Eat this, drink this

For the Chicago Tribune

Sample clips from the “Eat This” and “Drink This” columns

Eat This: Acadia’s Cheesecake

Imagine a slice of cheesecake. You're picturing a fluffy triangle on top of a crumbly cookie or graham cracker pie crust, right? But at Acadia in the South Loop, a restaurant known for its reinterpretations of classic American dishes, the cheesecake looks considerably different.

Mari Katsumura, Acadia's newly appointed executive pastry chef, makes beautiful desserts (she has worked at two other of Chicago's best fine dining restaurants, Blackbird and Grace, so that's no surprise), and her deconstructed Japanese cheesecake is my favorite example. On a large white plate, Katsumura arranges a wreath of contrasting colors, shapes, textures and flavors: a juicy scoop of Anjou pear sherbet, wedges of crunchy buckwheat graham, a scattering of light puffed grains, drips of honey and, of course, the cheesecake, presented in bite-size pieces that are airy and fulfilling.

The cheesecake is offered for $13 at the restaurant's bar (not on the tasting menu in the dining room), and rest assured, it's worth it. For a drink pairing, Acadia's beverage director Carlos Diaz recommends the 2014 Malvira 'Birbet' Brachetto Langhe, a sweet rose wine from Piedmont, Italy.

Drink This: O’Leary’s Cow

The recently opened Staytion Market & Bar, inside the spacious lobby of the Renaissance Chicago Downtown Hotel, cuts a modern edge, serving up bright, shareable plates of Chicago-style street food and neighborhood-inspired twists on classic cocktails.

Here a Side Car can be converted into an L Car and a Moscow Mule into a Market Mule — in a sleek, gray-toned milieu designed to mirror a CTA train station circa 1910. All of the locally themed libations are worth a sip, but the excellent O'Leary's Cow ($12) stands out for its elevated take on the Manhattan, complementing its robust combination kick of Bulleit Bourbon and Glenlivet 12 Year Old Whisky with delicate touches of bittersweet amaro, flamed orange oils, maraschino liqueur and, naturally, a hint of smoke. 

Eat This: Hoosier Mama Pie Flights

Like peanut butter and jelly or milk and cookies, coffee and pie is a winning combination. So when local businesses Hoosier Mama Pie Co. and Dollop Coffee & Tea Co. teamed up to open an Evanston pie and coffee shop in 2013, the result was, unsurprisingly, sublime. This spacious, pastel-accented spot offers handmade pies both savory and sweet, as well as breakfast pastries, buttermilk biscuit sandwiches, quiches and other delights to accompany the aromatic espresso.

However, the best deal is the Evening Pie Flight ($7.87): a choice of three gooey half slices of Hoosier Mama pie from a rotating menu — depending on the day, options include apple, chocolate chess, peanut butter, banana custard, coffee cream or peach blueberry with pecan crumble, to name a few. The flights, served in-house every day after 6 p.m. (also served at Chicago location, 1618 1/2 Chicago Ave., on Friday nights), are ideal for sharing and likely to impress. Because sampling a trio of delicious and disparate pies for less than $8 sounds too good to be true but is in fact foodie-heaven reality. Savor with a hand-warming cup of java (Dollop serves Chicago-based coffee roaster Metropolis) to make the triple taste experience last as long as possible.

Drink This: Flower Power

Purple drinks are rare — Kool-Aid and grape soda are pretty much it — and, thus, you rarely see purple cocktails, let alone good ones. But at Elixir Lounge's new location in Andersonville (the original Elixir is in Boystown), lavender and violet syrups give a distinctive amethyst hue to the Flower Power ($11), a gin cocktail with housemade nasturtium bitters and a dash of lemon juice.

The drink was inspired by a customer's request, says Elixir Andersonville's head bartender and manager Vlad Novikov.

"I used to work at the Lakeview location, and one of our regulars was very excited about nasturtiums, and came in and asked if we could make bitters with them or use them in a cocktail somehow," he says. "We ended up making these absolutely fantastic bitters with nasturtiums, cinchona bark and Sichuan peppercorns."

