It feels like I just licked a toad.” That was the observation of a friend a few minutes after he sat down at Bar Biscay. He didn’t mean the food. He was referring to the oscillating lysergic energy of the room, in which different colored LED strips and floating tubes imperceptibly pulse from the ceiling and walls, and then somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly. A girl with kaleidoscope eyes.
Still, adopting that concept is an audacious mission to take on when your restaurant is in the landlocked midwest. Anderes came to the project after two different chefs, one of them MFK vet Jeremy Leven, were announced to lead the kitchen, then suddenly, and for unspecified reasons, weren’t leading the kitchen anymore.
Along with appropriate cheeses and cured meats and a few canned conservas, say, high-quality Spanish sardines dressed with pickled fennel and red onion, or briny cockles washed in tart sherry butter, these are among the simplest and most resolutely regional bites on the menu. Anderes also offers fresh oysters, a scallop crudo, and fresh prawns, headless (perhaps these are being served at MFK?) and served curling over avocado halves sprinkled with a paprika-espelette pepper blend and drizzled with apple balsamic vinegar.
As good as we have it here in the midwest, our standards of perfection in product are generally nowhere nearly as good as it gets in the lands that meet the Bay of Biscay. As Americans, we compensate with in-your-face flavors, extra please, with extra sauce. Anderes delivers that, and delivers it well. In those terms it’s almost more of an American menu than a European one.
1450 W. Chicago 312-455-8900 barbiscay.com
