The other day I stopped off at my make-do bar — the one that has an English ale on tap I like and plenty of free parking nearby. It’s usually not busy, except today it was packed for pub trivia night. I got the last bar stool, and when the clue was “What European car manufacturer’s name means ‘I roll’ in Latin,” I so wanted to lean over to the team next to me and whisper, “Volvo.”
Engaging in group activities in a closed space makes for a fun time and a clever way to socialize without having to organize a party. I’m noticing how much this ethos has inflected fine dining in Chicago lately. Today’s tasting menu restaurants often encourage diners to interact with other parties. Many, like West Town’s Atsumeru, start things off like a cocktail party, with a drink and a round of canapés. There, guests descend the steps to a basement bar, settle onto bar stools, and engage in conversation with the chefs and perhaps other guests. A similar prelude starts a dinner at Lincoln Park’s Esmé, where guests sip Champagne and nibble snacks at standing bar tables.
This kind of cocktail hour also kicks off a meal at Class Act, which I reviewed in this month’s issue. Guests huddle around three small tables and help themselves from communal plates as they sip a cocktail. You’re close enough to others that not engaging in conversation would be almost rude. Once the meal begins, everyone sits around one large table, and over the course of the evening the conversations turn from sotto voce discussions with only the guests seated alongside you to cross-table storytelling. This is the best part of the experience here. It’s also fun to retreat with your date afterwards and talk about the people you just shared a two-to-three-hour meal with.
Chef Trevor Teich, whose last restaurant was the Michelin-starred Claudia, has reemerged with a new venture called Chef’s Table at Astor Club. This Gold Coast club (the former Maxim’s de Paris) opens its dining room to members only, but the private dining area transforms three times a week into Teich’s playground.
Up to eight people sit around one table and indulge in an elaborate (and quite delicious) $325 feast that doesn’t skimp on luxury ingredients. Foie gras, lobster, truffles, caviar, oysters: it’s a dream bougie bacchanal. The night I visited with a friend, we sat with a couple in their 50s who went to high school together, went their separate ways, reconnected later in life post-divorce, and now were insanely hot for each other. Teich’s fiancée rounded out the party.
Only a year ago Feld in Ukrainian Village seemingly made a break with tradition by setting up its dining room so the guests all faced a central kitchen and each other. After surveying your fellow diners from afar, everyone decamps to the back patio after dinner for s’mores around a fire pit. And that’s when the conversation starts. I remember one time when my friend turned to another woman with that time-honored conversation starter, “I love your dress…”
Sweet Endings
Here’s a trend I can get behind 150%: Meringue desserts are back. My favorite new dessert is the pavlova at Lincoln Park’s new Ox Bar & Hearth. It comes with raspberry sorbet and sage cream, and the mix of crisp and icy textures is all I want after a meal. Creepies has a rotating meringue cake on its menu: fall’s raspberry number has given way to one with salted cherry sherbet, stone fruits, buttermilk, and mace. And Valhalla may be the place that started it all — Tatum Sinclair’s marbled pavlova, with black sesame mousse and seasonal fruits, closes out the tasting menu.
Time’s Up for Time Out
Time Out Market Chicago, the enormous Fulton Market food hall, will cease operations on January 23. Michael Marlay, CEO of the worldwide group — which is co-branded with Time Out’s online entertainment and dining guides — said in a prepared statement that inconsistent business and rising costs spelled its doom:
“Following the pandemic, we have seen the Chicago Market recover and grow, and we have focused on initiatives driving further growth; however, footfall until today remains inconsistent in the area due to ongoing hybrid working and in addition, operating costs have increased—all of which prevents consistent profitability.”
I’m saddened but not at all surprised. Time Out Market never tapped into the raison d’être that made other locations successful (here are nearly a dozen worldwide and more on the way). When I was in Lisbon a few years ago, the Time Out Market was a destination because it took the market part seriously. As tourists, we weren’t just looking for a quick box lunch but rather an organizing principle that helped us make sense of this city and of Portuguese food. We could try the best presunto (cured ham) and compare it to Spanish jamon, the best cheeses, and the famous pastries made only at a historic bakery elsewhere in Lisbon and at the stand here. We could splurge on oysters and langoustines sold by the piece, and foie gras toasts. We could shop for gifts and, yes, also have the burger, donut, or stir-fry that brings one to a food court midday. But we could also sample an expensive plate of food designed by a chef with two Michelin stars.
At Time Out Lisbon, we dined in the upstairs restaurant which was in itself a destination for great seafood and secluded enough away to feel snug, so unlike the deafening, open-air loggia where Valhalla debuted in Chicago’s Time Out. People who knew the Lisbon market gave us punch lists of what to look for. When you didn’t have enough time in the city to explore all the most famous shops and bakeries, you could go to Time Out and get the compressed tour.
Time Out Chicago did attract local talent but the overall effect was mall food court. Here’s Asian, there’s Mexican: something for every hankering. Snooze. More than once I walked around and found the options workable and expensive, and the seating area loud and uncomfortable. Yet the salad bar at Beatrix pretty soon earned my Fulton Market quick lunch business. That’s where I began to mentally slot Time Out: sustenance, not destination.
I’d love to see the space give Fulton Market something it really needs, which is an actual frigging market. Something like Eataly or EatZi’s in Dallas — a business that offers plenty of prepared food to eat on premises but also gives the people who live and work in the West Loop some destination-worthy treats and ingredients for dinner. Imagine it being the best and best-loved of Chicago — Dirk’s Fish, Paulina Meat Market, Tortello, daytime Kasama, Pizz’Amici, Pequod’s, Beautiful Rind, Bavette’s Bar & Boeuf, Kurowski Sausage Shop, Del Sur Bakery and a mini Agora Market in the corner. Imagine walling in the upstairs dining room and having residencies with chefs from Oriole, Coach House, Duck Sel, EL Ideas. How great that would be for the West Loop, for its residents and for the tourists who come here for long weekends and try to make sense of the astonishing array of great food this city has to offer.