CHOW: Sunday Dinner Club

I love Chicago.

This is what I had to eat last night:

Sunday Dinner Club

Sun. Feb 26th and Thurs. March 2^nd, 2006

A Tribute to Pork

First

House-made Sausage

Pork Dumpling

Second

Grilled Loin with Cavolo Nero, and Cherry Gastrique

Third

Mixed Greens with Pancetta, Quail Egg and Croutons

Main

Braised Shoulder with White Corn Polenta, Roasted Beets, Salsify, Crispy Skins and Caramelized Onions

Dessert

Bacon Wrapped Mascarpone-filled Dates with Sherry Reduction

Christine, Jason and Josh cooked for PBP, Kingmaker, me and 11 other lucky bastards. Everyone, from the folks in the kitchen to our fellow foodie-minded dinner guests, were charming and cool. I wish, I WISH I could tell you where we ate. I wish I could send you into their kitchen.

But I can't.

Many, many props to Madman, MixMaster K and Miz Eng for the heads up.

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Date: Friday, January 6, 2006
Edition: Chicago Final
Section: Tempo
Source: By Monica Eng, Tribune staff reporter


PSSSSSST!

Hey, buddy, care for some ...

BRUSSELS SPROUT LEAVES?

Underground dining surfaces in Chicago

This summer I sneaked around New York eating scrumptious meals in secret, unlicensed restaurants. I finished my report with a wistful lament about the lack of such cool places in Chicago.

The lament was genuine but also almost a dare for underground chefs to come out of the woodwork.

It worked.

Within a few weeks, I was contacted about something called the Sunday Dinner Club. It's like a tiny private restaurant open twice a month in a toasty Wicker Park apartment, where three cooking school graduates serve up delightful meals along with a large helping of bonhomie.

The bad news: I can't tell you where it is and how to get reservations. That's all a secret. Like the places I wrote about in NYC, this restaurant operates through personal referrals only. Also, even though the payments for the meals are called "donations," the place is not a licensed restaurant.

And such under-the-radar ventures tend to make Chicago officials antsy, even if it's not entirely clear which officials should be feeling the ants.

"If they are operating illegally, then we would want to look into it as soon as possible and take any and all appropriate action," says Tim Hadac at the Chicago Department of Public Health. "But in terms of whether or not they are operating as a business, the final arbiter would be the Department of Revenue."

So I called the Department of Revenue to get the final word, and its representative told me that it would actually be matter for the Department of Business Affairs and Licensing.

So I called Rosa Escareno at the Department of Business Affairs and Licensing and she told me: "The term 'donation' is vague. But any time there is money changing hands then it could be considered a retail food establishment and it would need a license. But in terms of the rules on where they could prepare the foods, that would be the Department of Public Health."

So to avoid being busted by any of those departments, the trio of chefs has asked for their last names and specifics on their day jobs at -- let's just say--"fancy" Chicago restaurants to be withheld.

On the licensing matter, one of the chefs whose first name is Christine responds, "We consider ourselves more of a supper club than underground restaurant. Admission is based on friends, family and referrals only. We are not open to the public at large. Any suggested monetary contributions made by our guests are to cover the cost of food."

Christine and the other two chefs -- Josh and Jason -- are complete foodies.

So when they read another piece about underground restaurants early last year they thought, "Wow, why don't we do this too?" Christine remembered.

Soon after, they wrote to tell me about this ambitious twice-monthly venture that had them serving sumptuous five-course meals in their home for a donation of around $45 a person.

After reading the tempting menus they sent me from previous dinners, I signed up for the next possible spot. The week of the dinner, I got an e-mail with the address of the house hosting the dinner. And on the appointed night, my mom and I navigated Wicker Park's one way streets to finally locate the vintage brick two-flat where through the partially steamed-up living room window we could see a friendly group of folks settling in at a long wooden table.

When we entered, the chefs greeted us, took our coats and seated us at the beautifully set table for 10. Lovely smells wafted out of the kitchen as we met our fellow diners, uncorked our wine and munched on Red Hen bakery bread with sweet butter.

Some were proud parents of the young chefs, some were acquaintances and some were friends of friends who'd recently learned of this little dining gem.

As we worked through the courses from bread and amuse bouche to cheese course and dessert, we chatted, sampled one another's wine and got frequent visits from the chefs who were happy to explain the intricacies of their creations. Still, we wondered why hard-working chefs would go through all this bother on their days off, for -- given the quality of the produce -- a pretty slim profit margin.

In the months after writing my story, I learned that profit is not the big motivating factor for these kinds of informal eateries that have been around for many years in various temporary forms. That's because the aim is usually to use the place as a test bed for new concepts, to gain a group of fans and perhaps find bankrollers for a new project among those enthusiasts.

Christine admits she and her compatriots would like to open their own place one day, but for now, she says, it's mostly about having nice people over for dinner and stretching their creative culinary wings.

"I just love having people over at my house and being able to provide amazing food for them," she says. "We make a little money, but it is more about education and showing people what can be done with wonderful seasonal produce or this terrific lamb we found that day. In our day jobs, we are sometimes limited, but this opens up the possibility of doing 99 different types of cuisine, French one week or Thai, Mexican or Italian the next if we want to."

Only friends of those who have already partaken can be referred and invited to the dinners. But the trio can be hired to cater meals in customers' homes by e-mailing them at: info@sundaydinnerchicago.com.

Because of their informal nature, these kinds of restaurants are notoriously ephemeral. Due to lost leases and creative differences, both of the places I ate at in New York vanished within months only to resurface somewhere else. So, if you do manage to get on the Dinner Club list, you'd be wise to try it right away. Because you never know when these dinner parties are going to be over.

I didn't think they could outdo their previous dinner, which was a was so full of interesting textures and clean interpretations of pre- and post-colonial Mexican cuisine that it made you wanna smack your mama.

But they did.

I'm going again on Thursday.

My heart hurts. But it's a good ache.