It isn’t Alexander Brunacci’s fault that we live in a city that’s afraid of food trucks and runs down outlaw eloteros, fruteros, and tamaleros at whim. But it does smart a bit to see a full-service restaurant pairing wines to “elevated street food” in a city historically hostile to the real thing.
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OK, there’s an elote, if by elote you mean a shucked ear of corn piled precariously with a matrix of chicharron, hazelnuts, and blue cheese that you’d have to scrape off the sidewalk if you were eating it on the street. This was an appealing-looking special one evening in early July (it also appears on the Peasantry’s brunch menu). But the awkwardly mounted topping did little to deter my suspicion that the corn was prematurely picked. It was a flat, dull-flavored ear, resembling nothing you’d expect at the top of the season. The menu bears the usual proviso about local-when-possible sourcing, but this tasted like something harvested in February in another hemisphere.
I encountered a number of equally disappointing executional and conceptual failures across this menu, which to Brunacci and Doren’s credit doesn’t underestimate the neighborhood’s adventurousness. There is precisely one beef dish on the menu (a steak and marrow burger) and three chicken dishes—but two of them are gizzards and livers, respectively. The rest is a compellingly varied collection of odd cuts from formerly unglamorous protein sources—octopus, rabbit, lamb, duck—some illustrated in oversize graffiti on the walls. (But what? No kangaroo burger?) In more innocent times we might have called the Peasantry a gastropub, as the beverage program, apart from a tight list of ten wines, is focused on a selection of mostly local, if bottled, craft beers.
How all of this adds up to street food I can’t say. But elevated? More like muddled. Even in Chicago, the best street food remains on the street.
2723 N. Clark
773-868-4888
thepeasantry.com
