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Dec. 13th, 2010 03:28 pm
A bit of squeal
It goes without saying that a porcomane like me has been aching to go to The Publican ever since I learned it existed, and Sunday I got my chance. Nuphy wanted someplace convenient to the opera house for ease of transport home and I wanted a bit of adventure. We both got that, as well as some very tasty food and excellent service. Unfortunately, it all came with a huge dollop of irritating trendiness.
Our first hint of that came when we tried to find the place. There was one small sign identifying the location, cut from sheet metal, poorly lit, and literally at the opposite end of the restaurant from the entrance. The hostess actually had to step outside to wave us over to the door (for which kudos to her). Clearly you're just supposed to Know. Once inside, I was struck by the odd lighting: a huge cluster of low-wattage hanging lamps, apparently designed to suffuse the room with an all-enveloping warm light that is almost adequate to read by.
I'm sounding like an old fart, aren't I? Well, partly because I'm channeling the two I was with. Once seated, it occurred to me that this was not a good choice for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
monshu because--as is the style with seemingly all new eateries--it was going to get awfully loud once more than a handful of people were present. And just to make absolutely sure that it did, the musical selection was stacked with 70s and 80s punk. Fortunately, we occupied one bent end of the common table, so it was essentially like having a three-top to ourselves.
Our waiter encouraged us to order a selection of small and large plates, acting as final arbiter over whether we'd selected enough. And he contradicted himself strangely in explaining the service, telling us first that food came out "as it was ready" and then, when we asked what had become of two of our dishes, explaining that they were "staggering the courses" in order to present the hot ones last. In the end, it was all a bit too much, but as the most successful dish came last, we ended up polishing everything off anyway.
This was the exceedingly tender pork shank. The skin, though not uniformly crisped, was dark and flavourful, and the sauerkraut had good body and texture. For my money, the next most pleasing mouthful was also one of the first, the smoked arctic char on toasted brown bread with hazelnuts and frisee. Reminded me fondly of the smoked fish brought back from Door county. The same good dark bread appeared alongside the ham selection Nuphy ordered. Ironically, both he and I preferred the cheapest of the three featured meats, the pleasantly smoky-spicy Benton's country ham. Philistine that I am, I could taste no difference between the two grades of La Quercia cured ham alongside it.
The charcuterie plate deserves a separate ranking, since its selections ran the gamut from fantastic to boring. As a chanterelles fan, I was thrilled to discover that pickling allows one to enjoy them all year long. There was good kielbasa-style sausage with whole-grained mustard and a well-made pork pie (or half of one, at any rate). The head cheese was decent enough, but if you hadn't have told me the terrine featured venison, I never would've guessed; I didn't think even farm-raised deer could be so bland. But at least it didn't have the texture problems of the sliced beef tongue, which should be a marvelous compromise between tender beef and liver but ended up reminding me of overcooked brisket. We weren't inclined to finish it.
Of the vegetable dishes, the rapini with raisins and pinenuts came out best--but inexplicably last. I make this all the time at home (albeit without the farro); it's a stir-fry, it takes mere minutes. So did it only arrive almost an hour after we ordered it? The little gem salad was more interesting on the page than the plate. I loved the pig ear lardons and the buttermilk vinaigrette was tasty enough, but it was mostly just big hunks of lettuce, too large to eat without being cut down. Again, if the description hadn't've included the word "fennel", we'd never have guessed any was used. Of the pickles, the bread-and-butter were awesome, the beets were bland, and the cauliflower was searching to justify its existence.
As we suited up to face the wind,monshu damned the spot as "a place for the twentysomethings to impress their dates". It was a lot of money for the food you got, though it did come with an army of impressive servers. I can't remember the last time I had my silverware and china changed so many times in the course of a meal. But for the same price, I could've gotten an entire roast suckling pig from Sun Wah and fed four times as many people. And I wouldn't be left making my way through a frozen no-man's land of empty storefronts where the northbound Halsted bus doesn't even stop.
We ended up getting spendy and cabbing it back. (What the hell? It costs less than the shank.) Good thing, too, because I later learned that a train derailed at Howard.monshu was struggling to keep his eyes open, so I started chatting with our Mumbaite cabbie. Eventually we got on to the subject of food and I asked for his picks: kebabs at Khan Barbecue, haleem at Hyderabad House, and habshi halwa at Tahoora. All good things to try during my month of penury after paying off our splurge in pork world.
