Lake County IL Dining

[DanM]

My wife and I are visiting my parents in Gurnee, IL. We may live the little one with the grandparents and head out for a date night. Are there any good restaurants in the northern suburbs?

Dan

[KD1191]

There are many good restaurants north of the city limits. It would help if you could ID a price point and cuisine (or two) of interest. In the general upscale, contemporary American category, I have heard good things about Inovasi and Michael.

ETA: Maybe also mention how far you're willing to travel. Gurnee is about as close to Milwaukee as it is Chicago...so, even a trip to some of the other northern suburbs can be a bit of a drive.

Edited August 22, 2010 by KD1191 (log)

[DanM]

Lets say within 25 miles of Gurnee and $25 per person. I am not picky on the genre, as long as they have a vegetarian or fish selection.

Dan

[nsxtasy]

In the general upscale, contemporary American category, I have heard good things about Inovasi and Michael.

Absolutely! The top half dozen meals I've had in the Chicago area in the past three years include dinners at both these restaurants. Inovasi fits the OP's desires a bit better because it's less expensive and it's closer. (Inovasi is in Lake Bluff in Lake County, 8 miles from Gurnee; Michael is in Winnetka in Cook County, 21 miles from Gurnee.)

Both places accept reservations on Opentable, and both places (particularly Inovasi) can fill up, even during the week, so advance reservations are highly recommended.

I'll post stuff I've written about each; just a sec...

Edited August 24, 2010 by nsxtasy (log)

[nsxtasy]

Dinner at Inovasi this past February

This past Thursday night I had a TERRIFIC dinner at Inovasi in north suburban Lake Bluff. It was also a true bargain. Read on!

Inovasi is located on a corner in the small business district of Lake Bluff, on the North Shore in Lake County IL. It's a block from the Lake Bluff station on Metra, and a mile east of the IL-176 exit from the Edens Expressway (US-41).

It's a fairly large restaurant; the bar room is at the entrance, from which there are two dining rooms to the left, and a private dining room to the right. The tables are spaced fairly far apart so there is a nice feeling of spaciousness and privacy. There is also a decidedly casual atmosphere, despite the upscale creative menu.

Inovasi's menu is quite unique. Items are not designated as appetizers or main courses; instead, there are simply sections for seafood, meats, and vegetables/greens/soups. All of the menu items are designed to be in between the size of appetizers and entrees you would fine at other restaurants, roughly 2/3 the size of entrees elsewhere, and they are priced accordingly (most are $9-13). The intention is to allow you to structure your meal however you like.

The four of us decided to order five items for our first course, including three soups. As it turns out, the soup portion sizes were a fairly large bowl, so they are consistent with the "2/3 entrée" theme. The "honest mushroom bisque" was simply wonderful, one of the best mushroom soups I've ever had. The "Tuscan tomato soup" was a thick and hearty tomato soup, very good indeed. They had a daily special of "white truffle and cauliflower soup" which was garnished with an ample number of baby shrimp, and this was also wonderful, with lots of truffle flavor. We had the fried calamari which was made with roasted pecans, lemongrass coconut juices and a maple syrup and soy reduction; they were perfectly prepared and amazingly tender (although the bottom of the bowl was a bit gloppy due to the sauce). The final dish in this course was the sauteed foie gras, which is one of the best preparations you'll find anywhere, with a slightly salty crispiness to the oh-so-thin crust on the outside, and perfectly tender and warm on the inside. Just yummy!

For our second course, we ordered two meat dishes and two seafood dishes. One was the Duroc pork shoulder, which was one of the most awesome pork dishes you'll find anywhere, amazingly flavorful and tender. As described on the menu, they use "a 4 day process of marinating, grilling, confit, smoking, and finally sautee". The pork is in the shape of a disc, and it just falls apart as you cut into it - very tender, not at all dry (although not overly moist). Really delicious, even if you're not a big fan of pork. The second was the Tallgrass sirloin steak, which is dry aged in house for six weeks. It was very tender and flavorful; Inovasi is by no means a steak house, but this steak is as good as you'll find at any steakhouse anywhere. Another dish was the Dutch white sea bass, a grilled filet with a slightly spicy glaze on the outside, very tender and delicious. The final dish of this course was the most visually stunning of the entire meal. It was rainbow trout sauteed with a crispy corn crust. The trout was already fileted and boned, which is unusual for trout; even more unusual, the pieces were cut up into small, silver-dollar sizes, and stacked neatly along with the farro piccolo grain accompaniment. But the presentation, oh my! It was served on a rectangular CANVAS PAINTED with four sauces "Jackson Pollock style". Very unusual, and gorgeous!

