I tried to eat way more meat than is good for the body at Tête Charcuterie, but for days afterward all I could think about was a salad.
At the moment Tête only has a few of its own cured sausages available—either a la carte (in one-ounce or one-and-a-half ounce portions) or arrayed on charcuterie boards featuring an ever-rotating assortment that includes the various pâtés and terrines made in-house. The cured sausages are on display in a glass case behind the bar that runs perpendicular to the open kitchen, and in a glass-enclosed annex housing a meat grinder and sausage stuffer.
That sort of versatile fluency extends to a selection of shareable smaller plates and a few larger entrees. There’s a pickled beef cheek “salad,” which is really just a pile of some of the lushest corned beef you’ll ever meet, garnished with capers and raw onion. And two browned towers of pork belly with alternating stories of cottony fat and chewy flesh are served with a small crock of umami-loaded XO sauce—a pairing that has a brain-rattling effect.
Tête is a lot more than just a temple to our culture’s insatiable flesh lust. To dismiss it based on its name or concept does everybody a disservice. It’s going to be exciting to see what comes out of that curing room in the next few months, but just as exciting to see what comes out of the heads of these two badass chefs.
1114 W. Randolph 312-733-1178tetechicago.com
