I don’t have a habit of expressing gratitude for European colonialism, but I would like to thank the Portuguese for Fat Rice, the compact and currently booming new spot from the former underground dining team known as X-Marx.
Like the arroz gordo, the casseroles at the bottom of the menu are generous, stocked with a variety of plants and animals, and are impossible not to share. There’s the heaping bowl of catfish, tofu, Thai eggplant, and pork belly marinated in a powerfully funky shrimp paste that mellows with cooking but deepens in flavor—and balances the sweet-sour influence of tamarind. The Portuguese chicken, a simmering cauldron of bird and mussels bubbling in a bright but mild Indian-style coconut curry, presents a divergent but no less enjoyable expression of this uncommon convergence of the trade winds.
Fat Rice isn’t some recklessly dumbed down fusion of incompatible cuisines, where the most distinctive characteristics of the dishes are diluted in the service of an untested novelty. What’s most impressive about this food is that its flavors are assertive and its compositions fearless. I’m rarely as excited by a new place as I am by Fat Rice, and that’s a feeling that extends beyond the startling vibrancy of the food. With its open kitchen and tin ceiling that amplifies the chatter of the hungry, sipping wine and light fizzy cocktails before their turns at the tables, it feels not at all like Logan Square’s latest flavor of the day but more like a crowded market street-food stall that’s been operating for ages—and for good reason.
2957 W. Diversey 773-661-9170eatfatrice.com
