From the Ledge

When blogging mentor Tom and I were deciding on the focus and content of From the Ledge, I was pretty adamant that I would shy away from writing about food. Although I pride myself on being a card-carrying foodie, something not hard to be in Chicago, where food is on everyone’s minds and where the quality of cooking is of such high quality and innovation, it was recently proclaimed as the hot city for gastronomy by culinary god Ferran Adria, I just felt that so many people were already writing about food in interesting, colorful ways (check out LTHForum and Gapersblock’s Drive-Through among others). Tom knew though that I wouldn’t be able to resist pontificating about my culinary adventures, so he snuck in the Food category for times like this, when I just have to write about my experience with the phenomenal underground restaurant, the Sunday Dinner Club, one of the highlights of my dining year (right up there with the many visits to NYC’s Momofuku, the 12-course spring tasting at Alinea, and the opening weekend dinner at Sepia).

Underground restaurants, usually BYOB and manned by off-duty chefs from fine dining establishments, have been quite the vogue in San Francisco, New York City, Hong Kong, and London over the past four years or so, sometimes enthusiastically received, sometimes greeted with derision. Regardless of how one felt about it though, foodies and non-foodies alike agreed that these kinds of one-night only, ephemeral restaurants were exciting, creative, and noteworthy. Going to one, with its air of secrecy and, to be frank about it, exclusivity, as well as the opportunity to have five-star cuisine at two-star prices, was a good alternative to trying to snag a table at the latest hot new restaurant or getting stuck at the neighborhood bistro. Chicago, given the resident culinary talent, had surprisingly lagged in terms of underground restaurants and there was hardly any media buzz about it, until Chicago Magazine came out with an article in the spring. Some of the places the articles mentioned were actually restaurants with special menus which were about as “underground” as…well, the Starbucks on Randolph and LaSalle. Some of them were groups like the San Francisco forerunner, Ghetto Gourmet, which although it would release the location of the event only to confirmed ticket buyers, was still widely accessible to the general public, as long as one signed-up on their mailing list. And then, there was the Sunday Dinner Club, an invitation-only supper club ran by former chefs of Naha and Blackbird, with a focus on organic and sustainable food production. Getting on the list was about as hard as finding a vegetarian cowboy on the rodeo circuit. Like…next to impossible, unless you knew one of the chefs. Then, one day while asking my neighborhood gourmet food shop owner, the lovely Tracey of Provenance Food and Wine, about event caterers, she casually offered to introduce me to her friends at the Sunday Dinner Club. I said, wait, wait, the folks who run the super secret and exclusive underground restaurant also does..catering? As she nodded her head, in seeming slow-motion, I nearly popped a vein in my wide forehead, and emitted a loud gay gasp that Kathy Griffin would be proud of.

The catering opportunity fizzled out, but I got on the list for the underground dinners. Last Sunday night, I trekked to a covert location in Roscoe Village with two of my BFFs, Linda and Debra, to eagerly attend our first Sunday Dinner Club dinner. The email instructions were cryptic…BYOB. Get there by 6:30. Here’s the address, but please remember, there’s no number in front of the house. By then, I was thinking would I be asked to wear a burlap sack on my head? (quite the fashion fiasco since burlap would never go with my midnight blue Jil Sander sweater). Would I need to knock the correct number of times to be let in? There were no instructions in the email about the right number of knocks. Would the dining room be dimly lit and the chefs be wearing Zorro masks?

Both the dining room and the outside patio were warm and bright and Zorro was not in sight when we entered the modernist-design-influenced, artfully-decorated single-family home. The dinner’s hosts, Jenny and Bob, were gracious and welcoming. The chefs, Jason, Josh, and Christine, were friendly and eagerly shared information about the menu and the ingredients, despite the fact that they were busily coating perch with breadcrumbs. The 20 or so guests were an interesting mix of well-rounded conversationalists - lawyers, university professors, food industry professionals, a fashion designer, a really cute (male) bartender - a group of adults who all seemed to have lives well-lived, all sharing an appreciation for great cooking.

The dinner was a five course meal, with each chef presenting his or her dish, “Top Chef”-style, before the plates came out. Place settings (the menus were printed on little postcards with an artwork in front on them, and no one postcard the same!) and silver-and stemware were impeccable. The dishes were expertly cooked, made of fresh produce and meats from the Green City Market and other small farm purveyors, finely-detailed, and beautifully-plated. I especially loved the salad of red oak lettuce (with the vegetable tasting like it was harvested that morning, so pungently sweet) with these mindblowing home made honey croutons mixed with salty guanciale (crispy pork cheeks, which tasted like lardons) as well as the handmade ravioli with wild mushrooms, ricotta cheese stuffing, and cavolo nero (an Italian kale…yes, I had to Google that one). The pasta was melt-in-your mouth flawless, and the mushrooms were perfectly done, sweet but musky. The main course was a wonderful duck breast, seared medium rare, with fresh and crisp root vegetables (such as parnips and carrots) lightly coated with a red wine reduction. I’m not a big duck eater, but the breast was so tender and perfectly cooked, with only a whisper of the gaminess of duck, that I finished the whole plate. Dessert consisted of apple cider donuts with creme anglaise, a variation of a dish that had been on Blackbird’s menu.

The three chefs were all down-to-earth and well-spoken. They told of their passion for organic and sustainable food. They spoke of their delight at the ever increasing mailing list of the Sunday Dinner Club and the support it had gotten, a big thing for “three dorks who just love to cook”. They explained the whole rationale for the invite-only nature of the restaurant - not because they’re striving for some faux buzz, or trendy elitism, but because they host the dinners in their homes and at their friends’ homes (unlike Ghetto Gourmet, 24below, or other underground restaurants) so they would like to first get to know the people who were coming to the dinner, a perfectly reasonable request in civilized society.

It was a memorable evening of fine food and conversation. It was an evening that made me feel so grateful I was living in a city that afforded these kinds of experiences. I was glad that Chicago nurtured and continued to support such talent. The BFFs and I, looking quite stuffed and definitely tipsy, preserved the moment in the hazy, shadowy picture (in keeping with the underground theme) accompanying this post.

The Sunday Dinner Club is by invitation only. Dinners, which may or may not be on Sundays, are usually made up of 20-30 guests. In order to attend, one needs to be invited by the chefs, or come as a guest of someone who’s on the invite list. The next round of dinners are scheduled in early December. Here’s an interesting article on the group from NewCity Chicago. This blog post contains the Tribune’s coverage way back in 2006.

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