Tasty Chicago

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Have you ever figuratively called something an institution? For instance, you’ve heard people say that the University of North Carolina is a College Basketball Institution. Who’s going to argue with that? UNC has played basketball with a level of excellence, passion, and class for such a long time that they have only a few schools that are roughly comparable. It’s quite a complement to be referred to as an institution.

When I refer to something as an institution, I’m dead serious. I don’t use the term lightly. Hold your breath! Margie’s Candies at 1960 North Western Avenue is a Chicago Institution, and I’m not messing around.

Notice also that I only use a single modifier with the word institution. A single modifier institution (SMI) is the ultimate complement. I could have said it’s a Chicago Ice Cream Institution and that would have grouped it with other fine ice cream purveyors in town. But by just calling it a Chicago Institution, I’m saying that it’s worthy of comparisons to not only other Chicago food institutions, but any other great, Chicago landmark institution like the Steppenwolf Theatre or the Joffrey Ballet. I’m saying that Margie’s is as much a part of the fabric of this city as those venerable institutions.

Margie’s has served homemade ice cream and candy from this tiny north side spot since 1921. Here is a more detailed history from the Chicagoist blog. I’ve been hearing of Margie’s for about a decade now but didn’t venture there until about a year ago, when some good friends bought me a box of Margie’s chocolates for my 40th birthday. Man were they good.

That was when I started noticing how people talked about Margie’s. It almost makes you cry when you listen to heartfelt stories of how special it was to visit Margie’s as a kid. I’ve started mentioning Margie’s whenever I meet someone that grew up on the north side so I’ve heard a lot of these stories lately. I’ve been there multiple times but never sat down in the place for ice cream.

So, it was only fitting that my wife and I and another couple went there after a stellar meal at Think Cafe (no pictures, sorry) a few weeks ago. It was a Friday night at about 9pm and the wait was about 15 minutes. The clientele defies explanation. It’s kids, teens, young adults, and old people. It’s hipsters, parents, artists, and professionals. It’s all ethnicities crammed into a store front that can’t have a footprint much more than 600 square feet.

Plus it’s old, real old. It has that old smell too. That smell that you know is just from stuff being old, not from being dirty. And the middle of it is taken up with this huge display case of their chocolates. The decor is dated. I won’t lie, it feels like you’re stepping into the way-back machine and punching in about 1950.

But when the wait staff sets the clam shell bowl of ice cream in front of you, who cares. Pictured is the Turtle Sundae, which is Margie’s signature dish. The ice cream is fine. It has a wonderfully high butterfat content, but I’ve had ice cream as good elsewhere. There are other things that really set Margie’s apart.

First, that clam shell bowl really allows them to spread out the ingredients for maximum in-bite aggregation. Let me explain. When you get a sundae in one of those tall parfait glasses or even one of those large round bowls, the ingredients clump together in horizontal layers and it’s difficult to get all the way to the bottom so that you can each ingredient in each spoonful. Not so with the clam shell bowl. Margie’s has the whipped cream, ice cream, and toppings laid out on the vast clam shell stage so you can pick and choose the exact amount of each ingredient that you want in each spoonful.

Second, the chocolate comes on the side in a warmed, decorative tin. This is a great touch. It insures that you get really hot fudge. Your fudge doesn’t sit on the ice cream in a prepared state just cooling down while the wait staff services other people. It comes hot, on the side, so you can add it whenever. It really allows you to completely customize the experience. I like to do two pours so I can have hot fudge throughout the experience. Oh, did I mention that the chocolate is delectable.

Finally, they add some standard ingredients that aren’t so standard at other places. My Turtle Sundae had a fresh banana and a fine, European style cookie in it. Both were great touches. I go two-fisted with the cookie to start things out. That means I put the cookie in my left hand and the spoon in my right. I scoop up some ice cream and topping with the spoon, put it in my mouth, then follow up with a bite of the cookie before I even start any major jaw movement. With the banana, I try to parse it out so that I can have a little with each bit. It gets you about half way through it.

Like I said, it’s a Chicago Institution, and I don’t use those words lightly.

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Sometimes, a savvy restaurateur will fill a starchy thing with something oddly delectable. Take, for example, the Buffao Chicken Spring Roll from Carmichael’s; a fine but unexpected combination. Well, let me follow that up with this little treat. I’m not sure what it’s called exactly, but it’s basically a standard sandwich bun filled with chocolate chip cannoli filling and a little powdered sugar on top.

Yeah, they just pumped a burger bun full of dense, sweet, creamy, chocolate chip cannoli filling and made my friggin’ day. They, is D’Amato’s, at 1124 West Grand. Which is not to be confused with the D’Amato’s at 1322 West Grand. I don’t know if they’re related or not (read the reviews at the links for some takes on this).