When the bartender and his team put together the menu for Elixir Andersonville, they decided to incorporate the bitters into a new drink: something floral but balanced.

The Flower Power kicks off with Nolet's gin, a favorite of Novikov's for its notes of rose, peach and raspberry; Maison Routin syrups add floral sweetness, and the lemon and housemade bitters balance each sip with tart citrus and woodsy spice, respectively.

The drink's crowning glory, however, is its garnish: A plum-colored, candied hibiscus flower, sourced from local specialty tea supplier Rare Tea Cellar, spills over the lip of the glass in a chic and sugar-preserved bloom.

Eat This: Hot Stone Bibimpap

Bibimbap, which translates to "mixed rice" in Korean, is a signature Korean dish that endures because of its variability. For a meal in a bowl, a choose-your-own combination of sauteed vegetables, white or brown rice, sliced meat or tofu and a garnish of fried, raw or sunny-side egg has something for everyone.

At Kameya, a tiny Lincoln Park BYOB restaurant offering imaginative twists on traditional Japanese and Korean fare — try the spicy tuna tartare tower with house-fried tortilla chips and sweet sauce to start — the hot stone nibimbap entree ($15.95) pops with color and flavor in any iteration. The bowl arrives on a hot stone to keep the contents warm and steamy, starting with the sumptuous bed of grain rice, white or brown, and rising up to the wheel of assorted veggies, which include bright orange carrot shreds and sliced shiitake mushrooms, and finally to the overlays of a large, sunny-side-up egg and a spray of micro greens. Add beef, chicken or tofu for an additional $1.95 — the tender and lightly seasoned tofu is particularly amenable — stir well before eating and enjoy.

Drink This: Meilleur Cafe

Tucked down a cobblestone alleyway in the West Loop is the not-so-secret gem of RM Champagne Salon: an intimate, opulent wine and Champagne bar resplendent in the soft glow of its living room fireplace and chic, urban-vintage decor. Now adding to the Salon's ambience of romance and nostalgia is a wintertime libation from head bartender Mea Leech: the Meilleur Cafe ($13), which translates to "improved coffee" in French. This light and fluffy cocktail with a creamy finish incorporates one whole egg, two dashes of sarsaparilla bitters, simple syrup, Diep9 Young Genever gin, a cinnamon-spiced mulled wine called Geijer Glogg and Heering Coffee Liqueur, which is a combination of Caribbean rum, cocoa and dark, flavorful coffee. The mix is then dry-shaken, shaken again with tiny ice crystals, strained into a tall tulip glass and garnished with grated nutmeg. As a modern dessert drink with a pedigree that dates back centuries — Leech draws inspiration from the "flip" style of whole egg cocktail first seen in Jerry Thomas' 1862 book "How to Mix Drinks: Or, the Bon Vivant's Companion" — the Meilleur Cafe is a delectable trip back in time worth taking.

Eat This: Original Rainbow Cone

In the South Side neighborhood of Beverly resides an 86-year-old institution: a vintage ice cream shop called the Original Rainbow Cone. Joseph Sapp founded the business with his wife Katherine in 1926, and now their granddaughter Lynn oversees the crowd-pleasing establishment of cups, cones and cakes. However, the shop's eponymous creation still reigns as its most legendary. The Original Rainbow Cone is a hodgepodge of five heavenly flavors: a base of rich chocolate, a second layer of sweet strawberry, a scrumptious middle section of Palmer House (New York vanilla with cherries and walnuts), an upper tier of buttery pistachio, and a final slab of mouth-watering orange sherbet on top. In other words: a concoction so glorious that it must be tasted to be believed.

Drink This: How Do You Like Them Apples

Although apples are more commonly associated with autumn, peak season for the versatile fruit extends to early spring. Bar Takito, the West Loop extension of Division Street hot-spot Takito Kitchen, is showcasing an apple-centric cocktail with urbane appeal. Created by Bar Takito general manager and partner Adam Weber, the How Do You Like Them Apples consists of a cider mix that has been reduced with mulled spices, amaro, cinnamon-infused Finlandia vodka and a dash of brown sugar, poured on the rocks and served in a large, apple-shaped glass. Relying on tart Granny Smith apples and Zucca's rhubarb-accented bitters to cut through the sweetness, this charming $12 cocktail is both nostalgic (reminiscent of "bobbing for apples," Weber says) and ultramodern.

