As we speak, two of three Bruno articles (Stop By Anytime about Palace Grill and Loaded For Bear about who knows what, except the URL involves “Ditkas” ) are coming up blank for us. We mean, we click on the link, and everything but the text of the articles show up. This will probably be corrected at a really awkward time, like 30 seconds after this posts goes up.
Alas. But we shouldn’t leave empty-handed; Patpourri, a pun we rather enjoy week after week whether we want to or not, advises us to check out the Lent-friendly pepper and egg pizza at Ballo. Egg on pizza is a good thing; the runnier, the better.
Meanwhile, reviews gone wild on the Reader! The restaurants in question (Takashi, Rustik, and Crisp) all have one-word names with a dominating hard ‘k’ sound. These are action restaurants! So sexy, so now.
Actually, they’re rather unalike. Takashi is a fancy-pants Japanese-French fusion spot where the high-end ingredients are matched with expertly prepared accompaniments. Mike Sula writes, “there were no surprises where the well-prepared duck-fat-fried chicken or crispy, juicy veal sweetbreads were concerned, but their respective foils—spicy, slightly pickled cabbage slaw and cream-kissed green peppercorn sauce—made all the difference in the world.” Where would food reviewing be without em-dashes?
Rustik is a near-universally panned Logan Square upscale comfort food restaurant. The space is nice and the service is fine, but the food falls short time after time. Anne Spiselman sadly reports: “Oversalting ruined the robust broth of a chicken noodle soup, and a salty Dijon vinaigrette marred the ‘ABLT’ salad—spiky arugula and frisee topped with avocado, bacon, and cherry tomato. On the other hand, mac ’n’ cheese was bland despite the promise of smoked Gouda in the creamy sauce coating the cavatappi.” A shame.
Crisp is a Korean fried chicken joint in Lakeview that’s been winning praise around the Chicago foodiesphere. The guys who run the place sampled Kfc (note the lower case) around the country for their formulation, and it seems to have paid off. The chicken is perhaps the only reason to go, however.
There are a bunch more new reviews below the fold; on the Food Chain, Sula is especially proud of the reviews for Lao Beijing and Lao Shanghai that he filed with Gary Wiviott.
Palace Grill [MenuPages]
Ballo [MenuPages]
Takashi [MenuPages]
Takashi [Official Site]
Rustik [MenuPages]
Rustik [Official Site]
Crisp [MenuPages]
Crisp [Official Site]
Lao Beijing [MenuPages]
Lao Shanghai [MenuPages]
[Photo: crazy-ass shrimp at Takashi, via brady frequent traveler and eater/flickr]
