Restaurant Life #4 — Restaurant Schønnemann

      When the routine of eating out in restaurants in Chicago gets too oppressive, I like to travel to foreign countries to eat in their restaurants, as a change of pace. While in Copenhagen last fall, we of course went to Restaurant Schønnemann, for their lunch smørrebrød, or open faced sandwiches, the Danish national dish (and if you suspect I'm digging the three Os with a slash through them in the previous, you're right. Pronounced "ihh," more less, standing alone the Ø means "island" in Danish).

Herring with elderberries.

     Founded in 1877,  Schønnemann is one of the oldest restaurants in Copenhagen. Its waiters are brisk and efficient, obviously well-accustomed to serving blinking tourists, quickly establishing just how big of a glass of schnapps they'd like to go with their herring — and we had three types, mustard, elderberry and curry. (Of herring, that is. Only one of our party had schnapps, and it wasn't me. I enjoyed their fine Teedawn "Gentle Lager," whose label claimed, quite accurately, it is "Tasteful and Non-Alcoholic.")

     It was hard not to think that Restaurant Schønnemann is how the Berghoff might still be, had it not gone out of business in 2006 (what? You're fooled by the Faux Berghoff still in operation on Adams Street? I'd say it's a pale imitation, but can't, because I never stepped foot back in the restaurant again after they closed with great fanfare,only to open up a few months later, never admitting that the entire deception committed against their loyal customers was a base strategum to fire their union wait staff). 

    Don't trust me — I'm obviously emotional on the subject. Others have visited, and report it is ... not the same. David Anthony Witter, in his essential book, "Oldest Chicago" ends a discussion of the oldest restaurant in the city — Daley's at 809 E. 63rd, founded in 1892. — with this note:

Many may comment that the Berghoff Restaurant is missing from this book. In fact, the idea for this book was partially inspired by the extensive media coverage and local attention the closing of the Berghoff received. However I, like many Chicagoans, believe the Berghoff's current incarnation is so different from the original that [it] is not the same establishment.

     Amen. Back to Restaurant Schønnemann. The place had a feature which, in a lifetime of eating out at restaurants from Taipei to Santiago, I've never seen before. A little quarter door, so that when the place gets jammed with happy eaters and drinkers, they can let a little ventilation in without simply propping the door open and admitting the Danish cold. I thought it quite clever. Or cute anyway, which might be even better.

     

Restaurant Life #3 — Restaurants serve up more than food

     Chicago Restaurant Week already? And me without a gift.
     Actually, I’m always leaving gifts at restaurants, in the form of generous tips, plus those little fees tacked on the end of the bill, for employee health care, supposedly. They’re voluntary, in theory. But I’m not hard-hearted enough to strike them off the tab. Though I wish they’d just fold them into the cost — Kimberly-Clark doesn’t tag an optional nickel on the price of a box of Kleenex so its employees can have sick days.
     Restaurants seem to be getting better at it. It’s been a few years since I was puzzling over the bill at Big Jones, trying to figure out what the 20% ”service fee” might be — that’s the tip, right? Then the waitress, who’d obviously been through this charade before, hurried over to explain that no, it wasn’t the gratuity, but an extra wallop designed to help keep the lights on during COVID-19. Two percent is one thing; 20% is something else. Still, I ponied up, reluctantly — my guests were watching — and walked out brooding that I’d just left 42% extra for an OK brunch. I never went back.
     Restaurants are an odd business. You can eat at home, and usually do. They’re really social/aesthetic experiences disguised as strapping on the feedbag. Of the three legs of any dinner out — food, service, atmosphere — two-thirds don’t involve ingesting anything.
     We need restaurants. How else are we supposed to celebrate occasions? My wife and I tried Rich Melman’s latest, Miru, for my birthday in June. Everyone is raving about the scenery from the 11th floor of Jeanne Gang’s St. Regis Hotel — “Miru” is Japanese for “view” — but honestly it could look out onto a cinderblock wall and I’d be eager to go back, just for desserts like Black Sesame Mochi, described as “Charcoal-Vanilla Ice Cream, Black Sesame Praline, Mochi Sponge.” I don’t know if that sounds as fantastic as it truly was. Let’s put this way: It costs $18, and I can’t wait for the chance to order it again.