Eat This: ZiZi’s Baklava

The origins of baklava can be traced to the earliest years of the Ottoman Empire, when only the wealthy could afford the simple luxury of flaky, unleavened pastry dough layered with ground nuts and drenched in sweet, golden honey. Now, the centuries-old dessert is a near-ubiquitous menu item in Mediterranean restaurants across the world.

At ZiZi's Cafe, one of the best Turkish spots in Chicago, the plate of baklava ($4.75) is otherworldly. Unlike many Americanized baklavas made with an atrocious amount of corn syrup, ZiZi's version earns its mantle with real honey, which unites with crispy filo and chopped walnuts in light and fluffy squares served fresh out of the oven. Each bite culminates in a rich, warm and deftly layered balance of savory and sweet.

Drink This: Pisco Sours

For a well-crafted pisco sour — the classic South American cocktail spotlighting pisco, a brandy produced in Chile and Peru — look no farther than Rogers Park Social. The community bar and lounge is known for its cocktails, such as the Berry Necessary with muddled seasonal berries and the Rogers Park Palmer with house-made hibiscus iced tea. But RPS' classic pisco sour ($8), shaken with egg white, house-made simple syrup and freshly squeezed lemon juice, is an off-menu libation that merits star billing.

"We use a Chilean pisco called Pisco Control," says manager Wally Andersen. "Chilean pisco is distilled from fully mature wine, as opposed to Peruvian pisco, which is distilled from a young wine." That creates a rich base for the drink; a dash of Angostura bitters "adds an extra layer of flavor," Andersen says.

Tart, frothy and just a teensy bit sweet, this pisco sour tingles the taste buds from first sip to last, with a creamy, bitter-dashed head as the palatable high point. And there's more where that came from.

"One of the reasons I enjoy pisco sours is that they're delightful in their classic form but can also be tweaked to add different flavor variations," Andersen says. The bar's Spicy Ginger Pisco Sour is made with ginger beer syrup; the Blackberry Pisco Sour has fresh muddled blackberries and Edmond Briottet Creme de Mure, which Andersen describes as a "lovely French blackberry liqueur." Like the classic, these two pisco sours are $8 each and currently off-list, so make sure to ask (and tip) your bartender for one or all.

Eat This: Triple-dipped beignets

Pilsen may not be the first Chicago neighborhood that comes to mind when you think of beignets, the deep-fried puff pastries that originated in France and have since become synonymous with New Orleans. Yet you'll find some of the best in the city at Pilsen BYOB cafe Azul 18, where they are battered, fried and puffed to crispy-on-the-outside, fluffy-on-the-inside perfection.

Owner Jose Cruz recommends starting your meal with a warm batch of these made-from-scratch beignets ($4), plated with a medley of Nutella, chocolate and raspberry jam dipping sauces. The dish is designed to come out of the kitchen quickly — fry and go — so you can dig in while cooks labor over your main course.

Unlike at New Orleans' famed Café du Monde, Azul 18's beignets are served without a blizzard of powdered sugar on top; this is where those decadent, house-made dipping sauces come in. Break off a fluffy piece of pastry, dunk into all three of the sauces, and take a bite. A symphony of flavors — tart fruit jam, rich milk chocolate and savory hazelnut cascading over sweet fried dough — awaits.

Drink This: Ides of March

"I wanted to create a cocktail that evoked feelings of winter, with the promise of spring on the horizon," says Atwood bartender Ryan Burns of the Ides of March ($14), a drink that's just right for this temperature-fluctuating time of year.

Burns chose bright and herbal flavors for the cocktail — Hendrick's gin, Aquavit, yellow Chartreuse, absinthe — to create a refreshing switch from the dark, rich and spicy drinks we've been downing all winter. Cocchi Americano and orange bitters add balance.

Even the gorgeous ice garnish toes the line between winter and spring. It's inspired by an icy Lake Michigan, but the flavors frozen within — cucumber and mint — promise warmer days ahead.