Pères et Fils

Like billions before and trillions will after, we had a baby. This meant that I spent most of my solitary moments in the next eight months or so that followed thinking about being a dad. I should have been thinking profoundly about ways to tell my kids never to major in cellular biology because everyone tells you that you should be a doctor. Or, when you decide you don’t want to be a doctor, don’t hold on to that science major because you don’t understand the concept of sunk cost. I should have been thinking about how to tell my unborn child that if their partner declares a need, they should support it, and maybe only ask questions if they’re really, really important, later. Honestly, though, mostly, I hoped my child loved the Detroit Red Wings.

Dear reader, my first born is now a teenager and a Chicago Blackhawks diehard. As a dad, I’d failed at the first thing I had planned. I have failed a million times since. Fortunately, as we know, sports affiliations are not important. What is important is teaching children they should try to pursue their own happiness as long as that happiness does not come at the expense of others. And do as much as you can to help others pursue their happiness. The more I’ve focused on these ideas, the better my life has become. Unfortunately, adhering to a principle like this rigorously is like grasping at tadpoles with your bare hands.

I think of these things because Father’s Day was last weekend. It’s supposed to be a joyous celebration of dads, but like most holidays, it’s also a reflection point. For the father, it’s a moment to watch the Pawn Stars marathon uninterrupted, but also to account for how bad you’ve screwed up. If you’re the kid who got messed up, and let’s say it’s something bigger than your father trying to get you to understand just how great of a captain Steve Yzerman was, maybe you don’t want to celebrate pops at all. Maybe your dad left early on or you never had one. Maybe your father died.

Because I’m lucky that my father did not mess me up (too badly), and that he also happens to still be with us, I had the fortune of pursuing joy this weekend. I am also lucky that my wife and children subscribe to the fact that Father’s Day means that for one day, no matter how much they want to pursue their own agenda, they defer to my whims.

This is important, especially because not only does my son cheer for the Hawks, but his food preferences run like the wall paint colors of new homes: white and beige. He is a devotee of rice and dumplings, bread, and pasta with an allowance for certain types of cheese. The closest he gets to a vegetable is a strawberry. Tom Brady would not adopt him.

This food critic’s son isn’t amused when dad has declared we are all be going to a French restaurant which serves a shit-ton of snails and a deluge of duck liver.

Thankfully it’s my day and he indulges me. I usually spend big occasions at old favorites to avoid disappointment. This is a tradition started in college, whereby, young and dumb, my girlfriend (now my wife, she’s smart, I’m the dumb one) and I did not make a Valentine’s Day reservation, and found every spot booked. We ended up fighting in a Burger King parking lot while eating Whoppers.

I have never thought about it until now, but if I had a therapist, they would have concluded that I’ve cooked every Valentine’s meal at home since and have not dined in a restaurant on that day ever again precisely because of that moment. That was when I realized Valentine’s Day is a hustle whereby overtaxed restaurants overcharge you for your perception of love and the reality of mediocre molten lava cake.

I know you didn’t see this coming, but the Whopper, and its flame-broiled glory, was delicious. The familiar often rewards. Familiarity is why on this particular Father’s Day I have chosen to dine at Obelix. Though it is a new restaurant, it is run by a familiar family, the Poileveys, or more specifically their children, Oliver and Nicolas.

Oliver’s father, Jean-Claude, was a culinary forefather to me and the city of Chicago. When I graduated from college I lived briefly in Cleveland. Forced to cook for myself, I subsisted on a diet of Hot Pockets and Totino’s pizza rolls. While I find Totino’s, especially deep-fried ones, delicious, today, I recognized that if I kept the diet up, I would die of early heart failure.

I taught myself to cook via Food Network, cookbooks, and by expanding my processed-food loving palate by dining out. The few restaurants that changed my early culinary life and expanded my horizons in those years were Fat Cat’s (first foie gras) and Lola bistro (Michael Symon’s beef cheek pierogis made me realize I shouldn’t be ashamed of my first-generation Polish heritage), Charlie Trotter’s (it was the best restaurant in America at the time), and Poilevey’s La Sardine. 

The foie at Fat Cat’s in Cleveland’s Tremont neighborhood cultivated an early offal fetish. The first Chicago neighborhood I lived in was the West Loop. Living near La Sardine, which offered an affordable 3 course pre-fixe on Tuesday nights, a menu rich with kidneys, blood sausage, sweetbread and liver was like being a Slurpee-obsessed kid living above a 7-Eleven.

Sardine’s Salade Lyonnaise, the jiggly runny egg, the bright vinaigrette-kissed mouth-tickling frisee, and crisp hunky lardons, could not have been better if it were served in an actual Lyonnaise café on the banks of the Rhone. This is especially amazing given that I was in my early twenties at the time, and though affirming of offal, terrified of undercooked yolk and voluntary consumption of lettuce.

My love for La Sardine is fact, not nostalgia. While I still love offal, I do not like kidneys. I have tried them everywhere and they finish with the rank bitterness one might experience licking an athlete’s-foot-ridden big toe. But Jean-Claude’s were like custard, mustard-spiked, and delicious. I eventually went to Paris, but if I hadn’t, I would already have been.

I became a food writer. My first profile was of Ryan Poli of Butter, who told me that the most terrifying and gratifying moment of his life (at that point in his career) was when his mentor Jean Banchet, of the defunct Le Francais, Poilevey, Jacquy Pfeiffer (a Chicago pastry legend), and a Michelin-starred French chef from actual France whose name you most definitely know dined in his restaurant. I won’t mention the big chef, because what I remember is that Poli didn’t care about him. He was most interested in making sure Banchet and Poilevey, the Chicago’s legends, had a good time.

