Finally crawling my way out of the dark hole that is the first-month-after-graduating, seemingly endless cycles of resume churning madness.

Back to something a little more lighthearted… What about the oatmeal crawl?

My good friend Yana and I have been eating our way through Chicago’s breakfast joints, picking apart each restaurant’s representation of experience through their innovations on a classic, mostly forgotten about dish.

First stop? Why not hit the ground running with Stephanie Izard’s Little Goat Diner. This celebrity chef- most known for her James Beard awards, Top Chef fan favorite status and slew of restaurants associated with goats, the West Loop, and Boka Group- has a high bar to maintain with her take on oatmeal. The results?

Think: GOAT-Meal

Inedible oat-mush with essence of goat. Oat crumble, blueberries, creme-fraische. Thick paste that one would expect to be savory, but instead tastes like soured goat milk mixed in with good old-fashioned oatmeal and left to cook for too long.

This oatmeal screams, “Celebrity Chef needing to stay relevant innovates a simple dish, but comes out completely inedible”.

1/5.

Next stop! Little Puerto Rico, where we get a history lesson, a Jibarito, and some damn good coconut oatmeal.

Nellie’s Puerto Rican Cafe on West Division is famous for their ‘avena de coco’ made with creamy coconut milk and topped with cinnamon. Yana and I struck up a conversation with the server, asking “why coconut?” He explained to us that the coconut is a comfort food integrated into many aspects of Puerto Rican cuisine and life, typically bringing forth feelings of comfort, nostalgia, and love from generational passing of family dishes in their homeland. Although not native to Puerto Rico, the cultivation of coconut has grown rapidly over the past few centuries, and the enjoyment of the ‘avena de coco’ at Nellie’s gives a glimpse into a multilayered experience of place and story through food.

4/5 oatmeal experience.

Oh, and the plaintain sandwich, “Jibarito”, is killer.

One week later, Yana and I found ourselves eating at one of my favorite Chicago diners, Cafe Marie Jeanne in Humboldt Park. This French dinette features high quality, well excecuted comfort food ranging from Monte Cristos to poutine, and delicasies like calf brains to steelhead roe toast. At Cafe Marie Jeanne, you can enjoy caviar alongside cheddar grits and not feel pretentous for ordering it or embarassed that you had to Google a few items on the menu.

The oatmeal is the best yet.

Nutty, crunchy, hearty, all good things that oatmeal should be (in my opinion). Slightly sweetened, garnished with maple roasted pecans, I was in heaven. Quality and execution, 5/5.

Also, spruce up your breakfast sandwich by getting a cheddar and habanero biscuit and topping it with bloodsausage or (if you feel like splurging), caviar.

Cafe Marie Jeanne never disappoints.

Next up? Dove’s Luncheonette off of the Damen stop in Wicker Park.

I always find it fun to hop into a breakfast place that also doubles as a Mezcal Bar. Mezcalita with your oatmeal, anyone? Oatmeal features sliced pears, crisped oat topping and dried prunes with a delicate drizzle of maple syrup to finish. The slightly creamy texture of the oats is perfectly complimented by the crunch of the topping. The colorful plateware and mini-doily is a nice touch.

Although I was disappointed that there seemed to be no “why” to the dish, no Mexican flair or storyline to the ingredients, the oatmeal was quality. What’s quality without a good story, though?

3/5

This brings us to today. Did I mention that I’ve been in a funk since graduation? What better emergence from the depths than a trip to Manny’s Deli in the southwest loop? Although recently renovated, the space still holds the charm of a Jewish New York style deli with edible comforts to match. Grab a lunch tray, saunter past the Matzo balls, challah french toast, and bagel and lox towards the cafeteria-style case with pies and fresh sliced fruit towards a destiny of satisfaction. This place has character.

I don’t even care that the oatmeal is sticky, made with water, and bland. I don’t care that the raisins and brown sugar come in plastic cups on the side. I don’t care that the bagel and lox is a DIY project. Look around! The place has soul, history, and a clientele to match.

5/5 oatmeal experience. 2/5 oatmeal.

MORE TO COME! I’m promising you this, but mostly myself.

Oatmeal.

The much overlooked blank canvas of a breakfast dish that, when done well, speaks loads to the quality of a breakfast experience.

If anyone knows me well they know that my favorite go-to breakfast is oatmeal.

Because of this, I’ve set out on a mission to extend my oatmeal fantasies beyond my own kitchen into the restaurant scene in Chicago. Throughout the next few months I will chronicle the top oatmeal experiences in the city using the Michelin rubric as a guide.

As a reminder:

Michelin Inspector’s 5 Restaurant Rating Criteria:
1. Quality of products
2. Mastery of flavour and cooking techniques
3. The personality of the chef represented in the dining experience
4. Value for money
5. Consistency between inspectors’ visits

The restaurants that pay the most attention and produce the best version of a seemingly boring, uninteresting dish will be given the utmost honor.

Call me the oatmeal inspector.

More food adventures!

I grabbed a seat at the bar of much-acclaimed Via Carota and struck up a conversation with the friendly bartender and a single woman on her lunch break next to me.  I learned the story of the restaurant mashup that Jody Williams and Rita Sodi established just a few years prior, the details of their newly-opened cafe next door, and the french bistro Buvette down the street. The woman next to me, a 18 year veteran of the NYC real-estate scene, continued to talk to me about the various restaurant groups in NYC, James-Beard stamps of approval, and why Via Carota and Buvette are such special places.

So… I just had to go to Buvette.

The next day I found myself again sitting at the bar. I notice that a kitchen “line” is right in front of me. Three waiters, all chit-chatting in Spanish, swirl around one another in the tight space between the bar counter and shelves. One person is on egg and waffle duty, the other is concocting various salads of the nicoise variety and dressing the dishes coming from the hot area just a few inches away. I am amazed by how they can produce basically all of the items on the menu in such a small space. Adjacent to me is the station where waitstaff pick up coffee drinks and food and deposit various mise-en-place from an unknown origin (maybe a back stock cooler hidden in the basement?). While enjoying my rillettes de saumon and tarte tatin, a thought occurs to me:

The best spot to sit in a restaurant is at the bar. It’s even better when traveling alone.

Why?

On four separate dining occasions on this trip, I have struck up conversations at or experienced an “inside look” into a restaurant through bar dining. Maybe this opinion is because I have worked in the industry since childhood and have a certain restaurant perception having worked for over seven years at eight restaurants, but I argue that the birds-eye-view one gets over the theatrics occurring simultaneously across different scenes by different actors in the restaurant is truly unbeatable.

Furthermore, it also dawned on me that the theatrical experience of each restaurant that I dined at this week is particularly special because of the actors and agents involved. Having walked over forty miles through the streets of NYC this week, I noticed the sheer volume of restaurants that, while spanning quality and clientele, all garner their “pull” of customers from somewhere. Why is Via Carota full of guests with a wait while Fairfax just a few steps away in Greenwich Villiage has an empty bar?

Actors and Agents.

My various bar conversations typically revolve around the “who” of the restaurant and the industry in general. Given that the “what”, the food, is at an indisputable quality, what’s left is the origin story of the people who brought the pieces together and the actors that make it happen. Bar staff are the actors in the plot  and the founders and their stories are the agents that fill bar seats.

A sign of a worthwhile restaurant is one where you can sit at the bar and chat with whomever is there about the ins-and-outs of the who, what, and why of the meal and the restaurant.

Next time you have a free afternoon, pick a restaurant and park yourself at the bar. Enjoy.

Oh and everyone needs to try Joe’s classic slice at some point in their life.

Back to Chicago!