Dos Urban Cantina

After eagerly awaiting the arrival of Dos Urban Cantina to our neighborhood, my wife and I had dinner there last night and had a wonderful experience!

Every dish we had was a unique twist on the Mexican flavors we love, but with an elevated interpretation -- as one might expect from chefs that are alumni of Rick Bayless' empire (chef Brian Enyart and his wife, pastry chef Jennifer Jones both formerly worked for Bayless at Topolobompo). They were served in a small plate format.

We ordered: chips & dips, black lentils, sweet corn tamal, raw scallops, goat albondigas, beef pibil, and the piloncillo pie.
The chip & dip sampler included a pretty standard guacamole, guajillo salsa, and a pumpkin seed hummus. The black lentils were cooked with Israeli cous cous, peppers, watercress and a runny poached egg on top. More of a Mediterranean dish, and tasty. The tamal was like a gold bar of sweet corn masa topped with charred Parmesan cheese and served atop an excellent salsa. The scallops were sliced thin and spread across a plate in aquachile, with sweet potatoes, cilntro, chia seeds & offered a nice bright balance to some other richer dishes. The two meat dishes we ordered with the goat albondigas, which were tender meatballs with a nice seared crust on the outside, in a bed of smokey black mole. There were also pillowy gnudi in the dish. The beef pibil was unique in that it was slices of beef instead of the typical shredded meat of a pibil. But the flavors were very much pibil. The meat was served on a bed of refried black beans and the dish also included chopped collard greens. For dessert, we ordered the piloncillo sugar pie. While it was OK, it was perhaps too sweet. Could have used some lemon/lime or bourbon/tequila to balance the sweet. But the crust was perfectly flaky.

Every dish was a winner, and we'd definitely re-order everything except maybe the pie. Only problem is that most everything on the menu sounded amazing, so we want to try most of the other items, too! Next time, we'll have to take more people so we can order more dishes.

The space encompass two store fronts, with the entrance leading into the bar area with some long, communal tables and other high tables. The dining room was surrounded by curved banquettes with some tables in the middle of the room. Very warmly decorated with interesting lighting, exposed brick, wood.

Meal wasn't cheap, but we felt it was fairly priced for the quality and portion size. With two cocktails, the six dishes, one dessert, coffee & tea, plus tax & tip the bill for two came to about $140.

We met two of the owners, Michael and Erika Rotolo, when we arrived and also chatted for a minute on the way out. Very warm and welcoming couple, and they have done an nice job of getting the restaurant running well out of the gate. Service was friendly, well paced, and nothing suggested that they'd only been open a few days. We had an 8pm reservation, and while we were there the place was about 2/3 full. We wondered how much that was due to weather, and how much to word still having not gotten out. Once word gets out, we have a feeling this will be a much harder table to get on a Saturday night.

Dos Urban Cantina
2829 W. Armitage Ave
Chicago, IL 60647

First, to add to the previous post, here is the restaurant's phone number and website address:

773-661-6452
dosurbancantina.com

Dos Urban Cantina is on all the "hot lists" of the trendy new places around town, and Phil Vettel just called it "the most important Mexican restaurant to open in Chicago since Topolobampo". I'm surprised nobody has posted anything about it since November. Especially because I went there last night, and I think it's really really REALLY good. Absolutely terrific.

The menu is divided into quadrants for vegetables, masa (corn), fish, and meat, as well as offering a few snacks from the bar menu. This place would satisfy anyone from the most avid vegetarian to committed carnivores. Here's what we had:

Chips & Dips - guacamole, guajillo salsa, pumpkin seed hummus. The first two were excellent but not that unusual. The third, wow. The pumpkin seed seemed almost peanut-y, and it was really good and unique.

Buttered Chayote - avocado, serrano chile, peanut mole. This was absolutely terrific. I had never had chayote before, and I loved it; it has a mild flavor, reminiscent of squash, and the consistency is sort of like a cucumber. Just wonderful, maybe my favorite dish of the meal.

Shrimp taquitos - tomato broth, avocado, pickled vegetables. This was maybe the least impressive dish of the dinner, but it was still quite good!

Grilled mushrooms - maitake & shimeji, Oaxacan red mole, chestnut cornbread. This isn't even something I would normally order, but we got it on the recommendation of our helpful server. Great combination and contrast of flavors and textures. Especially loved the cornbread. Another wow dish and contender for best dish of the meal.

