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If you were wondering where to have your next date/group dinner/dinner with a friend, look no further than Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises’ Cafe Ba-Ba-Reeba! Conveniently located only a hop, skip and a jump away from Steppenwolf Theatre at 2024 N. Halstead, I thought Ruthie and I would give this place a try before we headed over to see Fake.
Since I was not sure if we were going to be terribly hungry or just go for drinks before our girl’s night out, I made reservations at Ba-Ba-Reeba through Open Table, a .com site that lets me make reservations for free online (I hate calling reservations in!).
As soon as we made our way to the restaurant, we decided to sit outside. The wait staff is uber-friendly, almost alarmingly so, as they made cheery, direct conversation. They showed us to a patio table and our waitress gave us a thorough explanation of the menu since it was our first time. She told us that the sangria was a favourite and that she recommended the black raspberry. Ruthie ordered the classic red sangria which had a deep, fruity taste and bitter aroma. My black raspberry was definitely more mild but had a tangy aftertaste.
Since Ba-Ba is known for its tapas, Ruthie and I thought we could not go wrong by ordering a few…errr…a lot. We ordered the above, or the short-rib stuffed piquillo pepper on toast. I am used to tasting a million different ingredients, but this pintxos did not need much to make it good. It practically melted in your mouth.
Bacon-wrapped dates
Ruthie tried the bacon-wrapped dates while I marveled at the fact that Ba-Ba had a local dish! Yes, they had a Green City Market special…wood oven roasted cauliflower with capers and onions! It only appears on their weekly menu until Sept. 23rd, but I thought it was cool that they tried to incorporate local ingredients for those of us in the Locavore Challenge!
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Okay, I lied. Ebert did not give Exchequer’s pizza two thumbs up, he gave it four stars then declared it one of his four favourite pizza places in all of Chicago. Exchequer Restaurant & Pub, at 226 S. Wabash Ave., is conveniently tucked behind the Symphony Center on Michigan Avenue right next to the Adams/Wabash El Station.
From the outside, Exchequer looks like a regular pub with a plain green awning that boasts of its four star pizza and ribs since 1969. 1969 is actually not that old, but what the sign does not tell you is that the building, long before it was Exchequer, was a speakeasy in the 1920s that was frequented by Al Capone. (You can find more information on the interesting history of Exchequer, as well as some pictures of it, here!)
After many years of renaming and remodeling, 226 Club/The Wonder Bar/Browns/Exchequer finally came to be in 1969.
If the outside does not let on to Exchequer’s rich history, all you have to do is take one step inside the heavy wooden door to experience its vintage charm.
If you do not look carefully, Exchequer’s interior will resemble the inside of a Ruby Tuesday. Nearly every inch of wall space is covered with framed items that can feel a little overwhelming and chavvy.
Like Ruby Tuesday’s, it has a feel of nostalgic prefab to it: old movie posters, signed celebrity memorabilia and sentimental advertisements are just some of the things you will see.
But look closer and you can find some gems among the forced sentimental drabness. There are several old photos of an old Wabash Avenue, a few handwritten notes from well-known Chicagoans to the owners and a really hot cardboard cutout of Marilyn Monroe on the door to the ladies’ room (I had to slip that in!). :-)
You might be wrinkling your nose in distaste, but I swear that once your deep dish pizza arrives, you are likely to forget the décor. Once Exchequer finally became Exchequer in `69, the deep dish pizza became an instant favourite and is one of the restaurant’s most popular items.
And for good reason.
Unlike the deep dish pizza at Chicago’s or Giordano’s, Exchequer does not finish its deep dish off with a layer of sauce on top. Instead, it drapes a thick layer of lightly salty mozzarella over some of the biggest chunks of meat and vegetables that I have ever seen in a pizza…ever. Tim and I ordered a small (10″) deep dish with cheese, sausage, bacon, mushrooms and green peppers that rendered three big slices for each of us – believe me, a small pizza will easily fill up two very hungry people.
When it arrived, it was hard for me to imagine what it was going to taste like. I rather like the thick, pasty tomato sauce infused with basil and a dash of oregano that smothered the other pizza slices I have had: the sauce makes it sweet and rich with a slightly acerbic taste. Exchequer, on the other hand, does not use the pizza as a sauce delivery system. No. They instead incorporate everything that people love about pizza in a slice that is perfectly balanced.
A thick, flaky crust is drizzled with a fresh tomato sauce, with chunks of real tomato and the watery tomato juices. You would think this would make it soggy, but it does not. What it does is deletes the sugar from the usual tomato pastes and enhances the naturally zesty, acidic taste of tomatoes that marries with the cooked green peppers and mushrooms beautifully. Then they add in these chunks of sausage that can only be described as meatballs. They are cooked and seasoned well and they are massive, which means you can taste them in every bite. The bacon hardly came onto my radar, but when I did encounter a piece, they were crispy and fatty which made them a welcome addition. Cheese is not usually something I want a whole lot of because it can overpower a good pizza, but this cheese was not pungent or bland, providing just enough salt and fat to make each bite go down smoothly.
If you look at this sign, it tells you the other places Roger Ebert loves to go for pizza in Chicago!
Once we were done oohing and ahhing and agreeing that Ebert got it right, we agreed that no pizza we had had was like Exchequer’s.
The menu also brags that their ribs are fantastic, which I will have to come back for at a later time. When I do return, however, I will have to fight to not get that pizza again.
If you are looking for a non-alcoholic drink that will bring you back to your kiddie days, Exchequer does a really cute (and tasty) Shirley Temple with grenadine, topped off with a skewer of maraschino cherries and a wedge of orange. If you ask nicely, your server may even get you a massive blue plastic cup’s worth of the sweet elixir!
Enjoy!!!
Dev xx
