"Uncommon Ground (1401 W. Devon Ave.; 773-465-9801). If you blot out Clark Street in Andersonville, the Far North Side is utterly devoid of fun restaurants that aren’t storefront Indian or gussied-up junk food. So, when Uncommon Ground opened on Devon Avenue, which is just four blocks from our condo, I jumped up and clicked my heels together. This past week, I ate there twice, once on Super-Duper Tuesday and again on Saturday night. The first meal was great: The Husband and I decided to splurge on a mid-week meal out with the kids and so we went to Uncommon Ground and ordered a smorgasbord of comfort food including a burger, the bacon-wrapped meatloaf, pizza, and sweet-potato fries. YUMMY, YUCKY (too dry), YUCKY (too greasy), and YUMMY, but overall exactly what you want on a cold, blizzardy night in Chicago. On Saturday, we went with The Husband’s parents and, although the calamari appetizer was terrific (the light batter is saturated with a sweet and spicy Korean-ish sauce), the rest of the dinner was basically terrible. The Husband’s cassoulet was more like pork and beans (brown, mushy, and dull tasting); I ordered a pasta dish, oxtail ragu with cheese-filled gnocchi, that was served in a bowl and oversauced to the point where it really seemed like a soup; and I did not finish my chocolate cake dessert, a tragedy that speaks for itself. WIGB? I’m sure I’ll go back many, many times, but it won’t be for the food. The sweet potato fries, however, are excellent — crispity-crunchity and not overbrown as sweet potato fries tend to be — and perhaps themselves worth the trip."
Today's meal was pretty good: The Millworker Burger (or, Mill-something -- Millman? Miller? I can't remember . . .), $14, was a big messy pile of toppings on a juicy, well-seasoned patty of beef, cooked perfectly to medium as requested (it was, however, weirdly uniform in thickness, which suggests to me that it's purchased and not hand pressed; not necessarily a bad thing, just sayin'). Piquillo peppers (when did these things become so popular?), two thick slices of bacon (Nueske brand, from somewhere in Wisconsin, I believe, and has a cult following), Boursin cheese (the snob's Velveeta), plus the usual burger toppings -- romaine lettuce leaf, two slices of plum tomato, a slice of pickle, and raw red onion. And, big ass bun, which I didn't eat. We also ordered the blackened tilapia fish tacos, $11. It was good: not overcooked, peppery spicy stuff on the fish, good cilantro-laden slaw with squash-and-tomato cubes next to it, and a huge coma-inducing pile of fries. For dessert, I divided one scoop of pumpkin spice gelato into three precisely equal parts between me, Isabella, and Finn. So, YUMMY, even though, as I noted before, the food does not sing; it's merely better-than-OK. WIGB? Yes, because one should not reject a good draft beer selection within walking distance of one's condo.
A couple weeks ago, I and a friend tried A MANO (335 N. Dearborn St,; 312-629-3500), only the latest in the string of fancy thin-crust pizza restaurants to dot the city in the past year or so. This one is the brainchild of Brian Duncan, the wine director of Bin 36, another restaurant, upstairs from A Mano, and a couple of other guys, possibly one of whom is a chef-type person. I submit for your review some photos of the food. In descending order, they are: 1) artichoke salad; 2) octopus salad with fingerling potatoes and anchovy dressing; 3) truffled mushroom pizza with onion jam and roasted hazelnuts; 4) beef carpaccio. The salads were both pretty bad -- the artichokes were kind of fibrous along some edges, which is not right, and the dressing on the octopus was fishy in a bad way. The pizza was nice looking but too sweet for my taste because the base layer -- rather than tomato sauce or nothing, if it's a white pizza -- is the onion jam. The hazelnuts were a surprise element (not in the menu description) and not a good one. I don't know if it comes across in the photo, but does the crust look too puffy and on the dry side, more like bread than it should be? The beef carpaccio, with lightly dressed baby arugula, was the winner, but it's such a small amount of food you want to cry. On balance, YUCKY. I can see the appeal of this place: the menu consists of appealing and accessible Italian dishes and the space is large and polished. But ultimately the decor makes me think of office Christmas parties and the food doesn't have much personality. WIGB? Not anytime soon because you need to like more than one out of four dishes ordered; and it's quite expensive. Our lunch, which was really three apps and an entree plus two desserts, cost $51 including tip. But I would go back for the house-made gelato -- the pistachio, chocolate chip, and honey were my favorites -- on a hot, sunny day. Oh, summer!
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