This blog is about the intersection between evolutionary biology and food. But also about practical applications, sustainable agriculture, and general tasty things.
Melissa McEwen
Connect
Comments
gluten-free
04/06/2013 - 17:38
Since I get regular emails on this subject, I thought I might as well create a whole post on restaurants (and a smattering of bars) in Chicago that I think are worth recommending.
The first of these is Elizabeth Restaurant ($$$), run by my friend Iliana Regan and her excellent staff. I chanced on an extra seat back when she was doing dinners at her apartment and ever since I’ve been a fan. I love her intricate approach to showing off what the woods and fields of the region have to offer. She has three menus, the ones that are probably the most interest to a visitor are the Owl, which is focused on Midwestern agriculture, and the Deer, which is focused on foraging and hunting. I’ve had bear, venison, raccoon, wild mushrooms, and other unique local woodland products here, all presented beautifully in multi-course formal tasting menus. You have to pre-buy tickets to this restaurant to secure your seats.
Salmon wrapped in turnip at Elizabeth
People who have serious food allergies who read this blog will be delighted to learn of the existence of Senza ($$$ previous post), a fantastic restaurant staffed by many veterans of Chicago’s most respected fine dining institutions that happens to be very strictly gluten-free, which is a boon for anyone with celiac disease. Unlike other gluten-free restaurants, the cuisine is more focused on meat, fish, fruits and vegetables than gluten-free bread and pasta that dominates the less accomplished restaurants of this genre. Tasting menu only, but it’s a perfect way to experience the talents of the kitchen.
Two less formal restaurants I frequent are Vera ($$) and La Sirena Clandestina ($$) in the West Loop, which is really the hub of the food scene here. Vera is a seasonally-focused Spanish-inspired wine bar. Sit at the Otro bar and enjoy delectable deviled eggs topped with creamy uni, the famous jamon iberico, the most perfectly cooked crispy brussel sprouts with anchovy dressing, and a glass from their very long list of sherries. Menu items change often as the seasons change, so I can’t recommend any one thing, but be sure not to miss ordering something each from the meat, the seafood, and the vegetable sections of the menu.
Bacon wrapped dates in blue cheese fondue and kale salad at Vera
La Sirena Clandestina is a romantic little South American-ish spot. I think some of my readers will enjoy it because the chef uses cassava flour for things like pao de quijo, which are cheese puffs (also found in Lakeview at Cassava, a gluten-free cafe), and fried smelt, which are little fish served with an aioli-like made with Brazillian malagueta peppers. I personally have an addiction to the empanadas, which are always filled with something new and interesting like spicy duck chorizo. Seafood dishes are a highlight here and there are lots of little appetizers that are surprising hits like the cilantro coconut risotto. Don’t miss the excellent cocktail program. I think the pisco sour is one of my favorite drinks in the city.
Cassava battered smelt at La Sirena
Another good option in the West Loop closer to the city core in Embeya ($$$), which has a nice selection of Southeast Asian dishes like this sausage stuffed squid and excellent drinks. If you are wheat-avoidant there is hardly any on the menu.
For Lunch, Blackbird ($$$ except for lunch special) is a great place to get a tasting menu that’s not very expensive. $22 will get you an excellent three-course menu that varies with the season. If you want something a little less formal, Publican Quality Meats ($) is a butcher shop that has a variety of really great options, like the butcher’s meal, which lately is Cocido, a Spanish blood sauage, cumin, and chickpea stew. I also go to Au Cheval sometimes for their chopped liver, which is so far my favorite liver in the city.
In my own neighborhood, which is above the West Loop and is usually called West Town, I am a huge fan of Ruxbin ($$), which is just really wonderfully cooked comfort foods with unique, often Asian-influenced, touches. One of the best dishes I had here was a perfectly cooked steak with miso-butter rice “tots” and the best crispy savory broccolini I’ve ever had. The catch is that it’s impossible to get into on Sunday, which is reservations only, and the rest of the days there are no reservations, so sometimes the wait can be long and unpredictable. I suggest putting your name down and heading to Noble Rot or Lush where you can get great beer or wine to bring back when your table is reading since Ruxbin is BYOB. I need to try more of the Mexican options in Chicago, but I typically go to the dive called Taqueria Traspasada ($), which is on the corner and open late, for simple good tacos.
