I have posted two previous reviews of Bellemore, last August and last November. Both Valeria and I enjoyed those meals very much, so we decided to return as the calendar started to move toward Spring. Last time, we ordered the Tasting Menu. It was a great choice and the wine pairings were very well chosen. We decided to go that way again.
The amuse bouche definitely started us in the right direction.
Onions, sesame seeds, and compressed apples combined to offer creamy, firm, and crunchy textures with, obviously, three very different flavors. I think the green leaf on top was Shiso, a Japanese herb that is a delightful combination of basil, licorice, mint, and sometimes a hint of cinnamon.
The first wine was one that appeared in the last menu, but this time with oysters instead of cod.
This is a great seafood wine from the Loire Valley in France. Here is what I wrote about it last November.
Chéreau Carré is a family owned winery that was founded in 1960 by Bernard Chéreau. It is now operated by Bernard’s son, also named Bernard, and his granddaughter, Louise. Their vineyards are all located in the Muscadet Sèvre-et-Maine region in the Loire Valley. The Chéreau family has owned the Château de l’Oiselinière, a 10 hectare (24.7 acre) vineyard, since 1960. There is a section of vines that are over 40 years old in this vineyard, and the wines made from these grapes are named “de la Ramée.”
The wines are called Muscadet, which sounds a bit like Moscato, but the grapes grown in this area are the Melon de Bourgogne. If you are not a wine geek, you have probably never heard of it. It is not one of the best wine grapes, although, if the grapes ripen properly and the wine is made carefully, it can be a really nice wine with seafood. This one was all that.
While I have friends who love to eat oysters by the dozen, I like a few as an appetizer, then I want to move on to more substantial fare. In this case, there was one perfect oyster for each of us.
I realize that oyster purists do not want anything—ok, maybe a squeeze of lemon—on their bivalves, but I like condiments that don’t overwhelm the oyster. That’s what I got here. A little salt from the country ham, a little sweetness and crunch from a bit of apple, and heat from a dab of horseradish all combined with and enhanced the flavor of the oyster.
Kusshi oysters come from the Pacific Northwest, specifically near Vancouver Island (lovely place, if you haven’t been there). They are farmed suspended in mesh trays in deep water. This protects them from predators, mud, sand and silt. They are also tumbled periodically, which strengthens and smooths the shells. The result is the plump, delicious oysters you see here.
The wine poured for the next course was one of my favorites: a Riesling from Alsace, France.
Domaine Specht is a relatively new estate, having been started by Alfred Specht in 1955. (Compare that to, for example, Trimbach wines, which have been produced since 1626.) However, he owns some excellent vineyards, including the Grand Cru Mandelberg vineyard.
There are a lot of rules around how the French government designates a vineyard as a “Grand Cru” (basically declaring “this is one of the best vineyards in France!”), and they include regulations about what grapes can be grown, how they must be handled, and much more. Suffice it to say that “Grand Cru” on the label is a very good, but by no means certain, indication that the wine inside will be quite good, even exceptional.
The main grapes grown in Alsace are Riesling, Gewürztraminer, Pinot Gris, and Muscat. My favorites are Riesling and Gewürztraminer. I have often said that, when you consider range of styles ability to age, and ability to gain complexity with age, Riesling is the greatest white wine grape in the world. Yes, much better than Chardonnay from Burgundy. That, of course, is a matter of my personal taste, not some immutable law of physics, so your mileage may vary.
At any rate, the 2016 Domaine Specht Mandelberg Grand Cru Riesling was delicious. Still very young, it had a lot of apple with hints of peach on the nose, and good acidity in the mouth. The wine is bone dry, but the fruitiness of Riesling often makes it taste like there is some sugar left, even when there is not. That was the case here, and that made the wine a nice pairing with a grilled scallop.
Properly grilling or searing a scallop is tricky. Your grill or pan has to be hot enough to get some good color on the surface, and you have to time it so the center just warms through. It is very easy to overcook a scallop. No problem here. Nice grill lines, warm, tender center. The toasted buckwheat added a nutty crunch, while the charred onion added some smokey-sweet onion flavor. The rhubarb added some contrasting color and texture while adding an herbal tartness. As predicted, the Riesling was a fine choice with this dish.
In my review of our last visit to Bellemore, I noted that the wine pairings were very well done. The wines that were chosen were not terribly expensive, were not just the usual suspects (Chardonnay, anyone?), and were well matched with each course. That was just as true on this occasion. Consider the next wine, the 2017 Ameztoi “Stimatum” from Getariako Txakolina, Spain.
This wine is from the Basque Country (Pais Vasco in Spanish), which is an autonomous community in northeastern Spain.
Even if you are an expert on wine labels from California, Spain, Italy, and Germany, this label looks like it is written in code if you don’t speak Basque. Let me break it down:
Ameztoi is the name of the producer. The Ameztoi family has owned and operated the winery for 5 generations.
Stimatum is the proprietary name of this red wine made from the Hondarrabi Beltza grape (which researchers are quite certain is Cabernet Franc brought in from Bordeaux in the early 1900s).
