Lunch in River North: M Burger

Cuisine: Fast-food/ Hamburgers

Location: 161 E Huron, Chicago, IL

Price: $

Food: ***

Service: Counter service

Overall: ***

Website: http://www.mburgerchicago.com

Last summer, while scouring the immediate vicinity of my workplace for feasible lunchtime options, I was pointed toward M Burger, Lettuce Entertain You’s answer to fast-food hamburgers. And I remembered it being glorious – thick, creamy milkshakes, delicious hamburgers (with a secret menu, to boot!), and crispy crunchy fries. However, because of M burger’s downtown location, I was left with nothing more than ethereal memories of lunchtime greasy fast food gluttony once my schooling days resumed at Northwestern.

Fast forward to me now, being all boss-like with a job and what not in the real world – as luck would have it, I work a five minute walk from where I did last summer, which, amazingly, places me within walking distance of not one but two M Burger locations! Oh, the options! I could go to one today and the other one tomorrow! I could go to one constantly and establish myself as a regular! I could work for a whole month and not go to either because I have no money and would prefer to bring lunches!¹ But on the last working day of the 2011 calendar year, with nothing better to do than sit in the office vegetating while staring blithely at a computer screen, I decided to further my state of extreme inactivity by going out to get some M Burger and stuffing my face for lunch.

Happy Thanksgiving! (Green Bean Casserole Recipe)

Due to my recent entry into the real world (read: employment! woohoo!) I've neglected updating this site for a couple of weeks. Between not having 18 hours of downtime each day and my addiction to video games when I get home from work, I've really slacked off on updating. Shenanigans! While I make no promises to the frequency of my updates coming up, I will do my best to add to this site whenever I can, either in recipe form (and now that I'm working, I cook a lot less too... sadly) or restaurant reviews (must have more willing dining partners willing to explore the city with me so I can create a crater sized dent in my bank account from eating good foodstuffs...). 

Portobello Mushroom Spinach Wrap w/ Home-made Chipotle Aioli

Title picture: recipe at bottom

Last Tuesday¹ marked the end of my self-imposed exile from meat – for lunch, I had stir-fry, and threw in some bacon just because I could – and it tasted awesome. There is something about the chewy, meaty, wholesome flavor of meat that simply cannot be replicated, no matter how intricate the synthetic substitute.

Hard-boiled quail eggs: like chicken eggs, but a miniature version that tastes way better

I made it through the week eating relatively well, compared to my prior forays into eating vegetarian – I deep-fried tofu (possibly removing all health benefits attached with said protein), made hard-boiled quail eggs to go with my stir-fry (a favorite of mine growing up), and had a lot of salads.

Quail egg stir-fry with deep fried tofu over rice

One of the biggest issues I have with eating vegetarian is how bland a lot of the food is – without that bite of meat to complement a meal, it often seems that my plate is missing something integral to a dining experience. 

Vegetarian for the week, and a recipe for scalloped potato gratin

Scalloped potato gratin - recipe at the end

Vegetarianism blows. There’s no two ways around it. I know more than my fair share of them, and to me they fall pretty neatly into two camps – sensible vegetarians who, for dietary, religious, or other reasons, don’t eat meat, and fucking crazy vegetarians (all vegans fall in this category), who, for mostly moral reasons, refuse to eat meat and take perverse pleasure in telling you that you’re ruining the world by consuming animal flesh.

The vegan argument: who the fuck is out there eating dogs, cats, and parrots, anyways? And that's not just any pig, it's Babe. A talking pig who herds sheep is in no way representative of the pigs that people eat.

It’s not that eating vegetarian has to be synonymous with eating shit – I enjoy having a salad for a meal, pasta with simple tomato sauce, stir-fried vegetables, breakfast for dinner (sans bacon). But it’s much harder to eat well when an integral part of your diet – protein – sees its options slashed by about 92%. You’re left with tofu and whatever disgusting synthetic meat-imitating garbage it is that Whole Foods sells, even though we both know you just eat grilled cheese and frozen French fries four days a week anyway.

This, incidentally, is what strikes me as most annoying about voluntary vegetarians – claims that they are living healthier or cutting the fat out of their lives are almost entirely false. They eat half-meals at 7 PM so that after going out they can come home at 1 AM and order a whole Papa John’s Cheese Pizza, and let’s throw some cheesy bread in there with that order, and hey while we’re waiting for the pizza why not pop some popcorn and make some mac n’ cheese to pass time?

