Valeria and I made our first visit to Bellemore, a (relatively) new restaurant in the Boka Restaurant Group, back in August. We were impressed by the ambience, food, wine, and service. Other than that, we didn’t like it at all. ? I wrote all about the restaurant, the Boka Group, and the meal here.
On that visit, we followed our often-used strategy of ordering several dishes each, then splitting them—a kind of “roll your own” tasting menu. This time, we decided to put ourselves entirely on the hands of Chef Jimmy Papadopoulos and ordered the Tasting Menu.
Well, we put ourselves almost entirely in the Chef’s hands. The signature Oyster Pie was not included in the tasting menu, so we ordered it as an extra course.
This course is a pure decadent indulgence that will look heavenly to some and hellish to others. Here’s what I wrote about it last time.
I completely understand that, for many people, this is not an attractive course. Not everyone likes caviar. Not everyone likes oysters. Certainly there are many people who do not want to pay $68 for an appetizer. That’s all completely reasonable. However, for those who do like caviar and oysters and who are willing to pay for them, this is a decadent indulgence. The mildly flavored, perfectly creamy oyster custard sits on a flakey crust. The layer of caviar is topped with a perfect raw oyster, some apple, and some herbs and edible flowers that add texture and a little more flavor. It is perfectly balanced and each ingredient shines even as it combines with the others.
Obviously, we are on the “it’s heavenly” end of the spectrum; it brings together many of our favorite ingredients to eat while we are drinking Champagne. Happily, the first wine in the optional Tasting Menu wine pairing was a Champagne, the NV Bérêche & Fils Brut Réserve.
Bérêche & Fils was founded in 1847 and is still a family-owned business. It has been managed by brothers Raphaël and Vincent Bérêche since 2004, when their father started settling into retirement. They own 9 hectares (22 acres) of vineyards that are farmed naturally and organically. Similarly, the wines are made with minimal intervention, fermenting the fruit from each vineyard separately using natural yeasts. As you may know, quality Champagnes are aged for several years in the bottle, usually with a metal cap sealing them closed. Bérêche seals the bottle with corks, a more expensive and time consuming method, because they think it produces a better quality wine.
Their approach is working, as their wines are highly regarded across the board. They make a dozen or so bottlings, depending on the vintage. NV Bérêche & Fils Brut Reserve, Vieilles Vignes, Cuvée Non Filtrée Champagne is quite a mouthful of a name. Let’s unpack it a bit.
NV (non-vintage) means the wine is made from a blend of wines produced in several different years.
Brut means it’ s dry wine.
Réserve is not a legally defined term, but indicates the producer has selected the best lots to blend this wine.
Vieilles Vignes is French for “Old Vines.” The quality of grapes improves as the vines age, generally speaking.
Cuvée Non Filtrée mens the wine is not filtered, a process that clarifies wine, but can also strip out some flavor and aroma.
Champagne means it was produced in the Champagne region using the Champagne Method.
So, in principle, all this indicated that the wine has been made with a great focus on quality. The only real proof of that, of course, is in the tasting.
This was an excellent glass of Champagne. The nose was light and elegant, but still showed some fruitiness. The flavors showed more fruit and some minerality. The wine managed to be intense, yet somewhat austere at the same time.
Having indulged in the Oyster Pie and Champagne, the Tasting Menu could now begin. Almost. First, a little amuse bouche from the chef.
These were delightful little bites with kind of a cornbread texture. Harissa is a spicy mix of roasted red peppers, chiles, garlic, and various herbs and spices that hails from Northern Africa. It added just a little kick to the aioli (garlic mayonnaise) that topped the little cakes.
OK, now the first course of the tasting menu: venison tartare.
I don’t remember having venison tartare before, but why not? I suspect that, if no one had told me what it was, I would have just assumed it was beef tartare. The cave-aged cheddar had the funky sharp cheese taste you would expect, while the pickled Asian pears added some briny, vinegar notes. Beef tartare is very popular in Scandinavia, where it is often served on hearty rye bread, as was offered here.
