TNDC: Girl & the Goat

What a wonderful dining experience. Hands-down the best dinner club we’ve ever had, and one of the best restaurants I’ve ever been to. We made the reservations at Girl & the Goat, 800 W. Randolph, two months ago. I was worried the buildup would only reveal a letdown, but trust me, it was worth the wait.

If you’re a person who doesn’t like to try new things or gets hung up on what you’re eating or the combination of the foods you’re eating, this place probably isn’t for you. I encourage you to try it, but if your brain can’t come in with a blank slate and just let your taste buds take over, it’s not worth it.

Some background: Girl & the Goat is THE hot restaurant in Chicago right now. It takes about two months to get a reservation during the week, and I have no idea how long on a weekend. I just did an experiment and tried to make a 7 p.m. Saturday night reservation about a month out. The times Opentable.com gives me are in mid-August at 4:30 p.m. on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday.

The chef is Stephanie Izard, who won “Top Chef.” Food & Wine magazine named her one of the best new chefs, and she’s been featured on a number of other top 10 lists for her culinary skills and the restaurant. She really is the toast of the town right now.

Let me start by saying the service was fantastic. The staff does not treat you like you should feel lucky to be dining at the hottest restaurant in town (SCREW YOU PURPLE PIG!) Amy, Neha, Meg and I arrived a little earlier than Alyssa, so we got a drink at the bar while we waited. The bar was PACKED with walk-in diners who couldn’t get a regular table, but the bartender spotted me right away and handed me a drink menu. I assume my super cuteness also had something to do with this J

Our waitress was great-very knowledgeable about the food, gave us a guide for how many dishes we should order (Girl & the Goat does small plates) and offered us the opportunity to meet Stephanie Izard after we were finished eating.

Here’s what we ordered and my impressions of the food:

-Empanadas with goat. Good, but not great.

-Sautéed green beans with fish sauce vinaigrette and cashews. Delicious. Meghan said, “I don’t even like green beans and those are good.”

-Chickpea fritters. I didn’t think I would like these, but they were great. They had romesco, hazlenut hummus, sesame and goat feta. Kind of like deep-fried fritters.

-Grilled baby octopus with wax beans, radish, favas and pistachio-lemon vinaigrette. This was more like an octopus salad. Not bad but probably my least favorite dish of the evening.

-Ham frites with smoked tomato aioli and cheddar beer sauce. These were French fries with some sort of ham/bacon awesomeness drizzled or salted on them. Best fries I’ve ever had.

-Goat chorizo flatbread with ramp pesto, rhubarb and fresh ricotta. Fantastic.

-Sugo, which was linguini, rosemary and cape gooseberries. Not a huge fan. I think the rosemary threw me off.

-Grilled hanger steak with grilled maitakes, sugar snaps, miso-marcona almond and green almond nuoc cham. I don’t know what half of that stuff is, but the steak was marvelous. Thinly sliced, medium rare and over some sort of goodness sauce. Yum.

-Wood oven-roasted pig face with a sunny side egg, tamarind, cilantro and potato stix. I know what you’re thinking: EW. Not in the least. Hands-down my favorite dish of the night. No, it did not look like I was eating an actual face. It looked like two meat patties with an egg on top (see picture). The server brought it over and told us to “Eat it like we are annihilating it. Mix it all together, cut it up and then eat it so you get all the flavors.” AWESOME. It was sweet tasting, like it was cooked in brown sugar or something. If you ever go to this restaurant, wipe your brain of any pig face fears and order this.

Dessert:

-Rhubarb and lemons with shortcake, buttermilk panna cotta, lemon gelato and salted graham cracker. This came in a mason jar and was really delicious.

-Ganache pork fat doughnuts, yuzu blackberries, salted oat streusel and malted vanilla gelato. My least favorite of the desserts only because it mixed fruit and chocolate and that’s not really my gig.

-Bittersweet chocolate with shiitake gelato and toffee crème fraiche. This was a brownie with mushroom ice cream. Sounds freakin’ weird right? AMAZING. Our server told us sometimes the mushroom ice cream was a little funky, depending on how many mushrooms were in there. I did not eat the ice cream on its own but some of the other girls did and said you could definitely taste mushrooms. I chose to eat it with the chocolate brownie and the other stuff and was not disappointed. Another dish you MUST order if you go there.

One of the best parts of the meal was when we got the bill. After our experience at Sunda last time, I was expecting another pricey meal. It was only $37 a person! We were delighted!

I left in a flash to catch the 7:40 p.m. train, so I did not get to meet Stephanie Izard after dinner (see picture). I’m very jealous but also can’t regret my decision since if I would have not made that train, I would have been on the 8:40 p.m. train, which was delayed an hour because of the storms. If I would have tried for the 9:40 p.m. train, that would have sucked because it was canceled.

I hope after reading this you are ready to make a reservation at this place. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

TNDC: Sunda

Every time I read the Chicago Tribune’s About Last Night blog or US Weekly, it seems as if some celebrity ate at Sunda. For the past year or so, Sunda has been on the tips of anybody who’s anybody’s tongue as one of the new hot restaurants in Chicago.

It’s owned by Billy Dec, who also owns Rockit and The Underground and is a celeb magnet. So popular that he supposedly dated Jen from The Bachelorette.

