When an oyster is perfectly shucked—that is, when its shucker is dexterous with his knife and neatly separates the creature’s shell without scrambling its stomach, feathery gills, or invisibly beating heart, or chipping off any nacreous shrapnel into its delicate anatomy—and then is gently laid on a bed of crushed ice without losing a drop of its precious liquor, it is still alive. I can’t think of very many animals you can eat live without getting arrested. Let’s be thankful they can’t scream.
It was deja vu again with a formidable slab of tough, undercooked pork belly positioned like an immovable monument between two mismatched seared scallops, the entire dish oversweetened with a load of cherry-quince mojo and date gastrique. Executions like that had me believing that the kitchen should stick to a strict seafood diet, but when a whole deep-fried red snapper (another carryover from the Savoy) came to the table clad in a cold, clammy batter, I wondered if I could carbon-date it to figure out how long it sat on the pass before a runner arrived to dispatch it.
1371 W. Chicago 312-988-0644bowandsternoysterbar.com