For lunch, the local butcher shop, The Butcher and the Larder, serves up delicious sandwiches and soups. Other neighborhood staples for me are The Green Grocer, a small grocery store which has an excellent selection of pretty much everything I like, and Nini’s, a little Cuban-Lebanese deli that has an assortment of homemade and high-quality goods.
In Wicker Park I like Carriage House ($$), which features low-country Southern Food, Violet Hour ($$) for cocktails (but on weekends there is often a very long line to get in), and Trencherman ($$) for brunch and cocktails.
Logan Square is another food-lover’s mecca. I really enjoy the cocktails at Billy Sunday($$) and the Japanese-influenced food at Yusho ($$), particularly the savory egg custard known as chawanmushi. Longman & Eagle has delicious tallow fries.
Up north in my old neighborhood of Lincoln park I recommend The Peasantry ($$), which is very rich and delicious dishes inspired by street food, and Rickshaw Republic ($$), which is oddly enough Indonesian street food. I guess it makes up for Chicago’s anemic food truck scene,a consequences of draconian regulations here. For drinks in that area I recommend Barrelhouse Flats for cocktails and Deliahs for beer.
If you are willing to go further north, there are very good Indian, Thai, and Korean restaurants. For Korean I usually go to Dancen ($), which is a Korean dive bar where you can get cod roe soup that is really made with cod sperm sacks. It’s better than it sounds, but if that’s not your style, the seafood pancake is also really really good. For Thai I love Andy’s Thai Kitchen ($) and Sticky Rice ($), which have many authentic dishes, one of my favorites being the fermented sausages.
Anderssonville is a northern neighborhood that also has a pretty good food scene including Southern food at Big Jones and craft beer at Hopleaf.
If you are willing to go way out of the way, Bridgeport is a fun artsy neighborhood further South that has Maria’s ($$), home to a truly impressive beer list and cocktail program, and Pleasant House ($), where they have managed to give British food a good name with their delicious flaky savory pies.
The more central areas of the city are not my preferred place to go, but if I have to be there, I will go to The Purple Pig ($$), a gastropub that is sometimes impossible to get into, Gyu Kaku ($), tasty Korean-Japanese barbeque with many offal options, Slurping Turtle, and Xoco ($), which has good hot chocolate and Mexican caldos (soups). For drinks I like Sable’s cocktails. I keep meaning to try Sumi Robata bar and will report back since that looks really awesome too.
That’s a lot of places, so if you want other recs for other neighborhoods or other types of cuisine, let me know in the comments. Also there are still places I need to try, so I will add more to this as I think of things or find new things.
Also don't forget to try the local Chicago-Swedish spirit, Malort, which I bet all of you will really really enjoy. It's a must!
If you want to know some underground dining options, you can email me privately.
10/09/2012 - 18:29
There is no doubt that gluten-free options are growing. However, at least in the places that I've lived, most gluten-free options are kind of sad. They are either bundled in with "health food" options and are also whole-grain/vegan/low-fat bundles or misery or are just regular menu items made with an assortment of mediocre processed gluten-free breads and pastas. Since the main problem for me with wheat seems to be the complex carbohydrates, often these options are worse than regular food. For those with celiac, it's not exactly fair to be banished to a butter-free ghetto just because you can't have wheat.
So I was excited to eat at Senza, which is a new gluten-free restaurant in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood. Except they don't want to be known as a gluten-free restaurant, just as a really good restaurant that happens to be gluten-free. The concept reminded of of a restaurant I read about in Berlin called Ma Restaurant and I expect Senza will share a Michelin Star with Ma considering the level of cuisine here.
