Smyth – Chicago 2*

Overall very enjoyable. Some issues with the courses and sizing of courses throughout.

The corn ice was a corn custard with frozen corn ice on top. It was brazenly acidic and sharp, with a ton of spice from the chili glaze. Bold and challenging first full course…not our favorite.

Oyster was amazing, had a watermelon oyster broth on it, ultra refreshing.

Lobster claw and lobster corral was excellent. Creamy lobster custard and a cold one bite claw. Lobster custard was lightly smoky and delicate while still being very rich.

Geoduck ceviche literally tasted like the smell of the ocean. If you like that, you’d love this. Otherwise you’d hate it.

Missed the photo of the Dungeness crab so I’m using theirs off their Instagram. It was really good but insanely nutty. There was a hazelnut oil with almond milk on the bottom, and then green almonds and a nut “fudge” butter. O think they mentioned walnut too. I enjoyed it still but the intensity of the nut flavor was a lot.

Their avocado dish is always excellent, but this wasn’t my favorite iteration. Cucumber shishito slush on the bottom overpowered the subtle avocado. The herbs and coated avocado are amazing, wish that was more of the focus.

Summer squash and caviar wasn’t memorable and isn’t pictured. Lot of flavors of pumpkin with a tomato broth poured table side. It was a chawanmushi at the bottom. Couldn’t taste the caviar.

Lobster tail and salsa macha was a weird description for it, because it was really another lobster and raspberry dish. Lobster was poached in raspberry butter. This was amazing, my favorite dish of the night.

The beef was great and came with a truffle and cheese filled brioche donut that had bone marrow caramel on it. All just as good as you’d expect. Flavor bomb for sure.

Then, savory kind of abruptly ended – never had any starches or anything with any of the dishes, so we admittedly were not stuffed.

First dessert was easily the favorite, potato peel ice cream with a pecan caramel…just amazing! Savory and sweet.

Next flight of desserts were underwhelming. Seaweed dark chocolate was on top of another see flavored ice cream. Burnt chocolate and cherry is certainly not what I
it tasted like lol. It tasted like cooked marijuana/the smell of ABV – if you know what I’m talking about you’ll know exactly what the dessert tasted like. The other little bites were good not great in my opinion!

Wine pairings were fun. I love doing a standard and reserve pairing and comparing them, but my main gripe with this was that 3 of the pours were the same for both pairing tiers, including the final pour. Slightly disappointing as a finale. I’m going for my level 2 CMS right now, so I had good conversation with the incredibly knowledgeable staff. I learned a lot, though one of my servers who poured several of the courses was very inconsistent. Like sometimes she over poured, sometimes under poured.

I’ll be excited to compare Oriole to Smyth directly in a few weeks – I haven’t been to Oriole since they were unstarred. Smyth takes big swings with their menu and can definitely miss, but they have a few home runs every time. Reminds me that I need to get back to El Ideas. Menu at the end has the reserve pairings for whoever is curious.

by apfeiff19