human doing his best to make America work for him, while enriching his community.
254 E Geneva Rd, Wheaton, IL 60187
Cool Runnings, Michigan City, IN
This is another fine example of hugely flavored global cuisine that popped up in a place that desperately needed it. My parents have a home in the Michiana area, where I spent most summers of my youth, and continues to be a regular getaway for the fam. The dining scene on both sides of the Michigan/Indiana border has always been rather uninspiring.
Over a fish taco wrap one summertime lunch at Bridges, a funky riverside dock bar and grill that I am fond of, across the river I spied unexpected colors for LaPorte County, the black, green and gold colors of the Jamaican flag. Some disorienting mapping led us over the Washington Street bridge past the Blue Chip Casino and around the old Pioneer Lumber Yard to a corner in an old residential neighborhood. And there was Cool Runnings– bar in front, very laid back patio in back with a mural of patron saint Bob Marley smiling down on the diners, some Bobo Ashanti dancehall bumping on the speakers.
Owner and chef Jermaine Miller got his start with an award-winning food truck before landing in his now impeccably chill digs. In my handful of trips, I have not made it past his jerk chicken, which in all honesty might be my favorite chicken preparation (over fried chicken, whaaa?!) And this is the best I’ve had at a restaurant– smoky, juicy, exploding with the aromatic trio of thyme, allspice, and ginger. The sauce is on the thicker side, the way I like it, with the serious Scoville kick of Scotch Bonnet peppers. And the sides, so flavorful and homestyle that they hold up to the huge flavors of the bird. Now there’s proper food to match weekend trips filled with sun and sand.
501 Center St, Michigan City, IN 46360
Bitter Ends, Pittsburgh, PA
Our besties moved to Pittsburgh, so now we go to Pittsburgh, which we’ve found to be a lovely, under-rated town. While I ate my way across the city on my first trip there a few years ago (which I recount on my 2016 best list), now we mostly hunker down for QT with Elizabeth and Brian (& hi baby Abe, haven’t met you yet!) in their stately Victorian. This spring, Elizabeth turned us on to this gem of a diner on rollicking Liberty Ave. in the charming Bloomfield neighborhood, which is now a must stop.
There’s been a turn back toward a style of California cuisine with roots undoubtedly in 1960s & 70s coops and Bay Area slow food, that was in full bloom in the 90s– hippie crunchy, health food-store-y, veggie-forward eating that has recently been championed by pretentiously hip eateries like LA’s Squirl (or Cellar Door Provisions locally.) I find this style eating a bit precious, its like stuff I whip up at home for breakfast on the cheap, but with tweezed-out microgreens for Instagram.
One thing I like about these places is that they’ve brought bread back (take that gluten intolerance!), which is the bedrock of Bitter Ends’ chow. The menu consists of a tight selection of sandwiches and toasts, built on naturally leavened house baked sourdough featuring seasonal produce grown on the café’s own farm outside of town. Its simple eating that clearly has a big audience of folks lining up for it each day.
The vibes are what get me though. It’s a shoebox sized lunch counter, every square inch optimized for storage, bread cooling on racks folded down from the ceiling overhead. The décor is tidy and carefully curated, decked in a 90s thrifted aesthetic. Its kinda just like the dearly departed Leo’s Lunchroom, that hipster greasy spoon that anchored and nourished Wicker Park back when it was still cool. The vibe is also not far off from the hippy punk look of the Ox-Bow kitchen when I first landed there in 1998, all granny dresses and patchouli. The staff looks the part, art school scruff but all smiles and bleary eyes in the morning. And since it’s Pittsburgh, Girl Talk blasting on the stereo. A throwback to simpler times, long live the punk diner!
4613 Liberty Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15224
Honorable mention- Gnarly Knots, Winfield, IL
Five years into living in a tiny village on the outskirts of the Western burbs, I’m ready to declare Gnarly Knots the best place to eat in town. A mostly to-go operation in a little shack, Avery and I love it in the warm months since its walking distance from the house and you can take your scratch-made giant soft pretzels out back to enjoy with the yellowjackets at a picnic table.
Seriously though, what a genius concept for the burbs, who doesn’t love soft pretzels! They’re only open five hours a day and there is a perpetual line (that thankfully moves at a brisk clip.) It’s better than it has to be, everything is made in house, including decent to good soups, a stable of topped pretzels both savory and sweet, and a fatty Vienna frank stuffed in a tubular pretzel. Every day they also offer special stuffed pretzels often filled with ostentatious things like mac and cheese and Italian beef. The latter is really good, which may seem strange coming from me, who stubbornly tracks the authenticity of this native sacred cow. The beef is legit– tender and juicy, giardiniera and extra jus are served on the side. Bulging from the bottom arch of a perfect crunchy/soft teddy bear brown pretzel.
27W570 High Lake Rd, Winfield, IL 60190