Naturally, the TNDC was curious. Neha was finally able to make a dinner, and this was her pick. Alyssa was wining and dining her husband in honor of his birthday, so she was not in attendance.

The Trib named Sunda, 110 W. Illinois, one of its top 10 celebrity hangout spots in 2010. The cast of “Glee” ate there last week after their concert at the Allstate Arena. The Tribune also lists the following celebs as frequenters: Miami Heat’s LeBron James, New York Yankees’ Derek Jeter and San Francisco 49ers legend Joe Montana, actors Vince Vaughn, John Cusack, Colin Farrell, Jeremy Piven, Channing Tatum, Josh Duhamel, Jared Leto, Leighton Meester, Jason Statham, Patrick Dempsey, David Schwimmer, Kate Walsh, Lea Michele and Cory Monteith, singers Fergie and Kesha, rapper Common, rock bands Green Day and Soundgarden, the Bears’ Jay Cutler, the Blackhawks’ Patrick Kane and reality TV star Nicole Richie.

On this particular day, it was about 95 degrees in the city. A sweltering, rainforest-like heat wave had blanketed Chicagoland and it proved quite uncomfortable and sticky.

Neha and I decided to cool off at Rockit, 22 W. Hubbard, which ended up being an unfortunate experience. I got there first and was told even though the rest of the restaurant was empty I could only sit in the bar area, which was filled with tall, two-seater tables. We had three, but I did not argue (the heat must have really gotten to me). I waited about five minutes and did not receive any type of drink menu. Then Neha arrived, aghast at the seating arrangements. She asked the hostess if we could sit at a larger table, and she said we should just pull up another chair if we had a third. Grrr. Again, no drink menu. Nobody came over. So we left.

We headed over to Hub 51, 51 W. Hubbard, where a similar experience ensued. Nobody came over! We really began to wonder whether we stank. So we had to walk up to the bar and order our drinks. Tres annoying.

Meghan joined us and the three of us determined we were STARVING so we headed over to Sunda early to order an appetizer while we waited for Amy. We decided on two orders of the Sticky-Icky Rice, which is steamed sweet rice with chicken, mushrooms, water chestnuts and chives wrapped in lotus leaves. It came out in covered bamboo containers, and you unwrapped the lotus leaves to find a thick patty of rice underneath. It looked weird. And once you cut it open, it still looked weird with little chicken bits inside. But it was soooo good. Rice was perfect amount of stickiness, and if you dipped it into the soy sauce, mmmmm. I don’t really have any sophisticated adjectives to describe this dish, it was just freakin’ good.

Amy only eats “fake” sushi, which apparently also includes tempura style sushi so she ordered two rolls. Meghan ordered the “Shaking” Beef, which was “wok-seared beef filet, greens and lime-pepper dipping sauce. She described it as “shish-kabob-style beef” and seemed to enjoy it.

Neha and I decided to split four sushi rolls so we got a rainbow roll, a spicy tuna roll, a hand roll with crab, shrimp tempura, salmon, and spicy tuna and the stuffed avocado, what we thought was a roll. The food came out on four plates and Ne looked at me and said “Kel, what did we order?” The rainbow roll and the spicy tuna roll were standard sushi. The hand roll looked like a wrap, cut in half. The stuffed avocado was not, in fact, a roll but it really was an avocado, stuffed with tuna. It. Was. Delish. The tuna was diced and shaved into little pieces and stuffed inside a perfectly ripe avacado. I highly recommend. The hand roll was OK-Neha liked it better than I did. The other rolls were good too. But given the price of the meal (mine and Neha’s bill was $72 each), I should have been stuffed to the brim and wanting to sleep with the owner for the deliciousness. We felt like we could get just as good of sushi at a cheaper restaurant (South Coast-what what!)

We each graded the meal. Meghan was the most generous with an A-. I believe Amy gave it a B+ and Neha and I decided that while our meal was good, the price to goodness ratio warranted a flat B.

I think Sunda is a great place to have a drink and some appetizers with friends. But if you’re looking for sushi, I can recommend a number of other places with just as good if not better sushi for a better price.

And no, we did not see any celebrities. I looked.

Run for the Reaper

Last year I said I wanted to run a 10K before I turned 30. Well folks, the Grim Reaper appears to be edging closer so I figured it was time to get on it. I am officially signed up for the Huntley Youth Sports Organization Run for the Sun on June 12.

I started running 5K races last year and really enjoy it. I love the camaraderie of my fellow runners, the adrenaline I get in a race environment and the goodie bag swag. But I really never thought I’d be able to get over the 4-mile hump. That’s the most I had run on my own and a 10K did not seem within my reach.

A couple weeks ago, I decided I wanted to try taking it up a notch. I ended up running 4.67 miles, and I was very proud of myself. After that accomplishment, I figured another 1.5 miles was doable.

Before I signed up, I wanted to make sure I could clear more than 5 miles. If I didn’t die at the end of it, I was going to devote my sweat to a 10K. So my friend and I took off on a gloomy Saturday and did 5.5 miles. And we didn’t die.

So there you have it. Come June 12, I won’t be driving to Huntley for the outlet mall but to torture myself by running 6.2 miles. At least I’ll have my home girls Adrienne and Erin to commiserate with.