Dinner at Gideon Sweet — The Forkling

Happy Day After Labor Day!

One of the grimmest days of the year, tbh. Because it signifies the summer coming to a close AND it’s the last holiday we have off work until Thanksgiving. So if that didn’t put some pep in your step...

LIVE from O’Hare Airport - it’s Tuesday morning!

I don’t want to set the precedent that I only post when I’m waiting at airports, but sometimes it’s the only moment of calm I have to sit down and get my thoughts together. But when I say “get my thoughts together” what I really mean is word-vomit out whatever jumbled stream of consciousness leaks out of my pea brain in the half hour before I board a plane.

Let’s see, where were we?

Ah, yes. Last we spoke, I was in Knoxville, TN. In the last three weeks, I squeezed in a trip to Ann Arbor, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Columbus, OH, a girls weekend in Indiana, my goddaughter’s first birthday, a fancy black tie wedding, and a music festival. I’m tired, I sound like Rod Stewart, and I have a cold which has yielded upwards of 20 sneezes per day. And if you are familiar with my sneezes you know they are a painful, snort-like sort of internal combustion, so this is not v pleasant.

Somehow, amidst the crazy, I managed to squeeze in a date night with my future hubs to Graham Elliott and Matthias Merges’ new(er) cocktail and small plates spot, Gideon Sweet. It is nestled in the West Loop on Randolph Street next to Nellcote, and shares the same gorgeous back patio as RM Champagne and Green Street Meats. Even if I only had a glass of water and a handful of pistachios, it still would have been a nice meal because of how precious that back area is.

The first thing I noticed was that they were playing Tame Impala. So right off the bat, we were off to a solid start. Our server was a doll. Chatty but not annoying, and willing to give us recommendations (which is all I can ever really ask for since I can’t make up my mind on my own.)

She recommended five things for us to try:

Burrata with cherries and cornbread
Lamb meatballs with homemade naan
Charred octopus with chorizo
King crab with uni butter
Sweet corn agnolotti

The Burrata, like all burrata, was delicious. And the cherries and mint were fantastic additions. But the cornbread, while pretty for presentation purposes, was dry as f%ck. Maybe it was because the piece of burrata was shrunken down to half the size I’m used to getting at a restaurant when we’re paying $15, or maybe it was because the cornbread was made with sand. No one knows. But at any rate, I quickly dismissed it from my repertoire and proceeded with only eating the cherries and the cheese, and then all was well.

Next up arrived something that looked like a bowl of burnt Cream of Wheat cereal. But the looks were deceiving on this one since deep down, under its weird burned skin, it was actually the lamb meatballs in some sort of ricotta soup. Good Lord this was tasty. The naan served with it was fashioned into a piece of avocado toast, so this felt like two plates in one. Score! Maybe they just threw us some extra naan love because they saw how little of the cornbread I ate. And they knew I would die on that patio if all I ate was ricotta soup.

The octopus came out third, and I must say, it was some of the best I’ve had in Chicago. You know how whenever you usually order octopus at a trendy restaurant, there’s usually like, two bites of actual octopus and then everything remaining is like HEY THAT’S A POTATO?! Well not here. Gideon Sweet loves u, boo boo, and they actually include enough food on this plate to be a legitimate contender in tackling your hunger. There were two full legs and a bunch of chorizo and goodies and sauce on the side to make this easily my favorite dish of the night.

The king crab was the runner up for second favorite dish of the night, but it felt like a rip-off after the octopus course. There were some optical illusions afoot because it *looked* like a lot of food, but then once I started exploring things with my fork, I realized I had been bamboozled. It was just shell. Don’t get me wrong, it was very tasty - probably because it was drowning in uni butter - but it did exactly the opposite of what I was so grateful the octopus didn’t do. It disappeared in three bites. But maybe if the price was determined by calories included, it was actually a fair price? Because there were 800 calories of melted fat? I don’t know. I can’t justify this. I’m just a food blogger.

My mouth was still predominantly happy at this point. I was looking forward to sweet corn and pasta and what was sure to be a wonderful closer to our meal. I was so naive back then.

This pasta was GRRRRRRRR-OSS. Tony the Tiger style. It was straight up not cooked. And I don’t mean al dente. I mean al dentist. Which is where you would need to go after eating this because it was rock hard, uncooked pasta, served in a watery broth. There were no redeeming qualities. Our sweet server came over to check on us and in the least bratty way possible (I promise, there’s a version of me that’s not 100% abrasive) I let her know that the pasta was undercooked. She confirmed that she had heard that several times before and apologized profusely. To her credit she offered to bring us another dish AND removed it from our bill, so she gets two gold stars, but man was that singular bite a Debbie Downer.

I hate to say it, but Graham Elliott hasn’t been able to figure things back out yet. I had high hopes... and we’re getting closer, but still not there. The Forkling gives it: 6.5 forks out of 10.0.

I’ll be in Toronto for the next 24 hours for a meeting, and I’m looking forward to getting some Canadian fare in my belly this evening. I wore extra stretchy clothing on the plane because I’m anticipating good things coming to my fork.

I’m wide open to suggestions... as long as you don’t recommend poutine. I’m really not a French Fry gal.