chicago

 If there is anything I can say about this year for sure, it's that I ate well, perhaps better than I ever have. I had meals that went beyond what I ever imagined food could be in terms of intricate qualities, each ingredient like little clockwork pieces, gears whirring together perfectly in tune. I'm particularly thinking of two chefs here in Chicago: Iliana Regan, once of One Sister supper club now of her own restaurant Elizabeth, and Justin Behlke of Thurk supper club (named after his grandfather's last name). Now that Iliana has a restaurant, the merits of it have been debated in various reviews, but I think what is missing is the realization that this is something you can only get here in Chicago. I see that particularly as a bit of an outsider, having only lived here for a year. Sometimes I think back on New York City, not missing it, but thinking (not always fondly) of experiences I had there that I cannot have here. What defines a place, particularly the foods?

I have perhaps been thinking about this all year, seeded by my trip to Stockholm, where I ate at Frantzen/Lindeberg, a meal I still think about often. And then later by meeting Magnus Nilsson of Faviken and reading his cookbook. This New Nordic movement in Scandinavia has undoubtedly influenced Elizabeth and Thurk, but at this point it's a matter of how this translates to our own environment and how in turn it shapes the environment. What is so striking about the New Nordic movement is how it upends assumptions about local food, how it instead of just buying local for the sake of local, it has seeded the genesis of food businesses that are both local and striving to supply such restaurants with the highest possible quality foods, not just in the area, but possibly in the world. 

I was talking to Justin about how difficult that is here with the way Chicago is structured, with its sprawl devouring nearby farmland so it's hard to have a the close relationship with producers that Magnus speaks of in Faviken. Some of the things I've eaten lately, sweetbreads out of a cow freshly killed right in the green pastures rather than a cold metal slaughterhouse, well I have to admit that yes, I wouldn't buy this, this is something that can only come from being near, even if it were legal to sell. It's too intimate and risky of an experience to buy from afar, maybe to even buy at all. And no, you couldn't buy it, since it did not come from an inspected slaughterhouse, though it's not like the law recognizes this as an inherently unsafe action since it would be legal for me to invite you over as a friend and serve it for dinner. The problem is that the laws impose burdens that small produces can't meet or that impair quality. The dearth of USDA-inspected slaughterhouses and quality control problems within them are serious issues for selling to restaurants. Troubles on that end are largely why I can not supply any of these places with much if any in the way of meat from my own family's farm. It is a problem I hope to solve someday, but working with Thurk is something ideal since it's home dinners with friends (of a ridiculously high quality) that are smaller in scale to test things with. Both chefs have expressed to me that they eventually hope to have restaurants in more agrarian settings that might allow them to do something more hyper-local. 

Cured pork, pickles and mustard @ Thurk. Via JenMoran Photography.

Occasionally someone will tell me that I should become a food reviewer, but while I love writing about food and visiting good restaurants, I believe this would hamper me in many ways, particularly from having conversations(and sometimes arguments) with chefs and the other people that make restaurants work. I admit a bias- I originally met Iliana by dining at her home and she introduced me to many new friends. Justin I found on LTHforum, where he was looking for a place to host his dinners. Not knowing much of anything about him, I hosted his first dinners at my apartment before he set up his own apartment to host. And my risk definitely was worth it, I was lucky to host some really fun and delicious dinners.

But on another hand, I see why restaurant reviewers operate the way they do. I remember an essay I read in a poetry class, the author lost in my memory, that laid out why a poem's author should never explain a poem. If food is to be a form of art, it is something to be able to glean the art from it without context. Even so, this happens to be the case whether you know the chef or not, in the environment of harried plating, who has time to explain? And you are lost in this short moment on your own, to find what you will there. 

From the Elizabeth Deer Menu: {sous vide and seared deer tenderloin with thyme and juniper, celery root tubes, pickled elderberries and sauce, amaranth and celery root porridge, ground deer meat, steel cut oats, parsley, seasonings loosely wrapped in cabbage, deer sauce with capers, parsley and shallot, with brown butter JenMoranPhotography

But what this food tells me is that it is of the Midwest a place, not as much as a culture. It tries to echo the land itself, nature forgetting all the people that have lived there, the people who in nature's course of time, lingered only for a second. Attempting to mirror the ecosystem itself, it has a complexity of tastes, species, aromas, and textures that at its height almost allow you to imagine that you are outside alone in the woods or in a pasture rather than sitting at a dining table.

From the Elizabeth Deer Menu: venison tartare on chard, egg yolk sauce, caper berries, pickled hawthorn berries, grains of paradise and horseradish whip JenMoranPhotography

But it is inevitable to see the marks of human hands even among the naturalistic deconstruction that often characterizes these menus, the cultures that have come and go, bringing plants and animals from others places to settle here with us, bringing ways of cooking and preserving food. For example, the pickles and sourdough on Justin's menu or the pirogis and gravlax on Iliana's. Iliana's also contains a characteristic storybook whimsicality and playfulness in her preparations.

Justin's Thurk menus are a little more minimalistic and rustic in style, more strict in their devotion to locality and season. He did a stint at the famous Noma and you can see some of that there. 

Iliana's restaurant is now offering three different menus. I think the best one for someone looking for an introduction to her style is the Deer menu, which has a heavy focus on foraged and wild ingredients.  

