I know, I haven't posted anything on this blog for months and months. And the other one's been fairly neglected too. This whole taking care of a kid business interferes with blogging. And then there's my recently acquired Facebook addiction...but that's another post. In any case, I thought I'd post the rare positive rave, instead of rant.
T & I were in Chicago this past week (he was there for work, E & I tagged along to hang with my mom and visit friends). Our trip conveniently coincided with both Valentine's Day and our anniversary, so we decided to celebrate by going to a fancy schmancy dinner at a relatively new restaurant called L2O. Yes, I'm secretly a wannabe food critic, although probably lacking in proper credentials.
Anyways, here's the wrap-up. I meant to take pictures, but I got a little intimidated. Or, to be more accurate, I didn't want to make an ass of myself and seem like a total tourist. But I found a Flickr pool of pictures, as well as a wealth of info on the L2O blog, and I've included links where applicable. I'll probably insert more actual pictures when I'm feeling less lazy, but for now, you'll have to click. Sorry.
I'll confess, we picked this place after seeing it on TV. But I figure that Anthony Bourdain and Eric Ripert probably know what they're talking about, so after seeing them rave on "No Reservations," I made one. The restaurant was located inside the Belden-Stratford building, a luxury hotel/apartment building in Lincoln Park. The space actually used to be another restaurant (Ambria) and there's another restaurant across the hall (Mon Ami Gabi). Interestingly, these are/were all Lettuce Entertain You restaurants.
When we pulled up to the valet parking, they actually already had our name down on the reservation list, so no ticket was needed. Same for the coat check. Nice touch. When we went into the restaurant itself, the entrance area was a bit dark, with dark wood columns, leading to a brightly lit tree-like decoration in glass, similar to but not exactly like these:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/18805923@N00/2497682336/in/pool-759455@N23 The decor was overall very modern. There was no formal hostess stand, but someone greeted us and showed us to the lounge to wait for our table (we were a bit early for our reservation).
The server for the lounge poured us some water (from their own custom logo'd bottles, of course) into pretty blue stemless Reidel glasses and gave us the cocktail menu. T and I choked a bit on the idea of ordering an $20 cocktail, but I guess it wasn't that outrageous given the setting. We did skip the caviar service though. Heh. I finally settled on a glass of Riesling and T went with a
Hefeweizen beer. Both were very good and I think we could have both swapped drinks and been happy, which is odd to say since I'm not a beer-drinker, and he's not a wine-drinker.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/18805923@N00/2496918631/in/pool-759455@N23
Again, the setting was very ultra-modern. White leather furniture, white lucite table, frosted glass divider separating the dining room, very cool. When they showed us to our table, they had us leave all our drinks and brought them over for us after we were seated, which I always love. The dining room was not very big and mostly divided by these big 'screens' of thick wire that you could still see though. There were also private rooms which we saw later during a tour.
Before our menus came, we had two Amuse Bouche:
The first was a small piece of smoked salmon, covered with a salmon foam and served with a clear disc of salmon gelee placed at 12 o'clock on the rim of the plate. Everything was clear or white except for the fish itself, but it all still had very strong salmon flavors. Very savory.
The second was a mussel encased in a coconut curry gelee with green apple essence and tiny discs of cucumber & jalapeno. That one was fantastic. I especially liked how you could actually taste the jalapeno, but not the heat. I loved the little dish it came in too.
When we got our menus, we were told that there are a few options for dining. There was a four-course prix fixe menu, where you got to select from a number of options for each course (Raw, Warm, Main and Dessert). Then there was a six-course "tete-a-tete" menu where each course focused on just two ingredients with very simple preparations. Then there was the twelve-course tasting menu that just listed the main ingredient for each course, but you could see some of the descriptions since some appeared in the prix-fixe option as well. After a short discussion, T and I decided we didn't want to mess with choosing and worry that we'd picked the wrong things, so we went for the tasting menu. Hey, you only live once, right?
Raw
1st course: Shimaaji (mackerel), served with baby radishes & thinly sliced daikon(I think?), red miso and soy salt, dehydrated from their own homemade soy sauce
Very light and clean-tasting. The shimaaji was white-fleshed and tasted nothing like the mackerel you normally get at sushi restaurants.
