Dish From Chicago Magazine
Dining critic John Kessler and dining editor Amy Cavanaugh offer their critiques of restaurants around Chicago, along with their perspectives on trends and happenings in the local hospitality scene.
Dish From Chicago Magazine
A Review of Thalaiva’s and a Dining Lightning Round
Hosts John Kessler and Amy Cavanaugh offer their short (but hot) takes on places they've been eating and drinking lately. Plus, John discusses his latest review, for Thalaiva’s Indian Kitchen in Park Ridge.
My feeling is like that is like — that restaurant is like the restaurant version of a 50 year old guy in a Wilco t-shirt. You know it's —
Amy Cavanaugh:I exactly what you mean. Welcome to Dish from Chicago magazine. I'm Amy Cavanaugh, Chicago magazine's dining editor.
John Kessler:Hey, and I'm John Kessler, Chicago magazine's dining critic.
Amy Cavanaugh:And today we're talking about John's latest review, which is of Thalaiva's Indian kitchen in Park Ridge. It's a spot that John's really excited about that highlights cooking from an underrepresented region of India. We'll also have a lightning round of short takes on places we've been eating and drinking lately, which includes a Middle Eastern tasting menu and a Filipino-Hawaiian bodega. And we'll wrap things up, as always, with the best things we've eaten lately, which includes a new Indonesian hot dog.
John Kessler:Sounds good to me. Let's, let's make a podcast.
Amy Cavanaugh:So you and I have both been eating out non stop the past two weeks.
John Kessler:We have, yes.
Amy Cavanaugh:One of my favorites was Kanin, which is the new Filipino-Hawaiian bodega in Ravenswood. I went early in
John Kessler:You, you just like anything that's purple, right? the morning, and they had four types of, like musubi behind an in a like a warmer on the counter. So I got all four flavors, and my favorite was the longanisa and egg. It was ridiculously good. I feel like I could start every morning with one of those. They're getting a lot of buzz for their ube-banana pudding, which, banana pudding is not my favorite food, but I tried it, and this was a really delicious version, and it's a beautiful color. So really fun, like.
Amy Cavanaugh:Yeah, I have a hard time with bananas, but yeah, really, really fun spot. It's next door to Side Practice Coffee. So looking forward to going back and working from Side Practice, getting a coffee, and then they turn out, like, plate lunches at 11. So gonna head back for one of those.
John Kessler:Oh, wow, that sounds great. Do they do those Hawaiin plate lunches where it's like, two scoops of rice and one scoop of a macaroni salad?
Amy Cavanaugh:I think so, because I was able, I got a container of the mac salad to go, and a container of, like, spicy cucumber salad, and they were both really good. So promising new spot.
John Kessler:That's great. All right. Well, I'll take your Filipino-Hawaiian bodega and raise you one seafood pop up in a natural wine bar. How about that?
Amy Cavanaugh:Sounds great.
John Kessler:Alright, so the good people of Motorshucker, the oyster seafood pop up. They were at Guild Row in Avondale for a while. They've been here, they've been there. They are now at Easy Does It. You know that place? The one, have you been to Easy Does It? The upstairs wine bar?
Amy Cavanaugh:Yeah, yeah. I've been upstairs. I really love their their summer patio. When they take out over like that whole side parking lot, it's like a summer block party.
John Kessler:Oh, wow. I gotta check that out. But anyhow, Easy Does It is there, you can go get oysters to go go during a happy hour when the wines are like eight bucks a glass. It's Jamie Davis and Mico Hillyard who are the chefs. And they do some delicious homemade potato chips with trout roe and creme fresh, and other business, which is exactly what you want to snack on.
Amy Cavanaugh:Nice, yeah, I went to a Motorshucker pop up at Three Dots and a Dash and they are doing some really cool
stuff. All right. Also seafood:I went to Obélix and I had a really good meal. But my favorite dish was, I'm sorry to say it was a special so I don't know if they have it anymore, but it was just like, really fantastic: quenelles de brochet, the pike dumplings. But it was made by a cook who had just come back from New Orleans, so it was like New Orleans seasoning. It was ridiculously delicious. Super, super fun. I posted a photo on my Instagram, and I got a lot of messages from people asking, Why isn't this dish more readily available? I don't know. I'm a big fan. Lot of people also seem to be be big fans of this dish, which I've only ever had a few times. So they're like, light, airy, fishy dumplings, and they're really tasty. And we capped things off with a pandan souffle, which was also special and also really good.
John Kessler:Okay, let's stay French. I went to Dear Margaret again, which you and I both love.
Amy Cavanaugh:Love Dear Margaret.
