Among many restaurants offering promotional prix fixe stimulus packages these days, Cafe des Architectes recently announced a three-course, $29 “Neighborhood Friends Menu” featuring seasonal local ingredients. Even if you aren’t a Gold Coast hood rat, the offer, available Sunday and Monday nights, is a great chance to taste the work of premier chef Martial Noguier, who promised when he started there last October to make the cafe, located in the Sofitel Hotel, more of a neighborhood restaurant than an undistinguished default for weary travelers.
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The chief culprit among those main plates was an old friend from One SixtyBlue—Michael Jordan’s favorite—a 14-ounce prime Delmonico steak with shallot marmalade (described as “caramelized” at the old place), accompanied by a potato gratin. At $38 this piece of cow shouldn’t have been as chewy and rangy as it was, nor should the gratin have been as tepid and gelid. Also disappointing: mushy diver scallops with a pair of tasteless frenched chicken wings, and wild striped bass with shredded, glazed veal cheeks. These dishes were so stridently one-dimensional they prompted a game: Guess What Went Wrong. We overheard our waiter tell another diner the chef wasn’t in that evening, but I don’t know if that works five months into a chef’s tenure.
The bright and shining stars were desserts by pastry chef Suzanne Imaz, whom Noguier brought along from One SixtyBlue—a pear-ginger creme brulee with almond phyllo and a chocolate dome with a pistachio cream center—and cocktails in the adjoining bar, mixed by an enthusiastic bartender who showed independence despite having to work with a silly cocktail menu that divides drinks into the categories “his” and “hers.”
transformations
200 E. Chestnut
312-324-4000
1400 W. Randolph, 312-850-0303
