Big Star: A litte bit of Austin in Chicago

Sizzlenuts here, happy to be a contributor to the GCL, and especially to write about such a fine establishment as Big Star (1531 N Damen Ave). I recently moved to Chicago from Austin, TX. The ATX is a great place, and I miss it. I miss the Mexican food; I miss Country music; and I miss Lone Star beer.[1] However, The Big Star goes a long way towards filling all three of those holes in my heart.

This place pretty much has it all, for realzies. While it’s a chic-hip type bar in design, it’s full of casual, scruffy, friendly, attractive people.[2] A nice contrast to the trendy-type lighting fixtures, on all the tables and bars are the remaining cardboard packs from sixers of Lone Star, with the tubes of salsa in the bottle slots. To top it off, the stereo was playing the sweet sounds of classic Country music at an appropriate volume. It’s like they had me in mind, those charmers.

It is run very efficiently. If you have a party of 4 or more, you can sit at a table. If not, find a spot against which to stand or lean, or pull up a stool to the bar or a counter. You order food from a belle of a bartender, tell her where you are situated, and the food is brought to you. Speaking of the bar, the drink menu has sufficient high-end nice beers and liqs, but also, they offer Platz for 2 bucks and, of course, Lonies for 3 (so we didn’t sample the good stuff).

Of course, all of this would have been nice, but eventually unimportant if the food did not live up. However, given that this place is run by the guy behind The Publican, Avec and Blackbird, I had little doubt that it would. The menu is simple and short. The first half is tacos, a list of about 5. The second half was other stuff; I wasn’t really attending. There were three of us eating: Sizzlenuts, Chittlins and Crooklyn Himself. We ordered a round of tacos. Crooklyn Himself is a vegetarian, and so there was only one option amongst the 5, the poblano. I ordered a braised lamb, and a pastor. Chittlins ordered a pastor and a pork belly. Unfortunately, because at the time I was unaware that we were going to be doing an entry about the place, I took no pics, nor remember all the fixin’s in each taco, but I remember enough to recommend them all.

The taco’s are 2 or 3 dollars. Given the setting, and the renownness of the chef, the quality of the ingredients, that’s exemplary. The tacos came out, and there were small, explaining the price a bit. But, eating four would be a full meal, and you’re still not looking at much money. [3] Chittlins and Crooklyn Himself raved about their tacos. Mine were also excellent. The lamb came out with braising juices in a cup, in which to dip. The lamb was shredded, flavorful, and tender, competitive with the birria plate from Borrego de Oro (my favorite dish at my favorite Mexican place in Austin). In the end, I might score Borrego a notch ahead, but sentimentality might be clouding my judgment. The pastor, however, was better than any in Austin. This sounds like more of a compliment than it is, as Austin’s biggest Mexican weakness is the consistently schlubby pastor. But, Chittlins is from LA, which probably has the world’s best Pastor, and he says that this was just as good. That’s an endorsement.

We left for a bit, going to another bar in search of something that was unclear to me.[4] 90 minutes or so later we came back to the Big Star for more. I ordered a poblano and a pork belly. The poblano was as good as the meats. Basically, it is a wave of sensual, silky creaminess that turns into a burning spice. It is quite hot, but the heat does not take away from the flavor. The pork belly was fatty and good, but you know, it’s pork belly; pork belly is fatty and good. The tacos needed no salsas, so to finish of the evenings consuming,we ordered some chips to act as salsa vessels. The salsas were universally liked.

We left The Big Star for a second time with nothing but positive things to say. Crooklyn Himself was satisfied, knowing that his weekend visit to a flyover state was not in vain. Chittlins felt good about himself, which was good to see given his recent bouts with social-anxiety and depression. And I left feeling a little less homesick.[5]

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[1] The first two are objective; The Mexican and Country is good in Texas. Missing Lone Star beer is purely sentimental; High Life, PBR, etc are all essentially equivalent.

[2] The trim isn’t Austin-grade, but that’s one area that will always be missed.

[3] I fear that such low prices won’t last long. It just opened. The cheap prices will get everyone going there, but maybe 6 months from now, everything goes up a dollar or two. You say “it’s so good, and it’s still pretty cheap.” That’s how they get you. (it should be mentioned I’m cheap, paranoid, and a Jew).

[4] Ok, that’s a lie. Chittlins was on poon patrol.

[5] Of course, live Texas Swing, and attractive girls willing to talk to me would go even further (no one makes ‘em sexier and friendlier than Austin).

