Day 2: Chizakaya, seafood tower, and gelato

Yesterday was both day 2 of the sabbatical and my family's visit.

11:30am: Lunch at Chizakaya. I heard through Tasting Table that they started offering lunch recently so we made a reservation for six and sat in the back room. When my family gets together we can get kind of obnoxious sometimes so I thought it'd be best if we sequestered ourselves off from everyone else. I guess not that many people know about lunch there because we were the only diners for the first hour or so that we were there. We met Harold Jurado, the executive chef and proprietor, and he made us a delicious lunch. 

Harold Jurado

The lunch menu is small -- a few appetizers and a handful of noodle dishes -- but we managed to get some dinner and off-menu items. Even though we were boisterous and demanding, Harold was cool and made us some okonomiyaki.

Okonomiyaki: bonito flakes on top.

It was perfect. For those of you who don't know, okonomiyaki is a Japanese pancake. I think of it as brunch food or drunk food, but it's really great any time of day. It typically has seafood, green onion, and a mayonnaise based sauce on top. This wasn't on the lunch menu, but it looks like it's available on the dinner menu under: Okonomi-yaki, bacon, squid, shrimp, ginger. I totally want to go back at night, get wasted on some cocktails, sake and shochu and eat this.

Mushrooms!

We also got hooked up with the a hot dish served at dinnertime: wild mushrooms, soy, lemon and butter. Yummy. One dish I didn't photograph that is available at dinner was the crispy pork/slow poached egg. It's three pieces of crispy pork belly suspended over a bowl with a slow poached egg (using a toothpick). You use the egg as a sauce for the pork and it's super delicious.

My dad holds up a prawn in his seafood curry ramen.

We ordered all the noodle dishes. My dad and I both got the seafood curry ramen -- he got it with ramen noodles, I got it with udon -- he liked the udon, I liked the ramen. The house ramen was really good, but the highlight for me was the tonkotsu ramen made with pork bone marrow and pork tenderloin. The last special dish we received was a soba noodle soup with the tonkotsu broth, chicken dumplings and a poached egg. So rich, so good.

The soba noodles.

All the noodle dishes were really rich so they offered us some pickles to cut the fat. So thoughtful. One last detail we noticed was the design of the soup spoons. They have a little ridge on top so that when you leave them idle in the soup bowl, they don't slide down into the soup. Such a simple touch but so effective. Want!

Soup spoons. 

Honestly, go to Chizakaya for lunch. It's fucking dope. Thanks Harold! 

Oh, by the way, totally didn't know there was a Hubbard Dianetics center in Lincoln Park. On my way over to lunch, I ran into some people from peaceful assemblers from Anonymous. They were really nice, if not spirited and a little forceful. 

Hiding identities, speaking freely. 

1:30pm: Hail storm! 

5:30pm: Dinner at the Publican. We had the seafood tower, some salads, pork rinds and frites with eggs. The frites were off the chain. So delicious. We were all really excited about the seafood tower, but honestly, it wasn't that big a deal. The presentation was really nice, but I didn't think that it was that extravagant. Here, you decide. 

Seafood tower at the Publican.

If you want this, you need to order it 48 hours in advance. Other than the snow crab claws, I didn't really think that any of the items warranted a two-day notice. Then again, I'm sure it's all about procuring ample supply. They'd probably lose a lot of money if they had enough seafood on-hand so that every table could order one of these if they wanted. I had a half-tower at Balsan one time and I think I enjoyed that more. This one had some west coast oysters, Island Creek Oysters, clams, mussels, scallop ceviche, grilled octopus, one whole lobster, snow crab claws, and shrimp. The four accompanying sauces were a mustard seed remoulade, salsa verde, mignonette and cocktail sauce. Fun.

7:30pm: Black Dog Gelato. This is my new favorite gelato place. Flavors we sampled included: sweet corn/lavender, chocolate, Mexcian hot chocolate, malted vanilla, goat cheese/cashew/caramel, banana/curry, mint oreo, ginger/lemon, and blueberry french toast. We chatted up the owner and I guess their gelato machine is worth $35,000 and takes only 7 minutes to create a 2-gallon batch of gelato. She got it on e-bay for $7,000. Steal! 

Stay tuned for day 3. Tonight we're dining at the kitchen table at Next. Yes, you read that correctly, me, my Thai-restaurant-owner parents are doing the tour of Thailand. Think about that.