Photos by Laurie Proffitt
Gråce
Ghosts of Restaurants Present
A Pâté by Any Other Name
Where's the Shiitake?
For dinner I ordered Roasted Eggplant Soufflé with Wheat berry and Shiitake Mushroom Salad ($12). Vegetarian entrees are of interest because vegetarians are an established category of diners, and skill and imagination are needed to create appealing non-meat dishes. The soufflé was presented hot in a soufflé dish placed on a dinner plate. The soufflé dish was ringed with a warm mixture of cooked wheat berries in a savory sauce and some wilted -- deliberately so I believe -- greens. However if there were shiitakes they were either used to flavor the sauce or were absent that night from the dish. I asked the server, and she said, "I'm not sure." The soufflé, however, was light, full-flavored and satisfying. I would order it again.
For lunch my companion ordered the Chef's Special Soup of the Day (market price), a lentil puree in a base of chicken stock. The dining room was cold; the soup was filmed over on top -- something the server should have noticed and remedied when he picked his order up from the kitchen -- preventing the real enjoyment of the immensely flavorful soup.
Now for the Good Stuff
The decor is warm and whimsical -- very inviting. Warmth comes from the exposed brick walls, natural wood floor and the brown butcher paper on the table tops. Whimsy starts at the small front bar with light fixtures encircled with metal halos -- inspired by the halo logo on Grace's menu. The haloed lights are also features of dining room in hanging and wall fixtures. Sheer gold curtains act as room dividers and light diffusers, and red upholstery is just the right color note.
But the real draw is Chef Cizma's food. A native Chicagoan, Cizma has the born chef's passion for cooking, without which no restaurant achieves distinction. As a young construction worker he took some cooking classes and was so hooked that he began working in kitchens for no pay, starting with Winnetka Grill, Winnetka, Ill. He quickly acquired skills that made him a professional. Subsequent Chicago experience included being on the opening team at the former very popular Daniel J's, working under Chef Michael Taus at Zealous, and and being executive chef for four years at The Outpost.
In this day of chain restaurants serving undistinguished fare -- much of it derived from pre-prepared convenience food that just needs to be assembled or heated -- Grace is among that rare breed of small, chef-owned restaurants where everything is prepared from scratch and from the heart. Cizma's food is hard to categorize. Some is regional American with his own unique twist: Maryland Blue Crab Cakes with Sweet Corn and Rock Shrimp Chowder ($8), a great Classic Caesar Salad with Shaved Parmesan, Anchovy and Garlic Croutons (6), Grilled Illinois Veal Chop with Sorrel, caramelized apples, Tasso Ham and Foie Gras with Veal Stock Reduction ($27). Among American specialties for lunch is Cizma's fabulous hamburger. How fabulous can a hamburger be? Try the juicy 1/2-lb. Wood-Grilled Top Sirloin Burger ($12) with crisp applewood smoked bacon, your choice of Gorgonzola or white Cheddar cheese, and a slice of foie gras on a toasted kaiser roll. Cizma adds a small mountain of crisp Yukon Gold potato chips. I thought I had died and gone to hamburger-lovers' heaven. A nice touch on that burger: When the burger is cooked and sliced in half, before bringing it to the table the kitchen grills the cut sides -- so the sandwich has grill marks top and sides. Another original lunch sandwich, Grilled Tuna Sandwich ($11) consisted that day of two fillets of very fresh tuna grilled as my companion likes it, very rare, garnished with horseradish vinaigrette and the same yummy nicely salted potato chips.
Then there are the chef's cross-cultural dishes. For dinner I ordered an appetizer of Risotto with Smoked West Coast Mussels and Spicy Seafood Sausage ($9) that had a real al dente risotto texture and such a tantalizing combination of smoky seafood and sausage flavors that I wanted to order seconds. My dinner companion had the Salad of Warm Lobster, Baby Beet Tops, Lotus Root, Papaya and Mango ($9). The lobster chunks were large and tender and wonderfully complemented by the slightly bitter beet tops, the creamy potato like sweetness of the sliced lotus root, and the tart-sweet papaya and mango.
Grace is getting fame for its game, especially in the fall and winter months. One evening for dinner the complementary amuse bouche was a tiny rare medallion of smoked wild boar with a tiny fruit relish. It was so enticing that my dinner mate ordered the signature entree of Grilled Herb Crusted Wild Boar Tenderloin ($19) that was sliced and fanned atop a mound of unctuous cinnamon-chile white Cheddar Polenta with a nectarine compote. Boar, like most game, is lean and thus better for you than high cholesterol beef (please forget about my hamburger). But lean meat has to be cooked very quickly and just right or it's as dry as cardboard and tough as leather. I'm pleased to say that Cizma is a master in the wild boar department.
By Bread Alone -- and Wine
Of course a glass or two of wine with the bread couldn't hurt. The wine list offers about 100 wines, all (according to the restaurant's spokesperson) handpicked by Ethan Asch and Cizma after they tasted more than 1,000 wines. Many of the wines are from small vineyards and there are several by-the-glass and half-bottle listings, facilitating changing from red to white. Bottle prices are reasonable, but if you're in the mood for something special and somewhat pricey, there is a small, carefully selected reserve list.
Not-too-Sweet Endings
Seeing Stars
A Word of Advice
If you are one of those moviegoers who has to watch the really suspenseful scenes through their fingers, relax. This review has some scary parts but it has a very happy ending.
