member for 26 weeks 2 days
This week we are reviewing Avec on Randolph in Chicago.
Freda: This is quite the place, and I love their concept – communal dining. This restaurant is not for the distant, unfriendly, crabby person because you are always sharing tables with strangers. I love this concept, I love that you can pop in for dinner and walk out with new friends and great stories. This is exactly what happened to Zara and I last Thursday evening when we chose this as the restaurant to review. Avec does not take reservations so I arrived a bit early to put our name on the list because people are lining up at the door to eat here. I noticed quickly that waiting was going to require great patience on my part because it was almost like the crowded bar that you avoid going to. Arrggh
The layout and lack of a waiting area, is really the only downside to Avec. The problem is that there is only one entrance way into the restaurant, because they are always packed it is very tight. I had my foot stepped on several times, was constantly bumped by other hungry patrons and we were forced to basically hover over the poor people at the first table. It was really annoying and my foot hurt after the third person stepped on it. That being said, the bar tender made up for it ten fold with the best glass of wine. After describing to him my typical requirements: a full bodied, ruby or garnet red wine with lots of berry fruits, black cherries, black berries, and hints of spices, he gave me the most wonderful wine called "SUM". It is produced by Torreguaceto and is made from 100% Sussumaniello grapes grown near the town of Brindisi on the coast of Puglia, Italy. I completely forgot about my foot.
Apparently, they had just gotten a bottle in and I was the second person to try it. I ended up drinking their only bottle. More importantly, Avec is the only restaurant to carry this spectacular wine in Chicago and they will be adding it to their wine list as early as next week. If that were the only thing that I had there, it would have been worth it.
The food: We went there with an open mind, rumbling tummies and set out to try as many dishes as we possibly could. The problem is that both of us are petite and have incredibly small stomachs so we ended up splitting four small plates and olives. First we ordered the house marinated olives. I love olives so I only have good to say about them: they were delicious I recommend them at the start of your meal. From there we moved onto my favorite dish the chorizo-stuffed medjool dates with smoked bacon and piquillo pepper-tomato sauce. It was outstanding. I don’t know how to explain it except that it was yummy. I could have walked away from the table after that and called it a night, however we went on.
The next small plate we ordered was the housemade-poached duck sausage with roasted mushrooms, green grapes, pickled onion, basil and couscous. Another excellent dish! I highly recommend this one too. At this point I was ready to explode, I was stuffed, but Zara made me keep going. The women seated next to us had ordered the red wine marinated crispy chicken thigh with the roasted eggplant, mint, shaved, fennel and lavish salad. The presentation was beautiful and it looked really delicious so we ordered it. I couldn’t eat it. After taking a few bites, I was very disappointed and didn’t like it. Maybe it was because the previous two dishes were very tasty and full of flavors from sweet to spicy and the chicken dish was just very bland and oily.
Zara wanted to end our experience with some fish and I don’t like salmon so we ordered the red pepper and tomato-braised cod with caperberries, pancetta and spicy mustard greens. Now, by this point, I couldn’t taste anything I was so stuffed, my tastebuds were on overload. I lost interest in the food and moved to the conversation. That being said, I liked this plate. It would have been perfect if I would have ordered that for my whole dinner and would been a great compliment to the “Sum” wine. The cod was light, tasteful and I would recommend this for those who are looking for a lighter dish. All in all, the presentation of each dish is really beautiful. They do a fabulous job and the wait staff is incredibly friendly. They make your experience very enjoyable.
We decided that we were going to have to make a second visit because I really want to try their wood-fired pizza and cheese plates. Of course I am going back for some more of that wine too!
We tried three different wines throughout the course of our meal. I will let Zara describe those since that really is her area of expertise. She is the true foodie here. I want to tell you about my favorite part of the whole evening, the conversations we had and the people we met. By the time we left three hours later, we had met nine new friends. We had the most interesting conversations, the people were delightful, the stories were wonderful and there was a lot of laughing.
I enjoyed listening to the two couples love stories on how they met. They were quite interesting too! I am always amazed at how people meet under the oddest circumstances and in the weirdest situations and manage to click. The great thing about this communal dining experience is that if you are open, you can really have an amazing experience and you never know who is sitting next to you. We shared food and wine with all the people that we ate next to and really that is what made the night.
