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Sticky Rice: Reignite Your Passion for Thai
Thai food just isn’t that what it used to be. It’s less Bangkok than Oak Park. Everywhere you go it’s the same. The menu has the customary chromatic triumvirate of yellow, green, and red curry, along with the peanutty Massaman curry and the creamier Panang. There’s also a smattering of stir-fry and various rice noodle dishes with two to three syllable names all starting in “Pad” and offered with chicken, beef, or tofu. Occasionally they’ll spice things up with a menu item starting in “Larb.” The walls are decorated with images of dancing golden people, some with too many arms, and waitresses offer efficient, but impersonal service. A vegan or two will sit in the corner, appreciative of the respite from the ugly animal product infested restaurant scene.
Don’t get me wrong. Some Thai restaurants are definitely superior to others, but they are still variations on a theme. I’ll invariably sit down in one of these restaurants and order without looking at the menu. When the curry arrives, its deeply familiar flavor brings me comfort but no joy. I eat as a somnambulist walks, without awareness or direction. I chew and swallow as my mind drifts to a pile of laundry at home.
Thankfully, not every Thai restaurant is derived from the same curry paste. Last week, I had a meal at Sticky Rice, and it resuscitated my passion for Thai food. Located on a busy stretch of Western Ave., it initially felt the same as every other South East Asian restaurant I had visited. Brightly lit walls were garnished with yellow paint and tropical vegetation. It wasn’t until I cracked open the colossal menu that my heart started fluttering. As I scanned it, I felt the excitement and apprehension of a traveller stepping off the airplane in Bangkok for the first time. Items like stingray, intestine, pork blood, and ant eggs mingled alongside more mundane meats. Every item looked unfamiliar and alluring. Sticky Rice, as it turns out, specializes in Northern Thai food. You can get your Pad Thai or Red Curry if you want, but that would be like ordering a ham sandwich at a sushi bar. Don’t be that guy. Just flip straight to the “Northern Thai” section of the menu.
I had heard the service was slow, but that wasn’t my experience. The first item to arrive was the Northern Thai Sausage: pork infused with curry and other Thai spices. It was a pungent and spicy start to dinner, but nothing terribly unusual. A few minutes later, things took an interesting turn. The Khai Jiaw Khai Mod looked rather innocuous when it arrived but its four syllable name put me on guard even before I had read the description. It looked like an omelet with some red dipping sauce on the side. And yet, when you took a bite it was as if someone had translated bubble tea into an omelet. Each bite of egg contained small globs of discrete texture. These globs were not tapioca. They were ant eggs. In essence, it’s an inter-species egg omelet. The truth is, the ant eggs are surprisingly tasteless, offering an unusual texture rather than an unusual flavor.
Up next was the Gang Som Toon, a catfish soup with toon root, whatever that is. Fortunately, descriptions only matter when food is not delicious. The soup was aromatic, sour, and spicy. It tasted similar to Tom Yum Soup, but felt zestier, and the cat fish mixed well with it. I know that spicy foods tend to originate in hot places, but I could really sit down with a bowl of this stuff in the midst of winter. The final dish was the Gang Hung Lay featuring pork and garlic cooked in curry. It was definitely the best dish of the meal. The chunks of meat dissolved in my mouth leaving behind the pleasant aroma of star anise. If anything, it tasted more like a dish from an authentic Chinese restaurant, but with a bit more of a kick.
In the end, I thoroughly enjoyed my culinary journey to Northern Thailand. Slightly smaller dishes mean that I could sample three dishes between two people. I got out of there spending about $15 a person, more expensive than South East Asia, but extremely reasonable for the U.S. Most importantly, though, for a couple of hours, I felt like I had left Chicago for an adventure in Chiang Mai.
Address: 4018 N. Western Ave
Tel: 773-588-0133
Goats. People are divided about them. Some find their stupidity endearing. Others find their horizontally slit pupils creepy. Some clever folks sidestep the whole debate and make goat stew. The people over at Birreria Reyes de Ocotlan clearly fall into this final camp.
It’s easy to prance right past this establishment, located in the heart of Pilsen. Despite having a grand sounding name, the restaurant is modest. If you walk down 18th street and spy a sign prominently featuring goats, chances are you’ve found the right place. Walk through the dusty doors and you’ll find everything you might expect behind the dingy exterior. The television blares in Spanish, and the poorly lit picnic bench tables are surrounded by incongruent pieces of Christian and mesoamerican imagery. Behind the takeout counter, you’ll encounter a couple of friendly women will point you to an empty table with a combination of broken English and gestures. In short, it’s a hole in the wall, but the good kind. It’s quirky, local, and, to my non-Mexican eyes, authentic. Of course, the fun doesn’t start until you open up the menu.
There are several places around town where you can chow down on a caprine treat. As far as I know, though, Birreria Reyes de Ocotlan is the only place in the city with a menu completely devoted to goat. If you walk into this fine establishment, don’t expect to find anything else. Tacos comprise half of the menu. Goat meat tacos. Goat head tacos. Goat liver tacos. I’ll be honest, I didn’t try any. I would have, but I got sidetracked by the siren call of the entrees meted out in pounds on the other page of the menu. As soon as I saw the Pound of Birria (Goat Stew) to share, I knew I could make no other choice.