Meat is an integral part of a balanced diet – though of course, a shocking number of Americans overindulge and ignore the “balanced” part of that statement, opting instead for three griddled patties at Edzo’s or two-dozen wings at Buffalo Wild Wings. So integral, in fact, that I don’t think I could live without meat for an extended period of time.

Ode to Rollin'

Worship-worthy homemade potato chips.

Cuisine: Italian/ Sandwiches

Location: 910 Noyes St., Evanston, IL

Price: $

Food: So amazing, you'll cry tears of joy.

Service: The guy behind the counter who always greets me as "bro" is positively awesome.

Overall: God, I really want to go and get a sandwich from there RIGHT NOW.

Website: http://rollin2go.com

It took me a whole year of being at Northwestern to make my way out to Noyes St. for food. Armed with a meal plan bequeathing me a never-ending supply of grilled chicken, sandwiches incorrectly made to order, and whatever the disgusting vegan option of the day was (Quinoa! Seitan! Tempeh!), I ate most of my meals in the dining hall¹. This was made easier by the fact that I lived in a dorm where the dining hall was in the basement, so dinner consisted of knocking on everyone’s door at 5:30² and traipsing down the one flight of stairs to the lovely Elder dining hall.

So, in retrospect, it was entirely reasonable that I would never bother to make the 10-minute walk west³ for an entire school year. Which is a shame, because on Noyes St., one can find the greatest sandwich establishment known to mankind – Rollin’ to Go.

I wouldn’t formulate that opinion until sometime during my junior year, when, finally weaned off of dining plans, I ate out significantly more often, and it was the closest option to where I lived. The very first time I went, it wasn’t exactly a memorable experience – at about 4 PM on Dillo Day, having eaten a few pancakes but having also drunk approximately my body weight in shitty tasteless rum or whatever the alcohol du jour was, I was not only completely inebriated but also so exhausted from waking up at 8 AM and going to three concerts in a row that I passed out at the table waiting for my sandwich.

A girl, a goat, an amazing meal.

Cuisine: Goat (for lack of a better descriptor)

Location: 809 W Randolph St., Chicago, IL

Price: $$$

Food: 4.5*

Service: ****

Overall: 4.5*

Website: http://www.girlandthegoat.com/

Three months. That’s how long the wait is for a reservation at Girl & The Goat. And that’s only if you’re dining at off hours (Sunday night, first and last seating, etc.). Otherwise the very instant seats are released on OpenTable, there’s a long list of people waiting to try the food at Top Chef winner Stephanie Izard’s restaurant who will snatch them up in a heartbeat.

In June, on an impulse, I decided the time was right to make a reservation at Girl & The Goat, for some far off date that might never come about, at least not before the Mayans predicted the end of the world or the rapture befell us yet again. For the duration of summer the thought of dining there was constantly in the back of my mind, a subtle reminder that the days were ticking off before I would be seated at one of the most talked-about, well-hyped, and adoringly-reviewed restaurants in all of Chicago.

Sustainable fine dining in Lakeview: Browntrout, Labor Day Weekend Part I

Cuisine: Contemporary American/ Seafood

Location: 4111 N Lincoln Ave., Chicago, IL

Price: $$ - $$$

Food: ****

Service: 3.5*

Overall: ****

Website: http://www.browntroutchicago.com

The father was in town recently to help me move into my new digs in Lakeview (conveniently located within walking distance of DMK Burger Bar!), and as per the norm I was given the task of planning all our meals for the weekend. The full weekend lineup was as follows:

Friday Dinner: Browntrout in Lakeview

Saturday Dinner: Fogo de Chao in River North (Brazilian steakhouse for my inner glutton)

Sunday Brunch: Publican in Fulton Market (Paul Kahan’s casual-dining locale known best for its pork, shellfish, and beer selection)

Sunday Dinner: Riccardo Trattoria in Lincoln Park (Italian, a must for my dad’s Chicago visits every time)

Let’s just say I finished the weekend very full and sated, with a promise to myself to eat a steady diet of greens for the next few weeks to compensate for the gastronomic whirlwind I had just been through.