Octopus - squid ink, white rice. I love octopus, and this was a very good version, perfectly cooked so it is very tender and not rubbery. The rice was superfluous.

Smoked trout - charred brassica, butternut squash, peanut salsa macha. The trout was excellent, and the smoke flavor was quite mild. Furthermore, I'm always impressed with a chef that can do great things with vegetables and with sauces, and both were on display in this dish. I really loved the peanut salsa macha, with was chopped vegetables (including small cauliflower florets) with chopped peanuts.

Sticky date pudding - vanilla ice cream. This was absolutely wonderful, and another contender for standout of the meal. The pudding was served very hot, which went perfectly with the ice cream. Wonderful.

Plantains - crema, cajeta, queso fresco. I thought this was very good. My companion is a plantain fanatic, and said these were the best he had ever had.

EDIT: Snickerdoodles - complimentary cookies brought at the end of the meal. Yummy and a very nice touch.

My little camera didn't do well photographing individual dishes on the no-flash setting in low light, but my exterior and interior shots below came out pretty well.

Our server, Sandra A, was very knowledgeable and very helpful with menu descriptions and suggestions. The restaurant is lovely, with a variety of seating (including two-tops, four-tops, and circular booths seating I'm guessing up to six). We had a 5:30 reservation, and when we arrived it was fairly empty of course. It was filling up by 6:30, at which point it was lively; the noise level was rather loud but not obnoxiously so. (We finished around 7:30.)

As you can see from the items we had, this is a very contemporary spin on Mexican cuisine. It's so gratifying to find a menu where the food is both unique and amazingly delicious, the way theirs is. I look forward to returning soon, as I'd like to try some of the other dishes there. This was amazing. I encourage anyone to whom their cuisine sounds good to go there RIGHT AWAY. I'm confident you'll enjoy it as much as I did.

P.S. Chicago magazine said, "Forgive the cliché, but you should really save room for the most amazing chocolaty chocolate cake ever." As you can see, I didn't have the chocolate cake last night. But I sure would love to hear more about what it's like!

My fiancée and I decided to celebrate our last anniversary as a dating couple at Dos last night and damn was it a gnarly meal.

We started with the chips and dips and a salad of beets and avocado with a brown butter lime vinaigrette. Definitely agreeing with nsxtasy about the pepita hummus. It was totally delicious. The salad was beautifully composed and the vinaigrette was an unexpected combination that worked perfectly - the bright, acidic punch cut the potential heaviness of dressing a salad in butter without detracting from the nutty flavor.

We followed it up with the roasted mushrooms with chestnut cornbread and red mole and the street corn. The mushrooms might have been the best dish of the meal (it was certainly the most stunningly plated). The mole did not overpower anything and the subtlety of the various mushrooms used was allowed to shine. The street corn was just a damn fine version of esquites.

For our meat course, we had the goat albondigas with masa gnudi and black mole and the beef bavette with black garlic pasilla sauce and crispy potatoes. The meatballs were nicely gamy and the mole was the deep, complex saucethat every shitty chocolate-laden mole aspires to be. The bavette was cooked perfectly and the sauce had a nice fermented note from the black garlic that really highlighted the beefiness. The potatoes were probably some of the best potatoes I've had in years. Impossibly crispy exteriors (even after minutes sitting in sauce) and pillowy insides.

We somehow had room for dessert and knocked back the coconut tres leches and piloncillo pie. The tres leches was fine but we both agreed that my pie was the winner. It was so good that I waxed poetic about how sad it is that we refine away the natural flavor of sugar itself.

Free snickerdoodles with the bill were great as well.

It's not shocking that Dos Urban Cantina is getting so much acclaim. It is a place that I would recommend going far out of your way for. Me? I just have to walk 10 minutes, suckers.

A little late reporting on my meal from more than a month ago, but it was fantastic. Two of the best meals I've had in Chicago in some time were here and at Monteverde. My impression is that Dos Urban Cantina is delivering food (and service) at the level of Topolobampo, but at a fraction of the price.

I was immediately impressed by the upscale decor at Dos Urban Cantina, including the attractive bar:







The food was equally pretty. And in terms of tastes, my reaction is along the lines of gnarchief, having had some of the same items (and then some). Most of the dishes are small, and with a group not opposed to sharing, I was lucky to try much of the menu. The eggplant sope with crema and chipotle was a fantastic start: slightly sweet, though more smoky from the chipotle, very flavorful masa, with a nice little crunch to the crust.






