Ronero is a rum bar with a pan- South American vision
Chef Cory Morris is at once creative and compelling, familiar and formulaic.
It’s difficult to imagine a dish more universally Latin American than arroz con
pollo. Everyone eats it, but it’s different everywhere you go. It’s cooked with achiote in Puerto Rico. They add ketchup in Nicaragua. In Peru it’s dark beer. But even with all the variations from country to country, one thing unites them all: the pollo is always cooked in the arroz. The reason for that is elementary. You give that rice to the chicken, and the chicken gives back to the rice.
That’s especially true of the juicier, gnarl ier, darker pieces of the bird: thighs, legs, wings, necks— and feet, if you mean business. Their copious fat, collagen, and fuller f lavor infuse the broth and then are absorbed into the rice. When all is said and done, the only part that isn’t 100 percent happy about this treatment is the precious and delicate breast, t hat white, f l avorless, of ten unnaturally enhanced muscle that is the primary source of protein for Pilates instructors and people with an unusual disinterest in food.
When it rises from the rice, a thigh literally falls from the bone and into your mouth, and you can hear its glutamates singing as they disappear down your throat. A breast needs to be dissected with effort and a sharp knife after it’ s disinterred from the pot, and its juicelessness is a rebuke to your palate and entire mandibular structure. Even Martha Stewart, when she’s dabbling in the cuisines of her domestic servants, knows you have to cook the rice in the chicken.
Arroz con pollo is the first entree listed on the menu at Ronero, a new pan- Latin rum bar on the West Loop’s ever- teeming restaurant row from “Actor/ Musician/ Style aficionado” ( as his Twitter bio identifies him) Nils Westland, who also paid industry dues at Nellcôte and Rockit Bar & Grill. Cory Morris was recruited as chef, and he’s a good get; Morris was chef de cuisine at both Mercat a la Planxa and Rural Society, two restaurants that ought to be in the normal rotation of anyone who enjoys living in Chicago. That Morris thrived in Jose Garces’s restaurant orbit is a good sign for the food at Ronero, which adopts, as Garces often does himself, a pan- South American approach ( if Cuba is included within those borders).
Ronero in habits along, di mart-decoinspired series of dining room/ bar/ dining room in a space that last housed a business that wasn’t a restaurant, an increasingly endangered species in this neighborhood. The upstairs bar and party space, judging from photos on Instagram, seems more populated by leggy ladies and dude bro sausage f es ts than anything on Morris’s menu.
That’s too bad, because t here are some pretty mackadocious plates coming out of the tiny kitchen at the rear of the restaurant, where Morris paces in front of the pass, making sure they’re just so.
He’s managed to make a plate of black bean dip look pretty: a silky lavender compound of smashed beans and tahini, showered with cloudy white feta, embedded with ribbons of fried plantain. There’s a tangle of shaved purple and orange carrots too, with tissues of ivory- streaked beef, cured until crimson, hiding wedges of boiled egg. It’s a saladlike deconstruction of matambre, the Argentine stuffed f lank steak, drizzled with tangy chimichurri that’s been emulsified to prevent st ray parsley f rom getting stuck in your shiny grill. There are also uncommon ly large hearts of palm that somehow defy the customary expectation that they’ll taste like canned tree trunks. They’re the stars of another inspired salad, though they’ re almost camouflaged under sheaves of purple radicchio and Belgium endive, the bitter greens asserting themselves among the more soothing presence of sweet pears, cream, and crunchy hazelnuts.
Not everything is that pretty. A cast- iron pan of braised goat shredded into the “old clothes” known in Cuba as ropa vieja is a powerhouse of a starter, especially with the scoop of rapidly melting goat cheese that you’ll swirl into the meat. Normally after eating something like that I’m ready for a shot of bitters and a nap, but that would give short shrift to the albon
digas, beef- and- pork meatballs wallowing in a thin, hot peanut sauce that will awaken your inner five- year- old. But then these meaty little plates can be countered by something as delicate as a mahi- mahi ceviche. Mahi- mahi is a stupid fish— the chicken breast of the sea— but here it’s fresh at least, bathing in a tamed leche
de tigre, its bite muzzled by ample amounts of creamy leche de coco. There’s definitely a party going on this “para compartir” section of the menu, and you will indeed share these plates even if it means breaking up the flaky, baked empanadas of the day like animals, just so everyone can get a taste of what’s inside.
For all the surprises among the starters, Morris’s selection of entrees, though written in Spanish, tells a familiar story populated by characters you’ll be accustomed to if you eat out with any regularity. There’s a burger. There’s a steak. Some scallops, some lamb chops. There’s more of that mahi- mahi. There’s a risotto for your vegetarian friends, and there’s pork belly for the bloodmouths.
The restaurant’s disciplined adherence to the rote protein- side- sauce approach at least is filtered through Morris’s South American sensibility. So the hamburguesa sports a chorizo marmalade, and the lamb chops try to keep it real with a Peruvian purple potato hash and a sauce made from the minty Andean herb hua
catay. The pork belly is arrayed in glistening, crispy mouthfuls across a hummuslike white bean puree with thinly sliced mangoes duking it out with charred brussels sprouts. It’s difficult to see what coordinates the saffron- butternut squash “winter” risotto is trying to navigate from, given its lack of any discernible f lavor profile. An aggressively charred but internally pink hanger steak has a little chimichurri to cut through the bitter black backnote, but it gets lost among mashed potatoes and sauteed oyster mushrooms.
And then there’s the arroz con pollo— lovely Spanish bomba rice with long slivers of Gordal olives deployed to cut through what are some truly fat, meaty, flavorful grains. But something’s wrong. Mounted atop the rice is the chicken, a thick, grilled white breast, sliced and fanned out to announce it has arrived— and it is simply exhausted. No other parts have made it, sorry. This arroz con pollo wasn’t intended for someone who eats for pleasure. It’s for the person in your party who would rather think she looks good than feel good.