Onwards to my review of Browntrout:

Thai Food in Chicago's Meatpacking District: Next Restaurant

Cuisine: Thai (Until the end of September)

Location: 953 W Fulton Market, Chicago, IL

Price: $$$$

Food: ****

Service: *****

Overall: **** (These ratings reflect the Tour of Thailand menu only)

At the James Beard Award ceremony in May 2010, Grant Achatz announced that he would be opening his second restaurant, after the critically acclaimed Alinea – Next, a restaurant that would change cuisines, time periods, and menu every three months, so drastically that he would essentially run four completely different restaurants a year with no common thread between each, except perhaps for the staff and the brick and mortar that housed this radical concept. Over the next few months, the hype built up to unimaginable proportions – before it had even officially opened its doors to the public, Next was preemptively named one of the best dining locales in Chicago by some publications. As soon as the ticketing system was revealed and the tickets released in April for Paris 1906, Next’s inaugural menu, Next immediately shot to the top of the list for places where reservations (or tickets, here) were both coveted and considered unattainable for the mere mortal¹.

If doubters wondered whether Next could meet these wholly unrealistic expectations, they were silenced when Paris 1906 opened. Chicago Tribune food critic Phil Vettel gave it four stars (the highest accolade possible), heaping layers of praise on the restaurant. My taste buds would soon verify the truckloads of positive reviews from diners – each dish left me with a lasting impression, from the simple but elegant Salade Irma to the fatty, buttery, cheesy Gratin de Pommes de Terre a la Dauphinoise paired with the Caneton Rouennais a la Presse². Starting with the hors d’ oeuvres and closing with the mignardises, there wasn’t a single dish or wine pairing that disappointed. Each dish I had opened my eyes to a new level of refinement when it came to French classical cooking, and it instantaneously became one of the best meals I have ever had in my life.

The success of Paris 1906, of course, only caused foodies to clamor for more and expect even greater things for the next menu. When Tour of Thailand was announced, people began to speculate how Achatz would put his own unique spin on Thai food, a culture steeped in the ways of street food and cheap eats now being transformed into $150 haute cuisine.

I have always considered myself to be well versed in Thai food – for a more detailed discussion of Thai food as I saw it growing up, you can read my review of Sukhothai here. So for this menu to impress me, it would have to be far and beyond the best Thai food I had ever set eyes upon in order to match the standard that Paris 1906 had set.

And so it was, armed with an empty stomach and high expectations, I found myself dining at Next once again a few weeks ago.

Fine-dining in a college town; French-American in Evanston: Oceanique

Cuisine: French-American, Seafood

Location: 505 Main Street, Evanston, IL

Price: $$$

Food: ****

Service: 3.5*

Overall: ****
Website: http://www.oceanique.com/

Evanston, for some reason, is home to a litany of fine dining destinations – from the now defunct Trio¹ to the trio of chefs behind Camapgnola², there is no shortage of places to eat, and eat well, when in Evanston. Of course, this hasn’t stopped students from slogging through four years of college at lovely Northwestern subsisting entirely on Rodeo Cheeseburgers and that banana pepper that comes with your weekly Friday 1 am order of Papa John’s large pizza³.

Of course, the budget of your average college student makes it difficult to eat out and eat well on a constant basis. That hasn’t stopped restaurants from making a name for themselves in Evanston, as locations where Evanston locals can get out and have a nice meal or for students to splurge every now and then.

Two of my favorite restaurants in Evanston to date have been Bistro Bordeaux, a traditional French place right off of Church St. that offers amazing French Onion Soup to go with delectable classic entrees⁴,  and Davis Street Fishmarket, which has been serving up fresh seafood of all shapes and forms to doting parents hoping to take their kids out for a nice meal for years now.

Which brings me to my newest find of Evanston – Oceanique, a French-American/ Seafood restaurant down on Main St., a combination of Davis Street Fish Market and Bistro Bordeaux that manages to outdo both by the virtue of being extremely attentive to detail in their dishes and by being creative and inventive with their menu.

This Week in Food Network Star

Quick thoughts on this season: Food Network Star is a totally different animal from Top Chef. For every reason that it is different, I prefer Top Chef way more – its emphasis on cooking, the cutthroat nature of the challenges, the level of difficulty and innovation required, the culinary pedigree of the contestants.

Top Chef is about finding the absolute best chef out of the contestants – Food Network Star is about finding a very good chef who also has an infectious personality and can be relatable to greater America. And since greater America doesn’t emphasize home-cooking like a Michelin three star chef, for practical reasons the food that Food Network Star showcases seems like it’s a cut below what you would expect on Top Chef.

