June 08--A restaurant that brands itself Southern is like a restaurant that calls itself Mediterranean: The label represents less a geography and more a reductive idea. For Yankees with only vague notions of The South, Southern cooking gets boiled down to a series of cliches: uncomplicated, oozing of comfort, down home, stick-to-your-ribs and so forth.
It speaks then to the sophistication of Chicago's dining scene that we can support subgenres of Southern cuisine. We're lucky to have among us Big Jones (historical Southern), Analogue (Creole with Cajun touches), Carriage House (Carolina Lowcountry), Leghorn Chicken (Nashville), Heaven on Seven (Louisiana) and MacArthur's (soul).
But don't conclude a catchall Southern restaurant is a bad thing. Have you ever seen Wishbone on a Sunday morning? The Southern in Bucktown on a Friday night? In the same vein, two new North Side restaurants -- Luella's Southern Kitchen and Pearl's Southern Comfort -- supply broad-base cooking of the American South. Meats get smoked. Catfish gets fried. Macaroni gets cheesed. You get the idea.
Luella's Southern Kitchen
This spot in Lincoln Square is my favorite of the two, a restaurant serving a greatest-hits-of-the-South menu over a soundtrack of '60s soul and rhythm and blues. Its chef, Darnell Reed, spent 18 years cooking for Hilton hotels locally, mainly formal banquets. But he name-checks Belly Shack in Logan Square as one of his favorite restaurants. It's not hard to see the influence: Both are counter service restaurants serving food not associated with counter service restaurants.
The plating work, for one, is more impressive. Microgreens adorn several dishes. Symmetry soothes the eye. A creamy she-crab soup comes from a broth of lobster, mussels and crab roe, then is poured tableside over a toast wedge and garnished with black and red tobiko.
What's more telling are the subtle hallmarks of a seasoned chef. I found the fry work at Luella's particularly impressive: Cornmeal batter fits snugly around green tomato slices, greaseless to the touch. This is the sign of a cook blessed with good timing. Buttermilk fried boneless chicken thighs are also expertly prepared, paragons of juicy crispness, served three to an order atop yeasty Belgian waffles and drizzled with bourbon maple syrup. (The beignets were duds, but that's less to do with the frying than the dough's dense consistency.)
At other restaurants across town, many Southern-inspired dishes are just that: dishes inspired by the South but not necessarily tasting of the South. Luella's shrimp and grits are transportative, bringing me back to Mr. B's Bistro in New Orleans' French Quarter. It's the Creole interpretation of barbecued shrimp -- not actually barbecued, but grilled or pan-fried and served in a left arm-numbingly rich sauce of Worcestershire and butter. I'd like to drink a hot mug of this sauce every morning. Luella's grits, too, are cooked as creamy as bechamel.
Pearl's Southern Comfort
I used to live two blocks from Pearl's Southern Comfort's location in Edgewater, and in the not too distant past, the dining scene along Broadway was sad. Pearl's looks different from just about every restaurant within a four-block radius: Broodingly dark, with decorative mirrored windows and chandeliers, a sort of plantation chic with obligatory whiskey signs. While Pearl's is young and still ironing out kinks, I consider it a net positive for the neighborhood.
For reasons of optimism, consider its pedigree. Its chef is Dan Finelli, who comes from the fine-dining world via Sixteen and Sepia. Jonathan Zaragoza, the talented young chef formerly of Masa Azul, is on board. And Pearl's owner, Danny Beck, is the man behind Lakeview's Toons, which has long defied my expectations of bro-ish bar food. (Its Italian sausage chili is great.)
Toons' reputation for solid chicken wings carries over to Pearl's, where smoked-then-fried wings are paired with Alabama white sauce -- think the creamy tang of coleslaw dressing. The crawfish cheesecake is downright strange but ultimately fulfilling, a chilled spread shaped into a cheesecake wedge, plunked down over a Creole mustard remoulade.
Where the restaurant could use improvement is its barbecue program. Smoke doesn't penetrate fully into meats, and where it does, it's drowned out by a thick slather of barbecue sauce. Balance is also an issue in the jambalaya, which is so tomato-heavy the dish is borderline acidic.
It's when the preparation is simple that Finelli's fine-dining background comes through. Aspiring cooks should check out the technique on the blackened catfish, pan-fried exquisitely while retaining considerable moistness. And a shoutout to Annie Beck, a Culinary Institute of America-trained pastry chef who wowed me with a four-star Nutter Butter pie that was sweet, creamy, salty, smooth and crunchy.
Perhaps the dish most indicative of Pearl's intentions is its Jazz Fest Crawfish Monica. Cajun-spiced Parmesan cream sauce fills nooks of rotini pasta, embedded with hunks of crawfish meat. It's mac and cheese for grown-ups with Mardi Gras beads slung. It's a dish rooted in New Orleans, yes, but it also bears broader Southern traits, ones that represent less a geography and more an idea -- uncomplicated, oozing of comfort, down home, stick-to-your-ribs and so forth.
kpang@tribpub.com
Twitter @pang
Luella's Southern Kitchen
4609 N. Lincoln Ave.
773-961-8196
luellassouthernkitchen.com
Closed Monday
Recommended dishes: Chicken and waffles, gumbo, shrimp and grits, BBQ brisket mac and cheese
Pearl's Southern Comfort
5352 N. Broadway
773-754-7419
pearlschicago.com
Closed Monday
Recommended dishes: Smoked wings, boudin balls, crawfish Monica, Nutter Butter pie, Sazerac
