All too often, restaurants that claim to serve Kobe beef are party to one of the most pervasive fictions perpetrated in the industry. The menu at River North’s Siena Tavern advertises a “Kobe meatball,” and servers describe it that way too. The idea that this new River North circus might have actually been grinding the exorbitantly priced flesh, extending it with bread crumbs, and forming it into oversize meatballs—even $17 meatballs that are fluffy and light in their roasted tomato sauce blanket—was difficult to swallow. If it were true Kobe it would be a crime against bovinity.
One of Siena Tavern’s mantras, repeated endlessly by servers, on its website, and in its marketing materials, is that everything that comes out of the kitchen is made from scratch. I don’t doubt it, but the sheer volume of table turnover results in some particularly careless executions that obviate whatever care goes into the prep.
But the law of averages dictates that some things will in fact be good. Or at least not bad. I liked the little antipasti coccoli, fried dough pufflets arranged over truffle-honeyed sheets of prosciutto with a creamy lump of stracchino cheese. Or a supertender, dino-sized braised veal osso bucco with farro risotto, brightened by a brilliant green gremolata. There are a few solid salads, too, including nutty farro clumped with grilled shrimp and squid in a sharp mustard vinaigrette (like Grape-Nuts for dinner), and a simple, tender baby kale Caesar that I wanted to eat above and beyond all that came before and after. The very last thing I ate at Siena—a cannolo whose shell shattered under the tooth on a creamy, cool, dark-chocolate-laced ricotta filling—briefly allowed me to forget the many missteps that preceded it.
51 W. Kinzie 312-595-1322sienatavern.com