John Kessler:Oh man, and I love going there at to sit at the bar and have one big plate of food and two glasses of wine. That is my happy place. They have on the menu now a nettle and chèvre agnolotti pasta. It comes in an onion, brodo, and the whole thing is covered with this grated, hard Swiss cheese called Belper Knolle, which is like super funky Parmesan, and it was springy and delicious.
Amy Cavanaugh:Oh, that sounds fantastic. In a totally different direction, I went to the new Mister Tiger, which just opened in West Town a couple months ago, and it's very much like Korean home cooking. We did, you know, bulgogi, we did kimchi fried rice. Everything was really tasty. They're very much in soft-open mode, though. I was talking to their beverage director. He came over from the Whistler, and so there's some really good drinks there, but he told me that they are going to be significantly adding to the food menu and to the drinks menu as well. So definitely a place to keep on your radar. And I think once they kind of do their grand opening or whatever they're doing, worth a visit.
John Kessler:Oh man, I can't wait to try it. I love Korean food. All right, I'm gonna go in, like, yet another completely different direction. And I went back to Piece Pizzeria in Wicker Park. We were, like, going to a concert. We just needed to pop in somewhere and get a quick dinner. I hadn't been in a while, and, man, that place is like, you know, there's so much like, Detroit-style pizza and super-trendy-ingredient tavern style and all this stuff. And it's just nice to go back and just get like that pizza in that place with those people. And I, my feeling is like, that is like— that restaurant is like the restaurant version of a 50-year-old guy in a Wilco t-shirt. You know?
Amy Cavanaugh:I know exactly what you mean.
John Kessler:Yeah? Great. Very happy to go back and the beer was good.
Amy Cavanaugh:Yeah. Piece is a real classic. I haven't been in a little while, but, you know, we need places like that.
John Kessler:We do. You know, keep it real.
Amy Cavanaugh:I went to Oriole, which, as you may know, is one of my favorite tasting menus in town. I think that what I truly love about it is since they renovated after the pandemic, when you now like journey through the space where you go in and you have drinks at the bar and little bites, and then they whisk you off to the kitchen, where you stand in the kitchen and have a plate of foie gras and another drink, and then they bring you to your table. But it's like 45 minutes before you, you know, reach your table. So you're just really getting to experience the space, you're seeing all the different rooms. And I just love it. I love that whole experience. The food is always, you know, really impeccable, and the service is always really great. I think it's, it's a special place that, you know. I think that Noah and his team really know how diners want to experience fine dining these days. And I saw Damarr Brown in the dining room, so it was a good celebrity sighting.
John Kessler:Very cool. Yeah, I'm with you there. I like that journey through space. It's like you enter like a wormhole and suddenly, but it's like, it is like that.
Amy Cavanaugh:It's so good. So this review is the kind of review that I love most from
you:a place that I think doesn't, you know, isn't super well known within the city. I know that you talk about how crowded the original location is all the time, but I haven't been and I get really excited when you get to dive deep into these places that really deserve more attention. So tell me, you know, kind of the backstory. What made you want to review this place?
John Kessler:I first went to Thalaiva's, must have been about five or six years ago, just before the pandemic, and it was at the recommendation of a good Indian friend. And what appealed to me was that they specialize in South Indian cooking, which I really, really love. And so I went back a few times, and then they decided to move, or not really move, according to the website, they're opening a second location. But what was confusing was the second location was directly around the corner from the first location. So I went to check it out. It's a bit of a fancier-looking restaurant, and it's got a real particular specialty, which is not just South Indian cooking, but the cooking from a region called Kongu Nadu. Does that like ring a bell to you at all? Or did it before I wrote the review?
Amy Cavanaugh:Not at all. I'd never heard of that before.
John Kessler:It's not a kind of cooking you often see translated into Indian restaurants abroad. It is a menu that is super fun to explore. There are a lot of dishes there that I've like, never heard about, never tried before. It was a bit of like throwing darts at the menu. But I'm glad I did.
Amy Cavanaugh:Yeah, what are some of the like, signature dishes or signature ingredients from this region?
John Kessler:So the owners are Revathi Manoharan and Vinoth Raju. They're a married couple, and they're both from a city in Kongu Nadu called Coimbatore, and it's a farming area. So they're really famous for, like, grains. There are a lot of meat curries. It doesn't have a lot of warm spices in it. It's a lot of cumin and coriander and hot chili. It's coconut-based, the curries. It's not dairy-based. It's just like homey, homey, delicious — you can just kind of crave when you just want something that's just like a big, warm hug of flavor.
Amy Cavanaugh:How does the menu at this spot compare to what they had been doing at the original?