The street style corn with cotija cheese, mayonnaise, hominy and a masa pudding might have been the very best version of elotes I've ever had. So much flavor, particularly great corn flavor that I often find lacking in this dish.







Shrimp taquitos in a tomato broth with avocado and pickled vegetables featured really delicious, briny shrimp and flavorful corn tortillas and a lovely broth.






The sweet corn tamal with charred parmesan and a tomato salsa was delicious, though perhaps not as interesting as some of my favorite dishes. It was very pretty though.






An item likely to be ignored (sadly) by most carnivores is the black lentils with couscous, rajas, a poached egg, watercress and a jalapeno salsa. Now you know not to ignore it because it is really fantastic. The lentils and perfectly poached egg add a wonderful richness to this dish, the watercress and rajas some smoke and bitterness, and the fiery jalapeno salsa brings it all together. Wonderful.






I loved the flavors of the carnitas with kapusta (braised cabbage) and buttered potatoes in a tomatillo broth. And the pork was so beautifully tender. My lone complaint is that the dish was not as texturally interesting as others and a couple of chicharrón would really elevate the dish, at least in my opinion.






The only time I felt slightly gringoed this evening was with the beef pibil with collard greens, pickled onions, black beans and habanero salsa. Don't get me wrong - the flavors were fantastic and the beef delicious and tender. But the habanero salsa was definitely dialed down a couple of notches.






Yes, I'm a proud carnivore, but my absolute favorite dish of the evening was grilled maitake and shimeji mushrooms with Oaxacan red mole and chestnut cornbread. Gnarchief hit the nail on the head here: the mushrooms were fantastic on their own but paired brilliantly with this wonderful mole. The chestnut cornbread was terrific too, but the mushrooms and red mole really made this dish.






Another star of the night was the goat albondigas with black mole and masa gnudi. The goat was delicious and the meatballs so tender, the black mole was even better and the masa gnudi were the perfect vehicles for soaking it all up.






I don't believe anyone would be disappointed by what may seem like the safe choice on the menu, a perfectly grilled beef bavette with crispy potatoes, cotija and a black garlic-pasilla salsa. But there are far more interesting dishes on the menu. That being said, the salsa really stood out here.






And yet another standout was the octopus with a squid ink sauce you'll be tempted to inhale quickly, and white rice to make sure you don't leave any sauce behind. It didn't hurt that the octopus was as tender as I've ever had.






Desserts were no less impressive. I love coconut so I immediately veered towards the coconut tres leches with meringue and gooey coconut. It was terrific and delivered all of the coconut flavor one could ask for.






And yet it was the piloncillo sugar pie with malted whipped cream and pecan toffee that stole my heart. The flavor of the piloncillo sugar was fantastic, almost like a brilliantly aged rum, and the crust was terrific too.






The plantains with crema, cajeta and queso fresco was also a delicious dessert, but the coconut tres leches and the piloncillo sugar pie are the desserts to order here.






Then there was the chocolate cake Dos Urban Cantina calls the "best chocolate cake ever." Well, it was a perfectly fine version of chocolate cake, but nothing particularly special.






And just when you thought the meal was over, complimentary (and delicious) snickerdoodles.






Writing this recap makes me want to get back to Dos Urban Cantina soon. I suspect reservations are going to be harder to get the next time.

My wife and I had an incredible experience here on Saturday night. We'd budgeted enough babysitting time to allow a 90 minute wait to try Fat Rice for the first time, but when quoted two hours and 15 minutes, we had to scramble to come up with a Plan B. Our first call was to Dos Urban Cantina; the host said they had the "chef's table" available with no wait if we could get there quickly. Having no idea what this meant, we asked if this was a special menu or an additional cost -- but were assured that it was a simply a setup that provided the same menu but with more interaction with the chef. We said "sure" and zipped over there.

