The Smyth

Summary

I hadn’t done a lot of research for this restaurant other than two things: look for a nice restaurant in Chicago that is Michelin starred and the menu looks good.

There were many other Chicago fancy restaurants I could’ve picked from, but looking at the example set menu, this looked like something up my alley. It wasn’t too strict on a direction, and it looked like one of those “we take ourselves seriously but not so seriously” type of restaurant, such as Blanca in NYC. I settled on this Michelin 2-star restaurant.

We ordered the Omaha tasting which is the largest tasting they have (~19 courses). I can’t say if the other tastings are good or not, but since I won’t be back any time soon, I had to go bold.

I decided as my drink for the night the very basic Chicago Dynamo Lager. There wasn’t anything special about this, but I’ve been becoming more of a beer guy lately because you can drink it with anything.

This is the Surprise Me! cocktail that has gin, lavender, and hibiscus. Despite its very small size, it’s actually pretty potent. The cocktail has a lot of alcohol in it, and it’s definitely a creeper. The notes of the lavender and hibiscus are very prominent throughout. But what’s great about this also is that you don’t taste the alcohol. In my opinion, these are the best cocktails. This drink was very smooth.

This is the Maine uni glazed in egg yolk. The texture on the uni was perfect. There was some yuzu in it, so you can taste the complement of the creamy uni butter flavor with the citrus.

Next came the “the farm” carrot aguachile. This is the epitome of the farm to table concept as these carrots came from their local restaurant farm somewhere. The dish was very balanced. The carrots tasted subtly sweet, and the gooseberry was a little sweet with sour aftertones. There was what I thought a carrot pureé below the actual carrots.

The menu that they gave us at the end of the night says this was suppose to be caviar, fig leaf, and horseradish. However in my notes, I have this written down as beets with caviar. The caviar is from a kaluga sturgeon fish, which they were saying how the restaurant had these special delivered to them. This wasn’t too salty, and the little pops of ocean freshness completely spoiled us. There is some jelly under the beets which was lemony, hence adding a citrus complement to the dish. The best part of this was the enormous wad of caviar that they gave us. It was a nice gesture because the caviar was delectable.

This is what I think was a green tea-like base for the precursor to the next few shima aji fish courses. They wanted to show how rich and pure the color was.

The shima aji belly came served in a very strange vessel. The vessel look like fingers playfully flicking around the belly like a deck of cards. The shima belly is nothing like tuna toro, but it was ok by itself. I think I wish it had a little lemon zest to it.

The shima bone broth was simply delicious. Remember the green tea base picture above? They poured the bone broth into the bowl, and voila! This is what came out. The combination of the two came out very delicate and delicious. There was a slight sour tickle on the tongue, but the stock itself was so good that I can’t find the right adjectives to describe. It definitely was very far from fishy.

I believe this was the shima loin (cooked?) which had some icy sour stuff on top of it. There was some creme that I could not make out the flavor. I think this was far better than the sashimi served at the beginning.

The last shima aji course came out in a sourdough vessel with cooked shima head meat. I think usually when people say fish head meat, it’s usually the cheeks which are usually very tender and buttery. The sourdough was completely loaded generously with smoked trout roe. They asked, if you can, to eat the whole thing in one bite. This was nothing short of delicious goodness as everything was just off the wall euphoria. The saltiness of the roe popping in your mouth with the sweetness of the cheeks and whatever dressing they got in there produced a perfect match in heaven.

The next set of courses was centered around king crab. This is the king crab in beeswax. At first, I thought I was suppose to eat the casing too. But no, they ask that you break it in half and peel off the beeswax. On the side, there’s a dipping sauce of egg yolk and what I think is some type of soy sauce. The beeswax has a very distinct flavor that is kind of interesting. After they cook the crab, they encase it with the candle like taste of the beeswax. It’s not something I was super excited for, but I like the adventure they were looking for. The sauce though was really good. I took the crab leg and just threw it into that yolk soy sauce medley. You got the sweetness of the crab dampened by the thick creamy yolky flavors with the saltiness of the soy sauce.

The next was the king crab meat with foie gras mousse. It had some sourdough chips in it. Everything was really good. The sweetness of the crab meat with the mousse is just perfection. My mental state was set in a good place after eating this.

