At some point early one evening at Stephanie Izard’s new Duck Duck Goat, I looked up and wondered, “Who are all the dead Chinese?” That’s because the walls of that particular semi-isolated dining room (one of several) are covered with sepia-toned portraits of old-timey Asian people, like a gallery of ghosts, each one tagged with a circular red sticker. A server explained that these incongruous dots are meant to draw the eyes upward when the lights go down and the photos fade into the wallpaper, but they just looked like someone had forgotten to remove price tags after returning from the flea market.
After Imperial Lamian, Duck Duck Goat is the second major new Chicago restaurant to prominently feature soup dumplings and hand-pulled noodles. Izard’s xiao long bao are listed modestly as the third item on the dim sum menu. They appear almost discouragingly flat and saucerlike, but each one that arrived at my table was structurally sound, with a thin, translucent wrapper that revealed some of the character of the surprising broth within—dark, hot, and redolent of five-spice seasoning. They’re remarkable, especially in light of the disasters I wrote about at Imperial Lamian.
A handful of challenging cocktails, one with duck-fat-washed bourbon, plum, and root beer, and another with mushroom-infused whiskey and musty rice wine, test the limits of what should be legal on a drink menu. More delicate options, such as a Tang-like vodka, carrot, ginger, and turmeric combo or a frothy tea-infused whiskey potion with a marigold floater, seem like something you might feel safe introducing to the underage. Best stick with the wine list, which offers a decent number of bottles, whites in particular, that can handle these flavor profiles.
857 W. Fulton 312-902-3825duckduckgoatchicago.com
