While in Chicago for a wedding a few weeks ago, I was really taken by surprise by a truly great meal, right out of nowhere. On Friday night before the wedding, I was out with some other (meaning “not affiliated with the wedding”) Chicago friends and one suggested that we go to this little organic place in Logan Square for dinner. Now, I’m all for organic in theory, but am generally skeptical of Organic Restaurants: in my experience, they tend to be pricey and a bit full of themselves. Lula Café did a brilliant job proving me ever so wrong, and even more than that, did so in a way that didn’t bruise my ego in the slightest!
Our cabbie did not approve of the address, and asked why we didn’t want to eat in a ‘nicer’ part of town. I suppose it was nice enough of him to be concerned, but we didn’t get mugged or anything, so I don’t really know what his problem was. We arrived at the specified address, and went inside to put our name on the list (no reservations). It was gonna be a while (this was about 8PM on Friday night, afterall), so we sat at the bar and the asked the slightly adorable bartender for some $2 PBRs.
An aside: while we waited, a woman with a particularly spectacular plastic surgery addiction was standing nearby, and we couldn’t stop noticing that her facial expression never changed. Her companion bought her a drink – she looked surprised; her companion told a joke – she looked surprised; she took a sip of her drink – surprise! We also noted that her upper torso was similarly … immune to gravity and inertia. It was funny to see, at an organic restaurant, a customer so, well, inorganic.
The silicone princess gave up after about half an hour, so our party moved that much further up the wait list! Finally, we were seated in Lula’s charming little dining room – it has a comfortable farm-housey feel, jazzed up with a modern edge, and is without the pretense of far too many places bearing the Organic label. As it turned out, well-balanced combinations would be the theme of the evening…
While perusing the menu, our server brought out a lovely goat-cheese amuse-bouche from the kitchen, and eventually, we made our decisions. I started with confit of organic beets and my companions with Caesar salads; for main dishes two of us had the “macaroni,” and the other had the chickpea and sweet potato tagine.
The Caesars were good, but the confit was amazing. Little cubes of it came in a little pot, with prettily arranged garnishes of apricot paste, chocolate, rock salt, and crème fraiche on the surrounding plate, a basket of pumpernickel crisps alongside. Our server instructed me to scoop a bit of the confit onto one of the crisps, and add little bits of each garnish. I did, and the results were fantastic. The flavors meshed amazingly, and each bite was a new experiment as I altered the mix of ingredients – tasty and fun!
On to our main dishes: the tagine was brightly colored and smelled divinely of cinnamon and vegetable goodness. It tasted as delicious as it looked, and is a great option for lighter dining – not too heavy, but filling and satisfying and very healthy. Someday I need to get myself a tagine and attempt to do something like this at home, but for now it’s good to know someone else is doing so well with their own.
The tagine was delicious, but the macaroni was outstanding. The first thing you notice about it is the yellowfin tuna: large-but-still-bite-sized chunks (raw, though the menu offers no hint of this) sit atop the bed of penne pasta. It’s fresh, flavorful, and a wonderful surprise to see such a twist on an ingredient almost exclusively seen in Japanese (and Japanese-esque) dishes. Below the fish are more surprises: the penne is bathed (but not swimming in) a sauce of melted emmental, mushrooms, and pickles.
Yeah, pickles. My tagine-eating companion HATES pickles, but tried a bite of this and loved it – you get the sweet-sharp overtones without full-on pickleness. Most amazingly, we didn’t feel like all these strong flavors – Swiss cheese, pickles, and mushrooms – fought each other at all, or overpowered the tuna. They blended wonderfully, and made for a really odd dish that was tasty, satisfying, and just the right bits of filling and satisfying.
After two courses like this, how could we not look at (and order from) the dessert menu? I got the spiced chocolate crème caramel, and my companions each had a batch of the chocolate banana bread pudding. The crème caramel was itself fabulous, and the topping of brandied fruits and candied pumpkin seeds really made it special (we are all familiar with my general feelings about pumpkin). And then there was the bread pudding: wow. It’s not like bread pudding I’ve ever had before, what with its chocolateyness and banana-containing, so maybe we were just blown away by the realization that such a thing was possible, but it might have just been that awesome.
How much did we pay for all this incredible food, you ask? It must have been expensive! This is where my little grad-student-foodie heart really gets happy: the total bill for the three of us, including tax and tip, was about $85. That’s less than $30 each. If there’s a really good special on airfare, it’s conceivable that the price of the meal, including transport, could still be in the range I’d not be shocked to pay for this level of food-happiness.
Lula Café
2537 N. Kedzie Boulevard
Chicago, IL 60647
773.489.9554