The CH Distillery purchased Jeppson's, the makers of Chicago's finest product, a few years ago. I've walked by their taproom a lot, but I've never been in there, expecting it to just be the same bottles I can get at the store and a couple bar snacks.
But no: for some reason, they do omakase. And it's really quite something!
The Alinea Group's baby tasting menu place, Next, is doing tribute menus this year. Julia Child and Bobby Flay aren't that interesting, but I wanted to check out the Charlie Trotter menu. So: here it is!
An old friend came to town, and they wanted to check out Indienne. I'd been in May for the vegetarian menu, so this time, I had their non-veg option.
I had a planned visit to Atelier last week. But, an opportunity presented itself: Chef Hunter's Sunday supper club was back, so I had to book that too. Here's a post with both Atelier's early fall menu, plus the supper!
The who's who of Chicago food critics have all been checking out Cariño's tasting menus. They offer a couple: the chef's counter, a slightly abbreviated version of the same menu in the dining room, and late-night taco omakase. It's all South American flavours, making it a unique entry into our fine dining scene.
Atelier suffered some damage in one of the big storms last month, so they had to close for a few weeks to make repairs. They brought back their quarantine-era weekend takeout, which we signed up for straight away.
And, yesterday was our monthly Thattu supper club delivery, so this post is a double-feature.
You might have noticed that I enjoy fine dining, from the blog posts showing galleries of Fancy Food to the fedi live threads for Atelier visit #823.
Thattu, an Indian comfort food restaurant that opened about a year ago, announced a supper club earlier this month: they'll deliver a prix fixe menu to your door on the last Tuesdays.
For the traditional May celebrations, I visited both Atelier and Oriole last week for their spring tasting menus. We're at the very end of ramp season here in the midwest, and excitingly, both resturants managed to incorporate 'em into the menu.
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!
