Naha

Alright my readers, time for another long over-due review. Eh, who am I kidding. My only two readers, Amanda my wife and Ariella my sister. Do you believe that!? Not even MY MOTHER reads my blog – granted, I never told her about this in the first place, but none-the-less…

So, a few weeks back my wife and I got together with a friend of mine from business school and his wife for a night out. Admittedly, neither Amanda nor I are very good at staying out late, hell I practically fall asleep by 9:45 when I’m back in Chicago – honestly. Well, we had a reservation for 9:30 or some ungodly hour on a Saturday night, and to make things worse, my wife decided to go against God and wear pants (Deuteronomy 22:5); I am not a pious man – probably even not a completely believing man, but religion does get things right ever once in a while… women only wearing skirts, I would have added only SHORT skirts 10 inches above the knee with some high heels!

Back to the story...so, the place we went to was Naha, located downtown right off Clark. First thing we observed was the valet right. NICE. Something like 12 dollars for <3 hours and 14 dollars for >3 hours. Perfect. I hope you all know my rule on valet. The price cannot exceed $3-4 more than the price of mass transit (this means always valet when you have more than 2 people in the car).

My wife being a huge lush concocted a plan with my friend’s wife to get there early and drink. We arrived sometime around 7:30 and waited a few minutes for our friends to get to Naha. In the mean time, the place was ok. A mix of urban trendy – which I dislike (think concrete floors) - and upscale. There was one weird aspect though. The place had its trendiness in style, but there were no hot chicks – sans my wife (yes, my friend’s wife was there too, but I only judge my wife and women I don’t know). I mean not even the hostesses were hot…really, the hostess…for crying out loud I think the Hooters hostesses are more attractive (we’re talking Chicago Hooters, not Florida Hooters).

A table at the bar opened up, the bar area was very expansive, and the four of us sat down some time around 7:50. This was nice, it turned out we could even order from those seats, sayonara 9:30 reservation.

Oh shit. Are you kidding me!? Seriously!? I was livid already and it wasn’t even 8:00. The bread, the FUCKING bread. I looked at my compatriots – fortunately our friends are as discerning as me, possibly more so – and I said something disparaging like “I can’t believe they just gave us Entenmann’s bread”, my wife piped up with “it’s probably Sarah Lee” – who knew I was married to a lush AND a comedienne? Our friends knew my dislike of bad bread. The night was so far a bit of a disappointment, no hot chicks and crappy bread, booooooo.

Tommy, the bar waiter, comes over to us, he seems to be a sincere guy and gives us each a few menus, both the regular and bar menu. “Arbitrage,” – huh, what was that, apparently our friends noticed an arbitrage deal going on between the two menus, the bar menu had a $12 oysters and $14 on the regular menu, they both had the same description. This night might turn out cheaper than expected (spoiler alert, I was wrong).

The drinks arrived, both our friends and my wife were very happy with their drinks (my wife had the Chardonnay and Riesling and both were nice, I can’t recall what our friends had).

Look, ya’ll know that I’m a fairly humble and subdued man, but let’s be honest, I’m a baller and anyone I hang out with is also a baller (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=baller). There was so much on the menu I wanted, I didn’t know what to get. A few of us noticed the “tasting menu available upon request” at the bottom of the menu, we decided to inquire. Tommy said it was 5.5 courses, Chef’s choice, for 125 a pop. Uhm, maybe. “Yes.” What!? Yes, to what…great Mike ordered the tasting menu, it’s not cool for one baller to do something and the other to decline, yes, I too got the tasting menu. My wife got the mushroom soup and the Quail while Mike’s wife got the Venison – medium rare (nice). We also had an appetizer of Foie Gras…mmm, close to perfection.

Wow, well this review is getting long already, let me start on all the food we had:

Foie Gras, Seared Scallop, Fennel and Turnip Soup with brioche grilled goat cheese, short ribs on grits with brussel sprouts, mushroom soup, gnocchi, risotto with bacon, oysters with béarnaise sorbet, whitefish with pepper mustard and crab, wild pacific cod, beef brisket, venison and quail. Well, I can’t really describe all this, if you check out the menu online you’ll see it.

Let’s cut to the chase. WOW. Foie Gras was good, my wife who doesn’t eat it liked it. Fennel and Turnip soup was ok, the grilled cheese was a tad coagulated. The grits on the short ribs were very good and Mike’s wife who doesn’t normally eat brussel sprouts or mushrooms actually enjoyed both. The mushroom soup was a bit eh and the gnocchi, quite frankly was actually subpar given the standard of the rest of the meal (probably a 6). Though what really ruined the meal was the risotto. I’ve actually made better at home. The oysters were ok, but the béarnaise sorbet…WOW, that put it into upper, upper echelon territory, damn that was good. I personally was not impressed with the whitefish, but Mike was, we’ll give that one a 7.5, I was NOT impressed with the wild pacific cod, the beef brisket was high quality, but Fat Willy’s Rib Shack, I think, makes a better beef brisket. The venison was delicious, as was the accoutrements that the venison came in. The quail, I thought fell a bit short, maybe a 5.5-6. My wife really liked it though.

Then we had dessert. I’ll be honest, I forget what everyone got, though I did get a rocky road sundae that was awesome. The female chef even came out to meet us but we all were so drunk on food that we didn’t do her any justice.

This place was great. Really. The bill was a bit much (we haven’t gone out since), but DEFINITELY worth it.

I’m giving this place a 9-9.5. I would advise patrons to not order the typical stuff, get the fancy stuff on the menu, you’ll be much happier.

CHICAGO LAND, go here, make it a mainstay of your dinning locales.

Good Eats my friends.