The lighting was not very good for taking pictures myself, but their website has some great photos like this one of the steak entree:
The cuisine, as you can see from the photos, is very modernist, but still very filling and satisfying. I ate off the A La carte menu at this visit, but I'd love to try their tasting menu some day. Everything was cooked with the utmost skill with excellent use of classical techniques. Of course my favorite classical technique, the flavoring with stocks and broths, was showcased in the prawns dish, which features a lovely savory consomme (a type of broth clarified with egg whites) made with Virginia ham. I should try this myself as I have seen it in cookbooks as a use for the hardened ends of a good ham. The scallops were perfectly seared and my halibut and arctic char dishes made it clear that the chef really does seafood very well. Each dish also features a wealth of interesting little textures and flavors. One of my favorites with a tiny little s'more on top of the chocolate ganache for dessert, served alongside a lovely little cup of creamy chicory "coffee." The scallops came with mini choucroute, which are bundles of pork wrapped with sauerkraut.
I would probably skip the bread and pasta next time. I tried a little, but especially compared to the meats and fishes, it's just kind of clear that this isn't where the restaurant shines. I do think it's possible to do bread service that doesn't just remind you that gluten-free bread will never be that nice sour crusty french bread you miss so much. Cassava, also in Lakeview, does "bread" in the form of cheese puffs made with cassava that are really good. Also, personally, I can't tolerate high alcohol beverages like wine or cocktails very well and gluten-free beers don't agree with me, so I would love to see some ciders on the menu, especially considering that they are experiencing a bit of a revival these days.
On Saturday I paid a visit to the local wine and spirits shop Lush and there were doing a cider tasting. I tried a few really good ones, my favorite being the Eric Bordelet Poire Granit. Later I learned this was a perry, a pear cider, which I am glad I didn't know because I had only had really horrifyingly sweet perrys. But this was dry and almost buttery. I also was a huge fan of the Isategi Natural Cider, though the staff at Lush noted this was a hard sell to most people. But I love very sour barnyardy tastes. If you like gueuze or kombucha, you'll like this. And I think Senza's food would pair well with these.
Either way, I'm glad that Senza is showcasing the fact that there are many good real naturally gluten-free foods that don't require creating elaborate mediocre substitutes. And given that trends in restaurant food are moving away from things like grain and sweet-heavy dishes and have been for some time, it was only a matter of time that such a restaurant would open. And Senza is very serious about gluten-free. They told me that there is absolutely no gluten allowed in the restaurant ever, which is a must for people with celiac disease.
03/28/2010 - 10:26
I am excited to welcome our first ever guest blogger. Sarah Davies is a member of Eating Paleo in NYC and is a testament to the diverse appeal of our group. We have everyone from Crossfitters building muscle to celiacs interested in healthy healing grain-free eating. Sarah is an example of the latter. Last week she helped me teach the first NYC Paleo Skillshare making some delicious roasted vegetables, soup, salad, and mandarin chicken! She talked about how her cooking methods allow her to get through the week without stressing about food. That's very appealing to me, because as long as I've been doing this, I admittedly don't plan as much as I should. I often come home from work and realize that salmon filet that I was planning to eat was eaten three weeks ago and all my vegetables are spoiled! Inspired by Sarah, I'm planning to well...plan more! Hopefully you will be too!
Thank you, Melissa, for inviting me to share my food philosophies and routines with your readers. It was so great to meet you and your Paleo group last weekend at the Paleo Kitchen Skillshare. You were all so wonderfully polite and inviting to me as a newcomer to this lifestyle, as well as generous in my servings of friendly ribbing for my pea and potato Paleo faux pas.
As someone with celiac disease the Paleo diet is one that is very attractive and easy to adapt to from my current lifestyle. I have been grain-free for more than seven years now, and added-chemical free for one. Having this disease necessitates the absence of grains from my diet, but eliminating the added chemicals is a choice I have made out of respect for my self, my body, my future and the environment I share with others. My life is sustained by real foods, with real ingredients. The nutrients I consume are from a balanced diet of food alone. I do not eat chemicals I do not understand, or take supplements my body was not built to process in high volumes.
