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Amy: Welcome to Dish From Chicago Magazine. I’m Amy Cavanaugh, Chicago magazine’s dining editor.

John: I’m John Kessler, Chicago magazine’s dining critic. 

Amy: Today we’re talking about John’s latest review on the tasting menu, experiential dining spot Class Act, as well as my report on Pizza Dada. Plus, we’ll also share the best things we’ve eaten lately, which includes a fun new starter at a River North hot spot.

Amy: So John, for the February issue, you reviewed Class Act, which is a new tasting menu spot in Bucktown, and it was— I joined you for one of the meals, and it was a very interesting experience.

John: Yeah, it is an interesting experience. So here’s how it works. There will be a theme to the dinner. And when you arrive, you will join a small group of people for that seating, standing in a little vestibule by tables, and someone will come out and explain the theme, the thing’s theme, serve a few canapes and a cocktail, and then, like the doors slide open like you know, voila, and there’s the chef standing there. He’s a young guy named Nicolai Mlodinow. He has cooked around Chicago, sort of a self-taught chef. First got interested cooking dinner parties in college, got hired to put on some larger events for a local religious organization, and got bitten by the cooking bug. And so anyhow, he will escort you in, tell you about the evening’s theme, which for us was evolution — as in the entire course of human history. And then everybody sits around one table, and each successive dish represents a different stage in human evolution. I just thought it was kind of fun hokum. It was kind of nice to meet people. I kind of liked the dinner party vibe. The sommelier, Jonas Bittencourt put together some really great wine pairings. The food, yeah, not so much. And just the whole, like, I don’t know the whole theme of it, it was just so superficial. It was cute, but, like, nothing more. That was my take.

Amy: Yeah, I second you on the wine service being absolutely fantastic. You know, I, we are both fans of Jonas’s wine service, and I’m always, I always like what he picks. He’s, he’s served me wine at a number of spots around town, and I think he both does a great job in selecting wines, but also giving us some takeaways. So, you know, I feel like I come away really knowing more about these wines and having a greater appreciation for them. So the wine service was fantastic, and I did think it was a very fun experience. Like the people at our table were really, really nice. You know, the two folks next to me, we had lived in similar places. So, you know, we were able to talk about living in D.C. in the late aughts and the places we used to go. So that was fun. And, yeah, and then I think the food was, you know, not really up to par for what you expect for a tasting menu at this level, 

John: And for the price. 

Amy: And for the price, yes, it was a very, very expensive dinner, yeah.

John: And it was just sort of like, I like a theme, and you can have fun with it. But also this is one kind of observation I didn’t put into the review. But even the theme was just so hokey, like one part of it was, they have the discovery of fire in 780,000 years B.C. And as I was working on the review, I saw this article come across from multiple sources in my news feed. And there was this report in Nature magazine showing that the earliest examples of human fire were made in about 400,000 B.C., placing up much, you know, earlier than had been anticipated. And I was gonna, when I interviewed the chef, I was gonna say, So where did you get that figure from? And I decided, maybe not. But it was just, I don’t know, it was kind of hokey, and I just felt like there was too many execution errors with the food. And it was, you know, it was fun for the experience, but it was definitely one of those meals where I left and was like, Okay, I need dinner now.

Amy: Yes, I know. There are so many tasting menus where you leave just absolutely stuffed and over-satiated, and this one was just kind of like, oh, I need to go home and eat a little snack. What were some of the other dishes that kind of stood out during the visit?

John: One thing that I noticed in a lot of different dishes was that the spices weren’t tempered. And I interviewed the chef about that, but you know, he likes just to pour raw spice into things. And so, you know, when you’re eating that mushroom barbacoa, or other dishes where there’s supposed to be a very spicy element — there was one noodle dish that had baharat, this Middle Eastern spice mixture in it, and was just so like, you could taste that kind of powdery, acrid flavor. I just thought other things too, like there was a fish broth, and it just didn’t smell very nice, you know, it was like the room filled with just this very not nice, sweet odor, but a very fishy one. I thought the focaccia that they served was quite damp. I mean, it just needed like, I mean, it felt like you’ve tried making focaccia a couple times, but you haven’t quite hit it yet. And I feel like maybe he just needs more time. I just think the food has to be at a much higher level of execution if he’s going to charge those prices. And also, if three different courses are chicken, I’m like, is this what you want on a tasting menu? I don’t have to have foie gras and, you know, lobster and truffles and caviar in everything I eat. But if you’re gonna spend, if it’s gonna be more than $200 a person, plus tax and tip and drink, you want that truffle shaver to come out.

