When I first visited Chicago, friends brought me to a restaurant called Avec, which I have since learned is sort of a golden child among Chicago food-lovers. My group had a rowdy time, happily jammed alongside another party at one long table in a galley—like room of bare cedar, which had few embellishments aside from a wall of green backlit wine bottles. Chef Paul Kahan's pan-Mediterranean menu of small plates—everything from pasta to salumi—was a step above comfort food, and extremely affordable. As a then-New Yorker accustomed to walloping tabs, I almost choked on the last gulp of my Nero d'Avola upon seeing the bill. It seemed like an egregious mistake, as if we'd somehow gotten the bill for a pair of children's sneakers at Target. That's a slight exaggeration, but it's certainly how I remember feeling. "Maybe I will just wheel a cot in and live here," I thought.
That hasn't happened, mostly because people don't live in restaurants. But I visited again last night, and it's become clear to me just why Avec is so beloved. (I don't believe it would be such a singular hit if it were to open in New York, where its closest counterpart is probably the homey Prune or the rustic Peasant.)
In Chicago, a city known as a bastion for molecular gastronomy (e.g. Alinea or Moto), you have several options if you have a hankering for flavored vapor or concentrated nut powder. At the same time, Chicago's rich and continuing immigration history means that there are places where you can have someone's German or Yucatecan grandmother make you her favorite dish (I'm partial to the Mayan food at Xni-Pec).
Basically, if Chicago's restaurant scene were a high school, it would be a really big public one that included a handful of famous prize-winning science nerds and a whole lot of really nice foreign exchange students. Avec, breezy and attractive, would be the school's hot cheerleader. It's the sort of food—homemade goose sausage with dandelion greens; supple cannelloni filled with wild boar, béchamel, and walnuts; perfectly seared whitefish with smoked paprika—that exudes effortless appeal. Near the end of the night, you see the line cooks cleaning their stations with beer in hand, joking with people who linger at the bar, and you realize that this place is the definition of a happy medium—and that sometimes hot cheerleaders are popular for a reason.
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