Editor’s note: Premise abruptly shut its doors in August 2012. Read more »
Andersonville has been bereft of a serious place for cocktails ever since Ben Schiller left In Fine Spirits to join the BOKA Group in 2009, and with IFS chef Marianne Sundquist now making ghost pepper mustard and bar cherries under her new preservation venture Mess Hall & Co., the neighborhood is certainly the sorrier for the restaurant’s demise last March. At first glance, the radically different approach taken by chef Brian Runge at its replacement, Premise, seems jarring and out of character for the neighborhood, even in light of recent interesting outlying endeavors by supertalented fine dining chefs at restaurants like El Ideas, Goosefoot, and Acadia.
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Apart from a duck breast, there was no other poultry on the menu either. As stated, seafood dominates, beginning with a fluke tartare with uni emulsified into a eggy sabayon, which is given enjoyable textural complexity from briny sea beans and crunchy, popped wild rice. Sweet prawns are dressed with modernist Thai flavors—lime, basil, coconut powder, red curry foam, and ginger “froth”—and supported by silky spoonfuls of tiny, creamy tapioca pearls, a garnish I wish I could eat by the bowlful. One of Runge’s more conservative dishes is a simple, crispy bass fillet, plated with nutty fregola pasta, bitter rapini, and plummy currant sauce. And he takes notoriously oily, strongly flavored mackerel and turns it into the most refined version I’ve ever had, light and flaky with an olive tapenade, quail eggs, fingerling potato chips, and a citrusy vinaigrette. There’s a surprising “smoked” salmon dish too—the super-rare fillet not actually smoked but sprinkled with a smoky tea-and-salt mixture, with textural assists offered by poppy-seed puree, explosive salty salmon roe, and fried capers.
Under LeFiles‘s direction the first-floor bar offers a respectable collection of classic cocktails, solidly made. But Premise’s dining room itself is far more austere, and the service far more omniscient and polished than anything you might have experienced at the warm, cheery IFS. It makes you sit up straight and mind your manners, particularly if you’re seated against the wall where the chalked design will rub off like soot, leaving you looking like a Welsh miner.
5420 N. Clark 773-334-9463premisechicago.com
