Aba: The Greatest Hits

Passion fruit gin + tonic. Yes, please! 

In the past month, I have been fortunate to go to Aba twice for lunch. The first visit was quite good, and the second trip even better! Aba is a Mediterranean spot on South Congress in the new Music Lane (read: upscale) development; the original restaurant is in Chicago and this is now their second location. Here's a rundown of our foods with a little commentary. 😀 

Whipped feta with pistachios and pita bread. If you only order one thing at Aba, make it this. OMG. So creamy, not overly salty, and a basket of  warm pita which is doughier + fluffier than your standard pita.

Hummus with short ribs was quite tasty.

I believe this was the farro salad with sunchokes; gorgeous presentation but to me it didn't have all the flavors the menu promised. (I actually don't see this version on the current menu.)

Grilled chicken kebabs with wonderfully juicy chicken. The zhoug sauce (like a cilantro pesto) was a bit flat and needed more acidity to really shine.

Frozen Greek yogurt with strawberry sauce was a refreshing palate cleanse at the end of our meal.

On to my second visit:

This ahi tuna tabouli was outstanding, and I am not one that gravitates to raw dishes. The tuna was like velvet, the pomegranate seeds offered the perfect texture and acidity along with a light bit of yuzu, and I like the mouthfeel of pearled couscous rather than cracked barley for a tabouli.

Very crispy potatoes, which I loved, served with a scallion crema.

Big Brussels sprouts, with almond dukkah (a sumac-based seasoning) and honey harissa for a touch of sweetness. Great flavors.

Slow braised leg of lamb wrapped in eggplant. I love lamb and would eat this again in a heartbeat! It was very tender, the tomato sauce full of cinnamon, which may sound strange (though very typical of Mediterranean food), but so good!

Plan your visit ahead as getting a reservation can be challenging. Both times, we went for an early weekday lunch and were able to get seated in the outdoor breezeway with no problem. The design of the place is beauitful with a huge deck with lounge areas, tables, and a full bar; the majority of the seating is outdoors, nestled between old trees and new buildings. My photos of the exterior don't do it justice and hence not posted, but take my word for it. They also have a gluten free menu, and to-go parking in the below-ground lot.  The scope of South Congress is changing, loosing its once funky vibe, but Aba is a welcome and VERY delicious addition to the scene. 

Have you been? What foods did you enjoy?

Satellite Bistro

It's only been in the past month or so that I have heard of Satellite Bistro and Bar in Circle C, and then I heard of it a few times by different people in succession. So my curiosity was

piqued, and I was even more surprised to discover it's been open since around 2006.

While in suburbia, Satellite was designed by noted local architect Michael Hsu, and it's very much his aesthetic. Stone work, modern lines, big windows, reminds me of Olivia (which yes, he also designed). We were seated on the patio, which has nice big ceiling fans and just enough landscaping to help you forget you're in a strip mall. However the volume on the speakers was really loud, and the music was reminiscent of your iPod on "shuffle"... when we sat down, it was the Gregorian Monks and that chanting song from the 1990s, and throughout our time there, it ranged from country to contemporary. Not exactly congruous. All the while, a 1950s chanteuse performed live inside.

It's an eclectic menu to say the least, with dishes representing the flavors of Italy and the Mediterranean, Tex Mex, pan-Asian, and seafood.... From their website, I learned the owners are a pair of Greek brothers, hence the Med and seafood influences, I would guess. It took me a long time to decide what I wanted to, especially because I wasn't starving, having come from another event. It probably didn't help that our college-aged (?) waitress came by twice for orders, though all of us were sitting there pouring over the menu both times. She was nice, and was trying to do her job, but our table of food people made eyes at each other when she mispronounced the day's risotto special (it came out like "reyz-ottow" instead of "rih-soh-toe") and none of us could understand the method of how the daily specials vegetables were cooked. Yeah, we're kinda food snobs.

