Bin Wine Cafe

Bin Wine Cafe in Wicker Park is one of my favorite go-to dinner places for the simple fact that it works as well for a dinner out with friends as it does for a date. The space is cool, hip and casual enough that it never seems like it's trying too hard. Exposed brick, warm woods and modern touches (like the tiny vases with minimalist flowers on each table) work together to create an inviting space in the open layout.

The people behind this successful Bucktown eatery are no strangers to the restaurant business. Bin Wine Cafe is the younger sibling of Bin 36 in River North and I have to say this is definitely one of those cases where the younger sib has upstaged the older. I very much prefer Bin Wine Cafe to Bin 36, which I frequented after work at my last agency due to the office's close proximity.

But I am willing to travel for Bin Wine Cafe. Now that Jeff has abandoned his Bucktown roots and therefore eliminated my own Bucktown outpost, a dinner at Bin Wine Cafe requires a little more effort than a casual stroll through the hood. But the drive or cab ride is worth it for some quality wine flights and tasty bistro-inspired fare.

The menu changes seasonally and I've never been displeased with anything I've ordered. Some things have been better than others (a beef stew and the hanger steak frites from last winter's menu, this fall's Gunthorp Chicken breast, the olive selection, various cheese plates, the white pizza, the Top 10 Burger -- yes, Bin Wine Cafe is home to what was named one of the Top Ten burgers in Chicago -- which is only $5 on Tuesdays), but I never leave dissatisfied with the food, the wine or the service at Bin.

Last Friday night, a group of ten of us headed to Bin Wine Cafe to celebrate my friend Steph's birthday. We tried various wine flights, which are also updated frequently -- and everyone seemed to be pleased with the flight they ordered. Some favorites were the Reigning Spanish Reds, The Sexy Reds and The Bin 36 Flight. I'd recommend any of them.

The vast majority of people at the table ordered the Seared Flat Iron Steak and it was pretty tasty, served in a pink peppercorn sauce with Bin's latest take on frites and some little clouds of spinach and cheese that they dubbed gnocchi. The pink peppercorn sauce was a bit more like a straight-up gravy than I'd have liked. It lacked the complexity of a really great sauce, but it was still an interesting complement to the meat. I liked the frites just fine, but don't be fooled into thinking that what you're ordering is anything like the steak frites you'd get at a traditional French bistro. These "frites" are like fancy steak fries -- and if you like steak fries, as I do, you'll be happy. If you had something else in mind, you may be disappointed. The gnocchi were decent, but nothing to write home about. I have to say that this isn't my favorite dish I've ordered at Bin Wine Cafe, which is unfortunate since literally 80% of us ordered it. It was good, but I know Bin's capable of more.

However, my dear friend Brenna branched out and ordered herself the Gunthorp Chicken Breast, which Jeff had the last time we visited, and which is quite delicious. The chicken breast is cooked to perfection and left on the bone so that's tender and juicy when you slice into it. The bird is well-seasoned and the sauce is a worthy accompaniment. All of this is complemented by some slices of chicken rillete served atop a mushroom risotto cake. Very tasty.

For dessert, we enjoyed a trio of gelato (pumpkin, chocolate and apple) and some apple crisps. The gelato was delicious. The fall flavors worked well together and the chocolate gelato was a nice dark chocolate. I could have eaten the entire trio myself. Unfortunately, the apple crisp didn't have enough apple or enough vanilla cream to save it from becoming dry and relatively uninteresting -- which is sad, because it seemed like it could be quite tasty if the proportions were altered.

The service was friendly and attentive, as it always is here. I recommend Bin Wine Cafe, even though my last entree wasn't my favorite dish to date. They do what they do so well so consistently that each meal is enjoyable, even on the nights when I don't order something I feel is the best thing I've ever eaten there.