Well, by this time we were nicely sated - two dishes there is plenty - but how could we resist the desserts? Fortunately for us, we couldn't; as it turns out, the desserts were every bit as good as the rest of the meal! One dessert was coffee mousse layered with phyllo and served with roasted pistachio nuts and a pile of small pieces of homemade smoked bacon. Yes, bacon. And it was very good. So was the tres leches cake, in the simple traditional presentation. My personal favorite was a chocolate pot de crème. This was a bit different from the traditional presentation; anywhere else, it's served in the cup in which it's baked. At Inovasi, the disc-shaped chocolate was served on a plate, and was slightly lighter than the typically dense and rich version; above it was a layer of a coconut cream, like a moist custard or panna cotta. And it was surrounded with slightly spicy chopped macadamia nuts. This was a great dessert, one in which there was a balance of different textures (smooth vs crunchy), as well as a balance of different tastes (strong chocolate and strong spice vs mild coconut). What a great composition!

Inovasi specializes in using local, seasonal, and sustainable ingredients wherever possible. Of course, a lot of restaurants say that... but how many have a partnership with a local farm, in which the restaurant's own dedicated hens lay the restaurant's own dedicated eggs? When Chef-owner John des Rosiers stopped by our table - he stopped by most of the tables while we were there, a practice I think speaks well for any restaurant - he mentioned that this time of year they have fewer vegetable dishes than the rest of the year, because of their reliance on local and seasonal ingredients. He also noted that they can develop menus for specific needs, such as the three very distinct dishes he had recently prepared for a vegan diner.

Oh yes, I left out one important part. The price. My jaw practically dropped when I saw how LOW the bill was. Oh sure, I was aware of how much the individual dishes cost, when ordering them, but still! The nine savory dishes ranged from $8 to $15; granted, they were roughly 2/3 the normal portion sizes, but even after adjusting for that, they were inexpensive. Everything else was quite reasonable, too. We had two glasses of wine, for $6 and $9, and the desserts were $6-7 each, all of which is pretty darn reasonable nowadays. For the four of us, the grand total was $153 plus tax ($14). With tip, it came out to $50/person for a top notch dinner. That is an amazing BARGAIN; you can easily pay twice that much at comparable restaurants in the city.

Please forgive me for my effusive praise here. This was NOT a typical meal, and this is NOT my typical praise. Yes, I eat out a lot, and while I find a lot of good food in the restaurant business, it's very rare when I eat a meal and try a lot of different things and one dish after another after another is just amazingly delicious. This happens to me roughly once a year, if I am really lucky. And this was one of those dinners, one I will be remembering for months to come, even longer. (Of course, this ignores the fact that I want to return to Inovasi and try some of the dishes I missed, as well as repeating some of the ones I enjoyed the most.) THIS WAS A GREAT DINNER AT A GREAT RESTAURANT.

Incidentally, Inovasi (which has been open for only eight months) is doing a very good business these days, so reservations are recommended. On this mid-winter weeknight, about 2/3 of the tables were occupied, and for weekend evenings, it's best to make reservations several weeks ahead if you want a desirable time slot.

Inovasi

28 E. Center Ave.

Lake Bluff, IL 60044

847.295.1000

www.inovasi.US

Dinner at Inovasi earlier this month (August)

We returned to Inovasi for dinner again last night, and it was another wonderful, memorable dinner. The menu was very different from our earlier visit, and somewhat different from the one on the restaurant website, but the style is very much the same. Which is to say, there were again a huge number of dishes that sounded great, making the selection process very difficult!

Some of the highlights of our dinner:

- chilled watermelon soup with chopped asparagus and a scoop of goat cheese ice cream - this was a wonderful way to start a meal on a warm summer night.

- sesame-coated chicken confit and seared foie gras - an excellent combination. Chef Des Rosiers's seared foie gras is one of the best anywhere. It has a thin crisp on the outside, slightly salty, that gives it extra flavor. The chicken confit underneath was great too.

- lettuce wraps with chicken and mushrooms - This was a good dish but I don't remember much about it and, like most of the dishes we had, is not on the current website menu.

- ishikura onions with romesco sauce - This was a very unusual dish. The onions were in the sauce (a tomato-based spread) topped with chunks of Dunbarton bleu cheese on top, served inside a glass jar to keep it warm, alongside slices of grilled rustic bread. Yummy!

