In the course of a year the Reader‘s restaurant critics eat many things we end up wishing we hadn’t—we do it so you don’t have to. Of course we eat a lot of very good things too, and of those a few are so wonderful they change our perspective on food and what it means to us. It’s those rare bites that make the added pounds, occupational indigestion, and occasional bout of food poisoning worth it.
Headcheese-and-smoked-tongue torta at Xoco Made with naturally raised pork from Wisconsin’s Maple Creek Farm, this symphony of dueling flavors (tart pickled vegetables vs. earthy black beans), textures (creamy goat cheese vs. crusty bread), and temperatures (warm and hot slices of fatty meat) rivaled in complexity and harmony a perfect Vietnamese banh mi. It’s no longer on the menu.
Buttermilk biscuit at Hot Chocolate Like a sausage McMuffin with exponentially better ingredients, this was one of my all-time favorite brunch items: an enormous, flaky, buttery biscuit loaded with a Gunthorp Farms sausage patty, scrambled egg, and melted aged cheddar. Despite a pretty healthy appetite I never managed to finish more than half of one—maybe because I don’t consider any meal at Hot Chocolate complete without the assorted pastry platter and a mug of decadently rich cocoa. Sadly, the combo’s now served on an English muffin.
Chorizo at Folklore Made at sister restaurant Tango Sur from a 60/40 mix of pork and beef, it’s crispy on the outside, juicy on the inside, and deliciously garlicky throughout. I thought it couldn’t get any better—until I dipped it in the even more garlicky chimichurri sauce it’s served with.
Mexican hot dog at Delicias Mexicanas The Mexican dog has many variations, but here it’s swaddled in bacon and griddled, allowing the juiciness of the sliced pork belly to saturate the sausage. Then it’s dressed with onion, jalapeños (pickled and fresh), mayo, mustard, and (gasp) ketchup, which beautifully sets off both the crunchy sweetness of the griddled onions and the heat of the peppers. To get this wiener at its best, stop by late in the evening, when patrons of local cantinas stream in and Doña Blanca Diaz keeps a fresh mess of links bubbling in lard on her stove.
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Pide at Istanbul Restaurant In the past, Yasar Demir made great bread wherever he cooked—including A La Turka, Cafe Demir, and Cousin’s—so I was delighted to learn that he’d returned from an extended trip to Turkey and opened Istanbul Restaurant in Lakeview this summer. The pide—often called “Ramadan pide” because that’s when Turks love to eat it—is as good as ever: a round, sliced, sesame-seed-topped loaf about the thickness of focaccia, it usually arrives warm from the oven with a dish of herbed olive oil for dunking. It’s almost impossible not to fill up on this freebie, but I try to save room for one of the boat-shaped stuffed pides, a meal in itself.
Salmon crudo at Roof I didn’t expect much from the food at the Wit Hotel’s 27th-floor bar, which was all the buzz this spring, but on a quiet, drizzly weekday afternoon I fell in love with chef Todd Stein’s salmon crudo. The five slices of buttery-rich raw salmon were deftly complemented by the lemon emulsion, pine nuts and, especially, little pieces of hot, red cured Calabrian chiles.
