|
STORIES
RELATED INFO
Chicago Restaurants
|  |
 |
 |
|
Subscribe in your favorite reader using the links below. To learn more about feeds and RSS, click here.
 | |||||
|
Articles
Sections
>>
>
|
|||||
|
Crazy Over Kaze
Monday Nov 14, 2005.
By Misty Tosh
|
|||||
| |||||
Three times a year, Kaze's tidy chef Macku Chan creates a seasonal menu that is utterly mind-blowing. Using seasonal produce and fish (yep, fish have a season; it's before they become pregnant) that are ripe and in their moment, he and his two-man team, family members chef Kaze and chef Hari, blast out a menu that is so sensational, it's hard to prepare the tastebuds. What's even more insane is that they offer the entire tasting menu for $45 on Tuesday nights, with wine and sake pairings to boot. A forewarning: Menu items may change from week to week in the sleek and cozy little sushi enclave, as it's all based on seasonality; if Chef Macku doesn't like what's delivered from his worldwide ring of small-scale fisherman, he simply substitutes something he deems worthy. But when I was there a few weeks ago, the menu was pretty much true to form and just begging to be attacked.
Course No. 2 finds me face-to-face with a lovely stone platter full of nigiri, raw fish draped over hand-formed balls of rice. Chef Kaze has hands of gold when it comes to preparing off-the-grid combinations. The first one I manhandled was the ika, a Japanese baby squid that was lightly flame-licked and coated with a spicy tobiko (crunchy, sunset-red flying fish eggs) sauce. Talk about gone in a flash.
The final course, the fourth, was an absolute winner. Simply dubbed pheasant, the big bird's breast had been finely minced, molded back into a perfectly round patty, then lightly fried and topped with a creamy brie, white wine, sweet marshmallow and white miso sauce. Delicious half-moon grapes topped the dish and, like the nigiri, it was gone in seconds. The wine pairings for each eclectic course were fantastic and smooth. I'm telling you, for a scant $45 bucks, there is no better way to spend a Tuesday evening. The Final Rave: Course No. 3 was the only one I wasn't mad about. It was an okra tempura makimono (kudos for using in-season okra, though) with a spicy sake sauce. I guess the seeds in okra just do not make sense to me. Okra is a slimy vegetable that should be saved for the deep fryer down south, because as you know, anything deep-fried always makes sense to me. Keep It Going:
Read it: Slow Food Chicago
Drink it: mk
Eat it: North Pond
Get crazy with it: Bistro Campagne
|
|||||
| |||||
If you're not a big sushi connoisseur, the names of the Japanese ingredients peppering the seasonal menu at 
First up was the mushroom duo soup. Served in an earthy clay teapot, the creamy portabella and white button mushroom puree was the most explosive sip of the evening. When it arrived, I quickly poured the truffle-oil infused liquid out of the pot into a tiny cup and somehow managed to slurp my way through an entire teakettle worth of soup. Just when I thought it was all over, I carefully opened up the teapot and was greeted with a small mass of fat black tiger shrimp and chunks of tender mushroom, which had done nothing but marinate in soup juices and were waiting to be devoured. I love dishes that make me work at uncovering their layered nuances. 
Next up was the bonito, a thick, oily fish from the same family as tuna and mackerel, tucked under a sauce of pureed enoki mushrooms and topped with crisp, pickled onions and fresh and fried garlic. It was another homerun with its surprising flavor, delightful crunch and shocking aftertaste. The sake (salmon) with Japanese white pepper and tasty truffle oil and hamachi, garnished with banana peppers and Japanese black pepper, were just as lip-smacking. I was beginning to wonder how I'd eat another bite. Turns out, it was no problem. 