I was once taken by well-meaning hosts to a large Italian chain restaurant in the midsize city of Gwangju, South Korea. After several weeks of stuffing me with everything the putative bread basket of the peninsula had to offer, they thought I might be missing a taste of home. So we went for pizza.
Jennifer Kim of Passerotto is the next candidate for this esteemed club. Kim, you may remember, was formerly a chef at the ungoogleably named, extortionately priced, and ultimately doomed C Chicago, who escaped that shipwreck with her then- boyfriend, chef Bill Montaigne, and resurfaced to open Snaggletooth, a marvelous Lakeview microdeli where the two made art with cured fish and bagels. There she had a hand in creating a pastrami-cured trout tartine with a schmear of seared, pureed kimchi piled on pumpernickel. “It’s one the most visually stunning and delicious things I’ve ingested all year,” I slobbered in 2016, just a year before the place closed.
Same goes for a pile of ruddy, funky, life-affirming lamb tartare showered in Parmesan and violet chive blossoms with sweet curls of Asian pear, a soy-mirin-sugar confit egg yolk lurking in its midst waiting to disperse its rich unctuousness. Large salty puffed-rice crackers dusted with black lime, the irresistible vehicle for this, earn a spot in the movie-theater-snack hall of fame I’m currently seeking funding for.
For dessert there’s just one option: the Tuscan biscuits known as cantuccini with the traditional pairing of a glass of the dessert wine vin santo or the “straw wine” passito, made from dried grapes.
5420 N. Clark 708-607-2102 passerottochicago.com
