The Dish

The Dish

Overview:

If I were to dine here again, I would skip the antipasti (they were all pretty much lacking) and go straight for the handmade pasta (which were all wonderful).

Special Dishes:

The Dish

Overview:

Ok, I get it. It's Italian food redesigned, or made 'mad'. Yeah, it's like there's a 'mad' scientist in the back trying to put a 'mad' twist on traditional Italian. I don't know if I would call it 'mad', but it was pretty tasty.

Was the food a 100% hit? No. Definitely not. But it wasn't bad by any means. It might fall into the category of one of those places where the menu is better written than it is executed. The lobster salad was fine but nothing incredible. Salad. With poached lobster and very soft roasted red bell pepper which texturally didn't do it for me. The black truffle vin was tasty but I almost wish it would have been tossed with the salad so that I got the essence of the truffle throughout. But it wasn't and I didn't. You know... it was a fine salad.

Handmade spaghetti with wild boar and foie gras meatball sounds wonderful and intriguing, wouldn't you say? Well, had no one told me that it was wild boar and foie, I wouldn't have known. That's not to say that the meatball wasn't delicious, because it was. Texturally, it was beautiful. Nice and loose. I mean, the real meatball killer for me is when there hasn't been enough liquid added to the meat mixture and they come out all tight. I hate that. This was not the case here. It was almost too loose as sometimes it would break on the fork during the pasta and meat integration. Flavor-wise, it was wonderful. I expected it to be deeper or gamey-er or something due to the boar, but for all I knew, it could have been my mother's veal/pork mixture. The foie must've melted in during the cooking because there was no sign of it apart from the richness that it lent. The sauce, too, was delicious. They kept it a bit fresh, indicating a shorter cooking time than what your grandmother may find appropriate. I really enjoyed it this way. And the pasta itself was quite good, too. I, personally, probably would have called it tagliolini or something of the sort since this was clearly a sheeted dough and not an extruded one. It had quite a toothsomeness to indicate this, not to mention it's shape. Lucky for me, I much prefer sheeted over extruded. It's modern presentation was in line with the restaurant's atmosphere. The nicely twirled pasta was on one side of the plate with it's gigantic meatball counterpart on the other. Jutting up between them were 2 very bias-cut crostini giving spaghetti and meatball something of an edginess.

Lastly was the guinea hen with handmade pappardelle. The bird was perfectly cooked in pieces so there were some pulled, braised parts along with the roasted-but-still-juicy breast. The pappardelle was pretty thick which I imagine had to do with the fact that there were fresh herbs sheeted into it. Still, I would have taken the rollers down another click on the machine. And it was undercooked. And I'm not talking from the American-who-thinks-al dente-is-undercooked viewpoint. This was actually undercooked to the point that you could still taste a little rawness of the dough. And there was definitely an abundance of butter on the pasta (as with the spaghetti) which I tend to consider cheating. Again on this dish was a beautiful smear of black truffle sauce that, flavor-wise, I wish had been incorporated somehow. For presentation sake, it worked.

Service was good but not over-the-top incredible. It kinda seemed like maybe it was supposed to be incredible, though, so I think it fell a bit short. For example, our first course came before we'd had a chance to enjoy the amuse bouche. For a place that serves an amuse bouche, one would naturally expect a bit more, no? Then, when I asked for assistance with the wine list, our server, who had clearly been educated on the subject but was by no means expert, offered suggestions. I would have expected real insight from a sommelier rather than what we got which was nothing more than general characteristics of particular varietals and an 'I like this bottle' suggestion. It was restaurant week, however, and the place was packed so maybe that night wasn't the best example on which to judge.

As for the ambiance, very cool and swanky. Funky seating, a cool ceiling mural, an open kitchen.... I was into it. The atmosphere, in my view, was the restaurant's best quality.

And the short version (out of 10)...

Food: 7
Service: 7
Ambiance: 10
Overall impression: 8

Would I go back?
Not tomorrow, but yes, maybe at some point when I wanted to dress up and eat in a classy, swanky scene in the loop.

Special Dishes:

The Dish

Overview:

So, I've been hearing about Takashi for a while now, really since I moved to Chicago about 5 months ago. It's been high on my ever-growing list of restaurants to try, so I was very happy to finally get a chance to experience the Sunday noodle brunch yesterday. Yes, can I just say... yum-o?

First were the small plates that I wish we would have had more of. Not because we didn't have enough to eat, of course, but because those that we had were so tasty and fun. The pork belly steamed buns were so delish... glazed and tender and fatty and crispy and flavorful. The bun itself was done in a way that I haven't seen before, that is, sliced from a larger piece. Normally it's one complete bun unto itself but that was not the case here. It didn't make it any less pillowy though, so for me, it was a non-issue. The duck fat fried chicken was pretty fab too. Piping hot and juicy inside with a thick, crispy crust. Yeah... fab. I can't say that I was a huge fan of the mini-mushroom app. I guess I was expecting something else, maybe for the mushrooms to have been roasted or something, but they weren't. And there was some strange sliminess happening on the plate as well which was less than appealing to me. I believe it was part of the taro root but I don't know. I hate to knock it because I'm just not that familiar with all of the ingredients in this type of cuisine and maybe it was supposed to be that way, but I wouldn't order it again. Does anyone have any insight into this dish that they'd care to share?

And then we all ordered noodles. Mmmm... noodles. I love a gigantic bowl of steaming hot noodles in broth. Normally, I would have been drawn to the ramen... maybe because it's something familiar and I'm on a constant search for rich, sticky, delicious ramen in this city. But this time the man ordered it so I was forced to try something else. I mean, we couldn't order the same thing. That would be absurd. So I opted for the udon with sliced ribeye. And, I totally won. Lucky me! The broth was flavorful, as was the beef, the noodles had a wonderful springiness to them, and the egg and tofu lent an interesting, spongy (in a good way) texture. It was wonderful.

The ramen, surprisingly, was my least favorite at the table. Not that it was bad, it just seemed a bit one dimensional. I guess I wanted more depth out of it. You know, Ippudo or Setagaya style. Does that exist in Chicago? Real, hand-pulled noodles with intensely flavored, sticky broth and a runny but set egg? If you have the answer, help a girl out! Do tell!

I also managed to steal a taste of the vegetarian ramen from my kind friend sitting to my left. It was excellent. The broth, as expected, was light and delicate but still had a very rounded flavor.

Another delightful component to our brunch were the very well composed cocktails. Real, fresh ingredients, mixed with care, made for very happy sipping to accompany our happy slurping.

We dined in the first floor dining room which was very nice and little and comfortable. Almost homey but in a non-kitchy kind of way. I didn't get a chance to check out the upstairs section of the restaurant. All the more reason to go back!

And our service was lovely. Casual and lovely. Our server was very helpful in describing and directing but then gave us space to enjoy ourselves. All components together became a very comfortable and delicious experience.

The short version (out of 10)...

Food: 8.5
Service: 8
Ambiance: 8
Overall impression: 8

Would I go back?

In a heart beat. I can't wait to try dinner!

Special Dishes: