This weekend, as part of my “Don’t say no” last few months in Chicago, I dragged my tired self to a feast.

“We are eating duck tonight Ellie,” said Sandeep, my wine guru and dining buddy.  “This is not an option, sleepiness is not an excuse.” And so I was off to Sun Wah, a Chinese BBQ (and deliciously BYO) on North Broadway. Game time.

Peking Duck  is an ancient recipe.  Historically, it calls for an Imperial Peking duck, a special variety of fowl. The birds are force fed and kept in a small cage to make sure their meat is tender…..its basically what the witch did to Gretel and what the French do for foie gras (we Chicagoans like it a lot….)

Heads up, cause the prep is kind of gross, but the result is awesome.  First, all the insides are removed and the tushie sewn shut. Next air is forced inside to stretch and poof the skin so the fat will render properly, producing the crispiest, most delicious and choicest part of the duck– the skin.

When its all set to roast the cooks paint the naked bird with a sugar and garlic sauce then dry it out, suspended in mid air. The preparation at Sun Wah is pretty traditional, though I didn’t spot the cylindrical clay ovens used to roast the duck like in the olden days.  Didn’t seem to matter, the end product was beautiful.

Our bird was carved table side by the daughter of the owner.  “I alternate between duck and barbecued pork for breakfast” said the slender Chinese women wielding the massive knife slicing up the fowl. I was pretty sure she could eat me for breakfast if I wasn’t careful.

Before Sun Wah opened more than two decades ago, the owner Eric Cheng studied in the Guangdong Province to get the hang of Peking Duck from the experts. It shows. The duck is served in three courses- a gut busting and delicious manner which includes the duck itself, an egg drop soup (with duck bones for flavoring of course) and fried rice with lots of peas. I do like peas in all forms.

Our duck came out, skin glistening, sweet smelling steam rising into the air, and my appetite skyrocketed. Based on the smell alone I could have eaten the whole thing– even after a big plate of sautéed baby bok choy with garlic sauce. Yum.

Traditionally, the sliced duck breast are eaten in small wheat pancakes or “lotus buns” like mini sandwiches. Topped with pickled carrots, scallions and jicama and a dab of hoisin sauce, I ate about a zillion. I still had stomach space to crunch through a bit of golden skin.

Photo by Agashi

While I have nothing to compare it to, I think this was damn good Peking Duck. I’m definitely not alone in my tastes either.  When I visited at 9:30pm on Saturday, the place was packed. And as the BYO trend continues to gain force, Sun Wah shows no sign of slowing down. With our meal, we opened a bottle of peppery, and zesty Rioja which cut through the fat of the bird and provided a killer compliment to its earthy taste.

I left a happy and very full person.

5041 N Broadway
(between Winnemac Ave & Carmen Ave)
Chicago, IL 60640
Neighborhood: Uptown

Why venture to Central Street (If you happen to live in Evanston, IL.) for your weekend BYO plans? For a little-known Thai restaurant that serves gingery tilapia and lets you tipple in peace. At Thai Pinto, it’s offbeat dishes that shine: the soft shell crab, the whole fish or the cheap and generous sushi rolls. And, of course, it’s BYOtastic.

In daytime, light streams into floor-to-ceiling windows, warming the white-walled, 20-seat restaurant with a happy charm. The atmosphere is friendly, the service not oppressive. It’s a perfect lunch spot, ideal for a serene date with a good book.

My first visit was a business meeting of sorts. Over edamame and a steaming plate of crab-eggplant curry, we discussed matters of grave importance, like New York’s latest fashions and the best way to cure a hangover (something I would come to need after my second visit).

I tend to avoid soft shell crab. Something about the texture (or the taste) of eating shell soft enough to bite through rubs me the wrong way. I’m no convert, but this might have been the best soft shell crab I have ever had. The crustacean’s golden flour crust stayed crispy on top. It soon began to soak up the delicate curry sauce on the bottom of the plate, creating a wonderful ménage à trois of texture: crunchy, succulent and smooth. The best part? The eggplant had been generously snuck all around the crab. It should have been cooked just a bit longer, to remove more of the vegetable’s natural starchiness, but the taste meshed well with the brininess of the dish.

(These are Thai eggplants! YUM)

It would be a shame and a travesty to visit a BYO restaurant and not participate in the BYO-ness of the place. In this spirit, I hauled three friends up to Central Street in the middle of a torrential rainstorm to eat some dinner and do a little sipping. Ok, a lot of sipping.

“So you would like wine glasses as well?” our emotionless waiter asked when he spied the three bottles of wine we’d brought for our four person meal. (Yes, yes we would.) The rain poured down. We were not leaving anytime soon. As we were the only guests—it was a Monday night—the nearly silent staff didn’t seem to mind. So eat and drink we did.

Four is the perfect number for dinner. It lets you explore the menu. Unlike most Thai or pan-Asian restaurants in Evanston, Thai Pinto offers sushi. The unagi roll we sampled was an eight-piece log of freshwater eel. Now, you can get much better sushi in Evanston. But Pinto’s trumps what you can get at Norris or Whole Foods, and rivals Sashimi Sashimi.

It has more variety, better ingredients and gutsier options than the usual suspects (I’m looking at you, Cozy) in Evanston.

We’d mowed through our bottle of white with the eel. Which was fine: these girls are red wine drinkers, not a bad choice for spicy food. A light Pinot Noir cuts the spice, calming the tongue. The first bottle gone, my compatriot Sara looked around the table warily and asked, “Family-style, right? I don’t know why you would come to a Thai place and not order family-style.”

