Emo Restaurants and Hipster Grocers, plus a Q&A with Joe Campagna of Bodega Biscay

Sometimes the scariest things are the things we can’t see. This does not hold true, if, like me, you spent $19.99 to watch The Invisible Man with Elizabeth Moss this weekend.  What could have been an all-time great flick turned out to suck. One, because it just made me wish there were three more seasons of Mad Men to binge watch. But, mostly because all ideas of natural self-preservation were thrown out the window. Instead of immediately running from the threat of an invisible dude in her house and getting the hell out of Dodge, Moss’s character hunkers down with a knife while throwing what I hope is really bad, non-fair trade Folgers crystals all over the floor in the hopes of finding the invisible intruder’s footsteps.

Then again, not being able to see things also allows you to pretend like they’re not real or to ignore the threat.  I’m reminded of this as a March snowfall dusts itself over the Chicago landscape, a giant middle finger to tell me that the only real seasons we have around here are swamp and polar vortex. 

What if, I thought, each snowflake coming down was actually a germ cell, a visible speck of COVID-19 to be avoided? I say this not to spread panic, but to suggest that if we could see what we’re dealing with in a real tangible way, we might not be shotgunning Natural Light from a raft in Florida. We might not be making exceptions on social distancing to go to the grocery store in search of Merkt’s swiss almond cheese spread (immediately hates self – but you’ll see why in a recipe this week) as if our lives didn’t depend on it.

If we knew what was floating near our unprotected human barriers, we might actually be able to flatten the transmission of this thing, as every sane person is suggesting we should, save Tangerine Mussolini, Trumpy, who of course is doing us no favors, so we can get on with our lives.

But, alas you did not open this email to cry. So let’s get on with this thing, as it’s supposed to be: a newsletter to show you the incredible stuff humans are doing in food while we wait this thing out, so life on the other side is something better than it was before this all began.

On that note, so far, paid subscriptions for the newsletter have raised almost $500, which as promised will be donated to hospitality folks in need.  I’ll post the donation receipts as they happen, so you can see how we’re helping people.  Also, on that note, if you’re reading this for free, you will continue to be able to do so for the next few weeks. After that I’ll send at a couple things to everyone and then a couple exclusive updates to paying subscribers only. $5 a month, if you can afford it, will, as the dogs in that weepy Sarah McLachlan commercial can attest, hopefully go a long way to making sure you have restaurants to eat at and incredible hospitality from those currently in need.

On that note, I’d like to introduce you to Joe Campagna, partner in Bar Biscay in Chicago’s West Town, which serves the French-kissed treats of northern coastal Spain. Campagna is partners with Sari Zernich and Scott Worsham who also operate sister restaurant MFK with their executive chef, the precocious James Beard-award “Rising Star Chef” finalist Alisha Elenz.  MFK is pound for pound, one of the best seafood spots in town. The Worshams and Campagna open personal restaurants, which is to say, in a world of conglomerates, themes, and mega-concepts, their places feel like that emo band you fell in love with in college. I’m not using emo in the true sense of the genre, rather, thinking about the music that cuts you deep, that despite you having grown up, changed, become someone over five other lifetimes, you can put that old record on, or search Spotify, and return to a feeling of being swaddled in a sonic Snuggie. Depending on who you are, maybe that’s Ella Fitzgerald, Ani Difranco, Dashboard Confessional, Morrissey, or Vampire Weekend. Either way, you know what I mean.  

MFK is also named after Mary Frances Kate “MFK” Fisher, maybe the greatest food writer that ever lived. If you have never heard of her, you’re probably familiar with her acolytes and contemporaries, incredible women in food like Julia Child and Ruth Reichl.  As I write, I am looking at a postcard signed by MFK Fisher that hangs above my desk, one of my most prized, possessions. Even here in quarantine, it puts me close to the soul of a person who, in her time, changed the world through food, reflection, and kindness.

I have not yet been to Bar Biscay myself. That is, because over the years, Joe and I have dined together and texted regularly. In my pre-COVID-19 life, I adhered steadfastly to the idea that a critic should be impartial. While I wanted to support Joe, I knew I could never write a fair review because I considered him a friend. This means that I kept going to restaurants I could review, and kept pushing a friendly visit to Biscay down the list.

Now of course, I don’t, like all of you, have that opportunity. I would however like to avail myself of that chance after this is all over. As you may know, I’ve never been a cheerleader for hospitality, because there are already enough of those folks doing that job in food “journalism” in normal times. I always felt my duty was to tell it like it was because then the reader would know when something was really truly good, because they knew that I was capable of seeing when something wasn’t that great.

But, these are not normal times. This newsletter is indeed about being a cheerleader, highlighting people like Joe, Scott, and Sari and their staff, who have shown incredible hospitality at MFK and Biscay and who deserve to come out stronger in the next few months. There will be no bad reviews, only good ones. That being said, that doesn’t mean there isn’t bad food out there, but I’m not focused on that right now.

