Hi, my name’s Sean,” said the server, flagrantly at variance with his crisp, white, 50s-style gas-station-attendant work shirt, which clearly identified him as “Lloyd.” At Bernie’s Lunch & Supper, the first foray into Chicago from a nascent restaurant group based in the Detroit area, all the servers wear pseudonyms.
The menu is equally unfocused; the Mediterranean is a big drink of water, after all. Spain, Italy, and southern France all weigh in, but none more memorably than Lebanon, with a dish confusingly called “lamb hashwi.” Normally hashwi is a rice dish, but here it’s a smooth spread of hummus embedded with pine nuts, pomegranate seeds, and a mince of za’atar-spiced lamb so fine it could be a sauce. It doesn’t matter. It’s devastating—an eruption of sweet, sour, and savory that’s perfect dredged up with scraps of thick, puffy flatbread sheened with olive oil, a confounding but delicious cross between pita and Navajo fry bread.
If you haven’t gathered by now, the current menu is heavily dependent on summer produce—corn, tomatoes, squash, carrots—and it’ll be interesting to see how Sklar’s people interpret this sunny food come fall and winter, after he’s moved on to his next venture (earlier this spring he told Crain’s Detroit Business his goal is to open 70 restaurants). In addition to those seasonally dependent dishes, there are a handful of concessions to picky eaters unwilling to get behind the already vague concept: a cheeseburger, a turkey burger, a French dip sandwich, cotes de boeuf for two.
660 N. Orleans 312-624-9892bernieslunchandsupper.com