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Restaurant Life #2 — Give the man what he wants

Beef and broccoli at Star of Siam. 

     Years ago, there was a restaurant at 1 East Wacker Drive called "The Little Corporal" that had a Napoleon theme. Which was reason enough for me to frequent it. All sorts of prints and etchings of the once-loathed tyrant, on horseback, posing regally, leading his soldiers.

      But they also had a good chicken salad — not chopped chicken with mayo, but a salad with strips of grilled chicken atop it. All things being equal, that's what I want for lunch, then and now, whether out or at home. The protein of the chicken, the bulk of the lettuce, the flavor of the the dressing. The whole gestalt. What's not to love?
     When The Little Corporal was a replaced by a steakhouse, I had to go elsewhere — this was back when the paper was at 401 N. Wabash — and for a time I'd go to the Hard Rock Cafe. There was always a line of tourists out the door, but if you were going to the bar, you could bypass the line. So I'd go to the bar, order a salad with chicken on it, and have my lunch.

     One week I did that every day. Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday I was surprised, when it came time to leave, to be informed that the meal was on the house — it isn't easy to prepare food for a clientele that consists of tourists from Iowa here to gawp at Ace Frehley's guitar. It turned out, they were flattered by the idea that some rumpled guy in a coat and tie came by regularly, ate their chow, and left, without even glancing at the case with, oh, a pair of Elton John's eyeglasses in it. 
     Which is a long way of saying that I am a creature of habit, when it comes to restaurants. I tend to go to the same place and order the same thing. The upside being I get what I want. And the downside being I'm cut off from the rich variety that one goes to restaurants to appreciate in the first place. We make our choices in life, and one rule I have is: be who you are.
     The prime example of this dynamic is beef and broccoli. I really like beef and broccoli. Why? Because I like beef. And I like broccoli. Taken together, they are the asian cuisine version of a salad with chicken on it. Yes, not quite as healthful, when you consider the sauce and the fat to cook the meat. But then, a salad loses its dietetic quality once you consider the dressing and the dried cranberries and such. 
     I order it at Thai, Chinese and Vietnamese places, counting on sampling whatever my wife orders to inject a note of variety. The bountiful plate shown above was devoured earlier this year at one of my favorite spots, the Star of Siam, 11 E. Illinois. My wife ordered something that disappointed her — which I regretted, as it dampens your mood when you're loving what you've got and your tablemate is sighing and picking dubiously at what's in front of her — not wrong enough to send back, but a disappointment in some ineffable fashion that takes a long time to explain. Another reason to always get what you want. Almost always. Sometimes I do change it up. It's never quite as good, but it does serve to remind myself of the joy of ordering exactly what you like.

Restaurant Life #1 — Old habits die hard

     It's Chicago Restaurant Week all this week and next. So in the days when my column isn't running —  a new column runs Wednesday — I thought I'd share scenes from the restaurant life.