Above and beyond the food and wine, it was the people that we met that made Avec my new favorite place to dine and will be frequenting there often. Unlike Zara, I would go here on my first date just to see what the guy is made of. How would he weather in this type of setting? How friendly is he? How do others respond to him? How does he respond to others? You really learn a lot about yourself and others in these types of situations. I will share more on this in another blog about some of the very neat and interesting things people shared with us that night.
Zara: Allow me to introduce myself. Zara. Wine aficionado and foodie. This of course is how I would describe myself in three words or less. Freda on the other hand, would describe me as such: Zara eats a lot. And she drinks a lot too. My partner would not disagree – I apparently drink more than him. But for you, my fellow readers, this is to your advantage since I will be able to sample a greater number of dishes and wines and thus provide a broader breadth of review. I will, however, need to start sleeping at my gym. But I digress.
Avec. Think Parisian bistronomique. Casual and friendly, where the chef serves playful food, the service is attentive without being claustrophobic and which is just simple good value. If you’re looking for a romantic dinner venue, this is not it. If you’re looking for unpretentious fun, then this is for you. Communal style seating is not for everyone but it certainly adds to the unexpected pleasure. My only quibble – I’ll get this out of the way early – is the inability to make a reservation and the ingress/egress bottleneck at the front door and near the bar when it is bustling with hungry clients.
The food. We are seated next to two sweet women enjoying a girl’s night out. They are eating the house-marinated olives and the chorizo-stuffed medjool dates with smoked bacon and piquillo pepper-tomato sauce. They are drooling so we order the same. Truly, how good can olives be? This good. Big, juicy, tasty. The medjool dates. Oh my godfather, I can’t laud this dish enough. They look like huge meatballs. The combination of the spicy tomato sauce and chorizo sausage tempers the sweetness of the date. The bacon is the icing on the cake. Our mistake was to start with this, a hard act to follow for the other dishes.
The girls to our right order the red wine-marinated crispy chicken thigh with roasted eggplant, mint, shaved fennel and lavash salad – presentation perfect – so against my personal rule to never order chicken, we do the same and were duly disappointed. Extremely oily, the skin is not that crisp and the chicken flesh is bland. The combination of the shaved fennel, eggplant and lavash salad flavors do not work. We leave it to save room for something else. Next, the housemade-poached duck sausage with roasted mushrooms, green grapes, pickled onion, basil and couscous. The sausage has a spicy kick, albeit it is a little fatty for me, but this is balanced by its accompaniments. Another winner. We move onto the red pepper and tomato-braised cod with caperberries, pancetta and spicy mustard greens. By this stage we are engrossed in conversation with two couples on our left, one of whom used to own a restaurant in Manhattan. I’m deflated by the cod – flavorless and flaccid (see you can use this word in a non-sexual context!). Our chef friend disagrees. He likes the balance of the caperberries, red pepper and tomato and thinks I expect too much of cod. I’ll leave this one for you to decide.
Our guests graciously offer me some of their wood oven-roasted pork shoulder with dried apricots, prunes, slab bacon and apricot mustard. Anathema to a vegetarian. Heaven to us carnivores. Truly it melts in your mouth. By now we have new people sitting to our right. I’m forlornly looking at their olive oil-poached organic salmon with melted lardo, grilled scallions, dill and lemon vinaigrette. They take pity on my emaciated stare and allow me to try it. Goodness Freda, how can you not like salmon? It was so light and flaky I had to hold back from helping myself to seconds.
I ask Freda whether she wants to try the cheese. She responds incredulously, “You want more food?!” Unfortunately, unlike a cow, I have not been blessed with four compartments in my stomach, so I decline.
I’m getting thirsty. The wine. A fabulously extensive list, their 250ml is enough for Freda and I to share and thus sample at least three, the first for which I don’t have the details of but given this was Freda’s favorite, I’ll leave it to her to describe. We followed it with the Spanish Castillo de Fuendejalon, Crianza, a ruby colored wine with rich black cherry character and earthy undertones. My favorite of the evening. We also tried the Italian Mario Bisceglia “Terra di Vulcano”, a complex wine with a stronger oak personality.
Final word. We had so much fun talking to our fellow diners, hearing their stories and sharing information that you would never dream of divulging to a complete stranger, it was a reminder that there are serendipitous joys all around us – we just need to invite them in.
Comments
Login or register to post a comment