Dining mavens have trudged through the undergrowth of France in search of wisdom. They have braved the California badlands in search of purity. They have made other far-flung journeys. And now, where have they arrived?
In the Midwest.
To some optimistic souls, Midwest cuisine is our next esoteric culinary fling. It has the history of European cooking, they say. It has the creative potential of the West Coast. In a way, they claim, it is where we have been heading all along.
But now that we`re home, have we achieved that crystal clarity of vision. Do we really know what makes a cuisine transcend the ordinary?
Of course not.
As a concept, Midwest food is interesting, but to talk to the many restaurateurs who are pursuing it, it is still ill-defined. It has promise, but it lacks resolve. Which means we are probably going to hear about it until it flowers fully or self-destructs in a souffle of overblown verbiage.
LOCAL STANDOUTS
When discussing Midwest restaurants, two Chicago names come to mind. One is Prairie restaurant, 538 S. Dearborn St., which recently opened with a fine Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired interior, and with many dishes from the past. The other is Michael Foley, a professorial spokesman for Midwest products, though he does not subscribe to all-Midwest menus. Foley owns Printer`s Row, 550 S. Dearborn St., a few doors from Prairie; and Foley`s, 211 E. Ohio St.
That fine restaurants should concentrate on Midwest-grown food is almost absurdly obvious. Freshness is critical in any restaurant, so chefs have always focused their attention on local producers. The difference today is that restaurateurs are searching farther for interesting products, and those that they find are responding nicely to a restaurant market that is clearly worth their while.
When francophile Leslee Reis, owner of Cafe Provencal in Evanston, prepared a dinner from a Parisian menu three years ago, she commented several times on the free-range chicken from a Wisconsin farm. It became the star of the meal. Smaller farms and factories increasingly market such regional goods to restaurants-and in the past couple of years diners are finding Illinois brie, Michigan morels and even Midwestern wines on haute cuisine menus all over the city.
How to characterize Midwest cuisine? The style is simple, and that should be encouraged, says Irena Chalmers, a regional cooking expert and writer from New York City. She talks about a meal she had years ago in Iowa: The trout was fresh-caught, the corn came straight from the field. ”It still haunts me in the night (it was so delicious),” Chalmers says.
But Midwest food can also be heavy, and that is a negative. ”Many people like meat loaf, mashed potatoes and gravy,” says David Radwine, chef at the Exchange Restaurant in Chicago`s Midland Hotel, who actively seeks out Midwest products. ”But that is not the kind of restaurant we want to have.”
Richard Perry, owner of a St. Louis restaurant of the same name, has done much to define Midwest cuisine in the 16 years of that restaurant`s existence. He started with old dishes, researched from hotel and riverboat cookbooks. Today, ”packet boat steak,” braised in sour cream, still is served. But most of the menu has evolved into something lighter and more contemporary-such as quail with cornbread dressing and cassis sauce with fresh currants.
COMMON DENOMINATOR
Whether the approach is historical or strictly personal, one common denominator remains: ”The Midwest is a major growing and producing area,”
says Michael Foley, who has spent the last several years looking for exceptional sources of products in our region. Major meat and dairy producers are in the Midwest. Michigan is one of the nation`s largest fruit growing states. There are even garlic and basil festivals in the region. For a creative chef such as Foley, it is a wealthy area.
It must also be noted that Midwest wines are gaining respect among people who once thought they were sweet rot-gut. Much of this credit must go to Foley, who has put various Michigan hybrids on his list-vignole, seyval and colombard to name a few. Admittedly, this means ”waging a war” against the already flooded market of California, Italian and French wines. But he and other people believe that fine wines will help convince doubters that the Midwest is a culinary region to be taken seriously.
Interestingly, Foley`s menu is not Midwest. Rather, his approach is using local ingredients in a more eclectic menu, and this is for utterly practical reasons. He says locally produced caviar is best for his caviar lasagna because it is fresher and less salty than most imports. He also notes that sources for game products are expanding-so a recent menu at Printer`s Row had rabbit wrapped in filo and mallard with a port sauce.