Mexican in SoHo: RANJANI CHAKRABORTY’s 21st @ Dos Caminos

Cuisine: Mexican

Location: 475 West Broadway, New York, NY

Price: $$

Food: 2.5*

Service: ****

Overall: ***

Website: http://www.doscaminos.com/

Have you ever tried to make last minute reservations in New York? It is basically impossible. My dear friend Ranjani, who I visited in New York for her 21^st birthday (betcha didn’t figure that out from the title!) attempted this gargantuan task after realizing at 3 p.m. that her original dining plans were going to fall through. The original plans called for all-you-can-eat sushi and all-you-can-drink sake, which I am 97% sure would have led to an all-you-can-puke for myself.

Instead, after a mad scramble, we ended up with a 10 p.m. reservation at Dos Caminos in SoHo. When we finally show up, a couple of drinks in,¹
we’re attacked by the atmosphere and vibe of the place – at 10 at night, the restaurant is not only packed, the alcohol is clearly also free flowing. And rightly so – the place serves over 100 kinds of tequila.

I will say that, between pre-dinner drinks, margaritas during, and post-midnight birthday celebrations, my memories of the night are a little blurred. I think the same holds true for the rest of us who went out that night. Nonetheless, here’s what I thought of Dos Caminos.

Burgers in Lincoln Park: The Counter

Cuisine: American/ Burgers

Location: 666 W Diversey Parkway, Chicago, IL

Price: $ - $$

Food: 3.5*

Service: ****

Overall: 3.5*

Website: http://www.thecounterburger.com

Excluding my lunchtime sandwich mainstays on Noyes St. in Evanston, The Counter marks my first time going out to eat since returning to Chicago from my trip home to Taiwan. The future roommates-to-be and I go apartment hunting in Lincoln Park and Lakeview on Sunday, where we come to meet a very… peculiar leasing agent¹, but unfortunately fail to find the place of our dreams. As the only one of our trio who is neither working nor studying (read: doing absolutely nothing) at the time, I volunteer to go back out on Monday to continue our apartment search.

By the end of my appointment on Monday, it’s 2 p.m. and I’m exhausted, having not eaten lunch yet. So I decide to venture around Lincoln Park and find somewhere to eat alone.

It’s not long before I run into The Counter – a place that draws me in with its open space and pristine interior². A burger bar that is casual enough that I don’t feel weird eating alone, but the place certainly looks nicer than a Chipotle³.

French in Taipei: Abu Authentic

Cuisine: French

Location: Si Wei Rd. No. 28, Taipei, Taiwan

Price: $$$$

Food: ****

Service: ***

Overall: ****

Eating French food always feels like a dining experience fit for a king – filled with extravagant ingredients and flavors, bursting with sauces heavy with cream. How the French have kept this up for more than a century¹ and perfected such a rich, decadent dining experience² is beyond my understanding.

Though my knowledge of the culinary world extends as far as Top Chef and Food Network, it appears to me that most chefs trained in culinary arts will have been versed in traditional French cooking, from making the five mother sauces³ to using French influence in their cooking.

It would seem to me then that a chef that can master French food must not only have the basics of French cooking down pat but also have the ability to give his food an unique spin to keep it modern and unique.

With Abu, this is certainly the case. William Bu, the chef/ owner of Abu Authentic, used to work at Tutto Bello, a small Italian restaurant nestled in one of the millions of alleys of Taipei. Tutto Bello has always been my favorite Italian restaurant in Taipei (and I would compare Tutto Bello to the best that America to offer), so when I read that Abu had moved from Italian to French and opened his own restaurant, I was determined to try it out.

The result? I was blown away by his food, as I once was at Tutto Bello. 

Thai in Taipei: Sukhothai

Cuisine: Thai

Location: Zhongxiao East Rd. No. 12, Sec. 1 at the Sheraton Hotel

Price: $$$

Food: 3.5*

Service: ***

Overall: 3.5*

There are many places to eat Thai in Taipei, most prominently Thai Town, a massive chain restaurant in Taiwan that puts out some very good (if not totally authentic) Thai food. Growing up, it was always my go to restaurant for Thai food. Although the cuisine is altered for the customer base (more Chinese flavors, less Thai), I think that it helped give me an appreciation for traditional Thai food while I was still developing my palate and less willing to try funky tasting foods or items with names I couldn’t even pronounce.

That said, I’ve since been to Thailand a couple of times, and absolutely love authentic Thai cuisine. From the intense heat of the curries to the fresh seafood, whether it’s pineapple fried rice or shrimp cakes, the spices and flavors of Thai cuisine are so different from its Southeast Asian brethren. When my aunt suggested that we go to Sukhothai, a supposedly more authentic and classy version of Thai Town, I was happy to say yes and excited to try it out.

