I could announce that the best restaurant to open in Chicago in 2014 was the Jerk Taco Man’s Jamaican Jerk Shack and I’d feel pretty good about it.
There was nothing simple or minimal about Joe Fish, Rosebud Restaurants’ brassy Italian seafood house with massive portions—a “throwback” to a time when to eat out was to be part of a performance. Paul Kahan and One Off Hospitality opened an Italian seafood spot too, Nico Osteria, which Reader editor Mara Shalhoup called “simultaneously rustic Italian and refined Italian.”
It’s not so rare, however, that it wasn’t done twice. Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto swept in and relaunched the old Japonais to great effect, delivering a menu that’s a bit more out-there than Momotaro’s—gyoza with puttanesca and bacon foam, sashimi terrines, tableside tofu service—but just as likable, particularly with regard to the sushi and the house-polished rice it rides on. What’s truly rare is “when an out-of-town chef comes to Chicago and manages not to condescend. That’s probably how Morimoto’s elevated Japonais to the very top of the food chain for raw fish in Chicago.”
I usually find it pretty hard to see past the inherent shallowness of certain Lettuce Entertain You restaurants, but that was easy to do with RPM Steak, where making the scene seems more important to patrons than the solid menu developed by chef Doug Psaltis, It’s markedly different from “the typical Chicago expense-account feeding lot” and offers some very good and relatively inexpensive butcher’s cuts likely to satisfy any hard-core carnivore.
Overall, it was very good year, and not just for Italian.
• Acanto • Bar Takito • Bohemian House • Boltwood • Charlatan • Cocello • The Radler • The Roost • Salero
Read my expressions of love for the dozens and dozens of great things I ate all year long.
