by A. LaBan
It's that time of year when I look at my New Year's (eating) resolutions for the upcoming year:
I'm going to head south this winter... For the past few years, I've turned west, as in West Randolph Street. But these days, diners are beginning to head to the South Loop, where another traditionally nonresidential neighborhood is being transformed into expensive loft condos and townhouses. As new money has moved in, new restaurants have opened: At the end of last year, we saw yet another Bar Louie open in the South Loop, as well as Gioco, an Italian eatery from Jerry Kleiner and Howard Davis, the restaurateurs who pioneered West Randolph. Now the Chicago Firehouse Restaurant, located in a restored, turn-of-the-century Chicago firehouse, is scheduled to open in early January, boasting a classic American menu. It will also offer a variety of dining scenarios, including a fine dining room, as well as a neighborhood bar featuring a menu of salads, pastas, burgers and sandwiches, pizzas, etc. I'm going to satisfy champagne tastes on a beer budget... Vong has introduced "Vong's Bamboo Express," a multi-course lunch served in thirty minutes or less, for $17. Wolfgang Puck is now offering two local options for bargain dining, Puck's at the MCA and a "cafeteria" location at O'Hare. Meanwhile, alumni of Spruce have opened Uncle Erv's in Lakeview, which serves comfort food with style. And, if you're really tight, you can always try that neighborhood's inexpensive Chipotle Mexican Grill, founded by Steve Ells, who trained at the Culinary Institute of America and is a veteran of Stars in San Francisco. I'm going to take salsa lessons... Rick Bayless' Frontera Grill and Topolobampo have not only led the way in feeding Chicago upscale Mexican, but have also spawned a number of restaurants by alumni, like Geno Bahena's Ixcapuzalco and Paul Helm at Adobo Grill. The run to more traditional border dishes seems to even be swamping last year's wave of Nuevo Latino combinations. Paul LoDuca, chef-owner of Adobo Grill, believes diners are gravitating to traditional Mexican fare rather than Nuevo Latino because "the basics never go out of style. The identity of a dish as well as the flavors are lost when you apply a multicultural approach to food."
I'm going to continue to see (and taste) confusion about fusion... These days, it takes a village—a global village—to put food on the table, even in Chicago. The trend toward fusion is apparently not dead. According to Cindy Kurman of restaurant PR firm Kurman Communications, one of the key agenda items for a recent conference sponsored by Women Chefs & Restauranteurs was the "Global Village," with subthemes including "The Americanization of the world's cuisines, authenticity, and regionalism... with an emphasis on Tuscany, Provence and Oaxaca, Mexico." Casey Eslick, partner in the Bistrot Zinc & Brío restaurants, believes the fusion trend is still going strong. "What I see people enjoying is global fusion, one world cuisine. It's being executed in various ways here in Chicago. Look at Trú, Thyme and Fahrenheit to see what's new and inventive. And keep in mind that it was Erwin Dreshler who started it all with his cuisine at Metropolis Café. He's been cooking regional fusion food for a long time. The next generation of that food is what John Bubula at Thyme and Patrick Concannon at Fahrenheit are doing—taking regional home style food and turning it into sophisticated global cuisine."
So I guess fusion is here to stay, but the point I make is that not every hurly-burly, mumbo-jumbo combination of international flavors qualifies as fusion. Fusion is a cooking style—granted, one with wide parameters, but still a style that requires a skilled chef to execute tastefully. So, my plea to fellow eaters is to vote with your feet. If a restaurant's nod to fusion is throwing together the contents of Mother Hubbard's cupboard, encourage them to go back to the basics—straight Italian, straight French, straight Tibetan, whatever.
The best tastes of the new millennium to you and yours from all of us at Newcity.
copyright 1999 New City Communications, Inc.