Our first hint of that came when we tried to find the place. There was one small sign identifying the location, cut from sheet metal, poorly lit, and literally at the opposite end of the restaurant from the entrance. The hostess actually had to step outside to wave us over to the door (for which kudos to her). Clearly you're just supposed to Know. Once inside, I was struck by the odd lighting: a huge cluster of low-wattage hanging lamps, apparently designed to suffuse the room with an all-enveloping warm light that is almost adequate to read by.
I'm sounding like an old fart, aren't I? Well, partly because I'm channeling the two I was with. Once seated, it occurred to me that this was not a good choice for
monshu because--as is the style with seemingly all new eateries--it was going to get awfully loud once more than a handful of people were present. And just to make absolutely sure that it did, the musical selection was stacked with 70s and 80s punk. Fortunately, we occupied one bent end of the common table, so it was essentially like having a three-top to ourselves.Our waiter encouraged us to order a selection of small and large plates, acting as final arbiter over whether we'd selected enough. And he contradicted himself strangely in explaining the service, telling us first that food came out "as it was ready" and then, when we asked what had become of two of our dishes, explaining that they were "staggering the courses" in order to present the hot ones last. In the end, it was all a bit too much, but as the most successful dish came last, we ended up polishing everything off anyway.
This was the exceedingly tender pork shank. The skin, though not uniformly crisped, was dark and flavourful, and the sauerkraut had good body and texture. For my money, the next most pleasing mouthful was also one of the first, the smoked arctic char on toasted brown bread with hazelnuts and frisee. Reminded me fondly of the smoked fish brought back from Door county. The same good dark bread appeared alongside the ham selection Nuphy ordered. Ironically, both he and I preferred the cheapest of the three featured meats, the pleasantly smoky-spicy Benton's country ham. Philistine that I am, I could taste no difference between the two grades of La Quercia cured ham alongside it.
The charcuterie plate deserves a separate ranking, since its selections ran the gamut from fantastic to boring. As a chanterelles fan, I was thrilled to discover that pickling allows one to enjoy them all year long. There was good kielbasa-style sausage with whole-grained mustard and a well-made pork pie (or half of one, at any rate). The head cheese was decent enough, but if you hadn't have told me the terrine featured venison, I never would've guessed; I didn't think even farm-raised deer could be so bland. But at least it didn't have the texture problems of the sliced beef tongue, which should be a marvelous compromise between tender beef and liver but ended up reminding me of overcooked brisket. We weren't inclined to finish it.
Of the vegetable dishes, the rapini with raisins and pinenuts came out best--but inexplicably last. I make this all the time at home (albeit without the farro); it's a stir-fry, it takes mere minutes. So did it only arrive almost an hour after we ordered it? The little gem salad was more interesting on the page than the plate. I loved the pig ear lardons and the buttermilk vinaigrette was tasty enough, but it was mostly just big hunks of lettuce, too large to eat without being cut down. Again, if the description hadn't've included the word "fennel", we'd never have guessed any was used. Of the pickles, the bread-and-butter were awesome, the beets were bland, and the cauliflower was searching to justify its existence.
As we suited up to face the wind,
monshu damned the spot as "a place for the twentysomethings to impress their dates". It was a lot of money for the food you got, though it did come with an army of impressive servers. I can't remember the last time I had my silverware and china changed so many times in the course of a meal. But for the same price, I could've gotten an entire roast suckling pig from Sun Wah and fed four times as many people. And I wouldn't be left making my way through a frozen no-man's land of empty storefronts where the northbound Halsted bus doesn't even stop.We ended up getting spendy and cabbing it back. (What the hell? It costs less than the shank.) Good thing, too, because I later learned that a train derailed at Howard.
monshu was struggling to keep his eyes open, so I started chatting with our Mumbaite cabbie. Eventually we got on to the subject of food and I asked for his picks: kebabs at Khan Barbecue, haleem at Hyderabad House, and habshi halwa at Tahoora. All good things to try during my month of penury after paying off our splurge in pork world.