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.