2nd course: Tuna Tartare, served as a grid of cubes with various sauces in gelee form and lightly drizzled with olive oil. Similar, but not exact pic:
I can't remember what was in all of the sauces except that one was black squid ink, which was suprisingly tasty. This was one of my least favorite dishes though. I thought the tuna on it's own was bland and the olive oil was overwhelming. After eating this, I felt like my mouth was coated in oil and had a hard time getting the taste out.
The texture of the tofu was outstanding - so silky it was like pudding, and the sauce was also very very tasty. But I thought the scallion was just a bit overpowering and the fish flakes didn't taste like anything to me, but they did add nice texture.
Oh, at this point, I should also mention the bread. They had the most wonderful selection of in-house baked breads, all miniature, and all absolutely amazing. I'm sure I'm forgetting a few, but there was a mini-baguette, a crusty wheat roll, mini rosemary croissant (my fave), a square milk bread whose name I can't remember (but it was T's fave), a kalamata olive roll, a caramelized onion roll, and then slices of some other bread (rye, maybe?) I didn't try. These were served with a small dome of homemade, lightly-salted butter, also to-die for. I told T at one point that I could have spent the whole evening eating croissants and butter and been pretty happy. They came around and refilled as we pleased and we probably got a little piggy with bread, but it was SO good.
4th - I'm not sure if this still falls under raw or was a transition to the "Warm" menu: Cold-smoked Escolar (I think, can't quite remember the name of the fish and I'm sort of relying on Flickr descriptions), served with thinly sliced hearts of palm and crystal ice lettuce. Our server recommended that we roll it up and eat everything together.
This dish was also excellent. The fish was very tender and you could definitely taste the smoke. I thought the texture was almost akin to lobster. Although I didn't like having to use my hands to tear up the lettuce and roll the fish up. I preferred to just pick the whole thing up with chopsticks and shove it into my mouth. I know, I'm a class act.
Warm
5th course: Kampachi with served over tapioca pearls and and drizzled tableside with an yuzu sauce.
This dish was more than just warm, it was hot (as was the plate it was served on, which I love), and it was probably my favorite dish of the night. I wanted very badly to lick the sauce off the plate, but I had to settle for using my spoon to scoop up as much as possible. The fish was cooked absolutely perfectly.
6th (I think): Arctic Char poached in a champagne butter sauce, accompanied by a square of zucchini emulsion, topped with a thin sheet of gelee and squares of zucchini skin arranged on top:
There were also dots of a basil pesto on the plate. This dish was also to-die-for. A close second for fave of the evening.
Simply amazing. The texture of the dumpling was much softer than you'd expect for a normal dumpling, almost gelatinous, but totally smooth and creamy, and SO lobster-y. T kept asking me how they did this - distilled so much lobster flavor into one small globe - and I have no idea. I think this was one of his favorites of the night.
Main
8th: Black (Striped?) Bass topped with brioche toast, sitting on a bed of shredded daikon and something else, surrounded by saffron-infused mussels with red-veined sorrel, served with an orangey shellfish(?) bouillon/sauce, poured tableside.
I loved the bass and the brioche toast, but I did not care for the mussels. I thought they were a bit overkill and took away from the fish. I actually gave the last couple on my plate to T. Then again, I'm generally not a giant fan of mussels. I'll eat them, but they're low on my list of seafood. I thought the sauce was a bit bitter as well, but it did sort of grow on me. T liked this dish quite a bit and thought I was being too nit-picky.
9th: Slow-braised Pork Belly, seared before serving to crisp up the skin, served with a black truffle sauce and yukon gold potatoes 3 ways - a thin sheet & a cylinder that had a bit of creamy mashed potato in the center:
This is they type of dish that I would normally never order since it's so much pure fat, but I have to confess, I'm a convert. It was very flavorful, and the crispiness of the skin provided just the right textural counterpart to the fat. I wanted to take a bath in the sauce.