We started off with the calamari, which had a nice thick crust on them, but a few rings were a touch greasy; the marinara with it was bland, but the red pepper remoulade had a nice punch. 

The eater who ordered this Mediterranean Shrimp Linguine ate too many calamari and could only eat half her main dish!

This is the Champagne Gorgonzola Salad with shrimp, which well-liked by the eater.

And the Gourmet Bistro Burger with a delicious smoked tomato jam; I tried the jam, but not the burger, and the jam was great. The yuca chips were decent, though you have to be a fan of the starchy tuber to appreciate them.  Didn't hear any complaints about the burger.

And for me, crab cakes. Oh but wait. Where were they? It was another waiter/runner who brought the food to the table, not our initial waitress. He said "they're coming," and disappeared. I urged my table mates to start eating....and waited. So a couple minutes later, our waitress comes by and apologizes, by saying the crab cakes were being made again, because they were "too dark." Okay...

So they did arrive a few minutes later, a lovely golden brown color. And while they were very crispy, coated with Panko breadcrumbs, and I think deep fried given their evenness of color, they really didn't have much flavor to them. Yes, it's mostly crab inside, not filler, but bland. Salt? Pepper? Garlic? Chives? Something, please!! The dish's saving grace, apart from the presentation? The jalapeno aioli.

We considered dessert, but when a dessert and corresponding drinks menu doesn't contain any prices, I am concerned! So we passed. Overall, the food was fine, though certainly not exceptional. And this correlates (unfortunately) with what I had heard from others about Satellite -- it's a mixed bag. Glad I had great company to make the meal more enjoyable!

Tino's Greek Cafe

Whoops! I almost to forgot to write about this place..... and unfortunately, it was just THAT memorable! About ten days ago, three of us were getting together for lunch, and we needed someplace near Brodie and William Cannon, so Tino's was suggested. It's a little further south at Slaughter, at the northeast corner of the intersection.

There were no printed menus that I could see, just the chalkboard, which I found a bit hard to read. You go to the counter to order, and they serve it up in front of you, cafeteria style. One of my friends had said the gyro meat was good, so I decided to get that as part of the the combo plate. I asked the man working the line which sides were the best, and he shrugs his shoulders and says they're all good. Okay....so not really helpful. So by looking at the food (shoulda taken a picture), I choose the spanakopita, falafel patty, and meatball; and I had my choice of soup or salad, so I opted for the chicken lemon soup.

The soup wasn't bad, it definitely had some lemon flavor to it, and rather small bits of chicken. Would have probably enjoyed it more if it weren't 100 degrees outside! (But I picked it rather than the salad, because that was iceberg, under ripe tomatoes, and cucumbers, as seen in the plate below on the left.)  The gyro meat is a combination of lamb and beef (I wasn't sure, so I just called them to ask as I sat here writing this up), and was really quite good, especially with their nice, soft, pita bread. (One friend comes here to buy their pita, as opposed to going to Phoenicia Bakery, and I can see why.) The meat was tender and moist, with very good flavor. I wish I could say the same for the rest of the meal. The spanakopita (spinach and feta wrapped in phyllo dough -- the triangle in the lower right of the picture) was decent; not quite crispy enough for my liking, but not as soggy as it could be given that it had been sitting under the heat lights. The falafel patty was totally limp, no crunch to it at all, as you would expect to find, and the meatball really didn't have much taste to it, nor did it's tomato sauce. I tried a bite of my friends' hummus and baba ghanouj, both of which were decent, but nothing to write home about.

It also concerned me that they were storing paint cans next to the soda dispenser. In food safety and sanitation rules, that's a big no-no. Also, the bottled cleaner they were using to wipe down the tables had a very strong chemical odor to it, and while I guess it's good they were being liberal with it's application, one of my friend's is 30+ weeks pregnant, and there was a mother with a newborn at the table next to us. The smell from the cleaner drove us out.