- Sustainable Ocean Raised Sweet Shrimp - This was my favorite savory dish of the meal. The description on the menu is "spicy & sautéed with a little Thai chile, shiitake mushrooms, yellow fingerling potatoes, Japanese citrus marmalade, and a sauce made from Vietnamese coconut & lobster broth". This dish would be at home in most Thai restaurants, but they should only make it this good. The shrimp were a somewhat small size and cooked perfectly so that they were tender and succulent. The sauce was very nicely spicy. Wonderful.

- Chesapeake Bay Soft-Shell Crabs. My dining companion loves soft-shell crab and deemed these among the best anywhere. They are "done in a very light, crispy Japanese tempura style and served with a light salad made with organic cucumbers, daikon radish, jalapeno, cilantro, California red verjus, and single grove extra virgin olive oil". The very slight amount of breading was just perfect, allowing the crab flavor to shine through rather than overwhelming it.

- Cherry cake. This was a light, airy slice of cake, almost like an angel food cake in consistency, studded with cherries that may have been soaked in some sort of liquor. Very good.

- Whipped Coconut “Mousse”. The whole meal was excellent, but this dish takes my personal "best in show". Not because it's a dessert - yes, I do love desserts - but because it's so delicious and has so many delicious layers to it (both literally and figuratively). The top 2/3 of the dish is a very light, silky-smooth coconut-flavored mousse, and on top of it is a thin layer of coriander-pear sauce that adds a note of fruity sweetness. The bottom third has pieces of crushed graham crackers and toffee in the coconut mousse, and the texture is amazing - not crunchy (which would overwhelm the silky mousse) but what I would describe as soaked/crumbly. This was an amazing dish.

The only thing I would do differently next time is that I think we ordered too much food. As noted above, the items on the dinner menu are all about 2/3 portion sizes, so it's a free-form, "mix and match" which lets you structure your meal however you like. Last night, each of the four of us ordered three savory courses plus dessert, and that was a lot of food. I was feeling fairly full before dessert, and a bit overfull afterwards; next time I'll stick with two savory courses plus dessert for each of us. (This would be about the same amount of food as the customary three-course a la carte at most restaurants, I think.)

On Mondays, in addition to their regular menu, they offer a supplemental menu with five comfort-food dishes (e.g. chicken pot pie) and five particularly healthy dishes, but we didn't order any dishes from that menu. I was really hoping to have their "Becker Lane Pork Shoulder done in a 4 day process of marinating, grilling, confit, smoking, and finally bathed in cooking liqueur" which I had enjoyed so much during my previous visit there, but unfortunately they were out of it. They were also out of one of the seafood dishes, an Illinois amur.

I was surprised to see the restaurant about three fourths full on a Monday evening - an unusual sight in this economy - so as always, advance reservations are recommended. I'm glad the restaurant is doing so well, because this is a very special place, firing on all cylinders in both my visits. Even for distant city-dwellers, it's worth taking the trip up to Lake Bluff (35 miles from the Loop, an hour by Metra which stops a block from the restaurant) to enjoy what Chef Des Rosiers is doing. It's just wonderful. And it's priced very reasonably too. Highly recommended.

[nsxtasy]

Dinner at Michael last month (July)

We ate at Michael again tonight, and I gotta tell you, they knocked it out of the park again. Just OUTSTANDING. How good was it? This was one of the two best dinners I've had in the past three years (and the other, at Alinea, cost several times as much). It was AMAZING.

