Creepies shows what marvelous things can happen when curious and creative kids watch Julia Child’s “The French Chef” on PBS with their friends in the basement rec room.
Chefs Anna and David Posey opened the French-inspired Midwestern bistro in the West Loop neighborhood last August with chef de cuisine Tayler Ploshehanski. The Poseys also own Michelin-starred Elske next door.
“Anna and I were looking for a really quaint, small building and we found one,” David Posey. “Nothing ever came to fruition, and we just ended up calling it the creepy building.”
While they looked for spaces, they’d say, “Let’s go look at some creepy buildings.” Luckily, the space they found is not creepy at all.
The chefs launched lunch at the new restaurant in January, when some of their most surprising and smart dishes made their debut.
The roasted chicken with liver and wine sauce at dinner has already become their bestseller. It appears to be a classically rendered dish. A slender drumstick and drumette extend enticingly above a half chicken with sliced breast, prized thigh and a pool of fatty, flecked sauce below.
“David’s and my death row meal is roasted chicken,” said Ploshehanski.
Their final meal is far from just roasted chicken.
“We worked on it for quite a while,” said David Posey. “I think two and a half or three years.”
And now it takes three days to make. They cure it lightly, then poach it, dry it and pan fry it, all before roasting.
Crisp-skinned and tender-fleshed, their chicken is then ready for its lovely sauce, herbaceous from tarragon and bright from white wine. That sauce is lush and savory. Not too livery, for better if you’re not a big fan of offal, or a bit wanting, if you’re like me and expected more intensity.
A Creepies croque monsieur hides a Mornay sauce within. The grilled ham and cheese looks nothing like the sandwich whose name translates amusingly to crunchy gentleman. It looks even less like a croque madame, without the defining fried egg on top, but you can add egg jam.
Long, angular and abstract, their croques capture the essence of the originals. They’re amazing either way. The chefs drew inspiration from France and closer to home.
“I started with David at Blackbird,” said Ploshehanski about the renowned restaurant by chef Paul Kahan that closed after 22 years in 2020. “There was always a croque on the menu for lunch, so we were paying homage to that.”
The Blackbird croques held house-made ham, Swiss cheese and caramelized onions on slabs of sourdough bread. Creepies sources its bread from Publican Quality Bread.
“Our croque is a mixture of all the good things that we experienced when Anna and I would travel to France,” David Posey said. “A croque was my go-to lunch order.”
But some were bad, with just one slice of ham on soggy bread. Or he couldn’t chew through it, because it would be so overcooked. Dry, but still soggy somehow.
“We worked on having crispy bread that was really thin, almost like a Chinese shrimp toast kind of vibe,” said Posey. They fill it with ham, Mornay sauce in the center and a little Dijon whole grain mustard mixed in. “And then the egg yolk jam is so you get it in every bite.”
The rapturous result hit so many nostalgic flavor notes. Shrimp toast has forever been my Chinese American childhood fried food favorite. And when I lived in Paris, my re-entry meal was always a runny yolked croque madame to awaken at the local café.
The Creepies croque has also become a fan favorite at lunch.
The niçoise sandwich, however, is the favorite lunchtime dish of David Posey, Ploshehanski and mine, too. It’s their play on a salade niçoise, replacing tuna with smoked beets (making it vegan), on sesame bread. But more correctly, it’s the chef de cuisine’s take on a Provençal pan bagnat, or bathed bread, stuffed with the iconic salad that radiates the South of France.
“I made a really intense olive vinaigrette that just soaks that top bun,” she said. “And a play on a tomato aioli using tofu, with sun-dried tomatoes to give it a really umami flavor.”
It’s rustic yet refreshing, filled with precisely lined haricots verts.
A lyonnaise salad with smoked maitake is also popular at lunch, but a touch disappointing with elusive mushroom slivers and an unfortunately overcooked egg, which was still nicely jammy on pristine greens.
The little gem salad with apple and celery, on the other hand, was impeccable, and Ploshehanski’s favorite at dinner. It’s her play on a Caesar, but lighter (and also vegan) with crunchy bits in a nutty seasonal sunflower seed dressing. I literally gasped at the artful plating with carefully arranged leaves.
Warm brie gougères have become another signature, sticky from a brush of honey and loaded with melted cheese. “We love the cheesy flavor of gougères, but sometimes felt they were lacking in the cheese department,” said David Posey. So they turned a 1970s dinner party wheel of baked brie into a big singular bite.
Tarte flambé tavern-style is one of two Chicago terroir dishes. Circular instead of oblong or rectangular, it is indeed cut into squares. Fragrant onion ribbons smother the crackery crust, and those smoked maitakes, which were lost in the salad, were amped up here.