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ManDate gets so real at Joy's

I think it was Harper’s Magazine that originally coined the term gastroporn. They were referring to the thin line the Food Network was treading between ‘food as basic necessity’ and ‘food as sensual necessity’. Where do Chittlins and I stand? We’ve pitched our 2-man tent with the latter; all we need now is some peanut sauce and cherries.

On Wednesday, Chittlin’s, myself, Charades, Ms. Piggy, Principal Blackman, four gay friends and Fedora, all met up at Joy’s Noodle & Rice (3257 N. Broadway, BYOB). With all the new faces, the Principal suggested a name game. Unfortunately, this proved too high a hurdle for the group to complete. We got through three whereupon our food arrived and everyone I didn’t know became a blank “Hello my name is …” sticker.

We started off with fried tofu and spring rolls. The cream cheese in the spring roll crept up on me like, well, like cream cheese would in a spring roll. The spring roll was much better off with the sweet & sour peanut sauce we got with the fried tofu than it was with the tamarind sauce in which it was drenched. Regardless, passed around the table, neither plate made it back.

Pair your dish with the libation of your choice. For my neighbor, who’s name now escapes me, real or otherwise, that meant two Miller Lite 40s. I didn’t know Thai food to complement 80 ounces of beer but I sat corrected. He and I both ordered the Penang Curry. I topped mine with vegetables and tofu. The crispy wide rice noodles on which the dish sits (foundationally and formulaically) balanced the dish’s softer tones. Like my Goose Island Mild Winter Ale, the dish ages well. The noodles soak up the curry releasing bursts of cayenne pepper and sweet coconut milk. (hint: gastroporn). Seated to my right, Chittlins was disappointed by both his dish (Green Curry with Chicken and a side of noodles) in relation to mine, and the fact that he was stuck at the end of the table. His noodles were flaccid and the curry looked flat, combining the two he got a disappointing puddle. The curry may have been salvaged with a side of rice, but there’s only so much you can do.

As rest of the party moved on to bigger and better things, Chittlins and I took the long way home to make the night last a little bit longer. My next post will come to you from Stockholm. Table for one.

My final recommendation, at $8 a plate, skip your usual fare and try something new. Joy's is a sensual as it is necessary.

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Cemitas Puebla - A dry, artisinal run

How much weight do you attach to the culinary pronouncements of a grown man dressed like a suburban 12-year old circa 1998? You would think being a 30-something year old decked out in cargo shorts, wrap-around Oakleys, a flaming dice shirt, and platinum bleached locks aggressively spiked for a DragonBallZ convention would disqualify your judgment across a slew of categories.

Well, when you're Mumbles my former roommate, you take a certain amount of pride in your populism. You see, his antagonism towards "the elites" predates Palin, when in the early aughts he felt no one gave him enough credit for wearing faded, form-fitting shirts before the Strokes or American Apparel stormed anti-popular aesthetics.

Incidentally, the Gentile perfection of Mumbles and his partner DiaBetty threw Sizzlenuts for a goyem curve, but he recovered in fine form. One can only imagine how Sizzlenuts would just clean house on J-Date were he ever to concentrate his charm on fellow tribeswomen. Although I will miss ToucanSam during his winter in Sweden, Sizzlenuts brings a similar joie de vivre coupled with a certain Les extrêmes se touchent about him.

The eponymous dish at Cemitas (3619 W North Ave) is your standard torta, only with sesame seed bread encapsulating the avocado, meat, adobo chipotle peppers, fresh Oaxacan cheese and papalo filler. Yelp, the staff, Mr. Fieri; they all recommend the cemita atomica or the cemita milanesa. The atomica has three kinds of pork – milanesa, carne enchilada, and jamón. I feel guilty now for ordering the atomica, a full $3 more than any of the mono-carnal alternatives. Mumbles had to pay for my dinner since he had been foolish enough to make a bench press-related wager with me.

Visually the atomica was pleasing, but in combination the three meats muted each other out. Mumbles’s pastor cemita was far more rollicking while the carne enchilada apart from the cemita had a certain artisanal complexity. Like the 2004 Lakers, the cemita atomica whole was less than the sum of its parts. Looking through the Cemitas Puebla menu, I see several other dishes that fly under the radar, like the chalupas (not like Taco Bell chalupas) or the cecina tacos (don’t buy into the tacos arabes parade, btw).

On the drive back, as I smothered my farts into the seat to avoid rolling down the windows on a chilly December night, I realized I was the richest man of all…just as long as we avoid measures of money, power, and prestige.

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