I ’ve been obliged to review an excess of high-profile hotel restaurants in 2017, and it’s been making me grouchy all year. Even the good ones follow a formula that implies they aren’t for Chicagoans. By their nature hotel restaurants encourage visitors to stay in their bubble and avoid exploring the thousands of other cheffy cheeseburgers the city has to offer—they’re about keeping in, not attracting.
Sunflower hummus with flaxseed crackers sounds like a depressant at a vegan commune, but the creamy swirl of nut butter is suffused with tangy artichoke and almost cheesy thanks to nutritional yeast. The pile of nutty brittle it comes with should be sold by the bag in the gift shop. Burrata, the second-most obligatory menu item of the last decade, is here one of the period’s most original, garnished with candied squash, semidried persimmons, and charred ginger and served with honey-garlic sourdough toast. Brussels sprouts, another old warhorse, are revived plated three ways, whole raw and fried leaves alongside shavings piled to conceal smoky deposits of whitefish, its salinity countered by candied poppy seeds and orange vinaigrette. Whole roasted chicken, another standard, rests on an assemblage of rich pan juices, fresh herbs, masa dumplings (tamales by any other name), and roasted squash, along with an herb-and-apple-bedecked tartine with chicken-liver mousse curlicued across the surface. Sweet, just barely cooked shrimp kissed with lardo and drizzled with brown butter and walnut-apple saba seems to channel a weirdly compelling union between sea life and apple pie. A wobbly tower of Boston bibb lettuce and Granny Smith apples is pleasantly dilled with green goddess dressing inspired by a “natural food salad dressing” Marisol herself contributed to the 1977 Museum of Modern Art Artists’ Cookbook. It’s a work of minimalism that stands out in this crowd.
The very best thing about Marisol is that Hammel and company aren’t presenting boring food. They’re challenging themselves, like artists are known to do. You slash the canvases sometimes when you do that. Fortunately, a restaurant isn’t a motionless painting. It’s an ongoing performance, and this is only the beginning of Marisol’s already promising run. v
205 E. Pearson 312-799-3599marisolchicago.com
