On a recent snowy Monday, I met my friends Jocelyn and Soo at The Kitchen, a new restaurant along the Chicago River. The Kitchen has large open space, with a oversized bar, and stools along the windows overlooking the river. Tufted banquets line the wall, and freestanding tables fill the middle of the room. It's a space that is modern without being pretentious.
The Kitchen describes itself as a "world-class neighborhood bistro" and the menu has a bit of everything, with fresh seafood bar (with some items coming from Portland, Maine) and an emphasis on rustic classics with sophisticated pairings. For example, the half grilled chicken is marinated in yogurt and served with flageolet beans and tuscan soffritto.
We settled in at our table and decided to order several things to share. We began with the Goat Gouda Gougere and the Urban Till Spicy Green Salad. A gougere is a small cheesy fried pastry that is crisp on the outside and doughy on the inside. It's light and airy, and I could have easily eaten 10 of them.
Jocelyn, Soo, and I didn't really want to order a salad, but we felt it was only responsible to add some greens to the meal. We were clearly underestimating this salad, which I couldn't get enough of. The salad combined shaved turnip, radish, pleasant ridge reserve cheese, and greens with a light champagne vinaigrette and croutons. It sounds simple, but it was one of the best salads I have had lately.
Then we moved on to the main dishes. We ordered the steak, half chicken, and tagliatelle and shared everything. The tagliatelle was served with wild mushrooms and a generous amount of French black truffles in a white wine, garlic, cream sauce. Often I find that dishes with truffle are completely overwhelmed by the favor of the truffle, but that wasn't the case here.
The dry aged steak, sourced locally from Slagel Family Farms, was served with mashed rutabaga, kale, sprouts, and jus. The steak was beautifully pink in the center and very flavorful. The jus covered the plate, and was soaked up by the rutabaga in the most delightful way. I rarely order steak at restaurants that are not primarily steakhouses, but this was a great dish.
The half chicken, which is described above, was excellent. I am starting to think that beautifully prepared chicken might be one of the next big food trends. We are talking about carefully marinated, expertly seasoned, and perfectly tender chicken that is just bursting with flavor.
We had sticky toffee pudding for dessert - toffee is one of my favorite things in the world. While I thought that this dessert was absolutely amazing - it was ooey gooey sweet and sticky and the vanilla ice cream complimented it well, sadly I have one complaint. We had alerted our server that one of my friends has a nut allergy, and the menu doesn't list nuts as an ingredient in this dish, and the server didn't let us know about the nuts ahead of time. We saw the nuts right away, and my friend had another dessert, so it wasn't a problem, but restaurants should clearly mark which dishes have nuts on the menu. photo via
I don't want to end this review of what I thought was a lovely restaurant on a negative note. The Kitchen is the perfect restaurant for a Friday date night. It is just outside of the loop, making it an easy after work meeting spot, and the views of the river are charming. The menu has a great mix of everything and the food was great.
The Kitchen is located at 316 North Clark Street, near Merchandise Mart. They do accept reservations.