Best Dishes: Stuffed Turkey Sandwich at Silver Cloud

In case you hadn't noticed, Fall has arrived. Since today was cool and cloudy, Jeff and I decided it'd be a great day to head to Silver Cloud for one of our favorite cool-weather meals. Silver Cloud is a bar/restaurant in Bucktown that specializes in comfort food. The atmosphere is nice and cozy, the service is friendly and competent, the bar stocks great seasonal beers (most of them craft) and features an out of this world seasonal cocktail list. (Their winter drinks are my absolute favorite.) To top it all off, they do comfort food really, REALLY well. We have two favorite items on the menu: 1) the chicken pot pie (perfect for a winter dinner) and 2) the stuffed turkey sandwich, which is what we ordered and what we'll be chatting about today.

The stuffed turkey sandwich is comprised of white meat roasted turkey (for real roasted; I believe they cook a turkey daily at Silver Cloud), cranberry sauce and stuffing in between two pieces of toasted white bread. Normally, the sandwich comes with mayo. Naturally, I ask for it without any. Fortunately, I feel that the stuffing and the cranberry sauce do enough on their own to prevent the sandwich from being too dry. This thing is like Thanksgiving in a sandwich, but better -- because you can get it any day of the year! Given that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, it's not surprising that I like to experience the glory that is that meal multiple times a year (or month if I'm really feeling extreme).

The toasted white bread isn't something I'd normally choose for a sandwich, but it really works here. The toastiness adds to the flavor and provides an important crisp textural component. The turkey is cooked perfectly and layered in thick slices just like real Thanksgiving leftovers. The stuffing is savory, served warm and never too dry. It's the perfect complement to the natural sweetness that is the cranberry sauce, which is an ideal final touch to a great sandwich.

I also like to start my meal with a Bloody Mary, which they do very well at Silver Cloud. Every Saturday and Sunday, they have $4 Bloody Marys -- and for an additional $0.75, you can get one of their "Snazzy Skewers," which consist of a blue cheese-stuffed olive, a shrimp, an artichoke heart, green pepper, red pepper, celery and a pepperoncini pepper. I highly recommend splurging and spending that extra 75 cents -- it's a delicious addition to an already well-made drink.

I can't wait to go back for my first chicken pot pie of Fall 2010. It is the best chicken pot pie in the city. Yes, I have tried quite a few chicken pot pies around town and yes, that does officially make me Cartman. I'm okay with that. Trust me when I say that this thing is the real deal. More about the chicken pot pie and the winter cocktails to come... In the meantime, spend a blustery day nice and warm inside a booth at Silver Cloud -- enjoying an early Thanksgiving.

Cumin

I was really excited to try Cumin, Bucktown's newest (and only) Nepalese/Indian restaurant. I've spent a lot of time in Bucktown and often thought that the only cuisine the neighborhood lacked was a good Indian option, so the stars seemed to be aligning perfectly. I also love what I've had of Nepalese food, which was admittedly limited to a meal at Chautara, a delicious little Nepalese restaurant up in Madison, WI. (If you are ever in Madison, pay this place a visit. Look, Yelp agrees it's worth it.)

I will start out by saying that the food at Cumin is pretty great. Everything we had (which actually ended up being more than we ordered) was good. But the service is very rough around the edges. Our server came to our table and greeted us with "Do you know what you'd like?" I mean, given that the restaurant is new to the 'hood and it specializes in Indian/Nepalese cuisine, which is a little more exotic than say, your average New American restaurant menu, it might have been helpful to have some sort of intro to what is a particularly robust menu. No such luck. And then she kept coming back and asking the same question as we worked to navigate the extensive menu. It was unprecedented hovering combined with very little actual assistance. We definitely felt rushed to order -- and it's not like the restaurant was crazy busy that night. There were no hordes of people (or any people, in fact) waiting for us to give up our table.

As we were deciding, we chomped on something sort of similar to Indian chips and salsa. Only the chips are a different, more delicate texture and they have some sort of seed/herb in them. And they're served with three different sauces. The green one on the left is savory and a little spicy; the dark purple/brown sauce was sweet but complex; and the marmalade-like sauce on the right that was pretty much straight up sweet.


