Chicago, Day 1

(August 11th, 2012)  I'm tempted to just throw the entire trip to Chicago into one, long post...but I shudder at the thought of what having so many pictures in the post writing software would do...So, I'll keep to my usual practice of going a day at a time.

My trip to Chicago, work aside, was all about the food.  I didn't spend much time in advance, but more than enough to identify a handful of James Beard Award winning restaurants that I had to try.  Unfortunately, there was no way that I was getting into Alinea, much less affording it if I did manage to get a ticket (they sell tickets instead of reservations, so you pay up front and have no money exchange hands in the restaurant itself...).  Instead, I came up with some pretty good alternatives.

The first stop was the North Pond Restaurant.  My colleague, Mike Starr, joined me for this one, and it proved to be the most expensive meal of his life.  And it was somewhere close to that for me too...but worth every penny.  Admittedly, since we were there together, we probably splurged a little bit...but that's beside the point.

Pork terrine.

To start, the chef sent us a pork terrine.  I always like those little touches at a restaurant...some small, but fancy dish sent out from the kitchen as a gift from the chef.  Although, since Mike is a vegetarian (technically a piscetarian, but we won't be nit-picky here), it ended up not being that small for me as I got to finish his off too.  Terrines are always a little strange...that cold gelatinous texture doesn't necessarily do anything for me...but the flavors, mmmm, the flavors of this dish were just fine.

Farm Egg, Beans.

You may think the captions I'm giving these photos to be a bit odd...well, the North Pond actually called each dish this way, so these are straight from the menu.  It's as if they're introducing two ingredients....Farm Egg, meat Beans.  Beans, meet Farm Egg.  In a way, that's precisely what they are doing...Mike's salad, for lack of a better description, was the afore mentioned beans with a soft-boiled farm egg, spin rossa polenta, green beans, cherry tomatoes, french fingerlings, and herb emulsion.  I can't comment too much on how it was, other than that I was lucky to take a picture of it as it was gone by the next time that I looked up.

Squid, Zucchini.

Next up, my appetizer...squid and zucchini, with squid ink farro, pickled onions, carrots,and a few other things.  Have I mentioned before how much I like farro?  I think I have, but I just thought I'd mention it again.  It took me a long while, but I eventually managed to find some farro in Albuquerque right before I left...so I can only dream of the fun that I will have with it when I get back home.  As for this inky farro...c'est magnifique.  The squid was really good too.

Alaskan Halibut, Summer Squash.

Slightly out of order, but that's okay.  For my main course I had the summer squash with slow-roasted Alaskan halibut filet, citrus butter, green zucchini “pasta”, shrimp mousseline-stuffed cadeau, gold coulis, basil.  I'm not sure what half of the ingredients I just wrote are, but it was good.  I've had zucchini pasta a few times now.  Interesting...it's like a very fresh spaghetti, but with a distinctly vegetable flavor.  After all, it's is long strands of zucchini...Mike and I both agreed that the halibut was the better of the two fishes we ordered for main courses.

Salmon, Grilled Peach.

Mike, being a vegetarian that's recently started experimenting with eating fish again, still complains that fish tastes "fishy."  I suppose it's something of an acquired taste when you're not sued to it.  Mike's main course, though, was actually pretty good...salmon, grilled peach, pesto aoli, and succatash.  No pancenta in the succatash, but still good.

Desserts.

And, of course, dessert.  This is where I got into a bit of trouble.  We all know the phrase "curiosity killed the cat."  Well, this evening I ordered out of a morbid curiosity.  I knew it wasn't going to turn out well, but I couldn't stop myself...It really was a slow motion train wreck as seen in the movies, but I digress...On the left we have Mike's perfectly normal and good dessert: nectarine, mint with roasted nectarine, cucumber-mint sorbets; noyaux ice cream; macarons, nectarines, streusel.  Very good actually.  Too bad he wouldn't share as much as I would've liked!  But Mike is somewhat similar to my sister...if he orders something, he doesn't necessarily want to share...

My dessert, on the right, was a different story.  This was the chef's version of a BLT for dessert.  And I knew that before ordering it.  The hostess did a very good job of selling the dessert as something that sounds weird, but is actually really, really, good.  After trying it, I'm not sold on that thought, but it was very creative and interesting...tomato, chèvre  with goat cheese-white chocolate cream, vanilla, heirloom tomato sorbet, bacon, arugula, toasted brioche.  Of all those ingredients...the one that just didn't work was the tomato sorbet.  It would have been a wonderful appetizer, but as a dessert, it was like a cold tomato soup...the dollops of bacon, on the other hand, were surprisingly good!

That, and two bus rides back to the hotel, is how the night came to a close.

Soon I'll be only about a month behind (once I finish Chicago I think?), and then we'll start getting back into interesting narratives instead of short descriptions as I play catch up.