When we were seated, we were served two small grugeres (melted cheese puffs) that were yummy. One appetizer was the foie gras appetizer noted in the original post above (seared foie gras over foie gras and mushroom strudel), although it is now labeled "foie gras served two ways" on the menu. The other was a giant sea scallop served over a spinach-filled crepe. Both were superb. But wait, there's more! Next was a very nice frisee salad with pecans and Asian pears. ... And things just kept getting better and better as the meal went along. One entree we had pre-ordered after receiving an e-mail from Michael's mailing list. It was a Dover sole and Maine lobster duo, with half of a 1.5-pound Dover sole (2 filets) and half of a 1.25-pound Maine lobster (claw, tail and arm meat all shell free), served with Grilled thin asparagus and Drawn lobster butter over creamy polenta. Imagine the most tender, moist, and delicious Dover sole you've ever had in your life. Now imagine the most tender, moist, and delicious lobster meat you've ever had in your life. THAT'S how good this was. And oh yeah, the creamy polenta was equally amazing, with a silky smooth texture and a great taste (it had some goat's milk cheese in it). The other entree was just about as amazing; it consisted of a stuffed breast of hen, amazingly tender, moist, and delicious, and a breast of Pekin duck, perfectly cooked and fanned out on the plate in ultrathin slices, with virtually no fat to trim off, served alongside Door County cherries. But wait, there's more! We had two desserts, and they were just as amazing as the entrees. One was a candied spiced peach served over a shortbread cookie, with a small scoop of spicy roasted orange sherbet placed on a French fig. The other was a "mango charlotte" that didn't seem like a charlotte but was easily the best dessert I've had all year. It was a buttery rich moist cake, almost like an upside-down cake, with chopped mango in the middle, and a small scoop of coconut ice cream on top, and it was just wickedly sinful. Amazing. (The waiter told us how it's made but I won't spoil the fun!) A little bit of chopped macadamia in the corners of the plate was a nice touch for this exquisite dessert. And our waiter also brought complimentary chocolate truffles, but even though they were very good, they were only the final touch on a meal that was already phenomenal.

Michael is also reasonable in price for such high quality food. It's $48 if you order three courses and $55 if you order four courses (the foie gras dish had a $6 supplement, the only supplement I recall seeing on the menu).

Michael is a very, very special restaurant, IMHO the very best in the suburbs and the very best in the Chicago area aside from a handful of uber-expensive big-name restaurants in the city. Those who haven't been there are really missing something special. If you live in the city, it's easy to get there on the Metra commuter train (see www.metrarail.com ); the Indian Hill stop on the Union Pacific North line is just a few steps from the restaurant, and the trains run well into the evening.

HOORAY for Michael!!!

[budrichard]

"Michael is also reasonable in price for such high quality food. It's $48 if you order three courses and $55 if you order four courses (the foie gras dish had a $6 supplement, the only supplement I recall seeing on the menu)."

The original Poster set a limit of $25.

Miramar http://www.miramarbistro.com/ in Highwood fits the bill and is one of Gabriels restaurants and Roland Liccioni is in the kitchen.-Dick

Edited August 29, 2010 by budrichard (log)

[ronnie_suburban]

"Michael is also reasonable in price for such high quality food. It's $48 if you order three courses and $55 if you order four courses (the foie gras dish had a $6 supplement, the only supplement I recall seeing on the menu)."

The original Poster set a limit of $25.

Miramar http://www.miramarbistro.com/ in Highwood fits the bill and is one of Gabriels restaurants and Roland Liccioni is in the kitchen.-Dick

Unfortunately, Liccioni left Miramar a few months ago.

=R=

[budrichard]

Where did he go?-Dick

[ronnie_suburban]

Where did he go?-Dick

I've heard nothing yet about his current whereabouts but here's a link to a piece at Chicago Magazine from back in May, which reported his departure:

Dish Flash: Liccioni Leaves Miramar

Roland Liccioni, whose resumé reads like a history of French fine dining in Chicago (Le Français, Les Nomades, Carlos’, Le Lan, Old Town Brasserie), is leaving his current gig at Miramar (301 Waukegan Ave., Highwood; 847-433-1078) after tonight. “I’m going to take some time off. I’m going to Europe for three or four weeks. See friends, chefs, people I know,” he says. Liccioni doesn't know who will replace him, and Miramar's owner, Gabe Viti, is unreachable on a mountain-climbing trip. When Liccioni returns from Europe, he’ll embark on a project in the city, but he won’t tell us any more than that. “I want to say when I come back,” he says.

=R=

[budrichard]

Thanks.-Dick

[nsxtasy]

The original Poster set a limit of $25.

True, but without specifying whether that is supposed to be for a three-course meal (good luck with that!) or for an entree (in which case only the most picky person would exclude Michael, whose prices are only a few dollars more; even the exquisite Dover sole and lobster special I mentioned was $29).

[P. Channon]

I like Lovell's in Lake Forest. For something inexpensive but tasty I am a fan of the Silo in Lake Bluff for deep dish pizza....my favorite in the whole city.

[DanM]

I like Lovell's in Lake Forest. For something inexpensive but tasty I am a fan of the Silo in Lake Bluff for deep dish pizza....my favorite in the whole city.

If you go to Lovell's, check out the lounge in the lower level. Mr. Lovell has artifacts from Apollo 13 on display and a few props from the movie.