RECENT REVIEWS
THE BENTLEY TAVERN LAKEVIEW | $$$ Like many restaurants forged in the current era by people with more money than taste, the Bentley serves pricey “American” fare, and seems devoted to proving just what a punishing concept “American” can really be: bland and unimaginative, on the one hand, and badly made, on the other. Steak was chewy and, even cooked rare, strangely bloodless; duck breast too was chewy. A confoundingly awful starter of duck confit “angelotti” in a jaw-crackingly hard wonton wrapper came served with a sauce that tasted like a can of Campbell’s, while an appetizer of scallops arrived lukewarm. (So did a martini.) This place doesn’t need a review, the person I was dining with suggested, it needs a parentteacher conference. — SAM WORLEY 2834 N. Southport, 773-477-2283, thebentleychicago.com. Dinner: daily. Sat & Sun brunch. Open late: Fri & Sat till 2, Mon-Thu till midnight, Sunday till 11.
BLACKFINN AMERIPUB RIVER NORTH | $$ The Chicago outpost of a national chain, River North’s Blackfinn Ameripub caters to tourists and business travelers who are either too tired or too timid to leave the neighborhood at dinnertime. They don’t want to be challenged with fancy preparations and weird ingredients. They just want something they can wash down with enormous quantities of beer— preferably while watching a sporting event on a big-screen TV. Here there are burgers. There are flatbreads. There are salads. There are attempts at international cuisine and barbecue, and many items identified as vegetarian, gluten free, “lighter side,” or “Blackfinn Specialty.” The staff is quick and cheerful, and if the servers recommend something, you’d do well to listen—they’ve eaten off this menu much more often than you have. It’s their job. — AIMEE LEVITT 65 W. Kinzie, 312-836-0290, blackfinnameripub.com. Lunch, dinner: daily. Sat & Sun brunch. Open late: Sat till 3, other nights till 2.
GOGI | WEST RIDGE | $$$ Live-coal Korean barbecue has been going the way of the CroMagnon in recent years, so it was a surprising and happy development when this family-run operation opened in the space that once housed Hai Woon Dae. Gogi has both live fire and meat of a quality several orders above most anywhere else, offering nine cuts of mostly beef and pork, among them beautifully marbled slabs of pork belly; broad pork and beef ribs that unfurl into thin sheets of tenderized meat; lean, soy-and-sesame-oil-marinated nuggets of short steak; and even, if you’re gutsy, ropy veal intestines. The meat is brought to the table with large bowls of glistening fresh pa muchim, a simple salad of greens and shredded green onion, plus baskets of plain lettuce and perilla leaves, and a variety of garnishes: little dishes of salted sesame oil, raw slices of garlic and jalapeños, and schmears of ssamjang, a mixture of red chile paste and bean paste that adds funk to the lettuce-wrapped packets of grilled muscle you construct and deliver to your muzzle by hand. And just because you’re expected to do some of the cooking yourself doesn’t mean you’ll be abandoned—servers aren’t the dour lifers you might have encountered elsewhere but engaging, helpful folks. Gogi offers a few other worthy non-barbecued items as well, such as crispy griddled haemul pajeon, a pancake embedded with chewy octopus, and an especially good yukhoe, Korea’s answer to steak tartare. Every available space on the table gets covered with an assortment of replenishable banchan, the little side dishes standard at any Korean meal (which here include some rarely seen offerings), and the drinking options are a step above the typical soju and lager as well. A crisp, refreshing Japanese Hitachino wheat beer and several rounds of meat are really all you need for the most satisfying Korean barbecue experience in the city. — MIKE SULA 6240 N. California, 773-274-6669, gogichicago.com. Dinner: daily. Open late: Fri & Sat till 4, other nights till 2.
THREE DOTS AND A DASH | RIVER NORTH | $$ If you’re a River North interloper, you might be shocked to find that Three Dots has only one open table at 6:45 PM—on a Monday. You might be underwhelmed by its menu of one-note (that note being stickysweet) bar snacks. You might be overwhelmed by a business-attired party partaking of the $385 “treasure chest,” which serves six to eight and includes a neon-lit bottle of Dom poured into the liquor-filled vessel, the contents of which are sucked through cartoonishly long straws. But who cares about any of that. You come here for two things: to sip transcendent drinks and revel in tiki chic. And on those fronts, Three Dots delivers. The drinks menu offers 16 cocktails—eight classics, sourced to various historic tiki bars and/or tiki culture’s forefathers, and eight modern cocktails, sourced to mixologist Paul McGee, the former drinks master at the Whistler now aboard the good ship Lettuce Entertain You. It’s hard to choose among options such as the Saturn—navy-strength gin, passion fruit, lemon, falernum, and almond, all perfectly calibrated— and the Poipu Beach Boogie Board, an impressive-strength mix of rye, overproof rum, guava, maraschino, grenadine, pineapple, and lemon. But you don’t have to—as my budget allows, I plan on drinking my way through all his superlative cocktails in as short an order as possible. — MARA SHALHOUP 435 N. Clark, 312-610-4220, threedotschicago.com. Dinner: daily. Open late: Sat till 3, other nights till 2.
The menu price of a typical entree is indicated by dollar signs on the following scale:
$ less than $10 $$ $10-$15 $$$ $15-$25 $$$$ $25-$30 $$$$$ more than $30