By Nancy Ross Ryan
First the scary parts. It's a terrible specter haunting every chef-owner or restaurateur: The reputation of their restaurant and the enjoyment of their food often depends upon the servers. Our different servers at Grace, at lunch and at dinner, suffered under the same fatal flaw: They didn't know the food well enough to answer questions that we asked about the menu. Some examples: When my companion (a real pushover when it comes to desserts) asked our server at the end of dinner one evening about the Seasonal Fruit Tart ($6) -- "ask your server," the menu read -- which she had failed to describe, she simply didn't know. She went to the kitchen to check and came back and announced: "It's lemon and lime tart." Lucky we ordered it. It turned out to be two small slices, one each, of silky and delicious lemon and lime custardy tarts on a crisp nutty (we think) crust. It's a shame we didn't get the full scoop up front, because we would have enjoyed it even more. Why so? Because it was the dead of winter and citrus are indeed seasonal fruits, and these were especially good, and the flavors were identifiably different. A very creative touch on the part of Chef-owner Ted Cizma, who, with partners Richard and Ethan (he's the general manager) Asch, opened Grace in May of 1999 in Chicago's West Randolph River neighborhood.
At lunch one day I was attracted by the House Made Pâté and Chef's Cheese Selection (market price), so I asked the server to describe it. He said, "It's venison and game -- and rabbit, I think." Even though venison is game and rabbit is game, I ordered it, trusting by this time, that nothing that Cizma prepared was really going to be bad. Such a plate of pâté! There were three slices with the shape and texture of a terrine, plus an oval scoop of a mousse like pâté, two small rectangles of on-the-mild-side blue cheese, some crisp, fresh toast rounds, and a small perfectly dressed salad of tender mixed greens. A lunch in itself, and I would recommend it as such with a glass of red wine. Perhaps my palate should be sufficiently refined that I could, blindfolded, pick out venison from boar from rabbit -- from, say, chicken liver. But it isn't. So I called the waiter back and asked him to point out which was which. He pointed at the mousse and said, "I think that's rabbit," then at the three slices of terrine and, sweeping his finger swiftly above all three, mumbled, "and venison and game." (Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!) Cizma is truly a kitchen wizard because whatever the three terrines and one pâté were, they were well-seasoned and among the best I have ever eaten. And it's a sign of both the culinary skill and also the husbandry of a chef whose menu is known for its variety of game dishes that he also makes charcuterie from these meats.
Wait staff, take note. Once you make a flawed first impression, you will get blamed for everything. For example, I am going to blame the only two food shortcomings we experienced on the wait staff.
The wait staff at Grace may lack complete mastery of the menu, but they don't lack for grace. They are indefatigably cheerful and friendly in the busiest times (even when some twit insists on the genealogy of the pâtés, the whereabouts of the shiitakes, and a paean of praise to the seasonal tarts). The restaurant tables are placed at close proximity and the servers swoop, swivel and glide agilely though this obstacle course without mishap and with infinite good humor. They are also solicitous. At dinner one evening, a guest at the table next to ours along a banquet knocked over his wine glass. A server reached the table immediately, sponged up the wine, laid down fresh napkins, replaced the glass of wine and made sure that I wasn't wine-soaked. I wasn't.
There is one pitfall to dinner at Grace: the bread basket is filled with such fine fresh breads that we could have made it our meal.. There are about five different kinds, and when I asked the server where they came from, she did know the answer: "They are all baked here." Favorites included the rye with fennel, black olive bread, sun-dried tomato focaccia, a country white roll, and a crunchy millet bread, in other words, all five. They are accompanied not with butter but with thyme-infused olive oil.
The dessert list (all $6) changes seasonally as does the menu, and the desserts, I was pleased to discover, are well-balanced in sweetness -- not too cloying. Aside from that great seasonal citrus tart duo, one day we sampled the Huckleberry Cheesecake made from goat cheese and, according to the menu, wild huckleberries. Huckleberries in their uncultivated state are in season from June through August, look like blueberries but have a more pronounced flavor and a lot more seeds in the center that are hard, not soft like blueberries. This was winter. So I can only assume that the huckleberries were in the form of a puree that was swirled through the cheesecake. But I'm certainly not complaining. It was delicious, a cut above New York cheesecake, and garnished with fresh blackberries.
Some restaurant reviewers believe that only fine-dining restaurants deserve top stars. When rating restaurants it's good to remember that Bryan Miller, the much respected former restaurant critic for the New York Times, was a pioneer in establishing a new criterion when, in the 1980s, he awarded Montrachet -- a New York bistro -- some very high stars. He reasoned that a restaurant should be judged on how well it did what it set out to do, not on how high the check, how expensive the wines, how luxurious the decor or how formal the service was. Obviously I agree. Grace is not fine dining. But it's amazing that there is someone in the kitchen creating fine food and cooking it for you every day.
Finally some free advice, which, as we all know, is worth exactly what you pay for it. This advice may prove prophetic. Cizma named his restaurant after the youngest of his two daughters, Grace. Any parent of more than one child can bear strong, if reluctant, witness to sibling rivalry. And while two restaurants can try the soul and stamina of a dedicated chef-owner such as Cizma, we nevertheless strongly advise him to open up a second restaurant in the near future -- as soon as he catches his breath. He should name it Elaine, after his oldest daughter, thus ensuring sibling serenity -- and more tasty treats for his Chicago fans, this diner among them.
