C~HOUSE CHICAGO

One and Two are away for a few days. Friends were so excited when Two announced an upcoming trip.

"Oh how exciting! Which bikini are you taking? Where is One taking you?"

"Well, actually I am packing my warmest coat, gloves, and two pairs of boots."

"Are you nuts?"

One and Two arrived in Chicago. And yes. It's cold. It's windy. What two better reasons to pack in the carbs? Ten floors down from the room in which One and Two are staying is C-House, the award-winning celebrity Chef Marcus Samuelsson’s highly acclaimed restaurant designed by Arthur Casas, a Brazilian architect. The room is big and airy but has a nice sense of intimacy created by the warm wood tones and the coffee table design and cook books that are sitting around when one sits down to eat. Diners can order from the menu or they can select a tasting menu. There is also a tasting menu paired with beer. 

One and Two chose to order from the menu. The first thing placed on the table was warm, homemade brioche style bread. Inside the delicate aromatic puff of yeasty delight were little warm buds of cheese. Well, it's cold in Chicago. Why not eat two brioche loaves the size of large softballs...with warm cheese inside? Two lightened up and ordered 6 very fresh raw oysters from the C-bar, the restaurant's raw bar. They came with a great house made smoky tomato relish and did not fail to deliver a quick mental trip to the ocean. 

Two is constantly wondering why One keeps telling her that bringing tupperware to restaurants is tacky...but this sauce was amazing and so much went back to the kitchen. Tomorrow's eggs were screaming for it. But no matter. One keeps Two in line. One ordered Octopus Terrine with a fennel and satsuma salad with bacon aioli. Wow. It was outstanding. Imagine the smooth melt in your mouth pure pleasure of sweet cream butter but replace the flavor with octopus. It was outstanding. The aioli was a perfect compliment. 

As an entree One ordered Poached Sturgeon wrapped around peekytoe crab, fennel and pickled crab apple. It tasted like the bottom of a muddy river...in a good way. The fish was not overwhelming but definitely had the distinctive flavor of sturgeon. The fishiness was lightened by its pairing with the fennel and apple. Two ordered Scallops perched on parsley root, golden raisins and brussels sprouts. The dish was well presented and tasted great but nothing terribly unusual or breathtaking about the concept.

Like so many restaurants these days the food comes on large plates in small portions with even more amusing dribbles of sauce wrapping around the plate. It seems that some chefs recognize that in every grown adult is a little kid who just wants a big plate of mashed potatoes. Mr. Samuellson addresses this need with his offerings of sides that arrive family style in cast iron dishes in quantities to satisfy any inner child's needs for something to go with the increasingly decorative entrees that are offered. The brussell sprouts in balsamic vinegar were decent, though One's are better. But the Polenta...oh the polenta. It was loose and light and just outstanding. Had there been any left, Two would have dumped it into the zip lock she had used on the airplane for her lip gloss. 

In fact, the little girl in Two wished she had left the scallops on the raw bar and ordered the mac and cheese. Now that would have been a meal paired with the bread...

BISTRO ONE

Crisp, buttery Baby Bibb lettuce with homemade Danish blue cheese dressing and a hint of lemon is a really wonderful way to begin a romantic Valentine's Day meal. Dry aged Delmonico steak tied into a beautiful well marbled round, seared in a hot cast iron skillet with sauteed button mushrooms and young green onions, and placed in a hot oven to finish to a perfect medium rare with a wine and butter reduction sauce settled next to buttery spinach and baby potatoes is an equally knockout followup. Two simply swoons to recall the beautiful plate placed before her in Bistro One.

JARRETTOWN HOTEL ITALIAN RESTAURANT AND BAR

Obviously the whole restaurant review process is subjective, particularly when the reviewers are not only considering the quality of the food but the decor, the staff, and the overall gestalt of a dining experience. Certainly there are some aspects of the experience that are more objective such as the freshness of the vegetables or the quality of raw fish. But this review, we will warn you in advance, is among one of our more subjective. 

The food at the Jarrettown Hotel isn't bad. Of course if you tell your wife her new haircut "isn't bad," you should probably duck. It is an "Italian" restaurant. The quotes here signify an overall theme to the menu, but not, in our opinion a true taste of the cuisine of Italy. This is where Two gets opinionated. Drive down the road and look around you in this bucolic Bucks~Mont neck of the woods. What do you see? Is there much of anything left in its pure state? Look at the Mc Mansions being built. The Tudor styled mock colonial country french melange that passes for some taste of Europe or Early American style. One and Two drive by a restaurant in Willow Grove that bills itself as an American French Fusion Asian Bistro. What on earth is that? These restaurants and houses and malls are all like a Disney world illusion...like the land of make believe. 

The once classic stone inn that houses the Jarrettown Inn is still stone. There are parts of its original charm left inside. But what dominates is high end mall decor. It is restaurant design on suburban steroids. Think granite and brass. There is nothing Italian other than a Chianti or two. There is no stepping across the thresh hold to Italy. But sadly, the limbo is complete because there is no sense of the Inn's history either. Then open the menu. Italian 101. 

Any restaurant calling itself Italian first needs to realize that bread is life and life is bread. Bread should be fresh. Sometimes bread should be warm. Bread should never ever be tough, dry, and stale. You guessed it. The bread was tough, dry, AND stale. And there was no olive oil to resuscitate it in. 

One ordered the antipasti. There was nothing bad about it, but nothing memorable and nothing that wouldn't be available at your local market. The Caesar salad that Two ordered with grilled shrimp was not bad. No complaints other than again, nothing special. Two ordered the salad as her entree but the waiter brought it with the antipasti which made for too many vegetables spread across the bar. Then much much much...much later the waiter brought the pasta that One had ordered after the Caesar was long eaten so that One ate his meal solo. The gigantic bowl of pasta was topped with what was making a valiant effort to pass as fresh tomato sauce. The main dish took so long to arrive that dessert was out of the question. 

In some settings the ambiance is so pleasant that waiting isn't such a chore, but when the decor, menu, and food are conspiring to send the diners into the same nether world as Two enters when she even gets close to a mall, most pass. We are sure that many will like this place. After all, if there weren't demand for twice removed from their sources cuisine and architecture, then places like this wouldn't be so popular as witnessed by the full dining areas.