Justin is doing a couple of dinners at his apartment in January and there are still a few reservations left. He also has a long-fermented sourdough (which I tolerate very well, particularly with his signature brown butter :) ) class coming up at my place.

Thurk's Sourdough via JenMoran Photography

Of all the meals I've eaten this year, theirs have been the most memorable and I can heartily recommend them. And hope this style of cooking and dining prospers and grows here. 

 I associate sugar-free with sad looking hard candies in a lonely corner of the drugstore shelves, carefully quarantined from the "good candy." From those ugly bright pink packets of sugar at every diner to Diet Coke, things labeled "sugar-free" are decidedly low-brow. 

But in Chicago we have Homaro Cantu, chef of ritzy restaurants iNG and Moto, who is trying to make it sexy. Luckily for those of us who are intolerant of sugar alcohols or mildly neurotic, instead of lacing his food and drinks with chemicals, he's using something called miracle berry. I remember back in college when this stuff was vaguely illegal or something and people hoarded their pills of it imported from Asia. Now you can order it on Amazon. Surprisingly, I had never tried it before last night. I guess it was a "why bother" thing for me, since I pretty regularly eat normal desserts in moderation, though my taste buds have shifted over the years from not eating junk and I find almost all desserts way too sweet.

But last night I signed up for a special meal at iNG hosted by Chicago Foodies that was themed Guilty Pleasures. All six of the courses were themed around foods and drinks people feel guilty about. I was imagining a meal of pony tartare and whale sushi, but I guess that's my own sick mind at work. They were more mundane things: cigarettes, late-night tacos, carbs, meat, butter, and coffee. Unfortunately, I don't feel guilty about any of those things, though I have a vague disease related to coffee since it occasionally makes me more insane than I already am. Maybe cigarettes, but I've only smoked maybe twice in my life. The carbs course was a bit hilarious to me since it consisted of a single raviolo, Lilliputian slices of truffle-covered bread, and a copious amount of vegetables. Chef Nate Park said he was once quite overweight from gorging on pasta, but I don't think he would have had a problem if he had eaten pasta the way it was served there. 

I wasn't terribly thrilled with the flavor tripping, but I wondered if I had done something wrong. Things tasted OK, I guess. The best thing was probably just this simple orange and this block of orange cream. It tasted a bit like fanta and icing...

My friend who is diabetic said she liked the way the sweet things tasted without the miracle berry powder. I agreed. I think this happens to a lot of people who don't eat processed foods: our taste buds get more sensitive to sweet and we also learn to appreciate more complex flavors. If I ever indulge in foods I used to overeat when I was less healthy, a lot of them taste cloying and disgusting to me. It would be interesting to know what percentage of this is physiological and what is psychological. 

I think the flavor I appreciate most now is sour. When I played with some miracle berry powder at home, I found that many things I enjoyed like kombucha and lime tasted very flat. I also tried it with a very sour little Australian citrus my cousin gave me, but that tasted flat as well. Apparently in that little lime there wasn't much else to it but sour. 

I am planning to trying it with some other stuff though, particularly things that don't seem to express their full flavor without massive amounts of sugar like chai and mulled wine. 

However, it is interesting what iNG is doing and another diabetic friend told me he appreciates that he can enjoy a sweet cocktail there that has essentially very little sugar. 

The head chef there, Homaro Cantu, has a bunch of other projects aiming to use such flavor manipulation to improve global health.

That's the fun part. But Cantu envisions greater purposes for this little fruit: eliminating sugar from our diets, conquering obesity and curing hunger. If squeezing lemon into soda water produces something resembling Sprite, then why shouldn't that be Sprite? Two ingredients plus the miracle berry. Junk food becomes health food. Sugar goes away. "All these sugar cane growers can just get rid of the sugar cane and start growing the berries, and then we can live happily ever after," Cantu says. "I just see it as a very simple, easy fix."
 

However, my own impression is that miracle berry is very hard to use and even a top restaurant with experienced chefs like iNG seems to have trouble delivering a consistently good flavor from it. It is widely speculated that this is the reason iNG keeps getting snubbed by the Michelin guide.

It is cool though that he is more realistic about human nature than other celebrity chef health campaigners. He recognizes that one of the reasons people eat fast food is because it tastes good, that in order to get people to eat differently, we have to work on viable alternatives

CANTU: We - we have a problem with food addiction in our country. Diets don't work, and people that go on diets go on and off. You've never heard anybody ever say, boy, I really enjoyed being on that diet. That was awesome. You know, that just doesn't happen.

We're trying to take the other approach. We want to give you food products, like this waffle, that tastes better than the real thing, just because of the way it's made. And, you know, you - you swear you're ingesting tons of, you know, calories from sugar, but there's nothing there.

But having studied food science at a major research university, I feel like I've definitely seen this before, and that it doesn't always go well. It's not like food science departments at both universities and major corporations haven't been working on this for ages, bringing us such failures as Olestra chips and Diet Soda. There rarely is a simple, easy fix...
 

And I see more and more fancy restaurants dealing with the sugar problem by just having tiny desserts. Honestly, I'd prefer to have a very small dessert made with real sugar like this innovative and delicious silver dollar-size dollap of ice cream and mochi I had at Blackbird, than the two very large sugar-free desserts I had at iNG. 

Anyone else tried miracle berry? What do you think?