Whether dinner was at Poilevey’s La Sardine (run by Jean-Claude’s wife Susanne) or his Bucktown spot Le Bouchon, it was always magic. Oliver eventually took over both restaurants. Resigned and exhausted during the pandemic, we flipped the bird to traditional Thanksgiving turkey, and went with life-affirming take-out pommes and Beef Wellington from Oliver.

Oliver’s collaboration with Marcos Ascencio, the French-inflected Taqueria Chingon is one of the best taco stands in the city. It also opened during the pandemic. Standing in line on opening day, masked up, was another rare moment of hopefulness during a hopeless time.

Oliver and his family have always lifted me up. But, as cryptocurrency traders will tell you this summer, past performance is no guarantee of future success. Like all things, my Father’s Day meal would have to be earned.

Great hospitality is an assessment of what YOU need in the moment. This may come as a surprise to you but I’m a dark bastard. I’m serious as hell, but I temper the sadness by working a serious commitment to a wry, I-don’t-give-a-shit personality. I do GAF, lots of Fs. My server at Obelix, whether she’s that person too, was a mirror. Jocular and dark, but ultimately enthusiastic about my commitment to stupid details like whether the frites were made from Kennebec potatoes. They were and that gives them an extraordinarily crisp exterior and a creamy lightness.

There is Salade Lyonnaise at Obelix too, but pork lardons have been replaced with crispy duck, hand-torn croutons, and bright tongue-puckering dressing. Up until my first bite, I was convinced a Lyonnaise salad without lardons was basically a Morrissey-dirge, the epitome of sadness. Yet, the crunchy tentacular tangles of duck contrasted well with the fluffy frisee.

The macaron au foie gras, foie mousse piped in between pink peppercorn macaron circles dabbed with date-citrus jam is so perfect in its shattery cookie and sweet and savory interior, the only thing I can criticize is the name. It should be called “We Don’t Foiecaron”, because they absolutely do not at Obelix.

Nor do I, as I make a return engagement with Oliver’s Wellington, golden puff pastry larded with earthy mushroom duxelles (basically a fancy French name for delicious mushroom and onion paste) and ribbons of prosciutto enrobing rosy, rare beef. The meat dipped in al pastor hollandaise, an annatto-spiked tangy custard shook my knees. The only criticism is that the accompanying asparagus was a touch floppy, overcooked likely because it had been pre-blanched and then grilled to order.

Most of these dishes are French classics, twisted slightly, so I’m not surprised that I’m excited by them. It is a saucer of soft-shell crab glistening with chili glaze whose heat is tempered by swooshes of cooling tapenade aioli punctuated by anise fennel crunch and bursts of lime that blows my mind. It is not French, Mexican, Asian, or identifiable as anything other than a chef who has found their voice.

While I’ve shone light on Oliver, this is a collaboration with his brother Nicolas who has chosen the wines including a berry bomb Domaine La Manarine Côtes du Rhône that I am about to buy a case of for daily drinking at home.

Chef de cuisine Nathan Kim and sous chefs Anthony Hidalgo and Alexander Martinez are rocking the consistency, while pastry chef Antonio Incandela’s spiky meringue-tufted baked Alaska, flamed tableside, is the kind of pastry, classic, complex and architecturally interesting, that few restaurants have attempted since Joel Robuchon started in the brigade system.

Full of meringue and chocolate, fulfilled on Father’s Day evening, I know my true desire for my children is that they are happy, that they take whatever values I’ve tried to share and make them their own, that they succeed despite, without, and beyond me. The Poilevey brothers lost both of their parents to tragedy. Jean-Claude was killed in a car crash in 2016 and three years later Susanne lost a battle with cancer in 2019. I imagine this makes Father’s Day a little challenging for them. I don’t know Oliver or Nicolas personally, though I have spoken with Oliver on social media. I don’t know their parents other than the hospitality they offered me. But what I do know is that the values of consistent honorable food, and the execution of a welcoming community is in their childrens’ blood. The restaurant principles that their parents practiced, the principles which have rewarded me for so long, continue to reward me through their sons.

But their sons are men of their own persuasion. On my way out, I peeped Oliver expediting with his baseball cap, something his white chef-jacketed dad likely would never have done. The sons’ values, whether deviating from French-only wine lists, or adding a Latin or Singaporean-spin to French food, are their very own, and they are very good. These are the great and everlasting gifts of an extraordinary mother and father.   

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This is the first full review I’ve written in a couple years. It has reminded me how much I love writing reviews, so my plan is to start writing them here a couple times a month in addition to the other content I hope you’re growing to love. While this article is free, the cost of dinners are not. I always pay my own way when I write a review, which, especially in these times of inflation is not cheap. If you value this content, and you’re not a paid subscriber, paying for a subscription will go a long way to supporting truly independent food writing and criticism. If you are a subscriber, thank you for your generosity.

Finally, a housekeeping note about future reviews. I won’t award stars. I’ve always hated them because they’re reductive and are hard to apply well across full-service restaurants and quick-service restaurants. Also a four or even five star scale doesn’t offer enough increments to make real delineations. I’d rather you read the story and decide from the content what the actual value is. So if you’re wondering how many stars, there aren’t any. However, you will never walk away wondering if you should spend your money or your time at any restaurant I’ve covered. If you have doubts, let me know, because then I haven’t done my job and I will need to fix that.