review: blackbird : take one

i went to blackbird last wednesday, and i have to say that i have mixed feelings about the visit. i had heard that it was really good midwestern-tinged fare from various sources (people on egullet also seem to like it), which typically would bode well. perhaps i just made the wrong choices.

i think i did make one mistake - going there when i wasn't particularly hungry. i think i had a late lunch due to being busy at work, which just meant that i wasn't hungry come dinnertime. as i had a reservation, it wasn't really possible to change it to accommodate my mealtime idiosyncrasies. i tend to eat dinner fairly late now, anyway, as i spend so much time dithering about in the city. despite my reputation as a food snob (i swear i'm not - or at least, most of me is not a food snob), if it's not convenient to eat, i just won't. good examples of this are when i am in studio, or when i go to a concert in the park straight after work. i might get hungry, but i'm just doing something where food can wait.

back to the restaurant. i was a little apprehensive because i was eating out by myself and this place had looked a little too hip to be particularly nice to single diners. but it turned out to be fine - and in fact, though i found the waitstaff to be a little pretentious and too silent (i was hoping they'd talk to me), they totally ignored the fact that i was by myself. i didn't feel pressured to leave at all, to make way for another seating at my table. i wasn't totally thrilled with where i was sitting, but i think it was just me rather than any failing on their part - i was seated at a table across from the bar, close to but not too close to the door. it was a great place to watch people from, but i felt a little like i was being watched too, since i was one of the first few people that would be seen by those entering for their dinners. i think that if i were to go there again, i would request a table farther away from the door.

the people : the people around me were an interesting mix. to my left, a group of four, two of whom were visiting and two of whom were natives, or had at least visited the city before. they were slightly loud about their gourmandism, which is something i never advertise (because if it's really natural to you, why would you need to say that you are going to charlie trotter's the next day, loud enough for everyone around you to hear?). well, i suppose you have to start somewhere.

there was a table between me and the foursome, and it was eventually occupied by a european couple, one of whom lived in chicago. i think the girl was visiting. it seemed like the couple had been together for a while, but that the girl was visiting for the first time, because the guy definitely tried hard to please her, and kept on checking if she was enjoying her food as a way to find out if he had chosen correctly - exactly the wrong thing to do if one wants to enjoy a nice dinner.

the couple to my right was equally at ease. they were maybe on their third date, and the guy - who looks a bit like the stunt guy in that billy bob thornton/bruce willis movie, bandits - was definitely trying to impress the girl. they ordered the most typical things off the menu - scallop appetizer and steak for the entree. the conversation between the two was pretty interesting - the girl kept on saying "but i don't want to go into that right now" and the guy would try to pry more out of her, totally oblivious to her own desire to change the subject. ie, she once worked in a factory and didn't really want to talk about it, but he wanted to know why. i guess maybe he was nervous and didn't realize he was being insensitive. anyway, this was definitely their night out on the town, and i hope they enjoyed it more than it seemed like they were enjoying it.

so i think that blackbird is seen as a cool, hip place to go, and thus it gets a fair mix of people who are there for the food and people who are there to pretend that they're cool. the restaurant is an interesting clash of ideas, with its really modern, minimalist design and its midwestern-influenced food. (ok, i really don't know where the midwestern influence was. it seemed like normal hip food to me.)

as for the food, i started off with my water and bread, which came with butter that had been sliced from a cylinder of butter rolled in spices (cumin among them, i believe). that is a wonderful idea. i wish i'd thought of it. it went really well with the bread. my appetizer - as i have become addicted to 3+ course meals - was a cold corn bisque with olive oil-poached rock shrimp (from maine - you know, i think the shrimp are best off left in and consumed in maine). it was really good - not too rich, and very corn-y. and the rock shrimp were, i believe, the best, most perfectly-cooked shrimp i've ever had.

all of this made my entree kind of disappointing. i had elk with sour cherries and fava beans, and while the flavor combination was great, the elk was really kind of stringy. chewy i can deal with, though i wasn't thrilled about that - it could have been due to the game meat. however, stringy means they shouldn't be serving it. i think i do like elk, though. and i really like fava beans! they're everywhere nowadays - i had them at no 9 park in two dishes, and at alinea, in addition to at blackbird. i think the restaurant was also a bit cold, so that the food cooled off too quickly. i'm not a terribly slow eater, but i'm not terribly fast either, and i wish the food had been warm a little longer. i found alinea to be far too cold too, but the fact that there were 28 courses meant that they were smaller, and consequently consumed faster, so they were less likely to get cold.

despite their silence - maybe my waiter was shy or something - i give kudos to the waitstaff for accommodating me and my habits. i was totally full by the time i had finished my elk, but still wanted dessert - no meal is complete without dessert! - and they kindly took my request to delay dessert by about 10 minutes with nary a raised eyebrow. when i did get dessert, i was slightly disappointed - it was a carrot cake with a blueberry and frozen yogurt terrine on the side. it just tasted...too healthy, i think. the terrine was kind of icy - more ice crystals than frozen yogurt.

overall, i was pleased with the service but displeased with the food. it was somehow off, and i was really expecting more, especially for the price. i am pretty displeased with the restaurant scene in chicago - really, the entire food scene. people are obsessed with fine dining - and there is a lot of fine dining, where by fine dining i mean the top tier - and i wish i could afford to have done more of it. but i haven't found any cheap food that was really worth it, which worries me a lot. i haven't found a lot of ethnic food worth having - where is the ethiopian place, the moroccan place, the cape verdean place? there are also too many brunch places in chicago - the restaurant world seems to cater to the yuppies. the thing i miss most is the $30 nice dinner, which is plentiful in boston. boston may not have the plethora of really top tier dining that chicago has, but at least it has good cheap food, and good middle range food. there is no $30 nice dinner in chicago. (and there's no good ice cream!!!) it's either $15 and mediocre or $100+ and great. to me, this is really a reflection of chicago's obsession with its image. it has to be the best in everything, the first to do this and that, and thus its restaurant industry is image driven. this is evident to me by the value that people place on regular food. in a city where food was really treated well, and valued, there would be a lot of supermarkets and produce markets. people would cook a lot, with good produce. my experience with chicago is that there are not enough supermarkets within walking distance of anyone's home - in cambridge i can walk to any of five supermarkets, and take the bus to several more - and the supermarkets aren't really any good, anyway. i haven't figured out where the supermarkets are in the Loop, which is distressing because the Loop is the only place where i could see myself living if i had to return to chicago. anyway, the existence and frequency of supermarkets is, i guess, my barometer of how food is valued in a given city.