D’Amato’s is not the kind of bakery I grew up with. In my hometown, a bakery meant donuts and cinnamon rolls. Sure, you could get a fresh loaf of white bread and maybe some cookies, but for the most part, BAKERY = DONUT.

But there aren’t really any donuts here at D’Amato’s. There are all sorts of fresh breads, buns, rolls, and tons of cookies. I walked in and was prepared to get some sort of mini-loaf of bread for breakfast, then I spied these bun-type things setting on the counter. If you’re a bakery owner and you want to lure John Steffen into purchasing your goods, just set them on the counter in an open-air type of situation. That says FRESH to me. It says, “Hey John, we just took these out of the oven and they’re so damn hot they will fog up the windows in the display case so we just set them on the counter for now. Do you want one?”

Ahh, yes, thanks (suckerrrrrr).

I enjoyed this treat with a cup of coffee from the Jupiter Outpost. I would suggest using a knife to spread the filling around a little as you eat it; like any stuffed pastry, it’s never uniformly spread throughout. Not a problem though. Some day, I’m going to stop by D’Amato’s and get some bread for a sandwich, then run down to Bari and grab some meet and cheese to fill it with.

We talked about my fondness for EBCs (ethnic bakery cafes) last week and how conducive they are to a light enough lunch so as to afford room for dessert. Well, as promised, here is part two on my visit to Artopolis, one of my favorite EBCs.

As I get older, I notice my dessert tastes evolving from a life long addiction to chocolate (mostly dark) to a keener appreciation for lighter brown options. By lighter brown, I’m talking about concoctions based on honey, brown sugar, maple syrup, and caramel. In the past, given the option between a chocolate lava cake or warm apple streusel with caramel sauce, I would instinctively opt for the chocolate. But now, not so fast my friends! Things like bananas foster, maple frosted donuts, and baklava-the king of all light brown desserts-are in my wheelhouse.

That brings us to the pictured dessert. Ahh, the Artopolis walnut baklava. It’s packed with walnuts and absolutely dripping with honey. I think there’s vanilla and cinnamon in it also. Accompanied by their fine coffee, it doesn’t get much better. They even put it on an orange plate, which I love because my wife hates orange stuff, so it cuts down on the risk of her eating some of my dessert, and thereby losing a limb. When I took the first bite, I said to myself, “If some food borne virus made all chocolate and/or creamy dessert dishes in the world unsafe for consumption, I would not be discouraged because I have baklava.” I didn’t say it out loud, thankfully, because someone might have thought I was nuts.

I think I mentioned before how versatile Artopolis is. They really do have something for everybody. If you go there and don’t like it, just come back a few hours later and order something else. You can’t lose.

Did you ever have a bad day? Ever start feeling down? Say you hopped on the treadmill and your iPod ran out of juice within the first thirty seconds and you were forced to watch a close-captioned episode of Hogan Knows Best. Or maybe your favorite sports team had their top defensive line recruit sniped by the juggernaut that is the University of Florida.

Well, if near-death experiences like the ones above happened to me, I would run out and grab a tres leches from BomBon Cafe, and everything would be better. As you know from one of my very first posts on this blog, I am a huge fan of the BomBon Cafe.

They usually have about five or six different flavors of tres leches. The one pictured above is the caramel flavor. For takeout, they come in a foil, mini pie-tin about two inches in diameter. Getting this cross-section was not easy and forced me to mangle the other half, but I did it for you, my fans…or should I say fan…singular (thanks mom).

As you know, tres leches stands for three milks. So yes, it is a cake soaked in three milks - specifically, evaporated milk, condensed milk, and either whole milk or cream. It has all the creamy, sweet goodness that you would expect from something with so much fat and sugar, but what I really like are the three distinct textures.

Look closely for a second at the pic. You should be able to pick out the three textures.

• Creamy, whipped topping
• Moist cake
• Soaking wet cake dripping with three milks

In my view, the hallmark of a great tres leches is something I call TLMV (tres leches moisture variance ). You see, you want the cake portion to have two separate textures. The top half should be like a regular, moist cake, kind of like you would get from a well-made American style birthday cake. The bottom half needs to be a milk-soaked, dripping layer of saturated cake goodness. BomBon has a good grasp of this subtlety and hopefully, by looking closely at the pic above, you can see this. If not, send me an email and I will get you the full res pic.

When consuming this, you need to execute your bite strategy correctly. I use a fork, not a salad fork, but a long-tonged fork. You start at the top with the fork held vertically, apply pressure downward, perpendicular to the ground, and accelerate evenly until you hit plate. Pull away gingerly with the fork still touching the plate. Then start the upward movement to your mouth by rotating your wrist clockwise (if you’re right-handed) so that the tongs of the fork are immediately ahead of the handle. Good luck.