The Next Ticket Debacle

On Sunday, Nick Kokonas, the co-founder of Alinea and Next, took to Facebook to announce that the majority of tickets for Next Restaurant’s summer menu – a tour of Thailand – would go on sale on Monday around 3 p.m. in Chicago, or 4 a.m. Tuesday in Taipei. Since I have a complete disregard for any semblance of a normal sleep schedule, I decided I’d have no problem staying up until then and gunning for one of the 2,000 tables to be released.

I went to the first iteration of Next, Paris 1906: Escoffier at the Ritz, in June after being one of the unbelievably lucky few to secure tickets in the mayhem that was their first few days of operations and ticketing. The meal absolutely blew me away – it is definitely one of the two best meals I have had all year, with the other contender being my college graduation dinner at L2O, which lived up to its Michelin three-star hype. Despite Next being well out of my price range¹, the meal was so good that I had no qualms about the opportunity to go back and experience Thai food under Chef Achatz’ creative vision. 

It’s a good thing that Next is stellar not only in its food but also its reputation, because the patience of many hopeful diners was put to the test during the ticket release process, which started an hour late². The process was slowed by the fact that the website was bombarded by so many auto-refreshing bots (and manual-refreshing fingers like my own, as I stared blankly into the screen and clicked refresh over and over again until I thought I was being hypnotized by the background on the page) as to overload the server. When Kokonas announced that tickets would not be released on Monday and would instead be released on Tuesday after server issues were handled, the vitriol and anger that poured out of the Facebook page where it was posted was unbelievable.

This screen will hypnotize you. Also the message that stares back at you simply says, "We are currently sold out. Please check back as we will soon be releasing more tables."

To be honest, I was frustrated too. I don’t particularly enjoy staying up in the middle of the night to wait for tickets that I have a minute chance of getting. My frustration was buttressed by the fact that during the two-hour waiting period from 4 a.m. until when the postponement was announced, I was forced to refresh the Next Facebook page over and over as well in anticipation of an announcement. What frustrated me wasn’t the endless refreshing or the need to do it all again tomorrow, but rather that I was forced to read the veritable shitstorm of complaints that rolled over the website like the recent power outage did Evanston.

I cannot, for the life of me, understand why people found it necessary to make comments - some sardonic, some sarcastic, and others outright virulent – expressing how they had been inconvenienced by the tickets not being sold at exactly 3 p.m. on the dot on Monday. Some commented on how fifteen-year-olds could have built a server equipped to handle the traffic Next received on Monday; others essentially stated that Next was to blame for them not getting work done for two straight hours or for them pointlessly postponing a meeting at work. People, I hate to break it to you, but a restaurant that you are begging to dine at – not one that is begging for you to dine there³ – is not responsible for your being wildly unproductive at work.

This is as fucking asinine as me blaming the creators of Adobe Flash for preventing me from paying attention in class – maybe if I wasn’t so busy playing flash games in class, I could have redirected my energy to listening to the dynamically monotonic voice of my Economics professors and learned something that I would find wholly inapplicable once I entered the job market!

Like six-year-old children that can’t believe their parents won’t buy them a horse after they’ve gone to one horseback riding lesson, the Facebook page was overrun with what amounted to one massive online temper tantrum. I’m not sure at what point along the way these people decided that they deserved tickets (and I guess everyone else didn’t deserve shit besides being forced to listen to them turn bitching and complaining into an art form), but the sense of entitlement was appalling and enraging.

The next day, as 4 p.m. came and went and there was no announcement of a pending ticket release, people resumed their bitching about how it would be unfair for people to miss out because they were stuck in a commute home, or how they’d have to stay by their work computers until the tickets went on sale and how they’d prefer it to be now so they could go home. Luckily for the community of chronic moaners and groaners, tickets did indeed go on sale shortly thereafter, at 4:30 p.m., or 5:30 a.m. Wednesday in Taipei. By then, I had already woken up four separate times (in 45-minute increments) to make sure tickets weren’t about to be released, and then had spent an hour mindlessly clicking at the lovely Next website praying for a miracle ticket already. Suffice to say I was totally fried and exhausted at that point.

Luckily for me, this long post of my own complaints about other complainers has a happy ending in that I did indeed end up snatching a ticket to return to Next in August to experience a tour of Thailand.

