The Other Critics

Nagrant Says Vera’s Aim is True; Crain’s Happy To Have Gioco Back

Liz and Mark Mendez, owners of Vera.
Liz and Mark Mendez, owners of Vera.

“I had an inkling Vera might be special,” Michael Nagrant says in his 3-1/2 star review, capturing how Mark Mendez won over food writers at Carnivale by being the zen food buddha in the eye of Jerry Kleiner’s storm of color and Latin flavor. “Most restaurant kitchens run on guts, tenacity and muscle, not deep thought. Vera’s chef/owner Mark Mendez… always struck me as the antithesis to all that. He seems deliberate and sensitive and his cooking is clean and nuanced.” Which is by way of saying, one after another of the simple, direct dishes at Vera pretty much wows Nagrant: “blood sausage — the moist, inky black morcilla nested on a bed of honeycomb tripe so tender you mistake the offal strips for noodles”… “ruddy, white-fat-streaked Cinco Jotas cured pig shoulder” ” well-paired with a glass of Terre Nere Nerello Mascalese, a Sicilian red featuring a wild, fermented-cherry top note”… “a cazuela featuring buttery sweet-spiced squash puree coddling a pool of local honey and crispy bits of Marcona almonds.” Noting that the name suggests the Latin root of the word for “true,” he says “the Mendez’s single-minded pursuit of what’s good over what might attract diners makes Vera one of the truest restaurants I’ve ever eaten at in Chicago.” [Sun-Times]

Liz and Mark Mendez, owners of Vera.

“Everyone should recover from dust-ups with the tax man as gracefully as 12-year-old Gioco,” says Crain’s Chicago Business about the South Loop pioneer which ran into tax troubles and closed for a bit in the summer. The reason, Laura Bianchi says, is that the owners “struck it rich with executive chef Gaetano Ascione, whose expansive personality and slightly off-color stories are rivaled only by his talent and attention to the food and customers.” She praises the straightforward pleasures in food that cleaves to the fundamentals,” such as a mussels appetizer in simple white wine sauce with tomatoes, garlic and red pepper spark ($9), and chunky cucumber and tomato salad with a sprightly vinaigrette and smattering of hazelnuts ($6).” [Chicago Business]

David Tamarkin starts out suggesting that Butcher & the Burger is some sort of alien cyborg life form made up of all that’s hipster in food this minute— “Trendwise, it’s got it all: the burgers, the inexplicable obsession with butchers and the nostalgia for a time nobody eating in the restaurant ever lived in.” But just when you think he’s going in for the kill, turns out he loves the place: “none of this annoyed me. In fact, I found it charming. But this was only because my ‘house-blend beef’ burger on a ‘split top egg butter’ bun rubbed with ‘Grandma’s onion soup’ spice rub and topped with griddled onions, pickle chips, bacon, blue cheese and a fried egg was pretty much perfect.” He has some advice for how to order off the choose-your-everything menu (hint: less is more) but mainly his advice is, go and enjoy. [TOC]

Nagrant Says Vera’s Aim is True; Crain’s Happy To Have Gioco Back