Swimming in a Sea of Side Dishes at Green Zebra
Friday, November 14th, 2008Claire and I grazed the many small dishes at Green Zebra like one-stomached, sweater-and-deodorant-wearing cattle. We went from roasted beet salad to Thai spiced carrot soup to a foraged mushroom popover to ricotta gnocchi to buttermilk polenta. There was also the squash tortellini and the potato tots and the…
We sat in a booth, telling each other that we gotta try this and that in front of us, as if we wouldn’t. There was such a variety of dishes, and on each dish there were so many interesting ingredients. For example: The potato tots came with a sunny-side up egg, nicoise olives and heirloom tomatoes.
It got me thinking about how I’m so lazy and uncreative in the kitchen at home, that I bet if I was ever forced to open up a restaurant I’d only be able to offer up one food item like a hotdog stand or a pizza parlor. One main dish, minimal ingredients. And I’d give my place a name like the following:
Ham Hock Stop
Just Strained Noodles?
Celery! Celery! Celery!
Onion Tower
Nothin’ But Beans
Lazy Greg’s Naked Toast
Cheddar Block
Boose’s Pulled Pork, Sans Bun
Green Zebra
1460 W Chicago Ave
312.243.7100
The thing about being a vegetarian (which I admittedly am only about 80% of the time) is that you end up eating a lot of side dishes. Mashed potatoes, rice, pasta, greens, salad, hunks of crusty bread, extra cheese and crackers, all because you’re in search of something filling.
Creating a complete vegetarian meal, something that feels as fulfilling as your mom’s Sunday chicken dinner, is a hard thing to do. I don’t necessarily believe that each meal needs to represent the classic protein-carbohydrate-vegetable portion plan, but when your menu is so often relegated to a sampling of side dishes, the three-portion plan starts to seem like a rare treat.
And that’s why–and I hate to say this–I was disappointed with my dining experience at Shawn McClain’s upscale vegetarian restaurant, Green Zebra. It’s not that the food wasn’t wonderful. It definitely was. Bright flavors, local and seasonal offerings, diverse ingredients. It’s just that the whole menu is arranged a series of small dishes and it made me feel like I do when I end up at a dinner party where steak is the main course: resigned to an evening of side dishes.
The way the menu works: The dishes at Green Zebra increase in size and guests are advised to kind of design their own five-course menu from offerings like fresh burrata cheese with piparras peppers and oregano, ricotta gnocchi with honey-roasted figs, potato tots with a sunny-side up egg and heirloom tomatoes. Our party of four shared these, along with some of the slightly larger small plates like the squash tortellini with purple cabbage and a mushroom popover with blue cheese and browned butter.
But as good each dish truly was, I left with a fully belly, still wanting for a meal.