They broke up the pace now with some nori sourdough bread. At the bottom left is nori butter. As a person who loves eating seaweed, this bread was so unbelievably good. The sourdough had that nice sour kick, and the seaweed was very noticeable. Combined with the nori butter, it was just heaven. The seaweed adds a nice unusual flavor that makes your tongue dance around whenever it eats anything with seaweed in it. I would argue that the seaweed is as much of a star as the sourdough itself, and that really says something. If I had to fault one thing, I think the butter could have used just a hint of salt.

The next dish served was a trout from Montana. It had some sour miso sauce around it as well. The fish was so unbelievably soft and fresh.

The duck as usual has a nice crust and was cooked perfectly. It was served with a sauce that was tart, so there was nothing strange to the tastebuds. It was one of those duck dishes that you’d expect prepared the same in most fancy restaurants.

The aged lamb with fermented black truffle was a different story. The lamb was very tender as if it was sous vide and briased, so it was easy to break apart. There are some starchy small transparent-like potatoes that tasted like each piece was loaded with butter in it. They said that it’s the natural taste of it. The dish was also served generously with loads of shaved black truffle on top. This lamb dish exceeded my expectations which were already fairly high.

With the lamb, there was also a brioche donut served. Some people eat the donut as is, but we decided to use the donut to dip into the remaining lamb sauce. The donut, albeit dense, was very warm, fluffy, and delicious. Think of it as a giant donut hole.

Next came the dessert courses. This was the milk chocolate with shiitake mushroom shavings. Everyone knows that I loathe mushrooms, but this was acceptable. I did not think mushroom could work with chocolate, but it did. The chocolate wasn’t too sweet, so the mushroom shavings added some character to give it a little noise to play with.

The malted sunchoke ice cream was kind of interesting. In the middle, there was some sour yuzu. The sunchoke has a subtle natural sweetness to it that some find dull, so I can see how that gave a little pop.

The black currant beetroot custard was interesting as well. It looks like a biscuit with some jelly on top, but the top is actually some sort of coffee, and the custard itself was super cold. I thought it would crack like a pie, but it was actually very mushy.

Lastly, this is the kombu ice cream sandwich with kasu caramel. The sandwich was basically smacked between 2 nori (seaweed) wafers. This was really good. I don’t remember what ice cream it was, but I could eat one of these if they were full sized. The kasu caramel was really good, and if you love miso like flavors, you would love this.

The desserts in general don’t fit the traditional stereotype of being super sweet by nature. I feel the desserts here are more clean and transparent meant to give you some sweetness at the end without feeling guilty about it. I think if you eat these with an open mind, it will kind of make sense. You want something that is not as rich as the main savory courses, and just something light and playful with hints of traditional dessert sweetness without overdoing it.

Not pictured, we were gifted on the way out with a bag of tea with some homemade honey. The honey was very watery and not gooey like a syrup. I tried it this morning, and it was fantastic. The tea had some interesting aromas, and the honey wasn’t too sweet such that it overpowered.

The service as expected was nothing short of excellent. The wait staff was very friendly and open to any questions.

The decor of the restaurant was very rustic as if you were in a nice cabin in the woods. The vibe was very relax and did not feel overly pretentious.

After visiting this restaurant, I learned that the head chef John Shields had served as a sous chef at Alinea (which coincidentally will be the next post after this). He was at the helm in the kitchen in plain site.

Final Verdict

Even though there were a lot of Asian ingredients used in several courses, I felt that the courses themselves didn’t remind me of an “Asian” restaurant. I liked how the chef exercised a lot of creativity in the composition of the dishes. There were some expected flavor combinations, but there were also quite a number of very impressive delicious dishes that I have not tried nor imagined before.

This is one of the few New American style Michelin-starred restaurants that I have eaten so far that I would very highly recommend. It was balanced and unbelievably good. I left very happy.

Yelp Jabs

Servings were SO small. One tablespoon of Uni. Two canelles of squash. Three bites of tuna. Oh, you’re now 1/3 done with your meal.

Servings are definitely small, but it sounded like this person opted for the smaller tasting menu. As you can tell, mine wasn’t really “three bites of tuna” and I’m done.

The environment did not seem like a fine dining establishment. I suppose we are too old for the “hipster” feel. We are 49 and 50 so not senior citizens.

It sounds like this couple was looking for a ritzy super pretentious environment. I wouldn’t say this was a “hipster” atmosphere. It was a very “you can treat it how you want”.

The dessert courses were AWFUL. Seaweed and chocolate? Just stop. Cucumber with cream and pumpkin seeds? cucumber is not a dessert item, please stop doing this.

I can see how the dessert items in our tasting didn’t fit the traditional sense of a dessert. This elitist, however, is the epitome of boring.