However… I still wish butt warts upon the legion of entitled fine-whining diners (or are they fine-dining whiners?) from their computer chairs. Also I hope that they all failed miserably in their quest to get tickets. That will give them plenty of anger and negativity to stew in until October, when the menu changes again, the ticket frenzy starts anew, and they disdainfully announce that since they didn’t get to experience this menu they should be allowed to waltz into the restaurant and receive a reservation at their convenience. Oh boy, I can’t wait for that to happen!

---

^{1. An eight-course meal with six different wine pairings ran me about $180, with tax and tip included. The meal, while expensive, offers unbeatable value and quality – the same meal would probably run $300 or more at similar upscale French restaurants, I imagine.↩}

^{2. Late, that is, in the eyes of the many Facebook posters, many of whom expressed anguish in setting aside a block of time to purchase Next tickets and then not having the tickets released. Kokonas had merely stated that tickets would be released “around 3 p.m.”, with an hour’s notice. Heaven forbid he try and run his restaurant on a schedule that doesn’t cater to each and every individual’s work schedule.↩}

^{3. Next, with its unbelievably large Facebook following and unique ticket systems that makes seating 100% equal opportunity, is so difficult to get into that the Michelin Chicago Guide (via Twitter) opined about its lack of ability to experience the cuisine there.↩}

Italian in Taipei: Osteria by Angie

Cuisine: Italian

Location: Guang Fu South Rd. No. 33, Lane 280, Taipei, Taiwan

Price: $$$

Food: 2.5*

Service: ***

Overall: 2.5*

Website: http://osteria.com.tw

In a city where Italian restaurants run abound and many try and cater to the tastes of the locals instead of preserving the authenticity of Italian cuisine, Osteria by Angie stands out in stark contrast. Co-owned by executive chef Giorgio Pappalardo, who grew up in Sicily, Osteria by Angie goes to great pains to deliver the feeling of authentic, home-cooked Italian food that makes one feel at home.

The concept, in my opinion, is fantastic – as someone with a decidedly non-Taiwanese palate, I have been to many Italian restaurants in Taipei where the quality of the food suffers as a result of dumbing down the food to local tastes. At Osteria by Angie, the pizzas are made with buffalo’s milk mozzarella imported from Italy, the pasta is hand-rolled and homemade, and the risotto is actually cooked “al dente”, instead of into a sloppy mush, the texture that many locals prefer as it more closely resembles the white rice eaten on an every day basis.

Osteria by Angie had all the components necessary for it to deliver an all-star meal – and at its best, I was definitely impressed with some of the dishes it had to offer. Sadly, I found flaws with a few dishes, whether it was in the preparation or in that they simply didn’t have a lot of flavor. The restaurant has a potential to be fantastic, but as it stands, too many missteps made the overall experience pretty average.

The first thing I noticed was how cramped the seating was on the first floor – we were seated in a booth that was directly next to the walk-in area. The layout was such that often, servers had to stand in the walk-in area and reach around us to plate food or refill water, which made their presence very conspicuous and made me feel like they got in the way of each other a lot. Otherwise, service was pretty much what I would expect.

Because our group ate family style, I wasn’t able to get pictures of all the plates, resorting instead to just taking pictures of what was on my own plate so I could chronicle the meal. So, apologizes for some less than stellar/ missing photos. With that in mind…

Deep-fried calamari with garlic aioli

Appetizer: The batter on the calamari was light and airy, giving them a nice crunch. I thought the garlic aioli could have been a little stronger – with the lemons that were squeezed over the calamari, the taste of garlic was neutralized and hard to detect.

Grilled tiger prawns, marinated capsicum, rocket salad

Appetizer: The poor, poor tiger prawns were way overcooked, making them chewy and tough instead of tender like they should be. Not only that, but the capsicum were not just marinated in olive oil - it felt more like they were just completely soaked in them. The amount of oil on the bottom of the plate gives you a little bit of indication here. They turned the dish entirely too greasy and further worsened an already crappy dish.

Angus Beef carpaccio, Parmigiano Reggiano, truffle

Appetizer: One of my favorite dishes of the day. The carpaccio was sliced very thinly, and the parmigiano reggiano and accompanying arugula gave the dish a kick that was finished with a slight hint of truffles. I appreciated that the dish wasn’t heavy-handed on truffle oil – it really allowed the carpaccio to shine through.

Salad: Romaine lettuce with Parma ham and smoked ricotta cheese (no photo)

The smoked ricotta cheese was an interesting departure from what I would normally expect in a salad – it had great flavor and accentuated the salad. Otherwise, this salad was pretty standard Italian, with the dressing being a simple balsamic vinaigrette.