Amy: I wrote about Pizza Dada as the Neighborhood Find. And Pizza Dada is a new New York pizza spot from the Table, Donkey, Stick team. So Matt Sussman, who owns Table, Donkey, Stick and Danke in Sterling Food Hall, started it, and he had the chance to open another stall at Sterling. And so he wanted to go with pizza. I went recently, and I was a big fan. I love New York-style pizza. I feel like we don’t have enough of it in town, even though, you know, we do have some good spots, and I don’t feel like we have enough pizza by the slice. And so yes, and this is this really hits those notes. And if I worked downtown, I would probably come here for lunch once a week.

John: I’m a big fan of Matt Sussman and everything he does at Table, Donkey, Stick and Bar Parisette, and I feel like he has a good sense of giving the city something that we don’t quite see everywhere else.

Amy: I agree. I know he started playing around with pizza during the pandemic, and he was doing some grandma pizzas, and I thought they were good, but I thought that didn’t quite like them as much as what he was doing at Table, Donkey, Stick, but he has really perfected the grandma slices now. And so it’s, I think, like, less thick than it was earlier, but the flavors were spot on, like I had this mushroom and truffle one that was just like, so earthy and so good. So he serves grandma slices, and then he serves New York slices. There are 10 slices on the menu, so there’s a lot to choose from. There’s always daily specials. I saw a ton of, you know, office workers coming in for two slices and a can of soda, and it’s under $10 like, you know, you don’t really get such affordable lunches these days, so I’m really thrilled that it exists. I think my highlight—

John: That is the best lunch, isn’t it? Just a great slice?

Amy: Yes, this absolutely hit the spot for me. I think my favorites were the vodka roni, which is the pepperoni cups, vodka sauce, basil and parm, and the Caesar pizza, which is they do a great white pizza with garlic, basil, ricotta and lemon, and then the Caesar piles on Caesar salad right on top. You know, dressed romaine. It’s so garlicky, which I absolutely love garlic. So this is right up my alley. Really fun. I think that, I think it’s been such a good addition to downtown. And honestly, Sterling Food Hall, if you haven’t been there lately, it’s like, there’s tons of new places. This is the former Revival Food Hall, and they rebranded maybe last year, but now, like, the purveyors like, I was just kind of, after my lunch I was just like walking around, and it was like, Okay, now we have a kimbap place. There’s Seedo’s, which, you know, is like a Middle Eastern bakery that I’m hearing such incredible things about, and we covered in Neighborhood Find a couple months ago. Egg Bunni just opened. That’s the new egg sandwich spot from Stephen Gillanders and Israel Idonije, so as, yeah, and so I, you know, I don’t really find myself generally excited about food halls, but this one really feels like they are getting top-tier places that feel a little bit different. So definitely, you know, next time you’re down in the Loop around lunchtime, go and walk around and grab a slice. I think next time I would actually probably grab one slice of pizza and then sample something elsewhere too, because it just feels like there’s so much happening there.

John: That’s a great tip. I have not been back since it was Revival Food Hall, and I just remember it starting out looking promising and then just getting kind of sad.

Amy: Yeah, I think they’ve really improved their offerings quite a bit. 

Amy: John, what’s the best thing you ate lately?

John: Do you know those, those fried Chinese dough sticks called youtiao, which are sometimes translated as Chinese crullers? 

Amy: I don’t think I do. 

John: It’s a traditional Chinese thing. You can have them for breakfast with a bowl of warm soy milk, and you dip them into it. And anyhow, what happens now at Crying Tiger in River North is Thai Dang and his team use them. They’re very, like, puffy and open in the center. Like, they’re very, they’re like, you know, they’re like cream puffs, almost, and, but they’re sticks. And so what he does is he slices them and he fills them with shrimp paste. So it’s like shrimp toast inside these, like, you know, little silver dollar-size chunks of fried dough. And it is fabulous. What a great way to start a meal there.

Amy: I’ve had those as well, and they’re really tasty,

John: So good. I could I mean, that is like, once you can actually get into that restaurant, I can’t wait to go with a nice big group and order round of cocktails and a couple plates of those and just eat them and then say, we’ll look at the menu later. 

Amy: Well, invite me to that dinner when you have it. 

John: Okay, how about you? What’s the best thing you’ve had?

Amy: So I went back to Cafe Yaya recently, and I revisited some favorites. But they had a new dip on the menu, and the dips are just always excellent here. And it was butternut squash baba ganoush. And, you know, not necessarily something that would grab me immediately, but our server was like, You need to try it, it’s really terrific. And it was fantastic. I love baba ghanoush in general, but the addition, using, you know, butternut squash just really made it such, like a nice, like, cozy, wintery flavored dish. So highly recommend it. We also, of course, had to get the caramelized onion miso labneh, because that one is ridiculous. But this one was just like, really, the perfect counterpoint to it, something a little bit lighter.

John: Oh, that’s great to know. Yeah, I love sitting there at the bar, and they have very nice wines by the glass and just having the dips. And they also have some new breads too. They do that simit, the, you know, Turkish round bread.

Amy: That’s really, that is actually what we got with our with our dips, and that was a really, really nice one.