I made the mistake of inviting a dieter to Au Cheval. In this line of work that’s a bush league move under any circumstance, but at prolific chefpreneur Brendan Sodikoff’s ostensible diner, primely located at the northern gateway to the Randolph restaurant row, it’s cruel and unusual punishment.
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Don’t let that keep you away. I should have known better. Still, it’s worth noting that the meal we shared wasn’t even the most decadent one I put together at Sodikoff’s fourth venture in two years (counting his River North fried dough shrine Doughnut Vault). I offered mild criticism of the risk-averse but otherwise solid Gilt Bar, Sodikoff’s first restaurant after a career distinguished by stints with Lettuce Entertain You and heavyweights like Thomas Keller and Alain Ducasse. I described Gilt as sort of a gastropub for the timid. But there is nothing for weak eaters at Au Cheval, the closest thing Chicago has to Montreal’s glutton mecca, Au Pied de Cochon.
This is perhaps where you can ignore the air quotes that otherwise accompany the description of Au Cheval as a “diner.” Nearly a quarter of the menu incorporates chicken ova in some way. The name itself, despite its equine association, is culinary slang for putting a fried egg on something, like a rider on horse (or a la holstein, if you’re Deutsch).
You’ll find more horizontal but no less supersized plates in the short rib stew, chunks of tender if dry beef, precisely cut (a la Keller) and stewed bourguignon-style with pearl onions and carrots, plated alongside a dino-sized marrow bone with stacks of Texas toast. Unlike the city’s plague of small plates that inspire feeding frenzies among unsatisfied groups, Au Cheval platters demand sharing: an enormous wedge of pork sausage wrapped in cabbage and larded superfluously with foie gras; a luxe, Dutch oven-cooked Polish golabki; a heaping mound of honeyed, ruby red General Tso’s chicken—more like a milder take on Korean gampongi—that’s not as hot, sweet, or fried as hard, but is a better class of bird, all dark meat with glassy skin.
800 W. Randolph 312-929-458aucheval.tumblr.com