When the waitress brought my meal, it looked just like the name suggested. It was a heap of meat in a bowl. Presumably it weighed a pound, although I had forgotten to bring my handy pocket scale. The goat stew came with a side of broth, some tortillas, and various condiments for two. I didn’t know how you were supposed to eat the stuff so I improvised. The process for me went like this:
Take a tortilla, add hot sauce, onions, hot peppers, and goat stew. Wrap. Take a bite. Enjoy as savory goat disintegrates in mouth. Allow mouth to become pleasantly warmed by hot peppers. Dip remaining wrap in soup if time permits. Repeat until full.
That’s how the whole meal went. Unsurprisingly this delicious and filling meal was cheap. The whole meal amounted to $10 per person. The goat was extremely tender and flavorful. It had probably been stewing all day. I’ve had goat several times in the past and have always thought of it as the sort of meat you buy as a substitute for lamb or beef because it’s cheap. This meal convinced me otherwise. That’s right, goat can bat with the big boys of the meat world any day. It just needs the loving touch of a hole in the wall diner in Pilsen.
Undoubtedly this restaurant will be cause for some disagreement. Some will find the dingy interior and pound piles of food charming. Others will find the restaurant’s laser focus on goat unpalatable. A few clever people will just shut up and eat some goat stew.
Address: 1322 W. 18th Street
Phone: 312-733-2613
Borinquen Restaurant: Home of the Jibarito
Close your eyes and think of a sandwich. Now imagine taking the bread off of that sandwich and replacing it with some deep fried delicious. The marketing folks over at KFC have basically guaranteed that the image sliding around in your head is the logic defying entity hailed as The Double Down. KFC went there. With the kind of amoral curiosity possessed by Dr. Frankenstein, KFC took a modest bacon and cheese sandwich and replaced the bread with sliced of fried chicken. Until Tuesday I was having nightmares about the thing. Until Tuesday, I thought I would be stuck forever with dreams of flaccid fried chicken engulfing some limp piece of bacon oozing cheese onto my table. Thankfully, on Tuesday, I discovered a hero, a new breadless sandwich that led to far sweeter dreams. I discovered the Jibarito.
As it turns out, the Jibarito is a simple concept. Combine meat, cheese, tomato, lettuce, and mayo and slap it between two slices of flattened fried plantain. This elegant concoction supposedly got its start in Puerto Rico, but it really took off right here in Chicago in the late nineties. The sandwiches are available all over the city now, but if you want to go to the epicenter of the trend, head to Borinquen Restaurant over in Humboldt Park.
Don’t saunter into Borinquen expecting amenities like stellar service or candelabra. This place strays deep into hole in the wall territory. As you enter, you’ll pass through an antechamber that includes the takeout counter and the Kitchen. Eventually you’ll be seated in a large windowless room in the back. The place is supposedly bustling on the weekends and at lunch time, but when I went, it was pretty empty. Still, on my trip, a large Puerto Rican family seemed to be enjoying a get together.
I tried both steak and pork Jibaritos. The experience is hard to describe. Perhaps the first thing you should know is that they are messy. As I picked mine up, I quickly began to question its structural integrity. With every bite, a small slice of lettuce would tumble onto my plate hinting at imminent disintegration. In my hands the sandwich struggled in a state of flux between existence and non-existence, constantly trying to eschew its sandwichhood for a more natural state. And yet, entropy did not win. The flavor of the cheap meat and cheese coalesced with each other and fused with the salty sweet counterpoint from the crunch plantains. Somehow the makers of the Jibarito take simple, even base ingredients, and transmute them into pure delicious. It is a work of culinary alchemy. As I swallowed my last bite, I was left with a yearning for more, but I know that I will never be able to relive the experience of my first Jibarito.
Information:
Name: Borinquen Restaurant
Price: Less than $10 for a full meal
Address: 1720 North California Ave
Phone: (773) 227-6038
Mayflower: A Sunday Morning Dim Sum Treat
Chinatown is a daunting place. As you step off the red line, you enter an alternate universe where all businesses appear to center around food. As you wander down the street, you’re confronted with helpful names like “Won Kow Restaurant” or “Yee Heung Seafood House.” Some of the restaurants try to draw you in by supplementing their Chinese names with English ones like “Triple Crown Restaurant”. Some eschew their Chinese names all together and go for names like “Go 4 Food.”
One of these restaurants calls itself “Mayflower Restaurant,” in English anyways. Inexplicably, its Chinese name is more like “Beautiful World,” but who am I to complain? Now, Mayflower serves all of your regular Chinese fare. You come in for dinner and you can get your Mapo Tofu or Chow Mein. The truth is, after dinner you’ll walk out feeling as if you’ve eaten a generic meal at a generic Chinese restaurant. That’s because that’s what you will have just done. Don’t go for dinner. Instead, when you wake up on a Sunday morning and have the urge to eat an unconscionable amount of Chinese food (for a very reasonable price), saddle up and head on over to Mayflower for some dim sum.