John Kessler:So the original was just more all over South India, North India, and, you know, whatever people wanted. But they did a lot of, like the Tamil-style cooking. You know, a lot of the dosas, those, you know, big, flat, crispy crepes that are made of rice and lentil flour and then filled with potatoes or other things. The idlis, the steamed lentil rice flour, kind of like puffs. And then uttapam, which are the thicker pancakes, and stuff like that. They also still have the original place, which is closed now for remodeling and will reopen as a kind of a early morning breakfast place and then a late night kind of biryani house. Park Ridge is not a five-minute drive for everybody. I get that. But it's not that far out, y'all. It's, you know, it's a close in suburb. It's a sweet little downtown. I think if you like Indian food, everybody needs to go.
Amy Cavanaugh:If the menu is really large, what would be like a good starting spot for someone who's dining there?
John Kessler:So if you want to get a little bit of this, a little bit of that, their thali is served South Indian style, on a banana leaf. It's really pretty, you get a bit of that, that really good biryani I was talking about, along with three of their different curries, you get a chicken curry that I love. It's little like pieces of hacked up chicken with the bone and everything. So I love bone food, but be prepared. There's a fish curry and then also a goat curry. And they have different kinds of vegetable dishes that you wouldn't normally find elsewhere, like dry curries, where, you know, you might get potatoes that are cooked with spices and shredded coconut, but not in a gravy or anything, just dry. So get the biyani and then go from there.
Amy Cavanaugh:All right, cool, I know that South Indian is one of your favorite styles of food. Where else can people try South Indian food in Chicago or other types of regional Indian food?
John Kessler:Before we get to other regional types — I've made South Indian like an area of study. You know? I've like, I study it the way some people study the Kabbalah. I'm very interested in knowing everything about South Indian food. So let me tell you, there is, of course, the wonderful Thattu, which, you know, it's got a lot of press when it opened a couple years ago. That's in Avondale. They specialize in the cooking of Kerala, which is on the like the western coast, the Malabar coast of South India that has one of the most celebrated regional cuisines of India, speaking of Malabar coast. There's a place called Malabar Foods in Glenview, which is a grocery store and a caterer. And they have this great, like, carryout catering section where you get all these, like, just these hot, like, big old dishes of like, different, you know, all sorts of food enough to serve four people for, like, 10-12, bucks. Where else. Udupi Palace is on Devon, is is always been fine. Madhura Cafe is up in Deerfield. And I always go there after visiting my cardiologist, because he's up in Deerfield. And then recently, a place called Trilokah just moved from Schaumburg to Lincoln Park. I wanna go back. It's right up the street from Pequods. And they do, like, I got a chili cheese dosa there. That was, you know, respectable. It was, it was a good lunch.
Amy Cavanaugh:All right. Well, John, what's the best thing you ate lately?
John Kessler:I went with some friends to Mano a Mano, which I had been meaning to go back to. That's the Italian restaurant in Logan Square. Pastas were pretty good. The thing we absolutely all went bonkers over was this little gem and gorgonzola salad. It had this creamy Gorgonzola base, the lettuce, pickled onions, chunks of very, very mild Gorgonzola and a final splash of just a nice acidic vinaigrette. And it was just like, it's just the flavors were so perfectly in balance. I just want to go back there and get that, not share it with anybody. How about you?
Amy Cavanaugh:That sounds fantastic. Well, I had lunch at Rendang Republic today, which is John Avila’'s Indonesian spot in
John Kessler:Is the Indonesian hot dog? Wrigleyville.
Amy Cavanaugh:This is the Indonesian hot dog. Everything in that restaurant smelled incredible. But if there's a fancy hot dog, I'm getting the fancy hot dog.This one., he's actually got a Duck Inn link. So it's a chicken hot dog made by the Duck Inn crew. And it's like, inspired by a Chicago dog. So there's like, sambal aioli, tomato, fried shallot, acar acar relish, cilantro and green onion on a poppy seed bun. Really fun. Very much looking forward to going back there.
John Kessler:Wow, is it the kind of thing where you can actually wrap your, you know, your mouth around it, or?
Amy Cavanaugh:It's a little big, but, you know,
John Kessler:We like that.
Amy Cavanaugh:I made do.
John Kessler:We approve.
Amy Cavanaugh:Yeah, yeah, we approve. Yeah, and it was packed today. There was a Cubs
John Kessler:All right. Gotta check it out. I loved his work game happening about an hour later, so that could have been at Minahasa, when he was in that downtown food hall. Where was it, Revival, I think? part of it. But, yeah, good for him. He's really — I'm glad he has his own spot. Thanks for joining us for this episode of Dish from Chicago magazine. Your hosts are dining editor Amy Cavanaugh and critic John Kessler. Editing by Sarah Steimer and music by Bill Harris. You can find us online at Chicagomag.com Please be sure to follow, rate, and review us wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you next time.