We ordered a bottle of wine to start, as well as some of the Lamb Keema Samosas and the Paneerka Naram Garam Pakora. Samosas are traditional Indian appetizers that are deep-fried pastries filled with a meat and/or veggie filling. In this case, the filling was supposed to be "minced lamb in a flavorful spice blend." Paneer is an Indian cheese that is somewhat similar to cottage cheese. In the Paneerka Naram Garam Pakora, paneer is mixed with chopped onion, bell peppers, cilantro and seasoned mashed potatoes, rolled in chickpea flower and deep fried.

Our server stumbled a bit through the wine service, which is totally fine since really, there doesn't need to be a ton of (read:any) pomp and circumstance around a $20-something bottle of Pinot Grigio. But then our appetizers came out and the one that they placed in front of Jenny and Elizabeth was unidentifiable, and it didn't look like we thought it would. (Fried balls of Indian cheese.) There were some fried lumps we thought might be vegetables, but since both Elizabeth and Jenny are vegetarians, we wanted to be sure.


At this point, our previously ever-present server was nowhere to be found. The other server who dropped the appetizers off was unable to tell us if they were what we ordered. Language was a bit of a barrier here. That's good because the place seems authentic, but bad because we couldn't confirm what was on the table. Though he couldn't tell us if the appetizer contained paneer, he could tell us that it was vegetarian. We decided to try to find our server before taking the plunge. When she did make it back to our table, we learned that this appetizer (while the lumps were in fact meat-free) was not actually the one we ordered. The waitress was nice and said that we wouldn't be charged for it. And in the end, our veggie friends liked the fried vegetable app just fine.

The samosas looked tasty, but when we broke into them, we discovered that they were the vegetarian version instead of the lamb. We were a little disappointed because we'd thought that the lamb samosas sounded interesting and we'd never had them before, but no big deal. We like veggie samosas. And they were tasty. The filling was soft and flavorful and the exterior was crisp without a ton of residual grease from their bath in the deep fryer. Delicious.

After perusing the menu, we were thrilled to discover they have sesame naan, which none of us had ever tried before. We got an order of the sesame naan and the garlic naan, which is pretty much a staple when this group hits up an Indian place. Both types made it to our table, which was great, and they were tasty. But I have to say that I think Veerasway's naan is better.


Jenny decided to try a Nepalese dish and ordered the Parvate Aaalu Tama Ra Bodi, which is potatoes, bamboo shoots and black eyed peas in "delectable Nepalese spices." According to the menu, this is a delicacy from the mountainous region of Nepal -- and Jenny really liked it. I'm not a huge fan of black eyed peas, so it was a little harder sell for me personally -- but I do feel that the dish was well-balanced and well-executed over all.


I ordered the Chicken Sahi Korma, which is chicken cooked in an almond-cashew curry sauce. It was pretty damn awesome. The sauce was rich and savory. The chicken itself was decent, but the sauce is definitely what makes this dish.


Elizabeth ordered the Navaratan Korma, which is is nine (!) assorted vegetables in the same amazing almond-cashew curry sauce. I actually preferred her dish to mine because I thought that the flavors of the vegetables added greater complexity to the dish than the chicken did. This would be the dish I'd recommend ordering -- if you're not intimidated by the thought of nine different veggies in one dish. Personally, I thought it worked beautifully.


Annie got the Fish Tikka Masala, aka Mahi Mahi in a mildly spicy creamy tomato sauce. Allegedly the fish was sauteed with some diced bell peppers and onions, but they were pretty undectectable. (Except for that one sticking out in the picture below. I think that might have been the only bell pepper in the dish.) The Mahi Mahi is an interesting take on the ever popular Indian gateway dish, Chicken Tikka Masala. I personally didn't love the combo of fish with Tikka Masala, but it was decent. And the fish was cooked very well. Again, a well-executed dish, but I'd go for the Chicken Tikka -- especially if you haven't eaten a lot of Indian in the past.


Overall, Cumin has some solid Indian and Nepalese cuisine. I don't think I'd make a point to eat in again, but this place would be great for take-out. And it's new, so the service may improve. They weren't rude -- they just seemed confused and perhaps inexperienced, which means that things could change for the better with time.

It's not my favorite restaurant in a neighborhood that has a lot of great ones, but it's a good Indian option in a hood that didn't have any Indian at all before. Give Cumin a whirl and let me know what you think.