Avec
At first, sitting on a bench between strangers in this cedar-lined, saunalike room makes me feel a little apprehensive, like I’m wrapped in naught but a sweaty towel. But as the wine flows and the evening grows long, everyone’s gabbing like pals, offering around bits of robust cheese or chorizo-stuffed dates and dredging juices off empty plates with warm rustic bread. Chef Koren Grieveson’s Mediterranean “peasant” food is paired with an ever intriguing and ever changing selection of uncommon wines and cheeses, many of which are as unforgettable as the Spanish sheep’s-milk torta del casar, a powerful molten gob of delicious funk that may forever remain my benchmark for strong queso (if only because I couldn’t seem to wash the smell from my fingers). There’s a daily salumi plate, and the chefs make excellent and varied use of the wood-burning oven, firing up everything from focaccia and pisaladiere to roast chicken and pork shoulder. And it never ceases to amaze me how combining just two or three seasonal ingredients can be, in the right hands, a kind of alchemy. —Mike Sula
Paul Fehribach, former chef at Schubas’ Harmony Grill, has turned this space into an airy, minimalist dining room distinguished by floor-to-ceiling windows and wrought-iron chandeliers. Like those chandeliers, the menu gives a little wave to the French Quarter. The cocktail list is full of daiquiris, hurricanes, and nicely balanced Sazeracs—including one with absinthe—and the menu includes crawfish-boudin croquettes and a rich and smoky gumbo with chicken and andouille. Most items are made in-house, from chorizo to tasso and headcheese to pickles. I didn’t try the sandwiches but I wish I had: at a neighboring table a sizable Tallgrass beef burger with fontina and aioli was provoking groans of happiness. And the fresh, clean flavors of a simple house salad got my friend to sit up and take notice. All in all Big Jones seems to be striving to fuse the accoutrements of upscale dining with the down-home soul of country cooking. When it works, the results are stellar, both sophisticated and bone-deep satisfying. —Martha Bayne
This late-night lounge/wine bar/gastropub from the owners of Webster’s Wine Bar is a pleasantly understated space, outfitted in a sort of rustic-minimalist vein, with tables made from old wine casks and stools reminiscent of high school chem lab. On a Sunday night at least, it’s a nice mellow scene. For the most part the starters are great—lots of cured meats and funky cheeses, salads, flatbreads, and so on. The classic frites, simultaneously crispy and floppy and served with little cups of addictive curried ketchup and garlic aioli, are no-brainer perfection. The seasonal menu features dishes like ale-braised rabbit with mushrooms, bacon, and Manchego served on fettuccine and wild-caught whitefish with braised leeks, sauteed spinach, and chipotle cream sauce. By-the-glass options we tried from the wine list were excellent, and the extensive beer list is sophisticated and heavy on the Belgians. —Martha Bayne
The seasonal menu at chef Chris Pandel’s beercentric the Bristol promises interesting variety at accessible prices, like a perfect pairing of grilled mackerel and romaine in the Caesar or “Scotch olives,” a mutation of a Scotch egg and Italian olives all’Ascolana (fat green olives stuffed with pork and veal and deep-fried). Challenges are even more evident on the daily chalkboard menu, where snout-to-tail items beyond pork belly or the increasingly common headcheese put the Bristol in the growing class of restaurants catering to the public’s curiosity about the fifth quarter and other uncommon proteins. It’s indicative of Pandel’s guts that he’s unafraid to leave the foot on a roasted half chicken; a supper-club-style relish plate special with potted salmon and beer cheese featured beets with a sprinkling of grated bottarga, the delicious, famously funky cured roe of a mullet. If these dishes still sound fearsome, there’s plenty here to feed the timid—duck-fat fries, a burger—and the beer list is deep and fascinating, with lots of large-format bottles and unusual choices. Since its opening two years ago the Bristol’s been joined by many others of its ilk, but no matter—this is the kind of neighborhood beer hall everyone deserves to have within walking distance. —Mike Sula
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River North’s Gilt Bar is only the latest in a long line of new restaurants testing the limits of how much gastropubbery the market can bear. More than two years after the Bristol and the Publican broke this ground, communal tables, shared plates, odd meats, and beer, beer, beer are everywhere, and if you haven’t had enough I have some marrow bones I can sell you at a 150 percent markup. Chef-owner Brendan Sodikoff spent quality time under the wings of Thomas Keller and Alain Ducasse in his early career, but his more recent assignments as corporate chef for Lettuce Entertain You and then in the kitchen of LEYE spawn Hub 51 didn’t inspire much confidence that Gilt would be anything more than a late leap onto a departing bandwagon. But maybe I should give it a pass. Gilt is decidedly less beer-, pork-, and organ-focused than many of its gastropeers, and there are enough simple, well-prepared, and fairly inexpensive dishes here to make me hope it can break the curse on the space that killed the likes of Pili Pili and Aigre Doux. There are plenty of nods in the expected directions, but the meaty options don’t get much more threatening than a pot of a six-inch-long marrow bone split lengthwise, which despite its unnervingly human appearance is actually a very satisfying presentation: two convenient troughs with easy access to the precious meat jelly inside. A selection of small, inexpensive vegetable plates tips the balance toward plant eaters. In a couple cases I found myself rebelling against Sodikoff’s minimalist approach and using them as add-ins for simply executed but one-dimensional pastas: fluffy brown-butter ricotta gnocchi became a different and better dish when I tossed on some of the tart, clovey red cabbage slaw. When it comes to dessert, again, simplicity rules: in addition to sundaes with house-made ice cream and diner-style pies there are terrific versions of basics like brownies and blondies. —Mike Sula
