In celebration of the girlfriend’s birthday we visited the Graham Elliot, the new restaurant by Graham Elliot Bowes formerly of Avenues at The Peninsula Hotel.  The theme of the restaurant is “Bistronomic” simply stated its high end food in a casual environment.  Most of Graham’s dishes involve some sort of molecular gastronome and usually a good measure of whimsy.

We started the meal with the Caesar Salad and the Kobe Beef Tartar.  The presentation of the salad was very interesting.  They used a very compressed portion of a romaine heart.  Accompanying the salad is a Brioche “twinkie” filled with parmesan creme.  Here’s a picture off someone else’s blog:

The salad was wonderful, the flavors of each of the components was so concentrated that the freshness of the lettuce really cut through the saltiness/fishiness.

The Kobe beer tartar was ok.  On the base of the cylinder is lightly seared cubed Kobe beef, topped with a bernaise panna cotta, topped with a scoop of “smoked” ice cream.  The combination of flavors iwas good.  The bernaise and ice cream play off each other to add a special creaminess to the dish, usually accomplished by adding an egg yolk.  My only complaint about the dish was that the Kobe didn’t really give off its fattiness since it was still in its “raw” form.  Maybe if they ground the Kobe rather then cubed it, the fattiness would of come through.

The second round included the Gnocchi and Risotto.  The Gnocchi was frankly, wonderful.  Probably hands down the best gnocchi I’ve had in Chicago. Each little dumpling was lightly toasted on each side to intensify flavors.  A top the gnocchi was asparagus tips, a poached egg, shaved Pecorino Romano and covered with white truffle oil.

This dish was hands down one of my favorites.  I could of eaten other one of these.

The risotto was disappointing.  I had thought the dish would be similar to the one shown on the Sweetest Sangria blog.  A cheddar cheese flavored dish sprinkled with Cheez it crackers.  Instead the dish was a Fava Bean flavored risotto, with pearl onions, wild mushrooms and house cured bacon.  Frankly, I thought the dish was a bust.  The flavor of the fava bean was so strong that it overpowered the rest of the ingredients of the dish.  If the goal of the dish was to recreate a split pea soup with the beans and the smoky bacon than it was accomplished. 

The third thing we shared was the Lamb with Israeli couscous and fennel.  This dish was great.  The lamb was cooked to a perfect medium temperature, from a wood fired grill.  I’ve never had Israeli couscous before and its good.  It has a great spongy beaded texture, similar to tapioca pearls.

The last dish we had was the brownie.  The three components to the dish are  1. A brownie sandwich filled with peanut butter.  2.  A peanut butter ice cream.  3.  A caramelized banana on a crumbled candy bar.

Overall my dining experience was a lot a fun.  All the dishes were tasty and quite imaginative.  I’ll definitely come back when I have the chance.

I know the title sounds like something out of the Hawaiian Chicken Skin Ghost Stories, but I’m not telling a ghost story.  I’m making an observation about every sushi resturant in Chicago with Toro on the menu.  Trust me, every place that serves sushi is chicago has something called Toro on the menu!  Almost as if its a brand.  I’ve tried some of these toros and none of them were fatty tuna!  Guess what!  Most of them were actually albacore tuna being pawned off as the real deal.  But sushiattack, what do they serve when they list shiro maguro on the menu?  Escolar!  Every place has escolar listed as shiro maguro, or “super white maguro.”  Interesting huh?

I have to admit  I’ve been pretty unhappy with all the asian food I’ve been eating in the Midwest.  Yeah I know, “How is the fishing boat going to drop the asians off in the Midwest?”  Well, there’s enough railroads around here that probably had something to do with their relocation.  Anyway the great Chicago sushi place I found is called Ginza Japanese Resturant.  Trust me, for weeks I’ve been peeking my head into so called “sushi” resturants and taking a look at the menu and the clientele, so far this is the only place I would stamp Japadamus.com approved.

So far I’ve tried the Agedashi Tofu, Sapporo Beer, Sakekawa maki (Salmon skin roll), Natto Maki, Hamachi, Sake(salmon), Shiro Maguro (interestingly they didn’t serve albacore for their shiro maguro, rather they gave me Escolar), Ikura, and Scallop.  Out of those, I would say the Salmon was the most interesting.  They use a VERY fatty cut that doesn’t look like the traditional striped design, it looked almost all white with several pink portions.  It was slightly more chewy but altogether pretty good.  The only fish I had a slight problem with was the Hamachi.  It seemed to a cut that was much closer to the bloodline which gave it a stronger fishy taste.  I didn’t like it.

To all my loyal fans I will promise to explore the menu further and report back.