Steamed mussels, plump and accompanied by an impressively spicy house-made fennel giardiniera, the other Chicago terroir dish, come finished with a cloud of buttery anise foam.
“We steam the mussels in a little Pernod and white wine,” said Ploshehanski. “Then we take that liquid and make an emulsion with a little cream and butter, and add a little lemon juice to season it.”
Their Parisian gnocchi, light and airy, actually inspired the croque monsieur with its Swiss cheese, house-made ham and egg yolk. It’s David Posey’s favorite at dinner, with an unusual shattering sheet of fried feuille de brick covering the dumplings made with pâte à choux. The dish is rich, yet vibrant with sharp mustard and acidic lemon.
For dessert, executive pastry chef Anna Posey offers a chocolate mousse cake at lunch, which is oddly dense but with a silky coffee cream. Butterscotch custard at dinner with crème fraîche and lemon is so smooth, but the flavor is subdued. Tutti frutti soft serve, with delightfully chewy candied tropical fruit, was cloyingly sweet after just a few spoonfuls.
Anna Posey’s brilliant baguette soft serve, however, with her house-made chocolate magical shell and brown butter crumbs, has become the signature dessert at Creepies for good reason.
“That’s the kind of Midwestern vibe we’re going for,” said David Posey, executive chef. “When you go to a Dairy Queen and you get Magic Shell on your ice cream.”
It’s also an ingenious transformation of leftover baguettes. The pastry chef steeps heavily toasted bread into her soft serve base, then strains it out. The finished dish receives a flourish of brown butter-toasted baguette crumbs and crushed feuilletine shards.
Her picturesque meringue cake, seasonal and stratified, recently came with a complex salted cherry sherbet and stone fruit confectionery layers.
“It’s a throwback to when Anna was the pastry chef at The Publican,” David Posey said. “She would always have either a pavlova or an Eton mess on the menu.”
Anna Posey’s desserts are generous, and the baguette soft serve and seasonal meringue cake pair extravagantly together.
As does an aromatic Rare Tea Cellar chamomile served with a delicately floral honey. The tea was a thoughtful recommendation from my server, Laura Herbert, during an early yet busy Monday night dinner.
Service at a quiet late Saturday lunch with Olivia Hanson was just as terrific and attentively paced.
Servers also make the cocktails, including an unusual, but delicious, celery Calvados Negroni, which tastes more of apple than stalk.
Monica Casillas-Rios just left as bartender at Elske and beverage director at Creepies.
“Most of them are batched,” said David Posey about her drinks, since they don’t have a bar at the bistro. “The idea is to have two-touch cocktails, very easy for the servers to execute.”
Emily Sher is the wine director at both establishments.
They also don’t have bar seating. Instead, there’s a deep back counter that faces a wall with antique mirrors. It sounds terrible, and when I went for lunch, nobody was sitting there. But at dinner, there were quite a few couples who seemed to like it, and they made it look so cozy.
“It is definitely love or hate,” said David Posey. “And I’m in the same boat with you, I don’t love sitting at a bar.”
Erin Boone of Boone Interiors designed both Elske and Creepies. But they’re so different. The former is Scandinavian minimalist, while the latter is Midwest basement meets French bistro maximalist. Wood paneling walks the very fine line between suburban rec room and mid-century modern. Short fabric tiers hanging as art soften the space, hinting at cafe curtains and basement windows.
Jenny Volvovski of ALSO studio drew the line art doodle faces throughout the space. On dishware and hidden corners, they’re for the curious and creative kids within us to discover. They’re cute and appropriately creepy too.
Creepies
1360 W. Randolph St.
312-579-2727
Open: Thursday to Monday, lunch, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., dinner 5 to 10 p.m. (closed Tuesday and Wednesday)
Prices: $20 (niçoise sandwich), $22 (croque monsieur, $4 add egg jam), $18 (tarte flambé), $39 (roasted chicken), $12 (baguette soft serve), $16 (salted cherry sherbet and stone fruit meringue cake), $6 (Rare Tea Cellar chamomile tea), $16 (celery Calvados Negroni)
Sound: OK (lunch, 57 to 58 dB; dinner, 71 to 72 dB)
Accessibility: Wheelchair accessible with ramp by request for small front step, and restrooms on one level
Tribune rating: Three stars, excellent
Ratings key: Four stars, outstanding; three stars, excellent; two stars, very good; one star, good; zero stars, unsatisfactory.
Meals are paid for by the Tribune.
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