On the other hand, the menu at Prairie is almost entirely Midwestern, a point of distinction, if not contention, between that restaurant and Foley.
Inspired by businessmen, not a chef, Prairie`s menu is made up of dishes that are firmly rooted in the Midwest-from whitefish to buffalo. And whether it is an artistic success, the approach has captured a portion of the dining public. ”We have a whole cult of people who really like our food,” says Dan Rosenthal, president of the Chicago Dining Authority, which also owns Harry Caray`s. ”The delight of it (Prairie`s popularity) is that it has all come through word of mouth.”
RECIPES UPDATED
Indeed, the theory is easy to understand, and often interesting. As chef Steve Langlois worked on this concept before opening, he studied old cookbooks and menus, many in the Chicago Historical Society, and worked to update recipes with undisputed Midwest character. Among them is a corn chowder, which he found on two Chicago hotel menus. Langlois updated it by thickening the soup with a vegetable puree, not flour. Also, he found a crispy apple salad from a condiments cookbook, and uses it as part of a very successful smoked turkey salad.
”But we don`t want to be hokey,” says Prairie`s chef. While the cuisine is somewhat rigid in Midwest roots, preparations are light and plate presentation is stressed. For example, a caraway apple kraut, found in the cookbook of the Milwaukee Girls` Trades and Technical High School, 1901, inspired Prairie`s caraway apple dressing for a spinach and sliced pork loin salad. More entirely from the chef`s imagination is an asparagus salad with rhubarb mayonnaise.
Other chefs are concentrating on both the ingredients and history of the Midwest. But with most, there is less emphasis placed on the label.
David Radwine has a fascination with the game dishes, mushrooms and cheeses of the Midwest. For example, he does a warm quail salad with watercress, and a gratin of wild mushrooms (which includes Michigan morels).
”But I don`t want to limit my customers,” he says, noting that he uses papaya with a smoked chicken breast. ”What I try to do is use what`s available in the most advantageous way possible.”
It appears that the development of truly recognizable Midwest cuisine will take time, since most chefs appear more willing to investigate it than to declare that it is manna from heaven. Thus, a Midwestern cooking renaissance may not hit us like a phenomenon from outer space or from France.
Indeed, more thoughtful restaurateurs have focused on the freshness, seasonality and even history for some time. Jerome Kliejunas, owner of Jerome`s, 2450 N. Clark St., and Prairie City Diner, 1329 E. 57th St., frequently travels to produce markets to find the best tomatoes, lettuces and blueberries, among other products. These are not exotic items, but he finds that buying closer to the source is cheaper, fresher and ultimately more interesting.
CREATIVE AND ECLECTIC
His restaurants are creative places. The menus are eclectic, especially at Prairie City, an updated diner which has Mexican specials, tomato salads in season, freshly baked muffins (with in-season blueberries) and Sheboygan brats, purchased from the best purveyor Kliejunas can find in that wurst haven.
In many ways, Prairie City is an example of a modern Midwest restaurant. It evokes timelessness in decor as well as in menu. Customers will recognize certain dishes because they are homespun, like waffles, or because they are basic, like marinated chicken. But it is not a doctrinaire regional concept, any more than the diner is a nostalgia-trip with bright lights and loud music. It is simply a modest restaurant where the owner enjoys his business because it gets him out to explore markets and farms.
If freshness and simplicity are the keynotes of Midwest cuisine, explorations can turn it up in unexpected places. In discussing regional food, Michael Foley also talked about the great pizza and pasta that Chicago is noted for. Familiar and comforting regional ties can come from the city, too. The brew pubs in our midst, Sieben`s River North Brewery, 436 W. Ontario St., and Tap and Growler, 901 W. Jackson Blvd., recall the Midwest`s role as a grain producer, and as a place with a German heritage. That is in addition to often wonderfully fresh beer.
To extend the Midwest`s influence even farther, Kay Zubow, co-founder of the Heartland Food Society, was eating in Bistro 110, 110 E. Pearson St. She tasted the simple oven-baked chicken and vegetables approvingly. It didn`t matter that the restaurant was designed after a French model. ”I couldn`t help it,” she said. ”It just seemed Midwest to me.”
