Chicago’s Board Game Cafe definitely has new restaurant syndrome.

Slide into the comfy new seats and serve up a deck of cards with only a few slight chunks of dinner crusted on the side.

The concept reminds me of the 50’s, Betty Who themed drive-in in my hometown, where the board games inside would leave a residue that sticks to your fingers as you dipped your coated french-fries into the Heinz ketchup.

Although Chicago’s Board Game Cafe elevates any ideas you may have about this type of experience, its front of house needs a shuffle.

The interior design transports you to another world thanks to impeccable design and lighting. Twinkling lights, trees, and an indoor town square huddled around the bar make it feel quaint.

The energy from the staff isn’t the relaxed, confident air of a well-seasoned team, but rather hesitancy, like a freshman walking into a room full of upperclassman. Servers in training, board game teachers, and runners crisscross the stage, and we feel like the test subjects for a live-action restaurant prototype. With the restaurant having opened just last week, we understandably are.

The food menu is solid.

Offerings span continents, styles, and flavor profiles. The back of house is composed of some of the big guys in the industry: Aaron McKay of Schwa, NoMi, & Le Lan and Evan Behmer of Mercat a la Planxa and North Pond have created and executed a geographically expansive menu spanning offerings from Vietnam to Mexico to Spain.

We order bread, popcorn, and fries off the snack list. The server kept coming back, as if forgetting that we had ordered our small plates. When our fries arrive, we put in an order for two large plates, remind him of our bread and popcorn, and we deny another request to order more 10$ draft beers. Our mains arrive.

We figure our server is new and we pardon the mistake, moving on with our evening.

Each dish is well composed and executed. The flavors are balanced and the ingredients are handled correctly and plated beautifully.

The cutlery is heavy and well-crafted.

We finish our board game and when I return to the table from the restroom my friends have gathered the check and are ready to depart. We all decide to head to Margie’s Candy right next door for their famous banana split.

As we pay, the server puts down three spoons and lets us know that a colleague of mine has two desserts ready to send out.

They’re amazing.

The sweetness of the dessert fades when we head next door & realize we were charged for the two items that never arrived at our table.

It’s okay, the desserts were on the house, and the server will realize at the end of the shift and learn a lesson.

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Overall, I hope the FOH learns quickly and gives the experience to match the BOH talent. There’s a lot at stake with this risky business model, and execution and timing between the board game teachers and waitstaff needs to be flawless.

I’m hoping this concept sticks around.

Fusion is all over, and it’s here to stay. We can point to globalization this and industrialization that, but I tend to think people are just more open than ever to broadening their cultural horizons, and food is an easy entry-point.

The exotic is morphing into a comfortable familiarity with “foreign”. We are living in an environment where Korean kimchi can have just as much personal meaning as the gnocchi their nonna used to make.

Novelty is wearing off and fusion is the new frontier.

This idea brings me back to a pre-post-grad time when I would’ve scoffed at far-flung culinary culture mashups…

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It was the summer of 2018, and I found myself alone in the city of London for three weeks. This is what happens when you buy a one-way ticket to Europe and the cheapest way back home is actually to stay put for awhile. Worse things have happened.

Typical for my solo-traveling adventures, I wasn’t alone for long. A domino effect of events landed me in a salsa dancing bar with an Italian girl I briefly met in the Swiss Alps and her programmer-buddy roommates. After a few rounds of margaritas, “on the rocks” as I confusedly explained to the British bartender, we headed to the dance floor to test our steps with some strangers.

I LOVE dancing. It’s free, fluid, and each partner teaches you a little more about yourself. At one point, I become irritated at how rigid the men are… and with one partner I finally exhale with a giggle and smile:

“just swing me!”

A week later, he and I are wandering the streets of London looking for a bite to eat. Apparently my enthusiasm intrigued him, and he wasn’t the worst dancer after all.

After lazily sauntering around Shoreditch for awhile, we stumbled across the holy grail of hilarious food culture combos.

I could not stop my laughter. Shoreditch is jam-packed with some of the best restaurants in the city, so this corner shop screams “we are trying to capitalize on all the possible trendy food concepts”.

Vegan? Yes. Asian? Check. Italian? YES.

My friend and I opted to skip what we considered to be the most extra food mash-up of all time and head for Neapolitan.

For both of us, Neapolitan pizza is our favorite. Simple and delicious, consistent and comfortable.

Authentic Neapolitan pizza is sacred: the dough MUST be made with Italian type 0 or 00 wheat flour, it MUST be topped with San Marzano tomato, only one of two types of mozzarella, and finished with olive oil and basil. Ingredients need to be fresh, and the pizza is made by hand.

Over these pizzas, we enjoyed pure contentment.

Yet, I’ve always wondered what it would’ve been like to eat at that Korean/Italian fusion place in London. My travel-induced spontaneous nature reflected by the “just swing me!” attitude was halted by suspicion and discomfort at the idea that Korean and Italian could possibly be successful on the same palate.

A year and a half later, I receive a text from him with a picture of the vegan korean/italian fusion restaurant that we thought was so off-the-wall.

It’s still around, and is even more popular than ever.

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So back at home in Chicago, the current culinary environment recalls my experience in London.

Today, restaurants like Momotoro Italia and Passerotto are surprisingly blending East and West seamlessly.

Bib Gourmand, James Beard, and all the prominent foodie outlets are highlighting the “new frontier” of international food on the relevant culinary stage: Rooh in the West Loop, Galit in Lincoln Park, and Tzuco in River North to name a few. Michelin guide has sprinkled stars across Chicago’s Omakase offerings, and the big guys in the scene like Next restaurant feature cuisines spanning Mexico City to Tokyo.

There are well-executed international offerings across neighborhoods, and now industry is begging for pop-ups, collaborations, and fusions of talent, ideas, and tastes to continue to challenge the market.

Luckily for Chicago’s industry, more and more people are willing to venture out to experience miso bean puree with romanesco, to drink Japanese whiskey with Italian amaro, and to delight in the combination of hamachi crudo with calabrian chili, garlic and parsley.

So next time you have the option to challenge your assumptions and eat something that doesn’t make sense… let loose, broaden your horizons, and

Just swing it!

Neighborhood spots provide some of the most hearty experiences. I’m biased, though, having earned a living in a quaint one in Evanston.

Albany Park’s Bokeh, nevertheless on the outskirts of the typical trodden path, proves to be a contender in a sophisticated Chicago bar scene.

It’s namesake, derived from the Japanese word “blur”, is a common phenomenon in photographic technique.

We scooch up close to the bar and scan the menu. My eyes graze the signature cocktail list: “crop factor”, “lens flare”, and “aperture” immediately reveal a theme.

Bokeh, in a photographic sense.

“The owner is a photographer”, the bartender engages.

I decide to order the drink that makes the most sense from the options: The Bokeh.

Fernet, simple, lemon & lime, and egg white. A Fernet “sour”: the egg white blurs the harshness of the citrus against Fernet’s unequivocally identifiable taste.

We make friendly conversation with our host and the single gentleman next to us, who offers us a free round. We hesitantly oblige to split one, accepting his half drunken gesture, considering the female bartender has been referring to him by name all night and keeping polite conversation.

Every bar has their regular..

Overall, the pleasant, sophisticated atmosphere on a Tuesday evening matched with  friendly conversation and a thought-provoking menu leaves us satisfied.

At the tail end of the CTA Brown line, places like Bokeh beg us to venture farther with our palates and our social scene.