I’m multitasking as I sit here typing this review of Brendan Sodikoff’s Bavette’s Bar & Boeuf. To my left a half-dozen bulging takeaway containers from the previous night’s dinner at the River North “European steak house” are competing for my attention. The creamed spinach I was served, already fortified by blue cheese, has been given structure by a hardened overcoat of brown, blistered Chihuahua, and I’m stuffing it into my face cold with one hand as I struggle to communicate how powerless I am to stop eating it.
But on these rare occasions when the meals haunt the mornings and I’m powerless to resist their call, it’s always instructive to see how restaurant food changes in the daylight. When it takes on a wholly different but equally irresistible character, you know you have something special on your hands.
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Massive salads provide an early indication that a representative sampling of this menu will require endurance and strength. A creamy, almost too cheesy Caesar with smoked whitefish has a superb textural surprise of hidden crispy potato chips, and tender, buttery Bibb lettuce is served with a fatty avocado half stuffed with a formidable scoop of sweet crabmeat. These could stand on their own for delicate eaters, but certainly won’t provide much in the way of vegetal respite if one plans to branch out.
That’s the thing about Bavette’s. It resides in the part of town whose arteries are clogged with goofy unserious places like that, and high-end, expense-account steak houses, few of which manage to distinguish themselves. But to those who would say we don’t need another steak house—and often I’m one of them—it breaks the mold and excels in practically every aspect. Except steak.
218 W. Kinzie 312-624-8154
