Aba
As a solo diner, you can walk into pretty much any restaurant in Chicago and get a bar spot by 9:00 p.m. Aba was no exception. One of Lettuce Entertain You (LEY) Enterprises’ better restaurants, Aba is a large, Mediterranean restaurant hidden on the third floor of the Northwest corner of Green St. and Fulton Market. While the food is solid, a corporate feel seeps through the entire space. The decor is cozy and gives the impression that you’re sitting in a garden on some Greek island (and I’m a sucker for a twinkle light) but I can’t help but still feeling like it was assembled by some corporate cronies who decided after several expensive focus groups that this was the best decor for a Mediterranean restaurant. Maybe its the generic music that sounds like something from a Netflix reality show where the producers were obviously too cheap to pay the copyright fees for real music. Maybe I’m cynical. Either way, at the end of the day, Aba is about as much as I could ask for from a corporate, chain restaurant (they also have locations in Austin and Miami).
Upon sitting at the bar, I was promptly provided with a glass of water and two menus - their standard fare and the Restaurant Week menu. I’m always skeptical about a restaurant week menu. There are a lot of restaurants who will simply create a 3-4 course prix fixe for $60 and hold it out as a bargain while the truth is, the meal would have cost less if the same items were ordered a la carte. I’ve also heard that the kitchen gets sick of rolling out the same handful of dishes for a couple weeks straight and the thought of my meal just being passed down some assembly line (even though that’s probably how it works most of the time) is not appealing to me. Nonetheless, after some quick calculations, I decided to give it a shot. Ordered a la carte, the items I wanted would have been about $65 so with the restaurant week menu, I saved about $5. Assuming the portion sizes were the same as the normal dishes, this seemed like a good enough deal to try it out.
THE DRINK
My first choice of the night was a cocktail, included in the restaurant week prix fixe, which I appreciated. Most restaurant week menus don’t include any drinks. Since I’m on my annual alcohol break, I opted for the only mocktail on the menu - Fire Sign. Normally $12, this is not a drink I typically would have ordered as I’m on my own mini revolution against mocktail prices, but I’m happy I tried this one. It was a bright, refreshing drink with the most prominent flavors being mango and lime and a slight kick of something spicy at the end. It wasn’t too sweet and paired great with my meal. We also love a drink with this kind of crunchy ice. 10/10 would recommend.
THE APPETIZER
For my first course, I ordered the Halibut Ceviche. This was the only dish of my dinner that was not offered on the regular menu, although the regular menu offered a different preparation of halibut ceviche. According to the menu, the ceviche was prepared with kiwi, cucumber, passionfruit leche de tigre, and cilantro. It was served with a plate of crackers.
The ceviche was…good. There was nothing wrong with it. In fact, the pop of the kiwi was fantastic, as were the crunchy pomegranate seeds. It just felt a bit underwhelming. There’s something about a dish that is just clearly scooped onto a plate and topped with a bit of herbs as garnish that feels a bit uninspired to me. I also wish that the dried corn that was clearly added for texture was actually crunchy and that the crackers weren’t so hard they tasted slightly stale. But c’est la vie. Overall, it was still tasty and I ate the whole bowl.
THE MAIN
Next up was the main course. Based on a recommendation from the bartender, I ordered the crispy chicken thigh. According to him, this was the chef’s favorite dish, which was all it took to sell me. I’ll admit, when the dish arrived I was still feeling cynical and was disappointed by the appearance of a greasy liquid on the bottom and sprigs of cilantro lazily thrown across the top, but once I tasted the dish I didn’t really care anymore.
This is one of the best chicken dishes I’ve ever eaten in Chicago. The chicken thigh was perfectly cooked. It was juicy and tender and the skin was actually crunchy and well seasoned. The potatoes were also perfectly seasoned and although they didn’t need the gravy underneath them, that was great too.
What really took me by surprise was the garlic chili vinaigrette on top of the chicken. Oh. My. God. They need to bottle and sell this sauce. I want to eat it on top of every protein I cook for the rest of my life. It was tangy and spicy and salty and was the true star of the show. When someone says they love something, my sister likes to ask if they would marry it. The answer is yes, I would marry this sauce.
If for nothing else on the menu, I’ll be back to order this dish alone. This dish had me wondering if my whole perspective on Aba and LEY restaurants was wrong. Maybe they weren’t corporate hacks. Maybe there was still hope and soul and passion in their food!
I was wrong.
THE DESSERT
As a kid, my mom would occasionally make a spongy, box chocolate cake that sat on the counter for days, and at night I would cut a little piece, nuke it in the microwave for 15 seconds, and enjoy. Although it was still tasty, it had a distinct reheated box cake smell and was never as enjoyable reheated as it was fresh out of the oven.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect Aba to bake each customer a fresh cake for every order. But when I can smell the reheated cake scent as soon as the plate is set down, my expectations aren’t high. It didn’t help when I cut into the sticky date cake with my fork and felt the edges were also slightly chewy and stale, another signature sign of a microwaved cake.
I was hoping the flavor would make up for it, but all I got was more re-heated, spongy cake taste. In a city of great date cakes (Hogsalt makes and INCREDIBLE date cake that they serve at multiple restaurants, as does Fabio Viviani at his new restaurant, Lago) this one was a real disappointment. I took about four bites, hoping it would get better and it never did. I didn’t even take my leftovers.
This cake really epitomized my feelings about LEY restaurants. Although they might serve some standouts, they’re still generic and corporate. There’s nothing wrong with this per se, but it’s just not the type of food I enjoy eating at the end of the day. I want to eat food cooked by chefs and served by people who are passionate about what they’re doing. Corporate spots like this just seem to lack some pizzaz. These meals feel more like sustenance than an experience and part of the reason dining out is so relaxing to me is it allows me to connect to a passion I wish I would have pursued. Seeing people in the restaurant industry just going through the motions shatters the illusion of romance I that I still naively hold about working in the industry. So maybe it’s just a me problem.
I do recommend Aba. The food was tasty and it seems like a great spot to go with a group of friends for a nice dinner. I’ll also go back to eat that crispy chicken thigh. Is it at the top of my recommendation list? No. But don’t let that stop you. You won’t be disappointed by a night out at Aba.
