Category — Dining

Yesterday I dined at Big Star for lunch. Big Star is a relatively new fast casual Mexican hot spot in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood (1531 N. Damen). It’s owned and operated by a group of Chicago restauranteurs (including Paul Kahan of Avec, Blackbird, and The Publican). Big Star is inside of an old gas station, still complete with large, metal garage doors. Inside is a wrap-around bar, stocking plenty of high end beer, whiskey, and tequila, with stools and booths surrounding. There’s also a quick service window where customers can walk up and order food to go. What kind of food does Big Star serve you ask? Tacos and tostadas.

The menu is very limited, and also deceivingly cheap at first. Available are a variety of tacos and tostadas with lamb, pork belly, fish, and chicken and topped with anything from pineapple to radishes. Each of the tacos and tostadas are priced at $4 or less, however they are quite small. I would suggest ordering at least 3-4 items, which can put your total well over $15/person, not including beer or cocktails. The food is quite good however. I had both chicken and pork belly tacos as well as a mouthwatering fish tostada. Our group also ordered the Queso Fundito, a small casserole dish of bubbling cheese, roasted poblanos, and chorizo served with warm tortillas.

Big Star is ideologically similar to Urban Belly (Big name chef opens small, fast casual dining spot), although I think the food at Urban Belly is far more unique and mind-blowing. Nevertheless, Big Star is an eclectic place to grab a quick taco and a beer. Although I have yet to go in the late evening, I imagine they get extremely busy as they transition from restaurant to full-on bar.

Big Star, 1531 N. Damen Ave, Chicago, IL, 60622. Opens at 11:30 AM everyday.
Big Star does not have an official website, but they do have a blog!

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Urban Bellyis a noodle and dumpling restaurant in the Chicago neighborhood of Avondale. Chef Bill Kim, of fine dining fame at Le Lan, Charlie Trotter’s, and Trio, among others, opened this counter-service gem tucked inside of a small strip-mall near Belmont and California Ave (3053 N. California Ave.). The restaurant offers a well-balanced menu of noodles and dumplings of Korean inspiration. Each day, Urban Belly offers seasonal kimchi and a dumpling special. The dumplings are well worth the visit and feature all sorts of flavors and ingredients, from lamb and brandy to foie gras. The noodles are spectacular as well. I suggest the rice noodles with hominy, kimchi, and spicy pork broth. The noodles have a delightfully glutinous texture and are perfect with the spicy broth.

Urban Belly is a counter service restaurant. After ordering you can sit at one of four long tables in the small and minimalist dining room. Instead of chairs Urban Belly has short stools made of old Chinese Elmwood. Eating at Urban Belly on a busy night is a surprisingly enjoyable communal experience, as complete strangers interact around the long dining tables. Urban Belly is B.Y.O.B. Although the menu is pricier than most other counter service restaurants, the quality of food and atmosphere at Urban Belly justifies the price tag. If you live in Chicago, or are planning to visit soon, put Urban Belly on your list of places to eat!

Bill Kim also recently opened Belly Shack in Chicago’s Bucktown neighborhood, another counter service restaurant offering his unique takes on a myriad of street foods of Asian and Latin-American inspiration.

Shrimp Udon at Urban Belly in Chicago

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My contribution to Foodbuzz’s January “24, 24, 24″ blog marathon is “A Steakhouse Dinner: Reloaded.” I selected four traditional steakhouse dishes and decided to update them with 21st century cooking and presentation techniques. Five dined at my apartment last night including myself, my brother Justin and his wife Val, and our friend Mike and his girlfriend Annie. Justin and Mike brought their cameras and shooting equipment and took the fantastic photographs.

I cooked our main course, filet mignon, using a modern cooking technique called sous vide. French for “under pressure,” sous vide involves cooking foods vacuum sealed in platic in a water bath heated to a very specific temperature. This technique is used in some of the world’s top restaurants and is normally very expensive. Read on to discover an easy and inexpensive method of cooking sous vide at home. Here’s the menu:

This is a shrimp cocktail that’s your appetizer and cocktail in one. It’s a horseradish bloodymary served with shrimp. The glass is rimmed with a mix of lemon zest, horseradish, and salt. Traditional bloody mary ingredients include tomato juice, lemon juice, Tabasco sauce, worcestershire sauce, and horseradish. These are also the major flavors of cocktail sauce, so the shrimp pairs very well with this bold cocktail.