I had no idea what a Tokyo turnip was, but learned it was a somewhat spicy, slightly smaller version of the turnips commonly found in US grocery stores. Like “regular” turnips, the bulbous root or the greens can be eaten raw or cooked in various ways.
Regardless of the meat or fish, tartare is almost always served with a wedge of lemon or lime to brighten up the flavor. Here, black (or dried) lime was used, which gives a concentrated hit of citrus aroma and flavor.
If you like beef tartare, you will find this to be quite an elevated version.
The next course was a Fall Salad.
This was a beautiful mix of reds, greens, and yellows from the various greens and lettuces that went into the salad.
Pears poached in red wine are delicious, and poaching them in port always reminds me of Christmas, which was just a month away.
Point Reyes is a popular tourist destination on the California coast. It’s about 45 miles north of San Francisco (although driving those miles in California traffic can take a couple of hours). It boast spectacular views, an historic light house, and the Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Company. They began producing a relatively mild, cow’s milk blue cheese in 2000, and it was a hit. It’s a very creamy cheese that is great in a salad, but also melts beautifully if you use it to top a steak or a burger.
The calamansi is a citrus fruit from the Philippines that is a cross between a kumquat and a mandarin orange. I’ve only seen the fresh fruit once, when I was in Thailand. The skin is lime green while the flesh is orange colored. Like a lemon or lime, it is too tart for most people to eat, but it can be used in all the ways you would use a lemon or lime. The juice can be fermented to make a very flavorful vinegar which, as far as I know, is only made by one company in France, although it is not hard to make your own if you can find the fruit.
Walnuts always make me think of the holidays as well, as we usually had a bowl of them out around that time of the year for us to crack open and snack on when I was a kid.
All of these ingredients came together in a colorful, very flavorful salad.
A signature dish at Bellemore is their Hawaiian roll.
It’s hard to go wrong with warm, slightly sweet, Hawaiian rolls with a rich, creamy, house made butter sprinkled with some chives, sesame seeds, and ham.
The wine for the salad and bread was an Austrian rosé.
I don’t remember having an Austrian rosé before. The best, widely available Austrian wines are made with Grüner Veltliner (“green grape from Veltlin”), which can produce delicious, light, dry white wines.
This organic rosé is made from the Zweigelt grape. I have had Zweigelt red wines twice that I can recall, many years ago now, so I am less than an authority on them. It is the most widely planted red grape in Austria. This rosé was the perfect summer sipper, but also worked great with the fall. salad. Strawberries and cherries on the nose, it is completely dry on the palate, carrying the fruit flavors along rather lightly.
Stefan Pratsch is the 9th generation of a family of farmers to take over the family business. For most of those generations, the family raised livestock and farmed wheat and barley with a few acres of grapevines as part of the mix. In the 1990s, Stefan’s father, Wilhelm, decided to sell off the cattle and convert all the farming to organic. Stefan developed an enthusiasm for the vineyards and winemaking when he was young, and his parents supported him in growing that side of the family business. He now produces all organic wines from grapes grown on the estate and other vineyards around the state of Niederösterreich.
Austria is divided into 9 states. Niederösterreich means “lower Austria,” but it occupies the northeast corner of the state, so it seems like it should be called “upper Austria.” I’m sure there is an explanation, but I didn’t take the time to search for it. Interestingly, Vienna, which is also a state, is inside of, and completely surrounded by the state of Niederösterreich.
Anyway, back to dinner. How about some Icelandic cod?
Historically, cod has been a very important fish for the human race, which, inevitably, I suppose, led to severe overfishing in the North Atlantic off the coasts of North America and Europe. Iceland has been more protective of the Icelandic cod population and their practices are considered sustainable. (Your can also get great Pacific cod from Alaska, which has not been overfished).
A good cod filet is firm and mild flavored and can be baked, sautéed, fried (fish and chips, anyone?), steamed or cooked sous vide, all with great results. If they mentioned how this was cooked, I missed it, but it was done perfectly.
The dried squid broth was a first for me. It was vaguely like dashi (a Japanese seaweed and bonito flake broth), but not really. It was nice with the fish, though, adding a different layer of seafood flavor and umami to the course.