     So I met a former alderman for lunch earlier this month. No pressing reason — I had suggested lunch, years ago. He recently wrote complimenting me on a column and said that now, in the easier pace that comes with retirement from public office, he's finally ready to take me up on my offer.
     "I have no hidden agenda," he wrote. "I'd just like to break bread with you and hear your insights on the state of politics today and life in general."
     Everybody has a hidden agenda. But okay. It isn't like people are beating down my door. I agreed. He suggested Taste of Peru, and I agreed to that, too. Fun place. A small storefront that nevertheless is home to one of the last of the big personality restaurant hosts, owner Cesar Izquierdo, who comes out and entertains dinners, doing tricks with a wooden top, basically putting on a floor show. Hadn't been there in years.
     I got to the restaurant first. No Cesar. No chicha morada — a purple corn drink I enjoy. Something about not quite ramping back up to speed after the holidays. So I stuck to water. The ex-alderman — no need for names, I don't want to embarrass anybody — was only a little late. We both ordered the lomo saltado — ribeye steak and veggies on rice, their speciality of the house. While we waited, we shared a ceviche appetizer — seafood in lime juice, quite delicious. My lunch mate also asked for three extra meals, carry-out, to take home. Prompted by his example, I got a $5 side of fried plantains for my wife. She likes plantains.
     Conversation was accomplished, in a pleasant, easy fashion. We talked about our children. I brought him up to speed with the paper. He's representing some interests that might be potential stories. The check came. "Why don't we split it?" he suggested. I fixed my gaze on the stack of extra meals he'd ordered for himself until my point registered.
     "Why don't I just pay for what I ordered?" I said, pulling out $40 and handing it to him. He took the money. It was a pleasant enough lunch, as I said. But I don't imagine there will be another.

Lomo saltado.

     

Flashback 2005: Liberty overrated, and one proud chef

Cherry Pit grub

    Chicago Restaurant Week begins Monday. Regular readers know that I'm a restaurant guy — restaurants help create the illusion of meaning in life — from dining at three Michelin Star Alinea, to lauding a favorite hot dog joint owner. I think I'm going to weigh in this week about it, in the paper. But in the meantime, here's a moment from 2005 worth remembering. I left in the section that ran above it, just in case you've got time to kill. Alas it's as current now as it was 19 years ago, and the last paragraph explains Trump about as well as he can be explained. The original headline was, "Liberty seems pretty far down on world's to-do list."

Opening shot

     Is liberty really "the universal longing of every soul," as Condoleezza Rice told an audience in Egypt this week? Or is that belief merely our gosh-darn American presumption leading us astray again?
     Because, frankly, when I look over the wide swoop of human history, I don't see much pining after liberty. I see a whole lot of "let's go kill those guys and take their stuff." I see quite a bit of "let's roll at the feet of that king." But not much "let's promote liberty so that each of us can breathe free."
     Surveying our world today, people seem to leap to put on the chains of some religion or drug or cause. Even in America, the supposed land of liberty, a big chunk of the population is eager to yank the leash the moment somebody tries to use that liberty to do something they don't like.
     Which liberty, supposedly, allows you to do. The error Rice makes is to assume that, if only Egypt had democracy, why, it would elect a bunch of swarthy Jeffersons. More likely that, given their choice, Egyptians would opt for radical Islamic theocracy, via popular election. We wouldn't like that.
     Rice's mistake is a common one. Those free of oppression have a very difficult time understanding the taste that so many develop for it. I'll never forget, when I finally got the old family boot off my neck and fled to college, the shock I felt that any sane man would join a fraternity.
     "They spend 18 years being told what to do," I said at the time. "Then they go out on their own, finally, and what's the first choice they make? To join a group that forces them to roll an egg with their nose across the quad at midnight, blindfolded."
     Oppression, like drugs, brings some measure of pleasure to those under the yoke. Why else do you think all those Russians are still mooning after Stalin, a half century after his death?