Getariako Txakolina is a designated wine region within the Basque Country, similar to “Burgundy” in France or “Napa Valley” in California.
I have been a champion of Spanish wines for a long time now. They offer high quality at generally very reasonable prices. However, I have not had many wines from the Basque Country, so this one was new to me. Since all of northern Spain is on the ocean, the sea is a major influence on the food and wine. The wines tend to be white, light, have a certain minerality and salinity that makes them great with seafood.
This is certainly true in the Basque Country. Hondarrabi Zuri is the dominant white grape, especially in the Getariako Txakolina region where this wine was produced. Something like 95% of the wine produced in Getariako Txakolina is white.
The style of essentially all wines made in the Basque Country is called Txakoli (Chác-o-lee). The wines are light, very acidic, and bottled with just a little bit of carbon dioxide left in the wine. The are not sparkling wines, but they have a very light spritziness that adds to the crispness of the wines.
Stimatum is part of the small amount of red Txakoli that is produced from Hondarrabi Beltza grapes. As far as I have been able to find, you won’t find wines made from Hondarrabi Zuri or Hondarrabi Beltza anywhere outside of Pais Vasco. Hondarrabi Zuri is thought to have come from some rather obscure grapes grown in southwest France, and Hondarrabi Beltza is likely to be a local variant of Cabernet Franc, but the growing conditions and wine making techniques are unique to the Basque Country.
While the white wines tend to taste of minerals, herbs, and the sea, the best reds have a very forward nose of red and dark fruits, flowers, and spices. The 2017 Stimatum fit the description perfectly. It had a beautiful nose of red cherries, red currents, and red raspberries with floral, citrus, and spice notes. All of these aromas come through on the palate, where the slight spritziness and high acidity of the wine made the flavors very bright.
The wine was poured to accompany a foie gras dish that was unique in my experience.
Foie gras courses are often very sweet to help balance the rich fattiness of the duck (or goose) liver. This one had sweet notes, but not nearly as much sweetness as most foie gras dishes. The sweet and sour beets (pickled, presumably) and the huckleberries (themselves sort of sweet and sour) balanced the richness of the dish, but still let the full flavor of the foie come through.
The wine played right into the combination of ingredients on the plate, fruity, tart, and a feel of sweetness from the ripe fruit. This was very different from the sweet wine that is usually poured with a foie gras course, and brilliantly done.
We stayed in Spain with the next wine, but moved south and east to the Penedès.
As you may know, sparkling wine can only be called Champagne if it comes from the Champagne region in France and is produced and aged following certain very specific regulations. In Spain, sparkling wines are called “Cava,” which means “cave,” a reference to where the wines were traditionally stored as they aged. Historically, three grapes were used in producing cava: Macabeo, Parellada, and Xarel-lo, all white grapes. (You may remember that three grapes are used to produce Champagne as well: Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Pinot Meunier.) None of the three classic cava grapes makes a very good wine on its own, although you will find some some still wines that include them. When they are blended together, however, they each bring something to the party that makes for a much more interesting whole. Macabeo brings, grapefruit, floral and stone fruit aromas and flavors (and is usually the dominant variety in a traditional blend); Parellada brings nutty and green apple flavors and aromas as well as additional body; and Xarel-lo has a certain earthy quality that is one of the hallmarks of a traditional cava.
Chardonnay was added to the list of grapes legally permitted in cava in 1986. More recently, the red varieties Pinot Noir, Garnacha (aka, Grenache), Monastrell (aka, Mourvèdre) and Trepat (a pretty obscure Spanish grape) were added to the list. That means that rosés, like the one offered here, can now be made.
Most cava is produced in Catalonia (the state where Barcelona is found), especially in Penedes, where the Poema comes from.
My favorite way to drink cava is in a Kir Royale. This cocktail is traditionally made by adding a little Crème de Cassis (black currant liqueur) to Champagne or a sparkling wine from Burgundy. I prefer to use Chambord (a black raspberry liqueur) and cava. The proportions are very much up to you. Start with an ounce (30 ml) of Chambord in your favorite Champagne glass and fill it with Champagne. Adjust the amount of Chambord to suit your taste.
Like most good sparkling rosés, Poema had nice aromas of red fruits—primarily cherry and strawberry—and a little citrus. These flavors came through on the taste, but cava is generally not nearly as complex as a Champagne. (In fairness, it costs a fraction of the price of a decent rosé Champagne, retailing for $15 or less versus $50 and up.)
The cava was destined to wash down some monkfish.
The monkfish is a large, and, I have to say, very ugly, fish.
Typically, only the tail is cooked and eaten. Monkfish has been called “poor man’s lobster” as the texture and flavor of the meat can be somewhat similar, if less elegant. It can be easily pan-fried or roasted and has the same kind of firm texture and touch of sweetness that lobster has.