Justin drinking his shrimp cocktail

This is a version of the classic iceburg wedge salad. The lasagna style presentation makes it more fun and easier to eat. Just like the classic, this is a knife and fork salad. It’s also extremely easy to make. Here’s a recipe for 5 servings:

Chophouse Salad “Lasagna:”

• 4 oz. red onions, finely sliced (about ½ an onion)
• 1 Tb. champagne vinegar
• 1 Tb. olive oil
• 2 heads iceburg lettuce
• 1/2 lb. bacon, diced and cooked
• 6 hard boiled eggs, diced
• 5 Roma tomatoes, diced
• 1/2 c. bleu cheese dressing
• Salt and Pepper TT

Season the onions and toss with oil and vinegar. Refrigerate and allow to marinate for 2 hours. Gently remove the iceburg lettuce leaves and, using a 3½'’ circular cutter, cut at least 25 lettuce rounds. Use the remaining lettuce for salad the next day. Place the same circular cutter in the center of the plate. Place a layer of lettuce in the mold and gently spread about 1 Tb. of onion on the lettuce. Top with another round of lettuce and repeat with the bacon, eggs, and tomatoes, making sure to create a neat, even layer. Top with lettuce and gently lift the mold. Drizzle with bleu cheese dressing. Garnish with the filling and a grinding of black pepper.

For the main course I prepared a filet mignon with bordelaise sauce. It’s served with mashed potatoes, pommes maxim, and sauteed vegetables. At first glance this looks very traditional but I used a cutting edge cooking technique called sous vide. Foods cooked sous vide are sealed in plastic and cooked at a very specific temperature for anywhere from a few minutes to a few days, depending on the food. The major advantages of sous vide are three fold:

To successfully cook sous vide at home you’ll need three things: A vacuum sealer or ziploc bags, a large stock pot, and a digital probe thermometer. Simply season your food, seal it in a plastic bag (or push as much air out of a ziploc bag as you can) along with any other aromatics. In this case I sealed the filet mignon with fresh garlic and a sprig of thyme. Place the sealed food in the largest pot you have and fill to the brim with water. Insert the digital probe thermometer into the water and slowly heat to the desired temperature. When the temperature is reached, cover the pot, turn off the heat, and monitor the temperature. A large pot should hold the temperature very well, so you may only need to adjust once or twice. I cooked these steaks to 135° F for about 2 hours for a perfectly rare steak. After the steaks were cooked, I removed them from the bags, and seared them very quickly in clarified butter. The result is a steak cooked perfectly throughout with the beautiful caramelized crust achieved from sauteing or grilling.

Cooking sous vide at home. Click for a larger collage.

I served the filet mignon with mashed potatoes and a mix of sautéed vegetables. The turnips and carrots I cooked sous vide and the brussel sprouts I blanched in boiling, salted water (cooking green vegetables sous vide turns them brown). The potato garnish is Pommes Maxim, a crisp of potatoes cooked in clarified butter, and the sauce is sauce bordelaise, a traditional french sauce flavored with shallots, red wine, and a veal demi glace.

The grand finale was a modern take on bananas foster. Using a stainless steel pyramid mold I froze vanilla ice cream in a shell of pureed bananas. I served it with some caramel-bourbon sauce, a bruléed banana, and a pulled sugar garnish. I drizzled the entire plate with a bit of bourbon and flambéed it right on the plate. The flames softened the frozen bananas and provided the hot/cold contrast of traditional bananas foster. Here’s a recipe for 5 servings

Banana and Vanilla Ice Cream Pyramid:

• 5 bananas
• Pinch salt
• 5 oz. heavy cream
• 2 vitamin C tablets, crushed into a fine powder
• 10 Tb. vanilla ice cream

Combine the bananas, salt, heavy cream, and vitamin C in a blender. Blend on high for 1 minute or until smooth. The vitamin C will prevent the banana from oxidizing, just as lemon juice would. Fill 5 pyramid molds to the brim with banana puree. Freeze for 2 hours, or until slightly firm. Using a paring knife, remove some banana puree from the pyramid mold, forming a 1/4 inch shell of frozen banana. Continue to freeze the shell for 1 more hour. Reserve the remaining banana puree. Soften the vanilla ice cream and fill the pyramid shell with 2 Tb. of ice cream. Fill any open space with the remaining banana puree. Hold in the freezer until you’re ready to use.

