I wish I could show you a photograph of the voluptuous grilled cheese sandwich I crushed at Fort Willow a few weeks back. That’s a new cocktail bar that sits across the street from the thundering tubular machinery of the Sipi Metals copper-stripping plant. The boite, from David Morton and Michael Kornick’s DMK Restaurants, is hidden off Elston on the decreasingly industrial east end of River West, dead west of the river, in fact.
Whatever it was, it’s not going to stop my good friend the First Amendment from making sure you have the most vivid mental picture of the food and drink at Fort Willow that language and art together can paint. To that end, we’ve called in top-notch illustrator Chantal Bennett to render images of the grilled cheese and a few other dishes based on the restaurant’s Instagram account and my shitty iPhone snaps.
Chile lurks in the small bowl of boiled peanuts and dried anchovy (the latter aka Indonesian ikan bilis). The Lebanese herbal blend zatar, earthy with hyssop and tart with sumac, adorns the rich, creamy goat cheese labneh served with finger-ready mini naan. Brittle-battered double-fried cauliflower florets are draped with a slow-burning serrano and poblano hot sauce. Bites of crab salad are loaded with harissa that chases the sweet meat, while charred broccoli is saturated with peanut sauce imbued with a sneaking burn.
1721 N. Elston 773-687-8898 fort-willow.com