Due to my diet restrictions and ideals I generally only eat foods I am able to prepare myself. However, as a high school teacher with 12-hour workdays, a commute, and a disease to manage it has taken some time to learn how to maintain a dietary discipline with very little thought or energy.
As it is now, I cook one day per week for approximately three hours. Every Saturday I invite some friends for tea while I prepare 3-5 dishes that I can mix, match and rotate throughout the week (thank goodness for refrigeration!), and a dozen or more dishes I can rotate throughout the months. Of course, more variety in the week’s meals prevents the possibility of growing tired of my food, but too many dishes to prepare ends up taking so long that the routine interferes with other priorities, or leaves me feeling tired of the maintenance. I eventually learned that the secret to a strict diet regimen is keeping things as simple as possible, thus leaving me with plenty of time to attend to other priorities.
The path to the diet and routines I have now has had many developmental stages. Once I learned of my disease I was forced to begin a process of dietary rearrangement. I immediately began to replace the food I was used to eating with their gluten-free grocery counterparts—gluten-free pastas, breads, flours, and treats. However, as I have become more informed on the ingredients that are used as gluten substitutes, and the chemicals used make gluten-free and conventional foods a more exciting color, consistency and taste, I have realized that the only sure way to eat healthy is to keep it fresh, real and simple. It took me several years to get to this dietary stage, but I eventually made it. After that, all I had left to learn was how to adjust my skills and routines to my diet needs.
As my skills and routines developed I found myself interested in learning more about the nutritional properties of the food I eat. Before then, most of what I knew was based on the mantras of moms and health teachers. Since, the following chart has become the ingredients list from which I design the menu my body requires. Additionally, the US Department of Agriculture’s website has two tools I refer to often for guidance. The first is a set of tables constructed by the Institute of Medicine’s Food and Nutrition Board that list Daily Reference Intake (DRI)values for all nutrients. I also use their Interactive DRI for Medical Professionals tool to calculate what my dietary needs are depending on my sex, age, height, weight, and activity level. I use these tools to calibrate my dietary needs as I grow and change, and base my menus on their recommendations. However, what my body requires will not be what yours requires. You may not have the same nutritional considerations as someone living with a disease, or someone of another gender, age, height, weight and activity level as yours. Check to see what your recommendations are, and tailor your food intake to your specific needs.
As my tastes for foods change with the seasons the dishes I prepare for the week change as well. However, I am careful not to eat too much of any one food, as moderation is always a good idea—it is when I begin to use one ingredient too often that I find inflammation, irritation or general imbalances emerge. In autumn and winter I enjoy slow-cooking stews, and preparing veggies, roots, tubers, meats and fish. In spring and summer I continue to eat meats, fish, veggies, and roots, adding other seafood, and raw fruits and vegetables to my menus. I generally roast most things in the warmer months rather than slow-cook. I eat fruits, seeds and nuts throughout the year, and legumes (mainly lentils and peanuts) and cheeses (goat) on occasion.
I enjoy my food most when I can taste all the ingredients I have used, so I use very few ingredients in my recipes. More importantly, however, keeping my recipes simple not only reduces the amount of time required to prepare them, but also increases the likelihood that I will continue my cooking routine uninterrupted.
A good model of efficiency is a great place to start in any dietary lifestyle adjustment. Although my diet has a lot of nutritional benefits (and arguably some deterrents), the model I live now is not perfectly Paleo. Still, it is a healthy place to start, with room for more information and improvement.
I’d like to share my routines with you here in hopes that it will be a helpful model from which you can develop yours on your way to a Paleo diet; or, at the very least, a grain-free diet with Paleo influences.
My week starts on Saturdays. I usually wake up groggy from the wine I shouldn’t have drank the happy-hour eve before. I make myself some coffee and a fresh fruit smoothie and listen to some music while I get ready for friends to arrive at noon to keep me company while I prepare my food for the week. Making my food prep a regular social event ensures that I will stick to my routine. After approximately three hours, my friends and I have chatted, snacked, caffeinated, hypothesized, laughed, teased each other, learned from one another, and strengthened our bonds. I have made all my food for the week, and am ready to enjoy my weekend. I put all the food in the refrigerator, grab some fresh fruit to take with me for the day, and make sure I have enough nuts and preservative-free dried fruits in my bag to snack on if the urge arises.
