I’ll try starting my posts with some short updates. These are things that aren’t enough to fill a whole post—at least not yet.
Arts Club of Chicago, which is a private club in Streeterville that hosts art exhibits, had an event where an artist gave away his paintings for free. This was supposed to run for 4 days, but the paintings ran out early on Day 2. We failed to grab one.
We’re going to see Ballaké Sissoko at the Old Town School of Music on 3/20. He’s a master of the kora (West African harp) from Mali.
We’ll be in St. Louis on the first weekend of April. Then we’ll swing by Carbondale, Illinois, to see the total solar eclipse1.
Months ago, I got 2 tickets for Oumou Sangaré, another artist from Mali, also at the Old Town School, on 4/14. But we will be in Southern California that weekend. I’m giving away the tickets if anyone wants them.
And now for our regular programming.
I actually have enough material to update The State of Ramen in Chicagoland again (see the first update), but we now have plans to go to Akahoshi Ramen. So before that happens, I’ll talk about when we went to Daisies last month.
We would’ve gone to Daisies for Chicago Restaurant Week, which was late January to early February. Daisies had been on our radar, but it takes some effort to plan an outing to Logan Square2. We thought their Restaurant Week menu was one of the most interesting ones we saw3. Alas, we moved too slowly and the only slots available were 9pm or later. And that’s called throwing money at our babysitter.
So we simply booked a table for 3 (we went with a friend) at 7pm on a weekday, after Restaurant Week was over.
Last year, Michael Nagrant wrote that Daisies is the best restaurant in Chicago:
There have been chefs and owners whose food has been accessible to everyone, chefs who have been technically inspiring, chefs who chose art over profit, owners who chose profit over art, and owners and chefs who built restaurants that were good in at least one of the categories of food, drink, hospitality, or ambience, but it is rare that you find a chef, his team, and restaurant dominating all of these areas.
He knows a lot more about food in general and about food in Chicago than I do. And I don’t disagree. This was my best meal since probably 20214.
First, about the service. I’m usually not too big on service at restaurants. If the food’s good, I’m happy. But one thing that great restaurants do is that they make sure the servers know about the food and have opinions about it.
Our server told us which dishes were especially seasonal—everything is at least a little seasonal here—and gave us good ideas of what they were. She also enthusiastically explained their herb soda. They save leftover herbs in the kitchen and use them to make soda. 2 of the dishes she recommended turned out to be our favorites.
We shared 3 appetizers, 2 pastas, a meat dish, and a dessert. If we were to do it again, we might skip the protein and go with another appetizer or pasta. The meat dish was very good, but the other items were all great.
Leeks were one of the starters that the server recommended. One common theme at Daisies, other than the super-fresh ingredients, was the balance of different flavors. The mustard hollandaise added refreshing bite to the savory leeks.
I saw 3 offal options—porchetta di testa, tripe, beef tongue—in the starter section and decided I wanted one. To put these on the menu, you’d have to really know how to prepare them5. I’d recommend getting one if you’re feeling adventurous. I ended up choosing porchetta di testa.
It looks kind of like cured meat, but it’s roast pork made of pig’s head (testa meaning head in Italian). The meat had some crunchy parts, and I guess I don’t know which part of pig’s head that is, but it was tasty. The tartness from cherries and the herbal nature of fennel balanced out the porkiness here.
And you do have to get some pasta at Daisies, since that is what they specialize in. Truffle ravioli was one of the seasonal options, and it was another hit.
Truffle ricotta and ravioli, sure, of course it tastes good. But what really elevates this dish is the pickled celery root. I learned from Michael Nagrant’s post above that Chef Joe Frillman worked under Paul Virant, who’s literally written a book on preserving. As you bite in, expecting a hit of truffle umami, you also get a surprising kick of the sour pickles. It’s wonderful.
We also enjoyed the dessert. We didn’t realize this at the time, but this wasn’t the first time we had Pastry Chef Leigh Omilinsky’s dessert. She was at the Italian restaurant Nico Osteria (R.I.P.) when my wife and I had our wedding lunch there, in addition to a few other visits. I don’t think we ever had parsnip ice cream there, though.
Daisies isn’t exactly cheap, but you can eat pretty darn well without getting close to $100 per person. While every dish had some interesting or surprising aspect to it, there was always nice, big flavors, making it approachable. We would be happy to go back.
What I’m listening to now
I’ve been posting albums in this section, but I’ll try something different this time. Here’s a short playlist.
“Baby” by Gal Costa and Caetano Veloso is a Brazilian classic from 1969 with an all-timer intro. It’s Brazilian psychedelia at its best.
Pearl & The Oysters, whom I mentioned last time around, released an English cover of this song on their 2021 album Flowerland. They made it a 21st century tune with a great bass line. My only gripe is that in place of “a melhor cidade da América do Sul” (“the best city of South America”, referring to Rio de Janeiro), they sing “the biggest city of South America” instead of the more obvious “the greatest city in South America”. I can’t fully blame them, though, because they’re just using the English lyrics as sung by Os Mutantes, another giant of early Brazilian rock.
The reason I listened to these recordings recently (not that I need a reason because I love them) is because I heard “I Know That It’s Like This (Baby)” by British singer-songwriter Bill Ryder-Jones. This is a tribute song and not a cover. Gal’s original is sampled heavily, but he takes the song to a different place. “I Know That It’s Like This” is a translation of the lyric “Eu sei que é assim”6.
As I talked about in “Amtrak Memories”, I saw the 2017 solar eclipse in Carbondale as well.
This is basically the way I want to do Restaurant Week. Not really for deals, but for little nudges to go to places that we haven’t made it to.
The other menu that stood out to us was Parachute, but that also didn’t happen. They’re closing permanently this month.
In other words, since my son was born in early 2022. The last meal I can compare this to is Dear Margaret in 2021.
This goes for any kind of unusual ingredients.
Which is different from “I know that’s the way” in the English covers.