This is a little ironic, because one of the reasons I vibe with Joe so well is that I always admired that he too told it like it was when he ran the entertaining Chicago Food Snob blog. Joe had authority to do this because he worked for Charlie Trotter and many different projects with Graham Elliot, the artist formerly known as Graham Elliot Bowles. Joe prodded the restaurant industry with intelligence and snark, but ultimately out of love, to make sure our restaurants and hospitality got better and became world class.

One of my other favorite things about Joe is that though he made the mistake of attending the University of Wisconsin, he was smart enough to marry a University of Michigan grad (Go Blue!). 

You can tell that Joe loves the industry so much, that even though he’s established himself as successful business consultant, he couldn’t stay away from places like Formento’s in the West Loop where he’s an investor, and as a partner at Bar Biscay. As is typical of Joe’s trademark humor, when I asked him his title at Biscay, he first said, “I’m basically known as the tiebreaker. No one likes or respects the tiebreaker.”

Well, I respect Joe, and I love what he and the Worshams are doing with Bar Biscay during the crisis. Not only are they doing comfort food takeout, but they’re acting as a de facto grocer for their West Town hood called Bodega Biscay.  Enjoy the Q and A with Joe below, and in the meantime, everybody stay safe, cook if you can, order out as much as possible, and stay hungry.

---Mike

You have your own business now, and yet, here we are, you’ve chosen to stay in the hospitality industry too? Are you crazy?

Campagna: Being in it now is a passion thing.  I love it so much that I wanted to stay involved. I mean I told my wife, I’m not going to pull a shift, I’m not gonna risk my mortgage or my girls’ college education, or retirement, but the hospitality world provides me the chance to collaborate, which I don’t get to do in my other business.

I always enjoyed it, the fun of restaurants. It’s also a very hard grind. I have the time, the funds to do it. It’s also a drug too, chasing that elusive glory of having this great restaurant. Everyone wants to write a novel, but opening and operating restaurants is my version of that. I feel like I get to open great restaurants, something a lot of people dream of, and they have been well received.

How is the pandemic impacting MFK and Bar Biscay?

We started pretty early taking tables out, limiting touching, and overall, doing a lot of game planning, and then came the shutdown. MFK is closed. We’ve moved all salaried employees to operate Bodega Biscay out of Bar Biscay to ride it out. Unfortunately, we couldn’t keep all the hourly staff on payroll.

Tell me about Bodega Biscay. You’re not only doing take out and delivery family style meals, but you’re like a grocer. Is that because you’re in a residential hood?

A little bit of that, I mean we’re not selling Twizzlers and loose cigarettes. Although we may eventually sell Twizzlers.

You’re selling porrons!  *( A porron is a glass carafe with a long spout which allows you to pour wine in to your mouth like a hard-partying Spaniard – God help you if you’re pouring rioja over a white oxford – the porron has become a symbol of the good time to be found at Bar Biscay, and in these times, a festive way to share wine without touching anything)

We are selling porrons! You’ve got to differentiate yourself. So, we have family meals, not French or Spanish stuff from the menu, but solid comfort food, roast chicken, roast cauliflower, and then we’re also a hipster bodega. We’ve got cocktail kits, Jamon Iberico, and toilet paper.

Editor’s note: (They also deliver eggs and top-notch Caputo pasta flour, all of which have seemed hard to come by these last few weeks)

I think about how I was planning for my personal future before this thing hit, you know like vacations I’ll take and what I’ll do with my kids this year. That is all on hold. I wonder what kind of stuff you guys were thinking about with the restaurant, and also personally, that you might do when this thing is over?

People thought Biscay was this Basque Spanish place and they didn’t understand the French influence and that we have this great chef, so we’re going to focus on getting that message out and reset a little bit.

Personally, I have a work trip in May, that’s probably not gonna happen I also had a trip to Italy in June. I was in the middle of planning all the meals and stuff, but that’s also likely on hold. I’ll definitely have to get some more toilet paper and do a lot of cleaning. The big thing we tried is not to have the girls (Editor’s Note: Bless the Campagnas who have two young twin daughters!) on TV too much, and to keep them within eyesight so they don’t murder themselves. I still don’t get the run on bottled water thing. Like is our water treatment under siege? I will open more nice bottles of wine. I might even crack a bottle of bourbon tonight.

Which bourbon?

Probably one of the Pappys [Van Winkel].

Nice. Too bad I can’t come over.  I’ve always appreciated that you’re an insightful guy, I wonder what you think the restaurant and hospitality future is going to look like when we come out of this?

I think about who’s going to make it? You know BOKA, Lettuce, the really big boys they will probably find a way. But, who can’t weather this? Where is this thing going to put mom and pops, where the restaurant is not some passion project or idea, but a true livelihood? If you’re a small Oaxacan or Ecuadoran joint, what’s the safety net going to be?

This epidemic is a great equalizer for everybody in some ways. This will be an opportunity for every cook or server to look inward. You’re a free agent and you can go anywhere you want. People will consider what’s really important and what they want out of their careers when they take that next step.

Bodega Biscay is located at 1450 W. Chicago Ave., https://www.barbiscay.com/