I couldn’t agree more. That’s the beauty of Thai: it’s almost always shareable. Order envy? Never. We selected three entrees: coconut chicken, pepper beef and ginger tilapia.

The more we diverged from routine choices, the happier we were. The light tilapia paired well with the fresh ginger, which had been sliced into thin strips and woven in and out of a mix of snow peas, baby corn and big hunks of red pepper. A few mushroom caps were scattered about, surprising in the light dish, but their warm, earthy flavor complemented the sharpness of the ginger.

I’m under doctor’s orders not to eat coconut, but I gave the coconut curry chicken a go anyway. Not worth it. Good flavor, not too rich nor thick, but the chicken was bland. And the noodle extravangza—egg noodle in the Khao Soy curry broth and crispy noodles on top—was overkill. Three bites in and I was gastronomically bored. (Also, a little visually grossed out by the noodles.)

It got more disappointing from there. The peppered beef, which did venture away from the usual vegetable pattern with lots of cabbage and asparagus (its only redeeming qualities) was utterly unsurprising. I shouldn’t have been surprised, I suppose. This matched the pattern of my first meal: The soft shell crab had surprised, and the second dish, the Thai standard mysteriously called spicy basil, had fallen flat.

After four years repeatedly trying everything Thai in Evanston—including the old standards—I remain amazed that the most basic dishes don’t blow my mind. They should! A good pad see ewe should rock like a Bobb-McCulloch bed on Mondays and the spicy basil should be really, really spicy.

On that sour note, if your tongue is tempted to step out of your Thai box, do it at Pinto. It has more variety, better ingredients and gutsier options than the usual suspects (I’m looking at you, Cozy) in Evanston.

Dishes to dive into: Softshell Crab, Curry, Tilapia, what the owner suggests when you ask him for a strange recommendation. He knows.

Avoid like MSG in the 1980’s: salt and pepper calamari, mixed vegetable stir fry (boring), cucumber salad (sweet like candy, in a one-dimensional way)

What to drink: If you like red, a light Pinot Noir will go well with the spicy flavor and won’t knock your taste buds out of your head with tannins. If you like white, you can’t go wrong with a bottle from French Alsace or its neighbor, Germany.

But you know what goes really well with Thai food and Asian cuisine in general? Beer. Pilsner. Go nuts.

Pinto Thai Kitchen

1931 Central Street
Evanston, IL 60201
(847) 333-2976

Hours

Monday-Friday: 11:30—9:30
Saturday-Sunday: Noon—9:30

Kibbeh, Baba ganoush, Ta’amiya and serious jet lag. About a week ago, I arrived back in Chicago after a truly humbling trip to Egypt.  The pyramids– they are just so old, and big and…awe-inspiring. And of course, as is my wont, I was basically adopted into a bread maker’s family, I ate strange foods and risked my stomach eating street foods in Cairo.

Although it is known more for its ——->

than its food, Egyptian cuisine is along the lines of what we think of as Middle Eastern or Mediterranean food: a lot of tahini, eggplant, falafel and lamb.  But never having spent time in a Middle Eastern country, I was pretty excited to get to the source

For me, the best part of fertile crescent dining is a tradition called Mezze (meze), or small plates that are eaten before the main meal.  Many times a half dozen mezze (hot and cold) are enough to constitute the main course.  Stuffed grape leaves with rice and lamb, pickled aubergine (delicious marinated eggplant with herbs) falafel, ful medamme and kobeba were among the favorites.

Depending which country you visit, kobeba is also known as kibbeh or kobeiba.  It is essentially a fried meatball made with ground lamb kneaded with soft bulgur and onion, and seasoned with pinches of cinnamon, cumin, and allspice. At the center of each torpedo shaped croquette hides two or three pine nuts like little treats for the eater. These were dynamite with a light baba ganoush or tahini.  For my readers in Evanston, go try the Kibbeh at Olive Mountain, $2.25 for two large pieces.

Wandering around the Islamic section of Cairo, near the tent maker’s souk, among small mosques and a few herds of sheep, the smell of ful medamme was ubiquitous.  No matter the environment– next to the sheep, or beside the fez maker’s shop, small stands with pots of the brown fava beans bubbled away wherever we walked.   Often considered commoner food, and eaten for breakfast with Egyptian bread (Aish Baladi), ful is a staple of Egyptian diets. It is made with slow cooked favas, onion, garlic and seasoned with olive oil and parsley.  Like kobeba, ful is also often served as a mezze.

Another favorite small plate was ta’amiya or the Egyptian riff on falafel. This version includes some dill as well as the more traditional parsley. It varies quite a bit from place to place, everyone has their own special version.  Sometimes it was more starchy and breadlike, heavy on the dried favas or more juicy with the delicious, deep fried crust containing a light green center. I ate ate this off the street warped in warm bread with onions and tahini as well as in restaurants with “fancy” dipping sauces.  It was definately my favorite sidewalk snack.   Though I did like the guy cooking that asked me “you know liver?” Yeah I know liver! “You know brains” Yeah I know brains!  That was a strange bit of meat that I tasted after this encounter…..still not entirely sure what I ate.

Throughout my wanderings in Egypt and Cairo in particular, I was reading Naguib Mahfouz’s novel Cairo Modern.  His vivid picture of the capital city in the 1930s gave me pause to think of the massive change that Cairo has seen: it’s population now reaches 20 million and the pyramids are surrounded by the expanding suburb of Giza, but on the other hand, bakers still fly past on their bikes during lunch time with huge pans of Aish Baladi (pita) balanced on their heads and donkeys still wander the streets but now among men in business suits. Not to mention it all started about 5000 years ago with the Nile, the Narmer Palatte and some mummies.