First Bite: Breakfast at C-House
C-House, the new restaurant that marks star chef Marcus Samuelsson’s entry into the Chicago market, quietly opened for breakfast service recently. The restaurant, inside the Affinia Hotel (166 E. Superior St.; 312-523-0923), will be a sleek steak-and-seafooder when it begins dinner service (no official date for that yet), but for now, it’s a nice place for a refined breakfast (served 6-10 a.m.).
The decor is low-key elegance, the narrow dining room done in hardwood (floors, wainscoting and shelves) and a palette of copper, rust and saddle-leather tones. There are free-standing tables and booths, a raised communal table and a low counter that rims what will be an L-shaped raw bar.
The breakfast menu is pretty straightforward, listing egg dishes, pancakes, waffles, oatmeal and pastry baskets. There are three versions of eggs Benedict, including one that includes generous slices of pastrami-style smoked salmon; that’s what I ate, and it was terrific. Orange juice is fresh-squeezed and wonderful.
— Phil Vettel
First Bite: Shochu
If you put a word like “Shochu” in huge letters on the front of your restaurant (3313 N. Clark St.; 773-348-3313), we expect Japanese food. And that influence dominates the menu at Shochu. But others are here too: Thai and American and Mexican. That’s OK — no one is expecting strict adherence, especially from the people who brought us Deleece, which has been blending to good effect for years.
Shochu highlights the rice (sometimes barley) derived spirit on its own or in cocktails. We tried a couple, and they were fine. Next time, though, we’d go for a Hitachino beer or crisp white wine to let the flavors of the food shine through.
And shine they will. The small plates menu is divided into curry, “And Then” (which includes steak, tuna, Kobe, spare ribs), raw items (such as oysters and tartare), yakitori (grilled), kara-age (fried), maki and nigiri. We skipped around, trying the red curry shrimp ($6) with fuji apple, toasted peanuts, scallion and pea shoots, the three plump shrimp spiked with a spicy sauce. And we tried Kobe tartare ($9), three golf ball-size mounds, each on a vibrant shiso leaf, with grated ginger — delicious.
The yakitori of Japanese eggplant and zucchini chunks ($4) featured three perfectly grilled skewers, with a choice of seven sauces. But because we also ordered a kara-age, we got all seven; it went best with the sweet Thai chile. The wasabi fries ($4) were super crisp with not much wasabi flavor or heat, but who cares when they were so well fried (a generous mound, too) that went best with the wasabi avocado mayo. We just hope the low prices (the highest item is $13) aren’t an opening tease and that the sure success that’s to come won’t prevent our snagging a table.
— Joe Gray
News bite: Eno opens second spot
Eno has opened in The Fairmont Chicago (200 N. Columbus Drive), a few blocks from its predecessor at the InterContinental Chicago (505 N. Michigan Ave.). And like the InterCon’s version, the Fairmont’s Eno focuses on wine and its decadent friends, chocolate and cheese. The wine bar offers hundreds of bottles to pair with selections from its expansive cheese and chocolate menus.
The Fairmont’s version, which sits in the middle of the hotel’s newly designed lobby, will also host “Eno-versity,” a monthly, hourlong class where enthusiasts can learn about wine and its many pairings. “It’s not just a wine bar,” says Andre Zotoff, the hotel’s general manager. “[People] come here and they get educated.”
— Glenn Jeffers
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