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The South Loop’s City Tavern, Mike Sula finds, is conceived to make you think, “Hey, I’m an early American colonist!” Even the cocktails—Fishhouse Punch, a rum punch, etc—are inspired by pre-Revolutionary models. So what’s chef Kendal Duque, who made a splash with Sepia a few years back, doing here? His signature flatbreads, for one, along with a widely cast net of a menu that includes sandwiches, charcuterie, entrees, and more entrees, the last from the grill. The fare is heavy, hearty stuff befitting a hoisted tankard: steak and ale pie, brussels sprouts with pork belly, simple standouts such as fried chicken and a mushroom-stuffed whole trout. But the most interesting items, in Sula’s reckoning, are the rum-focused cocktails: light, refreshing, guzzleable, in all far more suited to the hottest month on record in the continental U.S.
