The Lunch Game in Town

While many chefs and restaurants focus on dinner service, lunch is emerging as a new opportunity for a more casual style of ingenuity. As two crowd-pleasing, perpetually packed dinner spots implement lunch service, one River North newcomer is giving lunch the prix fixe treatment.

Considering how busy avec can get, the onset of lunch service at the West Loop’s preeminent Mediterranean wine bar bodes well for crowd control. Mezze-style small and large plates are the focal point of the new lunch menu. Small plates include lentil soup with yogurt and charmoula; kale and carrot salad with mint, dill, green harissa, and sunflower seed dukkah; and seed crackers with labneh cheese, avocado hummus, and beet muhamarra. Larger plates are oven-roasted merluza with Sardinian squid stew, clams, potatoes, and chickpeas; and wood oven paella with whole shrimp, morcilla sausage, artichokes, and almond aioli. There are also sandwiches and tartines like a roasted salmon tartine with walnut-beet muhamarra, frisee, and sumac; and kibbeh sausage on pita with cucumber, smoked yogurt, turnips, and red onion.

In Logan Square, Fat Rice has added lunch to their repertoire as well. Fresh off an inspiring trip to Macau, the region that drove the theme for Fat Rice, owners Abraham Conlon and Adrienne Lo have amped up their kitchen offerings, which includes a more casual daytime service geared towards quicker dining. Boiled dumplings are a classic option, while piri piri chicken takes the spotlight as the primary star of the lunch menu. It’s available in two distinct styles: Africana, cooked in a chili-tomato-peanut sauce, or Firebird, made with a lemon-garlic-chili sauce. Other lunch options include coconut curry-scented laksa and Nasi Lemak, a coconut milk-infused rice dish topped with hard-boiled tea eggs, fresh cucumber, spicy sambal, fried fish, and crispy Spanish peanuts.

In other lunch news, C Chicago is amping up River North’s lunch scene with a new prix fixe option. The slick new seafood restaurant provides options for each of the three courses, starting with appetizers like chilled English pea soup, market salad, tuna tartare, and octopus a la plancha. For entrees, there’s Scottish salmon in Verjus sauce; baked Aleutian cod with Spanish basquaise sauce; a cured sea trout sandwich with sea bean salad; and a half branzino with zucchini blossoms. Non-seafood options are USDA prime filet medallions and herb-roasted boneless chicken with brown butter. End on a sweet note with dessert selections like chocolate ice cream, fresh fruit with vanilla anglaise, and key lime pie.

avec
615 W. Randolph Street, Chicago
(312) 377-2002
Website

Fat Rice
2957 W. Diversey Avenue, Chicago
(773) 661-9170
Website

C Chicago
20 W. Kinzie Street, Chicago
(312) 280-8882
Website