If there’s one place in town where it might be safe to choke on a chicken oyster it ought to be GreenRiver. That’s on the 18th floor of Northwestern Medicine’s Lavin Family Pavilion on the Gold Coast. And as you pass the hand sanitizer on your way to the elevator and up past the sterilized habitats of phlebotomists and electrocardiogram techs, radiologists, and ultrasound specialists, you’ll probably wonder what in the name of General Hospital was New York restaurateur Danny Meyer thinking by positioning his first midwestern upscale barstaurant—a collaboration with the fellows behind NYC’s celebrated cocktail bar Dead Rabbit—high up in a medical center. But then you’ll step into the hallway midway through a Curtis Mayfield track, and a hostess will guide you around the corner into the bar, which is fairly bustling—not with beardos and manbuns—but lanky, sleep-deprived residents and jowly MDs, some of them kicking back with their coupes and highball glasses in loose blue scrubs. There’s a captive market here.
You’ll find a lot of culinary elements in these cocktails. Mascarpone cheese is blended into the MacSwiney, rounding off cognac and Crème de Noyaux for a Creamsicle finish on a White Russian-like drink. Kaffir lime leaf finds its way into the Haley’s Comet, adding an intense herbal note to an otherwise sweet spritz of gin, gentian, and passion fruit. Flavors of ginger, lemon, carrot, and cashew spice up the well-balanced Steamboat Cochrane, composed of Irish whiskey and Armagnac.
Among Lirette’s piscine hits is a tongue of fresh sea urchin gonad resting atop brilliant orange tangles of spaghetti dressed in an uni-tomato saffron sauce and flanked by sunny cherry tomatoes. The jiggly richness of seared diver scallops is countered by hazelnut crunch and celery root puree, while thin halibut fillets wade in a soupy sea-bean ragout with baby kale and turnip.
259 E. Erie 312-337-0101 greenriverchi.com