Because good food isn't enough

     I've eaten at a lot of fancy Chicago restaurants over the years, and I thought I knew what good service is. A little bit of theater -- the spinning salad bowl at the old Blackhawk. Some personal service -- Chef Louis Szathmary going from table to table at the Bakery to make sure everybody was happy. The brisk snap of the waiters at Charlie Trotter's. The knowledgeable, I-grew-this-lettuce-from-a-seed-and-now-I'm-gonna-tell-you-all-about-it authority of the staff at Tru.
     But I never grasped what the heart of dining-out hospitality really is, didn't look for, never mind touch, its essence, not until a fry cook named Carmen Vargas turned away from his grill at the Cherry Pit Cafe in Deerfield this past Sunday.
     It was Father's Day and the place — a narrow front with a lunch counter and a big square room in back — was packed. My family had to wait. Four seats opened up at the counter, and we slid on in, picked up our menus, and had that chin-stroking, what-shall-we-have-today moment.
     The special was buttermilk oatmeal pancakes. "I make my own oatmeal pancakes at home," my wife said out loud, to no one in particular, perhaps with a touch of loftiness, the way Queen Elizabeth, offered a $50 gift certificate at Zales, might murmur, "I have jewels back in London."
     We ordered. A few minutes went by while we watched eggs sizzling on the grill and customers bustling in and out behind us. Then Vargas, tall, with an elegant mustache, turned and set a small plate in front of my wife. On it was a single pancake.
     "You mentioned that you make these at home," he said. "But do they taste like this?"
     My wife cut the pancake into four pieces, and we each tried one. Fluffy, oatmeal-infused, slightly sweet — during the comparison of ingredients that followed, Vargas said he puts sugar in the batter.
     "You don't need syrup," he said. My wife pronounced them lighter than her own, my older son decreed they were better, too, which seemed to satisfy him.
     Maybe I wouldn't have noticed if he wasn't a fry cook — usually they stand stolidly before the grills, never turning, pushing out the orders, which were flying fast and furious at the Cherry Pit.
      But his impulse resonated in me. Isn't that the essence of hospitality? The open generosity of sharing, seasoned with a bit of here-try-this-I-made-it-you'll-like-it pride? I thought it exceptional.
                 — Originally published in the Sun-Times, June 22, 2005

Sports Illustrated is dead and I'm not feeling so hot myself

   

     Whenever I try to convey the bounty that the Chicago Sun-Times offers its readers every weekend with the Sports Saturday wrapper, I say, "It's like Sports Illustrated." Meaning that it is packed with long, complex, interesting articles and dramatic photos. When I stumble across the rare sports story I want to cover, like an older couple hosting three rising hockey players, or a blind radio color commentator, I try to run it on a Saturday, because sports will both package it beautifully and give me room to tell a tale.
     Sports Illustrated was such high quality that you didn't even need to particularly appreciate professional athletics to enjoy it — I remember the raw envy I felt, as a writer, reading an in-depth SI piece on the enormous challenge of washing the laundry for the National Football League. What a great idea, perfectly executed.
    While I wrote my share of sports stories back in the day — golfing in Montego Bay with Arnold Palmer, sitting down to talk football with Tom Landry before a Dallas Cowboys game — I only wrote one piece for Sports Illustrated: a quirky take on how TV cowboy star Roy Rogers invented sports marketing and taught the NFL to license its logos. 

     I was proud of that notch on my belt, and would have loved to show it off, had anybody cared. But they absolutely did not. Not a soul. 

     Why would anyone? Magazines have pretty much washed away in the howling media wordstorm. Time, Life, Newsweek, once-mighty gold-plated brand names that formed the apex of the profession. Now tiny mockeries of their mighty pasts, recognized by a narrowing sliver of the consumer world, like the threadbare names of those defunct products revived in the Lillian Vernon catalogue: Lemon-Up. Prell. Necco Wafers. A familiar logo to slap on a pale imitation slightly resembling its former self.

     But I took comfort knowing SI was there, hanging on. Though battered by the same faltering economic model clubbing down all journalism — the Washington Post is also about to jettison a chunk of its reporters — it still existed.
     Until Friday, when Sports Illustrated fired its entire staff. About 80 journalists, over the side, into the icy chop that awaits the unemployed. From now on, it'll be a nostalgia act, an aggregator. A hook to bait with repackaged material jamming the racks at Walgreens. 
     The temptation is to mourn. But I'm tired of mourning. It's boring. I thought I'd like to talk about what happened, and called my friend, Rick Telander, the dean of American sports columnists, who wrote for Sports Illustrated for 25 years. He knew. He'd make sure that whatever I said at least carried a whiff of veracity.
     "I shouldn't say Sports Illustrated just died because it's already long dead, right?" I said, beginning the conversation. This is just the utter end, the ritual abusing of the corpse. 

