5th
BELLY SHACK
At this point I’m pretty behind on keeping up with the food blogging. I have Chicago, Cincinnati Restaurant Week, and an amazing trip to New York in queue so I’ll keep some of these short and sweet.
Over St. Patty’s day weekend in Chicago, I had a chance to check out a number of these “fancy street food” places that are popping up in every city in the country. That night, we patronized Belly Shack, envisioned by Chef Bill Kim who runs the more upscale urbanbelly as well. Conveniently situated below the Western Blue Line stop, it was just a short ride up.
Inside, the decor was dark and minimalistic. Multiple piece of urban wall art adorn the The seating includes a bunch of bar and table seating around the periphery, and a large wooden communal table in the center. Food orders are placed at the counter and then brought to your table. The place, like a bunch in Chicago is also BYO, so we brought along some tasty premixed margaritas to compliment the Asian/Latin-American fusion fare.
For my main course I ordered the beef with plantain sandwich:
I thoroughly enjoyed this sandwich, who’s starch was the friend plantains surrounding well-marinated beef. I don’t know if this affect and street food always come hand in hand, but the sandwich did not last long in the basket, and promptly made its way into my stomach. This was the first sandwich served on fried fruit that I can remember, so I enjoyed the novelty of it.
In addition, we had the tostones with chimichurri sauce, seasonal kimchi, and roasted squash with maple syrup and pho spices; which were all quite good. I have not normally been a kimchi fan in the past, so this was a surprise to me. I think I may have to opt to try more of it out when I find it on the menu.
To finish, we ordered a selection of their wonderful soft serves: Huckleberry-Lime; Vietnamese Cinnamon Caramel, and Bacon Chocolate Chip which were all served up with some custom toppings by the pastry chef:
Each of the three was quite unique, I did favor the Huckleberry-Lime. We even decided to try mixing some of the soft serve with the sweet squash that we still had on the table, and it worked out quite well. I don’t recall ever seeing a winter squash in a dessert before, maybe there should be? I think with some minor flavor balancing, it could work quite well with some sort of sorbet or frozen dairy.
The food was outstanding for the price (< $10 mains, and <$5 sides/desserts) and I wish that I could have tried more of the menu items… I guess I will have to return sometime to sample the rest. I appreciated the decor as well, although it was intentionally on the pedestrian side. The service was also quick and attentive although it’s not designed to be a full service restaurant. Based on these comments, I’ll end with the following metrics:
Food - 25
Decor - 20
Service - 15
Next time I’m in Chicago, I’ll make an effort to check out urbanbelly to see what Kim’s “high-end” cuisine is all about.
