Well, we tried one of the hot, new restaurants in Chicago: Sable at the new Palomar Hotel. It has been trending high on Urbanspoon, as well as written up in Chicago Reader and Time Out Chicago. So, I called and got a table after work, and off we went on Friday evening.
The Palomar is a Kimpton Hotel, and the executive chef, Heather Terhune, was responsible for the Atwood Cafe, down the street at The Burnham, another Kimpton property. I’ve eaten at the Atwood a couple of times, and always enjoyed it. However, the whole executive chef idea makes me nervous in general, since the organizational structure removes the chef from the stove. I believe that my suspicions in this regard are justified, for reasons I will now provide.
The place looks hip when you walk through the door: dark wood, faux suede fabrics, cork, and some funky 70′s wallpaper above the kitchen. Contemporary with a touch of retro. Nice, but nothing earth-shattering. What was an immediate turn-off was the mirrored surface behind our booth. For those unfortunate enough to sit in the chairs, the effect was more disconcerting than having the wrong prescription in your eyeglasses (see photo.) That blob to the right of Laura? That’s me, taking the picture. And believe me, this is compounded as the drinks flow. I’m not sure who came up with that idea, but I’m pretty sure they haven’t eaten in the restaurant.
I can echo the review from the Chicago Reader: this seems to be more of a cocktail place than anything. Even though I could not secure a table at 7:00, when I arrived at 6:30 the restaurant was basically empty. It did eventually fill, but there wasn’t much of a hurry.
I started with a cocktail called The Bridal Shower, which combined vodka, rhubarb syrup and Campari. It was good – a commendable mix – but I was definitely not in the mood for it, and switched to a glass of Cerdon du Bugey. The wine selection seemed pretty good, albeit a bit pricey. But hey, it is downtown Chicago. An Argyle Pinot Noir was a good complement to my dinner.
The food was really inconsistent. We started with mussels in broth and found a number of them were spoiled. Otherwise they were good, but nothing special. My scallion hush puppies were like eating plain corn meal they were so dry. And the girls order deviled eggs – not my favorite – and both agreed they were only passable. Again, nothing special. That was followed by a delicious tomato cucumber salad, dressed in a tomato vinaigrette and topped with roasted peanuts. Sandi and I had flatbreads for dinner: mine a glazed pork belly and hers a mushroom and asparagus combination. They were both tasty but mine left me feeling heavy after eating just half of it.
The most disappointing aspect of the evening was the service. It was really inattentive. In fact, I would call it a deal-breaker and it will keep me from trying Sable a second time.
Back to my initial assertion, I think Sable really suffered from execution issues. Whether that is due to the absence of the chef, or just the absence of simple passion, I didn’t get the feeling that anyone was invested in creating a great dining experience. That, coupled with the fact that it wasn’t cheap, pretty much insures that my future efforts will be finding other places to patronize.
Well, I spent some time in my darkroom a couple of weeks back. For those of you who know me, my recent move to Chicago has separated me from my darkroom by several hundred miles, so spending time in there is a special event. I did some organizing and cleanup, as well as developing film.
Because of my lack of organizational skills, I don’t always keep up with my work. That’s the bad news; I tend to start things that may not get finished for a while. But the good news is that I discovered some lovely images taken at our friends’ farm in New Brunswick, so I can share them with you now.
Enjoy. [Note: You can click on the image to see it full-size.]
Last night, Sarah Palin got to do her TV dress-up on Fox News. Her comments about Barack Obama somehow made me think of the great line in Mel Brooks’ “The History of the World, Pt. 1“:
We’ve flattened their fingers,
we’ve branded their buns.
Nothing is working,
SEND IN THE NUNS!
In a sign from His Noodliness – the Flying Spaghetti Monster – an infidel statue was struck by lightning and reconfigured in the image of the Great Pasta. CNN reported on the incident.
My friend Pati came to visit yesterday, and we went to The Purple Pig – a collaboration between Scott Harris of Mia Francesca fame and Jimmy Bannos of Heaven on Seven – for wine and swine. Don’t let the crappy website scare you away, this was a good destination for eating, drinking and chatting it up.
Most of the plates are small, so like tapas just dive in and prepare to share. Pati and I started with roasted beets with whipped goat cheese and a pistachio vinaigrette, which was to-die for. An asparagus and hazelnut salad was tossed in a lovely mint dressing, which was light and refreshing. And don’t forget the deep-fried manchego. The Purple Pig has a lovely selection of cheeses, but hey, it’s deep-fried. We also ordered a blade steak, which we simply call a pork steak in St. Louis. They can come from the butt or, in this case the shoulder, and it’s one cheap cut of meat that will rock your world. This one was grilled and served with a spicy Italian salami called Nduja (make sure you get both in the same bite.) A side of arugula gave a nice nutty flavor to the bite.
I convinced Pati to try the braised kale and pigs ear, which was topped with a basted egg. Two thumbs-up. We didn’t get a picture, because we snarfed it, but a great couple sitting next to us was also snapping away, and after chatting and having much fun we took pictures of their pig tails and serrano ham. It turns out that they were two chefs in town to eat and explore, so we talked about what they had found and where they might go later in the day. It really sounded like my kind of weekend.
