If there was ever a place that made me wish the Reader rated restaurants on a four-star scale, it’s A10, Matthias Merges’s much-anticipated foray into Hyde Park.
I’m tempted to hold A10 to both a higher and a lower standard. Higher because Merges has not only Charlie Trotter’s on his resumé but Yusho, his spunky izakaya in Avondale, and Billy Sunday, a bespoke cocktail bar in Logan Square. Lower because the bar has been set depressingly low in Hyde Park, a destination that cries out for the quality restaurants found in those northwest-side hoods.
Simplicity is the menu’s unstated theme—this is a place, after all, that serves a naked piece of cold smoked trout over a bed of whipped potatoes—and yet restraint was absent in many of the dishes I tried. In others it was excessive to the point of boredom.
A salted-cod croquette was overwhelmed by aioli (a difficult feat) and bore no trace of the charred rapini I’d been looking forward to (that also makes the second time I was promised “char” and denied it). The pizzas sounded intriguing—particularly the smoked eggplant with house-made burrata. But in execution it was just plain uninspired, a Sicilian-style pie sliced into four large wedges and piled unceremoniously onto a plate. The sliver of eggplant was indistinguishable and the burrata cooked to the point of losing its lustrous creaminess. The whole thing was further disgraced by a far-too-liberal dose of balsamic reduction.
If it’s true, as some believe, that Hyde Park is the gateway to the south side, then I’d like to think of A10 being on the cusp of something—hopefully a south-side restaurant renaissance that eventually will extend south of 60th and west of Stony Island. That is an exciting prospect.
1462 E. 53rd773-288-1010a10hydepark.com
