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Vegetarian Tasting Menu at Indienne
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- owls
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- @owls@yshi.org
Last year, Indienne became Chicago's first michelin-starred indian resturant. They've been on my radar, and I've finally had an opportunity to drop in -- and let me start the post off by saying it was a fantastic experience. Indianne has made fancy-tasting-menu versions of dishes that are completely different from the original thing, but still capture all the flavours perfectly. And it's not always in a way you'd expect!
They offer a couple different menus: vegetarian, pesceterian, vegan, and a non-vegetarian menu, all of which have their own wine pairings. We'd heard their non-veg menu leaned waaay more heavily into French influences than the veg one, so we opted to go (mostly) vegetarian, since we can get fancy French stuff at most places. I wanted to see star-worthy indian food -- not more white asparagus.
A couple notable things, if you're thinking of going: you pick the menu you want when you book, but they have supplemental courses/add-ons. Some places require everybody to order the same add-ons -- not the case here! We all got slightly different configurations of the menu/drinks, and even got the non-vegeterian menu's crab dish.
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The eclair is a spin on a lamb kebab (galouti)'s flavour, but made of truffle and cheese. The tartlet is based on a fried dumpling served with sauce -- but the sauce is contained in the bubble!
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The gel & broth are both yogurt-based, giving the whole thing a breakfast cereal milk vibe.
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An avocado "steak" seasoned up like a lamb kebab
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Three-cheese flatbread to enjoy with the kebab
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Potato foam, onion cookie, and jackfruit beneath it all -- it was very similar to dal.
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A butternut squash & truffle "ravioli"
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King crab, dosa crumble, a butternut squash foam, and risotto underneath.
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A tube of paneer & fenugreek provides some great texture, and a vehicle for sopping up two DELICIOUS sauces -- the orange one had some kick to it!
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Served with the paneer roulade -- the garlic naan was great for grabbing more of those two sauces!
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Ghewar with a milk cloud and lots of carrot flavours
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The brittles were a little bit sticky, so some of the white sesame seeds they're served in become part of the bite.
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Incredible melt-in-your-mouth fudge
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Menu listing almost all of the courses: the bisi bele bath was the supplemental course from their other, non-vegetarian menu
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Their recommended pairings were perfect for every course
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The stem just sort of popped and the base fell off while I was holding it. I've never broken a glass at a restaurant before 😅
The avocado "kebab" and its pairing, the Entre Pedras Efusivo, was my favorite. The somm told us some cool stuff about the Azores: the island the wine is grown on had a lot of volcanic activity, leaving tons of ash and black basalt. Over generations, winemakers have used the basalt stone to build a huge network of walls around their grape vines, protecting them from salty sea spray. The vinyards on Pico are a world heritage site.
Jancis Robinson has an article that talks about the island, with a ton of pictures scattered through it, and a longer discussion about the grapes.
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By David Stanley from Nanaimo, Canada - Centuries Old Vineyards, CC BY 2.0, Link