Newer Spanish restaurants in Chicago—and I’m talking about Vera (which is almost three years old) and the upstart MFK—have pursued a rigorously minimal approach, focusing on just a few excellent ingredients in each dish and cooking them simply, without a lot of manipulation. There haven’t been many complaints, as far as I’ve heard. And though we haven’t been deluged with Spanish food like we have with Italian, I’m not unhappy that the latest chef to put a foot on the Iberian Peninsula is doing something a bit different.
Aubin occasionally fills his plates with complementing and contrasting accents to the point of excess, as on a plate of sweetbreads in a mildly truffly sauce Périgueux, all showered with roasted carrots, bacon chunks, huckleberries, and hazelnuts. A Moroccan-accented entree-size duck breast, its fatty skin crosshatched and magnificently seared, is undercut by accompanying dry, confit-stuffed grape leaves and a grayish “burnt” eggplant puree. Slightly less busy dishes come off better, like pink, fresh chorizo-stuffed joints of boned-out quail surrounding a mound of wilted spinach with raisins and pine nuts, dollops of orange piquillo-pepper puree guarding the borders.
Correction: This story has been amended to reflect that HB Home Bistro is open.
621 W. Randolph 312-466-1000salerochicago.com