Mushroom risotto with braised beef cheeks in red wine

Primi: Probably the best thing I had all day. I absolutely loved that the risotto had a bite to it, as it should – as I mentioned above, too often in Taipei I’ll get risotto with the consistency of white rice, which drives me crazy. The beef cheeks were braised perfectly and melted in my mouth. That, plus the fact that I love mushroom risotto, sealed the deal for me.

Pizza Diavola: Spicy salami, tomato, mozzarella cheese, basil

Pizza: Another very good dish – the cheese had that gooey, melty quality to it that I love, and the flavors are very traditional Italian. It's pretty hard, I think, to make something with tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese, basil, and spicy salami and have it come out poorly. I liked the thinness of the pizza dough, but found the crust to be a little bit too thick for my liking. 

Pizza Quattro funghi: Mozzarella cheese and four kinds of mushrooms

Pizza: I am surprised that the same kitchen that produced the pizza diavola could produce this disaster. Considering that this was a white pizza, I would have expected some intense flavors to replace the tomato sauce. Instead, I got bland, unseasoned mushrooms and some doughy pizza bread with a little bit of cheese. Without any flavor, I felt that the cheese's main contribution was to greasify the pizza (and my lips).  Just a poorly made dish all around.

Dessert Sampler: Chocolate soufflé, mango crème brulee, tiramisu, assorted gelato (no photo)

The dessert was complimentary, as someone in our party had complained to our server about the overcooked tiger prawns. If the point of dessert was to assure us that they cared about the quality of food they put out, well, they failed pretty miserably. It wasn’t that dessert was bad – most of it was decent, if not particularly memorable. However, the one thing I will remember from this sampler plate is that we were served a soufflé that didn’t rise at all – like a deflated balloon, the entire soufflé sank into the ramekin it was served it, creating an utterly sad and pathetic visual display that I will definitely remember. I wish I had a photo of it, but I think that we immediately dug in to the soufflé so we wouldn’t have to keep staring at the sunken black hole where there should have been an airy, fluffy top.

Last thoughts: The highlights – and there were many – were great, and left me wanting to make a return trip to have the risotto, pizza, and carpaccio again. Sadly, the lowlights – and there were just as many – left me disappointed with my meal as a whole, in the sense that I thought this meal could have been so much better. I’d love to go back the next time I’m in Taipei to see if they’ve improved upon some of the poorer dishes I encountered today – if they do, Osteria by Angie will become a great place to go to for authentic Italian.

Italian-Spanish in Taipei: Forchetta

Cuisine: Italian-Spanish

Location: An He Rd. No. 4, Lane 127, Sec. 1, Taipei, Taiwan

Price: $$$ - $$$$

Food: 3.5*

Service: 3.5*

Overall: 3.5*

There is a definite disconnect between the culture of eating in Taiwan and fine dining. I noticed this when reading the menu at Forchetta, which states the origin from which their food comes from (e.g. chicken from Mioli, fresh seafood from Keelung Pier).

I found it intriguing because usually when restaurants in the states do this –Maine lobsters, Kobe beef, etc. – it gives the sense that the ingredients are fresher and higher quality. I know that lobsters from Maine are fresh, that Kobe cows is raised to produce amazingly high quality beef, so on and so forth. However, I know next to nothing about Miao Li (the phonetically correct and more accepted pinyin spelling of 'Mioli', which Forchetta used), and when I think of Keelung, I don’t think of fishermen and the pier, but rather I think of a river that used to be so insanely polluted that someone once described it as looking like Coca-Cola. Which is funny, because the river I'm thinking of isn't even Keelung River, its Tamshui River¹. Even though I’m certain that the local produce is of very high quality, seeing it written down on the menu did not automatically trigger that connection to quality food for me, as my above thinking shows.

The good thing is that my little philosophical tangent into the gastronomic culture of Taiwan didn’t stop me from keeping an open stomach and palate towards the food being served. Though Forchetta serves some Spanish (Iberico ham; tapas plate) food, I only had their Italian food. But if what I had were any indication, then I would expect the rest of their menu, Spanish or Italian, to be well crafted and worth tasting.