So if you venture over to Tino's, and there are a couple locations around town, go for the gyro meat and pita, but skip the rest. Oh, and maybe get it to go.

Cafe Malta

In the few months that Cafe Malta has been opened, I have heard some really good feed back from food bloggers and from some other friends, whose food opinions and palates I trust. So I was excited to check it out for dinner on a recent week night with two friends. And while we had a great time catching up, ultimately the food was somewhat disappointing.

Two of us started with cocktails, as we waited for our third member. Catchy names -- I had "I Can Explain Everything" and my friend the "Blue Ruin."  When the drinks arrived at the table, our waitress, Jessica, apologized because they were out of the gorgonzola-stuffed olives that were supposed to come in the Blue Ruin. After my friend expressed disappointment as that's what had attracted her to the drink, Jessica returned a few minutes later with a couple of olives she said she had just stuffed herself. Overall, she was a very good server, was knowledgeable about the menu, and provided specific flavor profile information about the nightly specials without being asked.

We started with the mussels from the appetizer menu. The description reads: PEI mussels in white wine, garlic, tomato, preserved lemon, harissa, and onion. Looking back, there was no preserved lemon in it at all; I didn't realize it was supposed to have it in there, or I may have asked the waitress about it.  The plate was a gorgeous looking dish, that was tasty enough, but didn't have a lot of "oomph" to it, perhaps because of the missing ingredient that would have provided some acidity. Loved the Moroccan-inspired bowl they were served in, though it turns out to be from World Market, and still had price tag residue on the underside. We also ordered two of the dolmas from the evening specials board; from where we were sitting (by the windows), I couldn't read the board at all (on the wall opposite where we were). I was surprised by their large size (think hearty eggroll), and because I generally don't care for dolmas (it's a texture thing) I let my companions dig in....and forgot to take a picture! They use napa cabbage leaves, which are stuffed with rice that's mixed with chives and currants, and served over a zesty tomato sauce. I did try them, and we agreed it was a good dish.

I had a hard time deciding on what to get for my dinner; I had eaten a large lunch that day, and wasn't starving or feeling particularly in the mood for meat. Ultimately, I opted for the gnocchi, from the appetizer menu; I am think this is a dish I had previously heard was good. Unfortunately, these were not. They were dense, not light and pillowy, which tells me the dough was over-worked. Also, the menu description says they are tossed in a gorgonzola-white wine sauce and topped with parmesan. The restaurant must not have gotten their full order of gorgonzola in, because this was the second dish with problems with the gorg, and do you see any parmesan on top?  What little sauce there was had some nice flavor, but overall these gnocchi were dense and dry.

One friend had the house-roasted pork shoulder with date demi-glace, over fennel pearled couscous and haricot verts. This dish came out looking spectacular. The haricot verts were prepared perfectly. I thought the meat and sauce were fairly good, though the couscous was a touch gummy. My friend though, was rather unimpressed with it.

My other friend had soup du jour, cream of broccoli and spinach salad with fresh mozzarella. We're all people who like salt, and this soup was very salty. The salad looked good and fresh, and got good marks from my friend.

Two of us had lemon curd shortcakes for dessert. It's a good thing the lemon curd was amazing, because the shortcake was not. Not that there has to be a touch of sweetness to a shortcake, but in this case it would have really helped, because you could taste the excess of baking powder when you tasted the cake on it's own, and it's not a good flavor.

Cafe Malta is located at the southeast corner of Brodie and William Cannon, in a strip mall, in what apparently used to be a Double Dave's Pizza. And it's certainly a mixed bag. Liked the atmosphere, ambiance, and our server. Nice to see that the tables were mostly filled as the evening wore on. The food had it's ups and downs though, and that's what you're there for. I did tell our server about the denseness of the gnocchi, and she said she'd tell the kitchen. Hope they got the word. Based on what I had heard from others, I had high expectations. Was this just an off night for them?