Sometimes, gourmet restaurants are worth the exorbitant price tags they charge…Other times, they’re not. Last year around Christmas time my brother and I went home to Chicago to visit, and my parents took the four of us out to a fancy-schmancy dinner at L2O, one of the new hottest restaurant tickets in town. Chicago is a foodie city second only to NYC (and my mother would challenge even that!), so I don’t think we were wrong to have high expectations, especially at $110 prix fixe a head for four courses.
The restaurant was gorgeous, with lots of romantic ambiance, and the menu sounded amazing. They even printed special menus for us wishing my brother and I happy birthday at the bottom! But course after course, we were left less-than-impressed.
The meal started with a couple of amuse bouches from the chef. Now granted, it’s been awhile, but honestly I couldn’t tell you what either of these bit-size tantalizers even were—and they were anything but tantalizing. One was some sort of gelee, relatively tasteless and sliding down the throat like raw egg white. The second was so un-memorable that I couldn’t tell you a thing about it.
For each of the four courses, there were several options, all described by their ingredients. For example, my salad/sashimi course was “sashimi platter: Kampachi, Fluke, Medai.” My mom and brother each got “Peekytoe Crab, Avocado, Lemon.” With descriptions like that, it’s always kind of a crapshoot as to what you’ll get. My sashimi was actually quite good, but then it’s hard to mess up raw fish as long as the ingredients are good quality. Each fish had a couple flavor accents, and a dipping sauce. But I do want to stress that it was about four bites of food total. The other courses would have to make up for the sashimi in size.
The Crab salad was good…but interesting…Ther was this savory avocado jelly stuff surrounding a mond of crab meat topped with thinly sliced avocados. The jelly was distracting rather than complimentary, and took away from the delicate texture of the crab meat.
For my “warm” course, I ordered the Hand Cut Tagliolini, Uni Emulsion, Caviar. This was by far the star of the night. The pasta was very eggy and impossibly tender. The uni underneathadded an unctuous brininess and the pearls of caviar were an excellent salty counterpoint that delighted my tastebuds. Once again, it was a miniature portion size, but the uni made it surprisingly rich, so it seemed satisfactory as an appetizer.
My mom’s “Diver Scallop, fume blanc, vanilla, passionfruit” was a blend of flavors that simply did not work well. The two scallops were cooked fine, though not perfectly, topped with pieces of carmelized cauliflower (random) and surrounded by dots of passionfruit and a vanilla sauce. The sweetness of the vanilla was just too much. Scallops have their own sweetness and the vanilla simply didn’t complement. While I love passionfruit, it was completely out of place against the cauliflower. Overall, a beautiful presentation for a poorly executed dish.
My brother’s lobster bisque was quite good, though not the best bisque I’ve ever had (that distinction goes to Rustic House, a far superior and far less pretentious Chicago spot). I mean anytime you through cream and lobster together, it’s going to be good.
On to the entrees, I had a difficult time deciding what to order—they all sounded interesting. But it wouldn’t have mattered, they were all disappointing.
My mom’s “Lobster, Pinot Noir, sauce a l’orange, butternut squash” came cold. COLD! That is simply unforgiveable at a restaurant of this caliber. In fact, none of the entrees came hot. They were all warm at best, as if they’d been sitting there the entire first two courses, just waiting for us to finish. The butternut squash had been stamped into little flower shapes that looked pretty but didn’t offer much substance, and the sauce, once again, was overly sweet. I mean, lobster is lobster, and fresh lobster is always good, but at these prices, we expected something more. Something worthy of blogging!
My “Mishima Ranch Wagyu Beef, Lobster, fois gras-truffle emulsion, potato” was similarly lackluster. The beef was good, but it didn’t taste like anything all that out of the ordinary. Hell, my dad makes better steak on the grill in our backyard, and he buys it at Costco! The “potato” was cooked in funny logs. Again, they weren’t bad…they just weren’t that good either. Somehow L2O managed to be simultaneously luxurious and threadbare.
My dad had the “Spice Roasted Venison loin, Bartlett pear, chestnut.” It came with its own sauce to pour over the top…oh goody (sarcarsm).
When the dessert menu came, we were hoping for something magical, but we were disappointed once again. My dad was quite happy with his Grand Marnier soufflé (his personal favorite dessert), but if you didn’t want soufflé, everything else on the menu was too deconstructed. I ended up getting a berry dessert with some sort of “soup” and gelato and flecks of gold. I will never understand the urge to use gold in cooking. It adds no flavor, only flash, and let’s be serious, what THIS eater cares about it flavor.
After looking forward to L2O for weeks, we were all disappointed. I mean, it had good reviews on Yelp, we’d even gotten a glowing recommendation from a family friend! So was it a fluke? Just an off-night? I guess I’ll never know considering I have no intention of ever spending the money to go back and find out.
L2O
2300 N Lincoln Park W 
Chicago, IL 60614
(773) 868-0002
Fancy Seafood