     What happened? 

     "Fans know more than we do," said Rick. "And everybody's a photographer."
     Nothing to be done?
     "You're protesting the world," he said. "You're protesting modernity."
     Well, I'm not protesting anything. Just noticing it. I've long said, "Technology wins." No matter how much you liked human telephone operators, they're still gone.
     "To fight it is tilting at windmills," Rick continued. "To bitch about it too much is to bitch about getting old."
     Getting old does bite, particularly the part where ...  no. There's too much of that already. Rick isn't interested in shaking his fist at the young social media stars tramping all over our once exclusive lawn, and neither am I.
     "Time for journalists to figure this out, and stop worrying about the way it used to be," he said. "It's never going back, ever. Taylor Swift has 550 million followers. She has more power than all the newspapers in the United States."
     See, that's what journalists bring to the table. We see what's going on, and we say it. Even if we don't like it. Even if the truth is in no way optimistic — for us. Our houses are on fire; the least we can do is describe the flames, a final act of fealty to our fading vocation.
     "It's the end of what I've chosen as my profession," Rick said. "I never took a vow of irrelevance. That was never part of the deal. Nobody cares. Writing has become a commodity. Everyone can do it."
     I could argue that — actually, everyone can't do it. Obviously. What everyone can do is read, and watch videos, and the time once spent reading a revealing, in-depth profile of a player is now spent watching his girlfriend watch him. There is only so much time in a day.

     "Nobody under 30 reads a newspaper," said Rick. "Do you see them reading long magazine pieces? They get the stuff on Facebook. Go on their phone. Check out the news, go on TikTok and that's it. Who looks at the byline?"
     He said that there was a time when he knew the top sports columnist in every city in the country. He and Rick Morrissey were discussing this recently.
     "We used to know them all," he said. "We couldn't name a sports columnist in Detroit. I can't name a columnist in the entire United States. None."

     I told Rick that I do what I do, not for the benefit of whatever remnants of an audience might yet remain. But for myself. To satisfy my own curiosity, meet my own standards and, not incidentally, make a living.
     "I still care a lot," said Rick. "I never had a job I've been prouder of. Never dreamed I'd be blindsided like this. Didn't expect technology to make it irrelevant. The whole world is changing. I hate the feeling that the thing I chose to do is irrelevant. But it just is."
     I can't tell you if Telander is right, or I simply find myself in the same place and agree with him completely.  Sometimes it seems what I do is dig a hole in the morning, go to sleep, wake up to find it filled, then dig another one. Rinse. Repeat.
     "Every year we have a job is astounding," he said. "This is what I do. I'll do it until it's over."

     That's two of us then. Playing in an orchestra on an antique bandstand set on a cliff at the edge of the sea. Sawing away at our instruments while, every now and then, with increasing frequency, another chunk of cliff gives way, and a cello, or a couple of bassoons go whistling into the abyss. The symphony falters, the music grows thinner, fainter. But the tempo is resumed, until the next crash, a strangled cry and a pair of cymbals go clanging down the sheer rock face followed by a splash.

      If this all sounds depressing, it shouldn't. Some days fun is had, still, and a shimmer of significance forms far away, a mirage deforming the air for a moment before vanishing. The way I see it, no matter how big music streaming services get, there are still a few artisans left making violins. You don't need to sell them to everybody; you just need to sell them to a few customers whose ears can detect the difference between a tune played on a fine instrument and one buzzed out on a comb wrapped in wax paper. 

