Copyright 2006 Chicago Tribune Company
Chicago Tribune

July 27, 2006 Thursday
Chicago Final Edition

FOODIES AND FANS OF FOIE GRAS TURN OUT FOR OUTLAW DINNER

Ever since Eve reached for that shiny apple in the Garden of Eden, human beings have felt the pull of forbidden foods.
Whether the treats have been proscribed by municipal governments, the health police, animal rights activists, religious texts, trade officials or, well, God, their appeal rarely fades just because "the man" tells you to stop eating them.
In fact, sometimes, it's just the opposite.
That may be why more than 50 people showed up at 676 Restaurant & Bar in the Omni Chicago Hotel last Thursday night and plunked down $95 each to eat foods that have run afoul of authorities at one time or another.
The first of three nationwide "Outlaw Dinners" at Omni Hotel restaurants (the next two are scheduled in Los Angeles and Houston), the Chicago event attracted a broad range of foodies to this eatery overlooking Michigan Avenue.
Some diners ponied up the dough because they thought it was a great culinary bargain, others were intrigued by the menu's range of controversial comestibles and others attended to protest what they feel are ill-reasoned restrictions on their dining freedom.
"We object to the aldernannies telling us what to eat," said Barb Manny of Chicago, between courses of Beluga caviar and sous vide cooked Chilean sea bass. "That anybody in a free country would dictate what we can and can not eat is just offensive."
For Manny and her dining companion Tom La Riviere, this was the third such dinner they've attended since the announcement of Chicago's upcoming ban on the sale of foie gras.
"I just think that we should choose what we want to eat and what we think is good for us or not and what is cruel or ethically acceptable," said La Riviere.
Despite their remarks, the couple--much like everyone else at the dinner--appeared to be in a festive mood, poised to celebrate and enjoy the last weeks of foie gras in the Windy City.
But the controversial liver was certainly not the only thing on the Outlaw menu. In the open-air kitchen, executive chef Robert Gadsby, was leading a bustling team of pros to crank out six other courses of verboten victuals that included the once-banned-in-California morel, European unpasteurized cheeses and nods to banned Spanish hams and Szechuan peppercorns.
Gadsby called his dinner a "celebration of life" and of foods "I've cooked for more than 20 years and we've eaten for centuries," he said.
Joel Smith, one of the founders of Slow Food Chicago, an international group dedicated to the promotion of local, sustainable and natural foods, said he was there mainly to "enjoy food, but as a secondary byproduct to protest the absurdities that lawmakers are dumping on us about what we can and cannot eat. Massive amounts of corn syrup are OK and it's OK to confine poultry 10,000 to a building without fresh air or sunlight throughout their six-week lives. But it's not OK to allow a duck to live a relatively calm life to produce foie gras."
As the evening wound down and diners polished off their last bites of a brownie topped with strawberry ice cream and a hemp-seed gastrique, some talked about the politics of food, others about their experiences with absinthe (served in the first course) and others about which dish they liked best.
"I love foie gras, and the city has absolutely no taste for banning it," said Norman Silverman, a psychology professor at Loyola University and the Adler School of Professional Psychology, as he and his wife, Rosa, finished up their meal. "But I'm an outlaw and a skeptic. I don't agree with hardly anything."
Despite the slightly mischievous vibe in the room and the menu's sly allusions to formerly banned foods--and those banned for the future--chef Gadsby admitted that everything on the menu was actually legal, "because after all, I don't want to be taken out of the building in handcuffs."
Still, his thoughtful culinary mix of intrigue, history and decadence with a splash of naughtiness produced a delicious combination for most diners. Chicago bar owner and food lover Ken Frandsen, who was taking pictures of each course before he dug in, polished off his meal and pronounced it "amazing and tremendous, especially the Foie Gras Breakfast."
His only complaint: "[If] I had the money and my druthers, I would order it all again. Because as delicious as it was, I'm still kind of hungry."
The 7-course tasting Outlaw Dinner menu
1. Amuse-Bouche: Green Fairy Martini and Oysters Soigne
Concerns: Absinthe distilled with real wormwood is illegal in U.S.
Verdict: Tempura-battered oyster with a cold, sweet heady licorice flavored cocktail, but without wormwood. Deliciously inebriating. May be worth going to the pokey.
2. Cold Appetizer: Seared Wahoo with Beluga Caviar Dressing
Concerns: Some are worried about conservation of beluga sturgeon.
Verdict: Seared wahoo and dollop of slightly briny beluga. Like a bite of the ocean. Wouldn't go to jail for it.
3. Hot Appetizer: Foie Gras Breakfast and Foie Gras au torchon with onion marmalade and Pop Rocks.
Concerns: Some feel the process of fattening fowl for foie gras is inhumane.
Verdict: Tiny toast round topped with foie gras, a fried quail egg and a slice of serrano ham drizzled with maple syrup. Should be against the law for looking so cute and being so tasty. The foie gras pate wrapped in prosciutto and topped with Pop Rocks was an ingenious mix of textures and flavors. Slap on the handcuffs now.
4. Sous Vide: Chilean Sea Bass with Chinese Szechuan Stir-Fry
Concerns: Chilean sea bass conservation issues. Temporary ban in New York on sous vide cooking until rules are standardized. Past worries about danger to citrus plants from Szechuan peppercorns.
Verdict: Silky, moist sea bass fillet in mild broth. No Szechuan peppercorn tingly zing. Not jailworthy.
5. Morels: Roasted Liberty Farm Duck with Morels and 676 Tamago
Concerns: Briefly banned in Los Angeles because of quality control issues.
Verdict: Velvety slices of perfectly cooked duck breast outshone chewy morels which were soaked in a rich, overpowering reduction. Not ready to abandon my morals for these morels.
6. Unpasteurized Cheese: Flight of Imported Unpasteurized Cheeses and Accompaniments
Concerns: United States Department of Agriculture prohibits the import and sale of cheese made with unpasteurized milk aged less than 60 days.
Verdict: Mild ham-topped Altalanga and tangy, almost cheesecake-like goat with dried cranberries plus a delightfully stinky, oozy and nutty epoisses with prosciutto and figs that we'd risk prosecution or pay for a trip to France to enjoy. Gadsby declined to reveal the exact age of these young ripe recently imported numbers.
7. Dessert: Fudge Brownies with Hemp-Seed Gastrique
Concerns: Hemp seed products were once banned by the Drug Enforcement Administration over worries about trace amounts of THC.
Verdict: Brownie was dry and chewy. Lovely strawberry ice cream and tart gastrique was mercifully free of hemp-seed flavor, which is not worth a trip to the Big House.
--Monica Eng
The Outlaw Dinner will be presented again at 7 p.m. on Aug. 21 (the day before the foie gras ban goes into effect in Chicago) at 676 Restaurant & Bar, Omni Hotel Chicago, 676 N. Michigan Ave., 312-944-7676. $95. Reservations are recommended.
mengtribune.com
GRAPHIC: PHOTO (color): Executive Chef Robert Gadsby puts the finishing touches on a Chilean sea bass course in the kitchens of 676 Restaurant and Bar for a recent Outlaw Dinner.
PHOTO (color): At the Outlaw Dinner, Terra Brockman (from left) Joel Smith and Karen Karp sipped their Green Fairy Martinis, part of the meal's amuse-bouche.
PHOTO (color): The hot appetizer, dubbed a Foie Gras Breakfast (above), featured Pop Rocks atop the liver as well as a quail-egg-and-serrano-ham component. For dessert? A fudge brownie with ice cream shared plate space with a drizzle of tart hemp-seed gastrique. Tribune photos by Alex Garcia