Matsutake mushrooms have long been prized in China and Japan as both food and medicine. In recent years, they have become very popular in It has a tender, meaty flavor and texture and an almost spicy aroma.
Shiso is a Japanese herb that has both green and red variants and the red was added here. It smells and tastes like basil, mint and licorice all got together and made a baby.
The net result of all this was a delicate, but flavorful dish with several layers of textures.
We needed a wine to wash it down, of course, and the 2016 Chéreau Carré, Château l’Oiselinière de la Ramée, Muscadet Sèvre-et-Maine from the Loire Valley, France was chosen for us.
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.
The wine for the next course came out just before the food.
The 2015 Le Piane Maggiorina from Piedmont, Italy is the kind of wine that gives relatively inexpensive Italian red a good name. Le Piane is a highly respected producer in northern Piedmont who makes a wide range of wines from everyday drinking wines to high-end wines that need years, sometimes decades, of aging. Their Maggiorina is a blend of 13 grapes, all native to the area. This one was young, fresh, full of berry flavors, and ready to drink. It is by no means the most complex wine you will ever taste, but it is delicious and just calls out for some pizza or pasta. Fortunately, it was served with pasta.
Radiatore is a pasta shape that, as you can see, is shaped like little radiators. Porcini mushrooms were incorporated into the dough, adding a lot of color and flavor. Add a mushroom bolognese sauce and some chopped snails and you have an umami flavor bomb.
We were entering the home stretch with one more wine and one more savory course to go.
The 2016 Guímaro Mencía, Ribiera Sacra from Galicia, Spain is more-or-less the Spanish version of the Italian Maggiorina. 2016 was a difficult year in Ribiera Sacra region, which is in Galicia in northern Spain. For this wine, Guímaro pulled together Mencía grapes from around the region and used a variety of vinification techniques to produce a delicious, fruit driven, ready-to-drink wine.
Mencía is another less-well-known grape that grows in northern Spain and southern Portugal. It produces wines with a beautiful, aromatic nose, full of flowery aromas, cherry, strawberry, raspberry and more. Some of the wine produced from this grape are easy to drink when young, like this one, while some will age for a decade or so.
Lots of meat courses could have been paired with this wine, but an Angus strip steak was chosen.
If you have a good beef steak, you just want to cook it to your preferred temperature and not add anything that won’t let the flavor of the beef come through. In addition to some puréed vegetables and a touch of horseradish (always tasty with beef), the plate has one, perfect, crispy sweetbread. I love sweetbreads.
There was once dessert course, and it was a doozy.
If there is anything better than chocolate, it’s triple chocolate: dark chocolate, milk chocolate, and white chocolate (yes, I know white chocolate is technically not chocolate).
I’ve had butternut squash dishes that were sweet enough to be dessert, but this is the first time I’ve had it deliberately candied as part of a dessert.
Do you remember the calamansi fruit that was part of the salad course? It was back here as a citrus sauce, which always goes well with chocolate.
Finally, a few mignardises to wrap up the meal.
I love white chocolate (again, even if it is technically not chocolate) so these white chocolate truffles hit the spot with me. A lot of people love fruit jellies of all kinds, although for me they are just OK.
Overall, this was one very impressive meal. Each dish was delicious and featured a range of aromas, flavors, and textures. There were some unusual ingredients as well as more familiar items.
Equally impressive were the wine pairings. The wines were not big name, expensive, blockbusters, but delicious, everyday wines that complimented each dish beautifully.
If you enjoy a fine-dining tasting menu with creative ingredients and terrific wine pairings, but don’t want to spend the time (or money) for a full on, Michelin-starred extravaganza, this is a brilliant alternative that will leave all but the most jaded food critics very happy.
Oh, and, no, there was not a naked women standing in the restaurant with a bird on her shoulder. This is one of several beautiful, bird-themed pieces of art you will find there. Yes, there is some interesting artwork in Bellemore, but, trust me, you are going for the food.
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 24-105mm F4 G OSS Standard Zoom Lens (SEL24105G) using ambient light. Post-processing in Adobe Lightroom® and Adobe Photoshop® with Skylum® Luminar® plugins.