Oh, the wine list is nice. There are a reasonable number of bottles served by the glass (a 5 oz. pour.) We tried a Cotes du Rhone (all Syrah) and a Couteaux du Languedoc (a blend of Carignan and Grenache.) While both were enjoyable the Couteaux had a fuller body and a bit more spice, which held up better against some of the pork.
Last but not least came the sweet, with a couple of double shots. My favorite was the Sicilian Iris, a beignet-type of pastry filled with chocolate and ricotta cheese. The Nutella panini was also good, although marshmallow creme is not real high on my list. The food was great, the lunch was long, and the company was entertaining. The Purple Pig was a great experience that I look forward to repeating. Next time you’re over on Michigan Avenue, think about giving it a try.
I love living in Chicago, but there is one thing I’ve noticed: city government doesn’t do much to curtail loose trash. Certainly, in such a large city with high population density, there is going to be trash on the street. All the more reason to try and mitigate the problem whenever necessary.
Let’s start with what I consider low-hanging fruit: the hand bills that are shoved into door frames, iron gates, or left on cars. I see people walking up and down my street every day with a shoulder sack full of these things, advertising Chinese food, waterproofing, or cleaning services. And, since most of the buildings are multi-family, dozens of them wind up in your gate or, to the point of this post, on the ground in your flower beds. Not to mention the rubber bands that have to be pulled off your door knob.
Now, I understand the desire of local businesses to get my attention (and they certainly have.) But why is this not considered littering? There’s more shit on the ground than gets into homes, and I can’t help but think that my neighborhood is getting trashed simply because someone doesn’t want to buy a name and address and affix postage. At some point we need to make a value judgment. Are we comfortable with waste in our front yard, or do we want to take small steps to clean things up?
There are people who will say that banning flyers will hurt business. That’s a poorly constructed argument, if not pure bullshit. If nobody can use flyers, then everybody will find a different way of communicating their message. As long as restrictions are fair, businesses will not suffer. In fact, I would not even insist upon a ban, but would be happy with citing companies for littering. Maybe the fines could pay for more trash cans on the street corners. Either way, Chicago would be a better place to live without these flyers blowing down our sidewalks.
I got called a liberal yesterday. Again. And, as you might expect, it was pejorative. These things don’t matter much to me; the names are usually hurled at the losing end of an argument, but there is something important we all need to consider about contemporary political debate.
Let’s start with the definition, since this post is going to focus on the use of words, and how their meanings can change. My Compact Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition (1989) defines liberal in a number of ways. The relevant ones include:
Favourable to constitutional changes and legal or administrative reforms tending in the direction of freedom or democracy;
Free from narrow prejudice; open-minded, candid.
Judging from these statements, liberalism seems like a pretty positive philosophy. It was thought of in that way when, during the Enlightenment, political philosophers such as John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Jefferson conceived of returning liberty to individuals and limiting the power of monarchs. It is ironic that today, many of the ‘conservatives’ in America who claim dominion over the Founding Fathers refuse to recognize their liberal heritage.
Instead, Americans on the political left run from the word. George H.W. Bush – Bush I – used the term against Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential campaign, but I think it already had a negative connotation by then. Since that time, it has attracted so much detritus that Democrats are trying to replace it with the word ‘progressive’. While that may be a more accurate descriptor, it is nevertheless a response to civic ignorance.
Recently Timothy Ferris wrote an excellent piece on The Huffington Post entitled, “Conservative Is Not Opposite Liberal.” He makes the excellent point that, given our definition above, great conservative thinkers like Edmund Burke and John Adams were certainly liberal. That indeed, the opposite of liberal is not conservative, it is authoritarian. Since liberals tend to favor reforms that grant freedom, then the opposite would certainly remove freedoms. The question then becomes, what are liberals afraid of?
The American Right has been very effective creating memes since the days of Bush I and Lee Atwater. It is unabashedly visible today, with talk of ‘death panels’ in the Affordable Healthcare Reform for America Act, ‘bank bailouts’ in the financial reform bill, and socialism despite a quite different reality. Sadly, it demonstrates that the American electorate is sensitive to these marketing messages, regardless of their relationship to facts ‘on the ground’. That diverges greatly from the ultimate goal of incrementally improving society through science and reason as Jefferson had envisioned. Applying a skeptical eye to these messages is essential to returning the American electorate to a civil, intellectual debate.
When I hear the term ‘liberal’ used as a pejorative, I am confident in my presumption that the speaker is unaware of the history of political philosophy in the West. Which is a shame, because the American Right has strayed far from what was considered conservative. You know you have a problem when it’s important to characterize the philosophy as ‘paleo-conservative’ or ‘neo-conservative’, especially when movement icons like Russell Kirk and Barry Goldwater became disenfranchised from the contemporary ideology. I have already argued that the current Tea Party movement, and mouthpieces like Glenn Beck, bear much more resemblance to the French Jacobins than anything conservative. But the memes put forth by the marketing machine take hold, and the GOP propaganda operation that is Fox News has tremendous sway over those who do not question, and that bodes poorly for the future of honest debate in American politics.
What was an immediate turn-off was the mirrored surface behind our booth. For those unfortunate enough to sit in the chairs, the effect was more disconcerting than having the wrong prescription in your eyeglasses (see photo.) That blob to the right of Laura? That’s me, taking the picture. And believe me, this is compounded as the drinks flow. I’m not sure who came up with that idea, but I’m pretty sure they haven’t eaten in the restaurant.
