- Michael Gebert
- Escargot at Paris Club
There was once a great French restaurant in River North, owned by Lettuce Entertain You and run by Chef Jean Joho. Not great in the Michelin sense, perfection of technique and high-end service—for that you went into the Loop to Joho’s Everest. Great as in it looked like a Parisian brasserie, it was lively, the food was utterly reliable, and it felt like Gallic sophistication in the heart of Chicago.
What was once a big barn of a brasserie is now a darker, more intimate space, with the kind of old-school, black-leather glamor that places like Brendan Sodikoff’s Bavette’s have. The menu, now under Doug Psaltis, a veteran Lettuce hand who also opened RPM Italian, has been pared back to respectable classics of the steak-frites and roasted-chicken varieties, and when they’re determined to be good, they’re very good: a dish of escargot in butter was everything you’d want it to be, and both steak and chicken hit the mark as well-executed versions with no funny business. On the other hand, there were also dishes that could have been better, for not that much effort; a plate of Camembert with apples and quince wanted a cheese of more distinction than this one, which tasted like something I could have picked up at Whole Foods, and the frozen frites were no match for the old shoestring ones at Brasserie Jo—and besides, they arrived in a cup of their own, missing out on the best part of steak frites, which is potatoes that have soaked up the juices of the steak.
