I made a valiant effort last Friday to make a dent in my top 25 foods to eat in Chicago list. The previous post should explain the bliss I felt at Paulina Meat Market, but I am putting some pictures of the feast below. A few food whores and myself met at my place to start with a meat tray from Paulina Meat Market. We had smoked beef and teriyaki beef jerky, a honey pork snack stick and Hungarian salami that I put with some slices of fresh mozzarella and crostini. I?ll be honest, it was pretty freaking tasty. Smoked meat is heaven. Period, end of discussion. The meats were pretty salty (in a good way), so the mozzarella supported them nicely without being overpowering. My favorite, as always, was the Hungarian salami (it is not as spicy as the one from Bobak?s, but it?s so full of garlic, I was okay with that). Enough meat for four as an appetizer seat me back a whopping $9, and divided by four, that?s not too shabby if you ask me. Check number 6 off the list!
Next was yekuanta fir fir at Blue Nile Ethiopian Restaurant. It was little bits of steak cooked until it was almost crispy, mixed in with injera bread and chili sauce. Eh. I consider myself a great lover of Ethiopian cuisine, and this dish just didn?t hold up to what I?ve eaten in the past. For starters, there was so much injera bread in the dish, and you traditionally eat Ethiopian food by tearing off injera and using it to scoop up the dish, so it was really bread overload and sort of dry. The meat was also dry, and cut up a bit too small. There were countless other dishes that tasted better than that, and Ethiopian Diamond, my favorite Chicago Ethiopian restaurant, could kick their ass in a taste competition any day (yemsir watt anyone?). Needless to say, not my favorite. But check number 7 off the list. We decided to make it an even more decadent night and went to Hot Chocolate, an upscale caf? and dessert place for the last course. The dish listed in the top Chicago food list was pumpkin ravioli filled with butterscotch and served with a cognac whipped cream and candied pumpkin seeds. Now, this is a restaurant known for its desserts. The head chef used to be a pastry chef at a well-known restaurant, and all I have heard about this place is how good the desserts are. The ravioli?when it worked- just okay. When it didn?t, it sucked pretty hard. It came with five pieces, and all but one of them had been punctured and lost its filling. I don?t know where all that butterscotch went, but it sure as hell wasn?t in the dish. I was the lucky one to taste the still-filled pasta, which was pretty tasty. But when I tried a deflated one like the rest of my fellow eaters had, it tasted like soggy, flavorless pasta with no filling.
We also tried two other desserts, apple and the chocolate 64%. The apple was a mini apple cobbler served with triple vanilla bean ice cream and sugared donut holes. Again, totally underwhelming, at least to me. The cobbler was a little liquidy, and the rest was really nothing special.
The final dish was a tart of 64% dark chocolate topped with salted caramel ice cream and pretzels. This was my favorite, but a tighter execution of the dish would have made it a lot better. By the time they brought it to our table, the ice cream was already melted half way, so it was more of a sauce than ice cream. The tart was so rich; the melted ice cream didn?t really lighten it up enough. And the pretzel, while homemade and interesting, could have been more. And when you are charging $11 for each dessert, you had sure as hell better make them perfect. Especially in a city with a ton of great dessert places. But check number 8 off the list.
The food binge got me thinking?clearly, whoever reviewed the Ethiopian dish had not tried the other dishes, because in my humble opinion, even their vegetarian dishes could have kicked the fir fir?s butt. And what happened with the dessert? Either I caught the kitchen on an off night, or that reviewer told them they were from a magazine and got a perfect, magazine worthy dish. Either way, I find it hard to believe that I am the only one who was disappointed with the ravioli. It seems like a dish destined for failure?any pasta with a liquid center is super sensitive, especially if it is surrounded by pasta. And the pasta tasted water logged. Sigh. I was really looking forward to butterscotch that night too. Even one of my partners in chunk was a little sad. Look.
But hey, I got to eat and hang with some of my favorite people in the city, so overall, not a bad night. ~LTG
