It’s time I got around to telling you about the second half of my visit to Chicago, culminating in a meal at that temple of pork and beer, the Publican, on West Fulton Market. I say “temple” without reservation (though they do take them) or irony (though I brought mine), for what do my people’s religious observances offer that this restaurant does not? Seriousness? Check. Graciousness? Check. Uplift, even transcendence? Check. Cheek-by-jowl seating? Check. Unlimited bread? Double-check.

But first to the matters preceding.

City Farm, Chicago

Sunday began innocently enough, with a visit to the Farmer’s Market in Logan Square. Chicago farmer’s markets, as you can see, feature much the same kind of thing that you’d find in New York: unripe fruit, hippie greens, and root vegetables. So what makes it Chicago? Well, the hippie greens are marked as being a “great Bears game snack.” I asked the City Farm dude how to prepare it for such an event. He suggested a quick saute, maybe with a little tamari. Yes, sauteed dark greens for a football game. Intriguing city, this. The other thing that makes it Chicago? As with my local CSA, the produce from the City Farm stand is grown within Chicago city limits. That’s a short enough supply chain that you could transfer produce from farm to market in a cargo bike, or even, one shallot at a time, balanced on the stems of track bikes, if you were so inclined, and had at your disposal about three hundred equally hip and unemployed friends. The only way you could contrive a shorter supply chain would be to make the farm-to-market vehicle itself the market, like this guy:

farm-truck-market

I didn’t sample any of truck-man’s produce, because he was a few steps from this place:

Mariano Cuban sandwiches

I wish I could bring you pictures of the inside of this excellent Cuban sandwich joint, with its grill, its bins of beef and ham, its stainless counter, its steaming coffee. I couldn’t, because pointing my camera in any way, shape, or form that might have resembled the taking of personally-identifiable information might have resulted in my death, whupping, or at least denial-of-sandwich attack. Mariano’s is where Chicago’s minor gangstas, the ones who take Sunday brunch anyhow, like to roll up to in their blinged-out Infiniti SUVs and check each other out, while noshing on sturdy, dry Cuban sandwiches. Since I did not want to eat the lens of my girlfriend’s camera, I kept it capped, except to point it at the sandwich ($3.25), thus:

Cuban sandwich

It may not look like much, but a Cuban sandwich is like human goodness: it’s what’s on the inside that counts. In the cup next to it, you’d have found ideal cafe con leche: sweet, strong, and scalding hot. (Chicago is an unreformed Styrofoam town. Everywhere you go, your drinks are served in stays-hot, stays-cold, never-decays Styrofoam cups. For the foam-cautious, I would suggest this rule of thumb: if your food comes in a basket, rather than on a plate, your drink’s going to be in Styrofoam. As this may exclude you from some dynamite eats, you might want to either go it dry, or throw your morals to the wind and chow down.)

That evening, we met up with a couple of Bill’s friends at a bar in their neighborhood, where we put back a few pilsners before racing for an upscale Yucatanian Mexican joint, where we ate thus:

queso fondito

And thus:

enchiladas en mole negro

And a few other ways besides. The tortillas at this place were so delectable, that I can only imagine they were hand-patted one by one by someone’s grandmother. No other process could result in that kind of tender, sub-CD-sized tortilla. Most any day of the week, you could give me a stack of those and a bowl of warm beans, and I’d be a happy man. As for the mole that coated the enchiladas, had my beard not grown untowardly protuberant in the weeks since my last haircut, I’d have licked it from the plate.

It was kind of a late night. After the Mexican place, we snuck past an alleged Nazi bar, and slipped into another bar, in this town of many, many, bars, where we settled into a dark German beer that put me down as though my consciousness were molasses and my head a cracked glass jar. All the while, Bill & Co. laughed and chatted and sang along with the jukebox. If there’s two things they know in Chicago, it’s where to find good Mexican food, and how to drink New Yorkers under the table. The next morning, recovery was assisted by the addition of pho:

bathtub

The pho place had one of those menus that might better have been expressed mathematically, so dedicated was it to exploring each possible combination of roast beef, tendon, fatty brisket, well done brisket, and tripe. I found the fatty brisket a bit gelatinous for my taste, a discovery about which I should be as surprised as when I realized that I found government work too political. The soup (about $7) on the whole was, of course, excellent.

And that led us by way of a lazy afternoon to dinner at the Publican. I did not take pictures of the airy ceiling, the globed lamps, or the friendly and knowledgeable servers. I took pictures of the food. I was, though, excited enough about the food that I usually forgot to take the picture until we were a few bites in, and, for the most part, I took pretty lousy pictures. I didn’t even get pictures of the bread, probably the best I’ve had in a restaurant in five or more years, with a sturdy, thumping crust and a pliant, fragrant crumb, of which we devoured two or three baskets. We ate radishes, with sea salt and a heap of butter so excellent I wanted to sneak it out in my pocket:

radishes, butter, and salt

We ate sweet, dank, delicious beets, with light, fresh ricotta, and honey:

beets with ricotta and honey

We ate a plate of charcuterie, including a tiny, cold, quartered pork pie, a sizzling little sausage, and thin slices of powerful head cheese;

charcuterie

We ate roasted sardines, which I wouldn’t have thought would be good in Chicago, but were:

roasted sardines

And we ate the bar-none freshest and most delicately prepared sweetbreads I’ve ever been lucky enough to taste, nearly 100% cholesterol and worth every bite:

thymus glands in yellow light

All of which was so extremely freaking good, it was almost enough to make me give up on budget eating forever, and shout with the delivery truck:

my sentiments

Except that I still love to cook; I don’t have that kind of money; and there are a lot of collards between me and my next visit to that Paris of the Plains, that great gastronomic guesthouse, the beautiful, corrupt, and extremely well-fed city of Chicago, Illinois.

I left early the next morning, with two apples and a bag of almonds for the road, and was back in Brooklyn by dinner.