Caramel Bourbon Drizzle:

• 6 oz. heavy cream
• 3.5 oz. sugar
• 2.5 oz. corny syrup
• 1 oz. bourbon
• 1 oz whole butter, cubed

Scald the cream in a small saucepan and keep warm. Combine sugar and corn syrup and cook over medium flame until slighty brown. Carefully add bourbon, butter and cream, stirring gently, to dissolve. Cool to room temperature.

To Assemble:

• 1 banana
• 2 Tb. sugar
• Banana pyramids
• Caramel bourbon drizzle
• 5 oz. bourbon

Peel the banana and slice on a bias into five pieces. Coat 1 cut end with a bit of sugar and brulée with a torch. Drizzle the plate with caramel-bourbon sauce, place a pyramid and the bruleed banana on the plate. The pyramid will un-mold easily. if you dip it in hot water or warm the outside with a torch. Top with bourbon and light in front of the diner.

Setting the bananas foster alight

Photos by Justin Kern and Mike Boehmer.

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This week I packed up a carload of tools and ingredients and headed to my parents house in the Chicago suburbs. Here’s what I whipped up:

Fall Hors D’oeuvres
Left to Right: Honeycrisp apple, carraway pudding, bacon. Beet, honeyed goat cheese, dill. Poached pear, bleu cheese mousse, walnut brittle.

Rye bread spoons, smoked salmon, dill cream cheese

My finalized cranberry shooter. The orb in the middle is fresh squeezed cranberry juice encased in ginger flavored cocoa butter. It’s floating in a pool of sweetened orange juice. Take the whole thing at once and the orb shatters, mixing the sweet and tart in your mouth. The flavor of ginger comes last. This is an adaptation of a recipe from the Alinea Cookbook.

Roasted chestnut stuffing, dried michigan cherries

Thanksgiving turkey. Rubbed with lemon butter with fresh sage under the skin.

I will post a few of these recipes in the near future. Email me if you would like any recipes. Photos by Justin Kern.

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This past Monday I ate at Kuma’s Corner, a heavy metal themed burger bar in Iriving Park.  I went with my brother and his wife to celebrate my birthday.  Kuma’s Corner is definitely a unique restaurant, with drawings of half naked, leather-clad women on the walls, kung foo movies on the HDTV, and “Die Emo Die!” written on the chalkboard.  It was packed: a 1 hour wait on a Monday night!  The food was excellent though.  The menu is mostly burgers and each is either named after a metal band, like the Metallica, Pantera, and Mastodon burgers, or has a metal name, like the Plague Bringer, Lair of the Minotaur, or Goblin Cock (a hot dog covered in neon green relish.  I ordered the Mastodon, which was a 10 oz. burger with cheddar cheese, bacon, BBQ sauce, and a giant mound of fried onions.  It was heavy but the most delicious burger I’ve ever eaten.  Kuma’s corner serves their burgers on a pretzel roll, which actually adds flavor to the sandwich itself and holds up to the moist meat and toppings from the first bite to the last.  The only vegetable matter I had all night (except for the deep fried onions, but I’m not counting that) was the scant sprinkling of chopped scallions on top of our order of BBQ Pork Fries: A mound of waffle fries covered in BBQ pulled pork and melted jack cheese. 

In addition to the great food Kuma’s Corner offers a lot of beer on tap and in bottles.  They also have wine, but who orders a glass of wine at a heavy metal bar?  Speaking of heavy metal, if you don’t like loud music, Kuma’s is probably not the place for you.  The music is loud, but not so loud that you have to scream just to talk to whoever you’re eating with.  The service was excellent as well.  At one point during my meal I left the table to use the restroom.  I had thrown my cloth napkin on the table and when I returned the server had neatly folded it and placed it beside my plate.  I was very impressed.  Overall, I highly recommend Kuma’s Corner to anyone who wants a good burger.

Links:

Kuma’s Corner

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