Bloomsdale spinach is an heirloom variety that I don’t think I have ever seen in my grocery store, but which shows up occasionally in restaurants. It’s dark green, heartier than regular spinach, with more texture and just a hint of sweetness.
Green garlic is simply baby garlic. The garlic bulb is still very small and the plant looks pretty much like a green onion. You can use it just like you would green onion or garlic, as it tastes more like garlic than a green onion does, but more like onion than garlic does.
The spinach and the green garlic were just the right amount of flavor and texture with the fish. The wine worked fine, but it was the least impressive wine we’ve had as part of a tasting menu pairing. Of course, that’s just my taste.
The next wine took a big jump from light and bubbly to heavy and red.
Ridge has been an outstanding producer, especially of red wines, in California for decades. Their Monte Bello Cabernet Sauvignon-based, Bordeaux blend, and their several Zinfandels have been benchmarks since before I started drinking wine (and that’s a long time ago).
Petite Sirah is a minor French grape called Durif. It’s pretty rare in France these days, but popular in California and Australia as a blending grape or bottled as a big, tannic beefy red wine, like this one. Just a baby, it could use another 3-4 years of age and would probably last another 5-10 years in the cellar. The nose had a ton of raspberry and black cherry aromas and a good dose of vanilla oakiness. Full bodied, juicy, but still quite tannic in the mouth. Petite Sirah will never win prizes for elegance, but if you like your reds big and bold and able to stand up to anything you pull off of your grill or out of your smoker, this ones for you. When the fruit is ripe, as it was in the one, I like it a lot.
There had to be a meat course coming with this wine, and sure enough, there was.
This was another really good wine and food pairing. Wagyu (a Japanese breed of cow that has amazing, fatty marbling) is so rich that something big is needed to cut through the fat. The grill flavor and the natural rich, concentrated beefiness of the meat were perfect foils for a Petite Sirah.
Black trumpet mushrooms have a stronger, earthier aroma than common white button mushrooms. The flavor is also nuttier and more concentrated and the texture is firmer, but quite silky. Mushrooms and steak are never wrong, and these are high-end mushrooms for a high-end steak.
No fungus is higher-end than a truffle, however, and infusing beef jus with truffles made for a simple looking, but incredibly flavorful, sauce.
Nothing left at this point but to have some dessert. The first one was unique in my experience.
We usually think of toasting marshmallows, but here’s one that was flavored with a Meyer lemon, bergamot, and ginger, then frozen!
Meyer lemons are smaller, sweeter and thinner skinned than our common supermarket lemons. The acidity is lower and some people enjoy eating it like you would an orange, but it is still too tart for me.
Bergamot (which is what gives Earl Gray tea it’s unique aroma and flavor) is a type of sour orange that is too tart to eat alone, but which can be mixed with other ingredients to add a lot of flavor. I don’t need to tell you how flavorful ginger is.
There may be a law somewhere that tasting menus must end with chocolate, and certainly a lot of people would say there should be such a law. I wouldn’t require it, but I’m glad to reap (eat?) the benefits.
A chocolate pavé is a rich, flourless chocolate cake (although in Brazil it is a chocolate pudding). With that in the center of the plate, you are already off to a great start.
It turns out that yuzu (a Japanese citrus fruit similar to lemons and limes) worked very well with buttermilk to make a creamy sherbet. (You can just see a little of it peeking out of the left side of the pavé.)
The thin square on top of the pavé is the black sesame seed crémeux, made by simmering black sesame seeds in cream, then straining them out, adding gelatin to thicken the cream, and chilling it in a thin layer that can be cut into squares.
I don’t know exactly what the crumbles were. A graham cracker crust, perhaps? They added a nice crunch to the dessert.
Put it all together and you have cool, smooth, crunchy, chewy, chocolatey, citrus goodness.
Just as a tasting menu will almost always start with a little amuse bouche from the chef, it will almost always end with some mignardises from the pastry chef.
The passion fruit cream puffs were a delicious upgrade from the usual vanilla cream filling, and who doesn’t like a rich, deep, dark chocolate cookie?
Bellemore is three for three in impressing us with both the tasting menu and the wine pairings. If this is your kind of dining, give it a try.
Bellemore
Address: 564 W Randolph St Chicago, IL 60661
Phone: (312) 667-0104
Reservations: opentable.com
Website: https://www.bellemorechicago.com
Dress Code: Smart Casual
Price Range: $50+
Hours: Lunch: Monday – Friday: 11:00 am – 2:00 pm
Dinner: Monday – Thursday: 5:00 pm – 10:00 pm
Friday & Saturday: 4:30 pm – 11:00 pm
Sunday: 4:30 pm – 10:30 pm
Credit Cards: AMEX, Discover, MasterCard, Visa
Chicago, IL 60661
The author has no affiliation with any of the businesses or products described in this article.
All images were taken with a Sony a7 III camera with a Sony FE 35mm F2.8 FA Lens using ambient light. Post-processing in Adobe Lightroom® and Adobe Photoshop® with Nik Collection by DxO and Skylum® Luminar® plugins.