An interesting note about the service here – our server was someone who I recognized from a previous trip to Mondo, another fine Italian restaurant in the nooks of Taipei. He stands out particularly because he speaks English fluently (a rarity here), and also because of his gregarious nature. He actually selected the courses for my friend and me, so overwhelming us with his suggestions and enthusiasm that I think we decided to just let him run with it. In general I found him to be very helpful in explaining the food and enhancing our experience there, save for the fact that his constant doting² was certainly out of the ordinary when it came to service I’ve come to expect. It was a little like dining at a friend’s place and having their parents keep saying, “Eat! Eat! Eat!” That and I had a minor quibble about his rush to serve us the plated food – because we split all of our dishes, he would often separate the dish, put it on our individual plates, and pull the original plate of food in a blink of an eye. Aside from the fact that it prevented me from taking photos of the composed plate, I was a little disappointed that it detracted from the visual aspect of eating. But I thought service overall was very good, and certainly appreciated how helpful our server was.

Without further ado, my meal at Forchetta:

Fresh baked bread

Tomato paste, garlic aioli

Bread: I was impressed with how fresh the bread was – in fact, when I went back for a second piece of bread 20 minutes after it had arrived, the wait had robbed it of its freshness and the bread became just slightly harder (certainly not to the point of it being inedible, just that you could tell how fresh it had been originally). It came paired with tomato sauce and garlic aioli³ that we spread ourselves, which I definitely preferred to the common alternative, a pat of butter. The flavor combination was great – very rustic Italian, with the garlic and tomato.

Shrimp Carpaccio w/ sun-dried tomatoes, arugula, truffle oil

Appetizer: I love arugula. The peppery taste it gives off pairs greatly with the light, refreshing flavors that a carpaccio is supposed to bring. I was very happy with the shrimp – they had a great raw flavor without being too slimy for my tastes. The arugula and sundried tomatoes gave the dish a real kick, and the presence of truffle oil gave another layer to the dish that left a lingering taste afterwards.

 

Mushroom and truffle pan-fried ravioli

 Appetizer: I was a little miffed by the presentation – these pan-fried ravioli were not like either traditional ravioli or deep-fried ones, but rather something in between. The original plate was dotted with a bit of sauce, but we didn’t get any of the sauce after our slightly-too-hands-on server served us and removed the plate. I wasn’t a fan of how big the ravioli were, and thought they resembled pot stickers more than ravioli. The filling was quite tasty, however – the combination of mushrooms with a hint of truffle is a very classic one. Served hot, I loved that the scent of truffles was released once the ravioli was cut into. I would have loved this dish if it were served traditionally as ravioli instead of this bizarre Asian-fusion pot sticker style.

Spaghetti with spicy chicken from Mioli and Chinese pickled mustard vegetables from Fu Hsin Garden

Pasta/ Primi: I've always believed that a good Italian restaurant is judged by the quality of their pasta – if so, Forchetta passes with flying colors.

The undoubted star of the meal, the pasta was finished with some spicy olive oil to give it an extra kick, but the crunch and taste of the pickled mustard vegetables had me sold. I love pickled mustard vegetables with Asian cuisine, and seeing them used so cleverly here without turning the spaghetti into a bowl of Asian-style noodles was an impressive feat. The pasta was cooked perfectly, the chicken superbly tender, and the slight spiciness to it kept me coming back for more.

Pineapple panna cotta

Dessert: Again, I didn’t get a picture of the original plating here before our server helped us split it into two. I liked this as a closing to our meal – it was not overly sweet, which I actually liked a lot. The pineapple flavors were still prominent, and the texture to the panna cotta was fantastic. A good end to a fine dinner.

Last thoughts: Forchetta was definitely a quality Italian restaurant that I would be happy to return to. In a city filled with Italian spots, I don’t think many can make a pasta dish that I enjoyed as much as the spaghetti here.

The first floor is very small and gives the place a very intimate and elegant feel – I didn’t venture down to the basement, where I think there was more seating. As such, I’d definitely recommend this place for a romantic dinner, a nice night out, or simply as a fine dining destination. 

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^{1. Just yesterday, the local news in Taipei, which focuses exclusively on ridiculous sensationalized news that whips the nation into a frenzy about idiotic issues of non-consequence, reported that a corpse was found floating in Tamshui River, just 25 meters away from a major MRT (Taipei's equivalent of the L) station. Not the best association to have with the origin of my food, erroneous or not.↩}

^{2. Ranging from telling us to eat our bread before it got cold to playfully chastising my friend for not finishing her ravioli. Although, in his defense, he was 100% right about the bread getting a little stale if it sat for too long.↩}

^{3. Like bacon and chipotle mayo, garlic aioli makes everything taste better. This is also why I am a sucker for the turkey with garlic aioli at Al’s Deli and the Al Forno at Rollin’ to Go.↩}