     When I went into writing, and was warned about how difficult this line of work was as a career, even then, I liked to quote Daniel Webster. Told that the legal profession was an impossibly crowded field, he replied, "There's always room at the top." I believe that still holds true as the journalistic world empties out. If this is the end, well, then, we will endeavor to shine brightly at the end, just as we did at our beginning.

Swirling in the vortex

 

   
     As someone fascinated by the 1912 sinking of the Titanic — who isn't? — you'd think the 1997 blockbuster movie "Titanic" would be right up my alley. But it wasn't, and a quarter century since I last viewed the film, I can still point to the moment when director James Cameron lost me: the chase with a handgun, a bit of business added to goose the story further. I remember thinking, "The ship sinking isn't drama enough? They need a gunfight?" It seemed gilding the lily. 

     That moment flashed back when I was standing in the Coconino National Forest Red Rock Ranger Station, going over potential hikes with Rhett, a helpful volunteer. He was pointing out trails on the map, when I noticed a spot labeled "Airport vortex." 

     "Airport vortex?" I asked.

      It turns out that being set in an absolutely stunning physical vista — really, the place makes Boulder look like Kansas — isn't enough. The paranormal powers of the universe have to be summoned like a pack of performing dogs and ordered to do tricks upon command. 

     "They say there are seven natural vortexes in the world, and Sedona has nine of them," Rhett said, neatly summarizing the local attitude toward the New Age hooha forming here like moss on a stone..

     Not that this spiritual claptrap bothered me, per se. Life is hard, the night is long, people need to conjure up all sorts of rococo nonsense to comfort themselves. I get it. So long as they don't use the laws of the country to force their particular brand of gauzy flimflam upon others, it's a free world. It's when you use your personal fairy tale, hardened by the passage of time, to vet the books at the school library, that I feel the need to disagree.

     I wish upon a star, sometimes. I do not, however, insist you get your medical care by appealing to the indifferent cosmos. It is, I believe, an important distinction.

     I never thought about any of this at all while we were hiking. Heads on swivels, trying not to blunder over a cliff while gawping at a mesa, butte or range. But one evening, we decided to go explore the town of Sedona, and found — at least in the Uptown section — an Estes Park-caliber hellscape of carny come-ons. Crystal shops and palmists, vortex vendors. It being offseason and late in the day, we were about the only tourists, and owners stood in the doorways of their establishments, trying to ballyhoo us in. 

     A man in a knit cap and a swami-length beard urged us inside for a "sound bath," and interpretive reading, an offer so strange I was tempted to inquire about what that might be. But I knew if I made eye contact with them man he'd wrap his arms around my knees and we'd never get away.

      We have friends ... treading carefully here ...  whose broad-minded approach to life allows them explore realms that I'm too narrow to consider. So we hit a few of the shops, looking for presents. Again, the patient work of a thousand millennia, the intense physical forces that formed these quartzes and gemstones, doesn't do the trick, apparently, for some. It isn't enough. These materials also have to heal you if you, oh I don't know, rub them on your afflicted parts — your head, I imagine. Merely being malachite won't satisfy some folks; it has to cure you too. I very much wanted to challenge one of the employees, to say, "If this stuff works, if you're so centered and purified and healed and enriched, spiritually, then why are you hawking wildly overpriced pebbles in a strip mall in Arizona?" But I'm a kind soul, we all struggle. Besides, then I'd be harassing clerks in tourist trap curio shops, and what good is moral clarity if you use it to browbeat people? An insight I wish I could magically impart to my friends on the left.

      The place depressed us. But fortunately I heard music coming out of a restaurant — Agave 89 — a pair of guitarists and a drummer doing Latino-tinged tunes. We slipped in and sat down. The music perked us right the hell up — it so strange that people would feel the need to conjure up all these wild and imaginary claims for inert stones. When a spiritual force that really does refresh and redeem your spirit is always available to anyone who can whistle. Maybe the problem is, music is free. Or at least quite reasonable ready to be rented for the price of an NA beer and a really quite good mushroom quesadilla.