GOURMET GUIDE NEW TASTE Clockwise from top left: full wheel baked camembert at LeTour; Andrew Graves of LIVA at Chicago Winery; the interior of Kindling Downtown Cookout & Cocktails; LeTour’s Amy Morton and Debbie Gold ONE OF AMERICA’S great food cities, Chicago may have been laid low during the pandemic but it certainly wasn’t felled. Yes, there were casualties – Jean Joho’s beloved Everest, for one – but now, the phoenix is rising. Less show, more substance – restaurants which are authentic, brave and responsible are opening all over. And, while these independents thrive, a clutch of deep-pocketed, serial restaurateurs are also back at work, breaking new ground and introducing their own particular brand of razzle-dazzle. From modest joints opened by partners or a bunch of friends to grand Parisian-style brasseries, Chicago has new restaurants aplenty – plus a rekindled love affair with France. With a clutch of popular bars and restaurants already in its portfolio, the Fifty/50 Restaurant Group has just launched Kindling Downtown Cookout & Cocktails (kindlingchicago.com) on the ground floor of the Willis Tower in the Financial District. With over 1,600 square metres of restaurant floor space (no hole-in-the-wall, this one) and James Beard Award-winning chef Jonathon Sawyer wearing the whites in the live-fire kitchen, from wood-fired oysters to confit chicken wings to horseradish-crusted steaks – if it can be cooked over an open flame, Kindling will be serving it. Chargrilled meat and shellfish are also the kingpin at José Andrés’ Bazaar (thebazaar.com) in the nearby Bank of America Tower. Here you get two for one. Upstairs is Bazaar Meat, the Chicago iteration of Andrés’ countrywide retro steakhouses, with its beautiful Persian-style carpets and plush, crimson velvet chairs. This is where you feast on Japanese Wagyu beef and sweet, suckling pig imported from Salamanca in Spain, exquisitely roasted in the firepit. Downstairs is the more nautically themed Bar Mar, where you come for oysters, black-ink squid, Galician-style octopus and seafood butifarra subs. It’s a real doozy of a menu. For Chicagoans keen on beef, Grill on 21 (grillon21.com) on the 21st floor of The LaSalle, Chicago’s newest luxury boutique hotel, is yet another downtown/financial district steakhouse to have recently opened. Billing itself as a “classic but more approachable” American grill, the watchwords here are “local”, “humane” and “sustainable”, evidenced in dishes like Faroe Island salmon with kale and wheat berries and steaks from named farms and producers. There are also some splendid retro dishes to enjoy, such as lobster thermidor and sole meunière. Prized, prime beef, though, is not the only Japanese import Chicagoans are interested in. In the restaurant-dense River North neighbourhood, just across the river from the Loop, deluxe ramen and striking design (check-out those spaceship-like hexagonal booths – think Star Trek with a gastronomic twist) go hand in hand at Kyura Men (kyuramen.com). The first Chicago location for this highly regarded Japanese chain, brought to the city by serial restaurateur Tony Hu, Kyura Men has built its reputation on silky ramen crafted by masters, diligently made soup bases and broths and the highest-grade pork and chicken. Located near Logan Square on the city’s northwest side, the American diner-like Second Generation (eatsecondgen.com) self-identifies as both “Asian” and “women-owned”. To say this restaurant explores the relationship between America and Asia is perhaps a little glib, but it is fair to say that if Second Generation’s heart is in the West, with standard American fare – chopped salad, mac n’ cheese, chicken wings, and burgers – then its soul is most certainly in the East, titivating those American classics with fermented black soybean, Korean spices, Sichuan peppers and the like. Shouldn’t work but it does. Another newb brought to Chicago by the indefatigable Tony Hu (see Kyura Men) is Shoo Loong Kan Hotpot (+1 312 526 3242), the fourth and newest US outlet for this Chinese megachain. With its striking interior of bamboo, lacquered wood and gilt motifs, Shoo Loong Kan is almost as remarkable for its design as for its food. Best suited to families or groups of friends – you cook your own beef and lobster over hotpots at the table, a sort of Benihana for the 2020s – the overall experience is a theatrical as well as a culinary one. Hu, incidentally, is the man who has been almost single-handedly responsible for introducing Chicagoans to discrete Chinese regional cuisines: with Shoo Loong Kan now up and running after protracted delays through Covid, the unofficial “Mayor of Chinatown” looks certain to have another winner on his hands. Like Hu, chef Daniel Rose is also a Chicago restaurant luminary, although his new restaurant, Le Select (leselectchicago.com), is actually his first in his native city. Named, one supposes, for the famous Montparnasse brasserie, with its gracious arches, antique mirrors and Art Nouveau table lamps – not to mention beautiful linens and tableware – Le Select is a stunner. As for the food, Rose earned his stripes in Paris and polished them in New York (at Michelin-starred Le Coucou), so he knows his contre filet from his faux filet. Corners are never cut, with classic French gastronomy alive and well in dishes such as soupe à l’oignon, tarte flambée and choucroute strasbourgeoise. Even a simple green salad here is a thing of excellence. Faithfully executed French dishes like Burgundy snails, salade Lyonnaise and classic skate wing in beurre blanc are also pulling in diners at LeTour (letourevanston.com), in the sought- 74 NetJets