If you aren’t familiar with dim sum, you should be. It’s a small plate Chinese brunch. In a more traditional setting, you sit down and get swarmed by a group of ladies trying to sell you little plates of dumplings and chicken feet out of their push carts. It’s fun, but unfortunately Mayflower doesn’t do that. Step over to the Phoenix Restaurant if you want to try that out. Instead, you just circle your desired food items on a giant paper picture menu and out comes the food.
I’ve tried several of the dim sum places in Chicago, and I can unequivocally say that Mayflower offers the best value for money that you can get. Sure the dim sum is a little fancier over at Phoenix, but it really isn’t much better, and it costs twice as much. Seriously, you can completely fill up on food and walk out of there paying $12 total. The service isn’t great, but that’s not something you should expect from a Chinese restaurant anyways.
As far as the food goes, you really can’t go wrong. Order three or four dishes per person and just try everything. Try the dumplings, or the buns, or the turnip cakes. Try the rice porridge with the thousand year egg. If you’re really feeling adventurous, try the Phoenix Talons, usually less glamorously referred to as chicken feet. At $4 a plate or less, you can’t go wrong.
Name: Mayflower Restaurant
Location: 225 S Wentworth Ave (In Chinatown)
Phone: (312) 808-1322
Price: $10-$15 per person for dim sum
Delicious, Cheap, Convenient: Chutney Joe’s
Sometimes I just have to have Indian food. I don’t know what comes over me, but when I get into one of those moods, curry is really the only option. I could head on over to India House and pay fifty bucks for a meal, but that’s a bit much for a Wednesday night. Don’t get me wrong, their food is delicious. It’s just not the type of food you want to be eating on a whim.
Thankfully, I live near an inexpensive and delicious alternative to India House in the South Loop: Chutney Joe’s. Located in the base of the University Center megadorm, this place offers a small selection of satisfying dishes on the cheap. You aren’t going to find the pages and pages of curry that you find in a normal Indian restaurant. Instead, the place embraces the Chipotle philosophy of offering a small selection to choose from and combine. You walk up to the counter, choose naan or rice, choose one or two kinds of curry, and then chutney to mix it with. The chutneys come in a variety of flavors ranging from the mellow yoghurt to the mouth searing Killa, and add that little bit of customization that everyone’s looking for. It all works out quite nicely. In addition, they do have a few other offerings including Samosas and Biryani for people that don’t want to get with the program. Finally, if you’re Vegan, this is the place for you! They make it clear on their menu that they’re all about making this a vegan friendly eating environment.
Honestly, you’re going to find better Indian food in other places, but when you factor in cost and convenience, Chutney Joes is truly a winner. A filling and delicious Indian dinner for only $7 in the heart of downtown? How could you pass that up?
Chutney Joe’s
511 South State Street
Chicago IL 60605
(312) 341-9755
Have you ever wondered about what they actually eat in Japan? Your initial answer might be “Sushi” or perhaps even “Tempura.” Sure, that makes sense, but it’s also like telling people that you eat Porterhouses in America. It’s true, but it’s not really what you eat on a day-to-day basis (hopefully).
“So what do Japanese people eat?” you might ask. Well, you should go and find out for yourself at Ginza. First let me tell you what you shouldn’t be expecting from Ginza. You shouldn’t go expecting to chow down on the best sushi you have ever had. You shouldn’t go in there expecting a chic atmosphere. You really shouldn’t walk up to the place expecting to find a classy exterior. Ginza, in true hole in the wall form, looks like a dump from the outside.
Don’t be afraid, though, because you’re really in for a treat. Ignore the fact that the Tokyo Hotel looks like it will crumble down around you before you finish your meal. Just walk right in. What you’ll find is a small oasis of Japan in the heart of Chicago. Ginza is not a first class restaurant, mind you. The decor looks more like that of a neighborhood Japanese restaurant than the zen interiors you might be accustomed to at Kamehachi. Still, Ginza’s as authentic as it gets around here. For a really Japanese experience, see if you can get a seat at one of the private Tatami rooms in the back. You’ll have to sit on the floor, but that’s the way it’s traditionally done over there.
The real reason you should go to Ginza is the traditional Japanese food. Really, skip the sushi and go straight for the traditional home cooked stuff. As an appetizer try the Yakitori, essentially marinated grilled chicken on a stick. On a colder day you might try the Ochazuke where you take a bowl of rice and mix it with a serving of green tea. This is a dish that you aren’t going to find in most Japanese restaurants around here. On the main courses, you generally can’t go wrong. If you want a real home-style meal, try the broiled fish dinner, where you get your choice of fish along with some tasty Japanese sides. If you’re in the mood for something light and cool, go with the Zaru Soba, which is simply a tray of buckwheat noodles with a delicious dipping sauce.
Finally, don’t rule this place out for lunch. I would venture to say that Ginza offers one of the best deals in this part of town. For nine dollars you get your choice of main dishes ranging from Japanese Curry to Deep Fried Chicken Cutlet along with your choice of side. Delicious!
Details
Name: Ginza Restaurant
Location: 19 E Ohio St, Chicago 60611 (Between State and Wabash)
Telephone: (312) 222-0600