On Sunday mornings I make my daily fresh fruit smoothie and pack a very full container of food to carry with me wherever I am going. I pack enough food for lunch and a second small afternoon meal that will sustain me until I get home for dinner.
The rest of the week I do the same, except I pack two meals per day to bring with me to work, with the fruit and nut snacks to sustain me between meals. When I get home from my day I already have dinner waiting in the fridge. All I have to do is heat it up. I never have to worry about not having time to cook, or suffering the take-out consequences many New Yorkers endure. While my food is warming I prepare the next day’s containers of food and fresh fruit so I can grab-them-and-go in the morning. No thinking, no extra time in the morning, just grab-and-go.
How does this apply to the Paleo diet? Well, the purpose of the routines I have described can be generalized to any lifestyle. If you want a thing, make it easy for yourself to have. If you want to eat Paleo, make the foods you desire available. Finally, be patient with yourself as you learn the skills and make the transition, as it will surely take time. Once you have the skills share them, practice them, prefect them! Invite your friends over for social meals when you try new recipes. Everyone loves to be fed.
After acquiring a basic nutritional knowledge of food, cooking skills, and cementing of the routines to maintain the diet, the deeper understanding can come. Seek out nutrition information again. You will notice details about your foods you hadn’t noticed before. You will find problems with your current food choices and benefits you weren’t aware of. You will also learn how to find good substitutes to replace any foods you have eliminated from your diet. Do your own research on scientific studies in human biology, nutrition, anti-nutrition, evolution, and archeology. The more you read the easier it will become to discriminate between scientists and enthusiasts, evidence and circumstance, sensible and nonsensical conclusions, biases, opinions, and intriguing hypotheses. Consider their evidence for yourself, and collect your own from your life. Then reconsider it all after some time has passed and ask yourself if it still applies.
Life is dynamic. It and we are always changing. Even with as much as we have come to understand over the last few centuries about ourselves and our natural systems, it would behoove us to accept that there is exponentially more that we don’t understand. Even with what we think we understand about how things were, are, or will be, there is always something, some evidence that has not yet been revealed, that changes our social and cultural constructs of what we thought we knew to be true. In this regard, humility is a responsibility that must be taken seriously, even in the realm of diet. For everything we think we know for sure, scientists and non-scientists alike, there are infinite variations of the same idea and contradictory ideas. Each should be considered when making a personal choice.
The Paleo diet and lifestyle is a powerful and compelling one to consider adopting. Based on the amazing people I met at the Paleo Kitchen Skillshare, is it apparent that the New York City group is populated with people who are warm, welcoming, exciting and highly knowledgeable in the realm of food. For them, this is a discipline that revolves around the simple ideals of living well, cooperatively and sustainably for body, community and mind. They carry a profound respect for the ecological, genetic, nutritional and physical conditions under which our species emerged, and use this knowledge to inform their decisions on how to adapt that environment to our modern one. Their hypothesis that our modern lifestyle has become one that results in physical and biological conditions that can produce diseases, damaged habitats and unhealthy minds is sensible and rational. It is one that most people would probably not argue with, except for variations on the epidemiological details of the issues. Regardless, living well is the primary objective here. How that is done is up to you.
It was definitely a good point of discussion when Sarah made split pea soup! But I have to note that paleo isn't about some magic list of food, it's about thinking evolutionarily. Recently I saw on a paleo message board a lady ask "I am pregnant and craving black beans!!! What should I do?" I say eat them! Sometimes eliminating neolithic foods is important for healing, but I don't think some servings of beans are going to cause leaky gut in an otherwise healthy person. Both spinach and beans contain antinutrients...are the antinutrients in beans really that much worse? Well, that depends on who you are.
Sarah, I think you would definitely enjoy the blog Whole Health Source and the cookbook Nourishing Traditions.
Comment?: 8
Recent Comments