“Do you know who any of these people are?” a manager asked my small group as we stood in the karaoke room at BellyQ waiting to be seated in the dining room. He was referring to a series of portraits on the wall featuring popular local chefs dressed up as their preferred “alter egos.”
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“Tradition. Amplified.” That’s the slogan coined for this nominal Korean barbecue restaurant from Kim, the former fine-dining chef (Trotter’s, Le Lan) who was among the first in his class to downshift to a humbler, fast-casual environment, first with his pan-Asian noodle shop Urban Belly and then the pan-Asian street food concept Belly Shack.
I am among an extremely small minority who were unimpressed by both places, largely by what I felt was a reckless, caricatured application of Asian flavors.
The more traditional of these—Korean short ribs and sweet marinated shreds of beef shoulder—are among the most tender I’ve tried. The short ribs, in fact, are almost too tender—fatty beef sheaths slide off the bone like meat jello, with no dentition required. Bite-size slices of fatty salmon arrive on a rectangle of banana leaf, and you’ll eat them in less time than it takes them to cook. Getting set up for this exercise calls for more effort than the execution does. Save yourself the trouble. There’s always the option to order them cooked by the kitchen.
The beverage program is designed by the talented Peter Vestinos, who rarely fails to meet the challenges set before him. Four wines on tap, ten sakes, a few shochus, and other straight spirits compete against a short cocktail list that looks cloying and oversweet on paper, but in execution yields some dramatically good drinks. A shochu-based Serpentine cocktail spiked with coconut vinegar and salty Japanese plum and a pastis, aloe, and celery soda number called the Thermador are surprisingly complex, grown-up beverages.
1400 W. Randolph 312-563-1010bellyqchicago.com