10th: Shabu Shabu - Slices of Medai fish, trumpet mushroom, napa cabbage, and a shizo leaf, that we dipped in hot kombu broth, served with a white ponzu dipping sauce.
This was nice, but didn't knock my socks off. The fish was very good, sushi-grade but better cooked than raw, but I wish we could have actually drank the broth at the end. I didn't care much for the dipping sauce either. I will say, the presentation was gorgeous.
Dessert
Chocolate Soy - basically explained as a soy paste, almost akin to tofu, that was infused with chocolate and then sprinkled on top with chocolate salt. This had the look and texture of a truffle and was so chocolatey good. I never in a million years would have guessed there was soy in it.
Floating Island - a take on the traditional "Isle Flotant" dessert (that I made in cooking school, ha!) but with a limoncello cloud, a pistachio sauce and a pistachio crisp.
This is not my favorite kind of dessert, but it was good. I think T liked it better than I did.
Exotic Fruit Consumme - Mango Sorbet topped with lemongrass marshmallows, passionfruit seeds & mint, sitting on brunoised pineapple, mango and passionfruit, and a passionfruit consomme, poured tableside.
I did not care for this dessert at all. It was easily my least favorite dish of the evening. I thought there were way too many flavors, components and textures and it was overall too tart. The lemongrass marshmallows didn't taste like much (I could detext a hint of lemongrass), and I thought the texture they added when you ate everything together was icky.
At this point, I thought we were done. We'd long since lost count of courses and assumed that 3 desserts were about it. But I'll confess that all evening, I'd been seeing these gorgeous, PERFECT souffles coming out all evening and was secretly bummed that we weren't going to get one since I think they were on the prix-fixe menu. But then imagine my suprise when we each got one!
Praline Souffle - with Frangelico base and rum sauce.
To. Die. For. This was sooooo good. But by the time it came, we were already pretty full. And for EACH of us to eat our own not small souffle was kind of crazy. I struggled to finish mine, and only because T pushed me to do it, saying I'd regret wasting it.
At this point, I thought I was going to burst. T and I started making jokes about how we wouldn't have to pull through the drive-thru after all. And then our server told us that while technically, that was the last course, there was still a Mignardises. *groan* She actually offered to wrap them up for us, but after convincing us that they were just two very small bites, we went with it.
Served together: Macaroon cookie sandwich with salty caramel filling and a Canelé Bordeaux cake. Here's a pic of the latter, which is kind of a custardy cake covered with beeswax to give the outside a crunchy texture.
I'm normally not a huge fan of macaroons, but this was like a heavenly little pillow, filled with caramel goodness. Despite being stuffed, I probably could have eaten another... or six. The canelé was good also, but I just couldn't finish it. Honestly, I was a bit OD'd on soft custard-y textured things after the souffle.
After dinner, we got to take a tour of the kitchen. Of course, it was now about midnight and service had long since officially ended, so most of the staff were cleaning. I was a little bit sad that we didn't get to see it in action, but it was still amazing. The kitchen was HUGE, I believe they said slightly more than half the space of the entire restaurant, which is crazy. It was amazingly clean, which I imagine it is even at the height of service, and there were separate stations for everything, as well as lots of cool machines to make all the various components. There was even a separate fish kitchen where I guess the chef himself breaks down the fish that is flown in every other day from Japan. Crazy. Here's a link to a pic from someone else's Flickr, just to give you an idea:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/apocope/3064166838/in/set-72157610262028662/
So this was definitely the meal of a lifetime...but I'm already thinking about how/when we can go back. I'll also add that despite the fact that this place was insanely high-end, our server was fantastically warm and friendly. I never felt like she was looking down her noses at us, especially when we decided to forego wine and drank water the rest of the evening after we finished our pre-dinner drinks. And it goes without saying that the service was overall impeccable. Beautiful table service, presentation, all-new appropriate silverware for every course; we never had to ask for a thing. An amazing meal, in every sense.
If anyone had told me at any point during this season that Hosea would win, I never would have believed it. But to his credit, he pulled it off when it mattered most, helped along a bit by the catastrophic collapse of Carla's judgment, and Stefan's ridiculous over-confidence. 
