9/11/2023 0 Comments Yelp chicago indianIt will be more! It has to be fun, it has to be light and airy.” “It’s not where you just go and sit down and go home. “I want it to be fun, I want to be interactive,” Sarkar says. After the lamb is cooked over wood, servers will bring the dish to the table along with a personal-sized brass grill. Sarkar says beyond the tandoor - which is reserved for naan vegetarians fearful of cross-contamination can rejoice - Indienne’s kitchen won’t look like a traditional Indian restaurant’s kitchen. The custom-made grill is something of a novelty for Indian restaurants. Lamb off the tasting menu marinated in hemp seeds and pine nuts.Īnother dish on the tasting menu, lamb burrah, is marinated in a paste made from hemp seeds and pine nuts, and then cooked on a wood-fired grill. Fancy cocktails include Mumbai, a rum drink made with a clarified milk punk and steeped with fruit and strawberry vinegar. Still, a $90 tasting menu is a relative steal in Downtown Chicago. It’s also a way to highlight the labor that goes into Indian cooking, Sarkar notes, showing respect for the time, number of spices, and ingredients that it takes to cook some Indian dishes. If Indienne were to have an anthem, Sarkar says, it’s Indian food made with atypical ingredients and some European techniques. Indienne’s version uses foie gras and chicken liver. Indienne’s tasting menu includes galouti, a northern Indian kebob typically made with ground lamb. He’s familiar with European techniques and ingredients. Knowing that history, Sarkar wants to remind the public that his experience covers more than cooking Indian food. While Sarkar says this has never been done in America, the late Floyd Cardoz built up quite a following in New York with Tabla, a restaurant that combined French and Indian cuisine. Carlos Gaytán ( Tzuco) and Beverly Kim (Parachute) have since graduated away from French references, preferring to cook more traditional representations of their heritages. Both Mexique and Parachute earned Michelin stars for blending Mexican and Korean flavors, respectively. “This was a project that I started, something that has never been done before in America,” Sarkar says.Ĭavia (Golden Osetra) with a vada, or lentil doughnut.įrench cooking is interwoven in most American fine dining experiences, and it’s been a gateway to success for a pair of Chicago restaurants that served cuisine from cultures that weren’t always welcomed on the fine dining stage. Uncles and aunties accustomed to Devon Street’s working-class South Asian restaurants may scratch their heads when they see their plates decorated with dots of sauce. This project is independent of those restaurants, and the ambiance at Indienne is geared more toward fine dining. He remains involved in Rooh locations in San Fransico and Palo Alto, California, as well as Baar Baar in New York. Sarkar says he nearly left America for London before Graham Elliot's space opened up. Sarkar opened Rooh in West Loop, but after a falling out with the local owner, he departed last year. It includes a 10-seat bar and a 14-seat private dining room. Owned by Sarkar and an investor group that includes Roy Appukuttan, a contractor who built Rooh Chicago and owns The Swill Inn (a bar in River West), the chef also designed the 85-seat dining room. Though Indienne features elegant items like a lobster-topped bisi bele bath - a dish of rice, lentils, and more than 30 ingredients it was once reserved for royalty - Sarkar says he isn’t after glory: “If you’re opening a restaurant, it has to be for the right reasons.” Indienne joins Wazwan in Wicker Park as Chicago’s only two Indian restaurants with tasting menus. The former Graham Elliot space has a new tenant.
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