What a great evening...one of the most enjoyable dining experiences I've ever had (we struggled later to find comparables...recalling intimate meals we've had at Goosefoot and Elizabeth, and on past trips to Italy, Mexico, and Grenada, were some of those that came to mind). The chef's table was a 6-person counter basically in front of the station where Chef Brian was managing everything coming out of the kitchen. We were waited on by an great, friendly server, but Brian actually presented most of our dishes to us and described them (then always checked back later to get our take on them). It wasn't just "here's what's in this dish and that dish", but a detailed, well-articulated story of the origin of the dish, and why it resonated with him on both a culinary and emotional level (or in one case, describing how we could make it at home). He'd ask questions about us and our lives, and was extremely open to questions about his food, his history/background, etc. This would have been a cool experience at almost any restaurant, but considering we got to have this type of personal, intimate interaction with the former chef de cuisine at a James Beard winner for Most Outstanding Restaurant (not to mention someone putting out the kind of stellar dishes that we got to try) left us awestruck.

The menu seems to be pretty similar to what has been described above and in other reviews -- I'll infer that they are more focused on really nailing the core dishes they've conceptualized than trying to bring something new to the table every night.

I will say that everything we tried (including "chips and dips", asparagus appetizer, Eastern European inspired carnitas, shrimp tostada, and mussels with house-made naan) was delicious, fun, and supremely executed. The tequila and mezcal cocktails we ordered were superb, as well.

To me, the one truly transcendent dish was the special appetizer of salmon belly tartare with guacamole, soy, radish slivers, serrano, and applewood-smoked olive oil. The balance of flavors and textures was (for me) perfection; one of the best dishes I've ever eaten. The dessert we had (sticky date pudding with a beautifully sweet/tart tamarind sauce) was out of this world, as well -- and Chef Brian called his wife / pastry chef Jennifer out from the back for us to say hello and offer our compliments.

While my glowing comments here are definitely qualified by the unique, chef-driven experience we had, I'm sure we would have loved our meal either way. From what we heard, it sounds like they reserve many of the chef's counter seats for walk-ins (and possibly offer some for reservations, as well?), so I would highly recommend getting in there before more people start catching on.

I have to disagree, I found this place really mediocre. After going here, and a similarly poor experience at Cantina 1910, I have instituted a blanket ban on patronizing restaurants with the word "cantina" in the name.

We followed BR's recommendations as well as what we thought sounded delicious.

We started with the shrimp taquitos. Best dish of the night, though slightly underseasoned and I could have used some spice in that tomato broth.

I was not fond of the elotes. Tasted like canned corn with a bunch of cheese on it and the masa pudding was a weird flavorless gloppy translucent goo under it.

The main dishes we ordered were very weak too. The mushroom and chestnut cornbread was really disappointing. The mole tasted like nothing. It was not spicy or fruity or rich with nuts or chocolate. It literally seemed to be there to look nice. The mushrooms were similarly unexciting. I really liked the cornbread as a person that does not typically like cornbread. Unlike many dishes (chestnut cake at Nico for instance) they did a great job actually imbuing it with a chestnut flavor.

Then there were the lentils. This was texturally uninteresting as everything was kind of the same consistency, be it lentils or couscous. Even worse this was another dish with essentially no flavor. The jalapeno salsa seemed resigned to a few bits of jalapeno with no spice.

Everything looked great and just like BR's pictures, but the flavors were just so mild and uninteresting. I wonder if it was just another case of vegetarian dishes striking out. But we really had no interest in most of the protein-centric dishes (carnitas or beef and potatoes, really?)

botd wrote:I have to disagree, I found this place really mediocre.

botd wrote:. . . the flavors were just so mild and uninteresting.

That pretty much mirrors my experience there a few months back. Went with 3 friends. Ordered a ton of items, virtually none of which I'd ever want to have again. I left the place scratching my head wondering if something had gone wrong in the kitchen.

=R=

I returned to DUC three weeks ago and my second visit was as consistently excellent as the first. And...

nsxtasy wrote:My little camera didn't do well photographing individual dishes on the no-flash setting in low light, but my exterior and interior shots below came out pretty well.

...this time, I used the flash for my photos. Ta da!

Chips & Dips - guacamole, guajillo salsa, pumpkin seed hummus.


Mussels - Sorry, I don't have the detailed description on this daily special, but it was terrific!


Horchata - I love a good horchata (rice beverage, like liquid rice pudding), and theirs was very good indeed!


Sweet Corn Tamal - charred parmesan, tomato salsa.


Buttered Chayote - avocado, serrano chile, peanut mole. Again, maybe my favorite dish of the meal.


Carnitas - kapusta, buttered potatoes, tomatillo broth.


Grilled mushrooms - maitake & shimeji, Oaxacan red mole, chestnut cornbread. Again, another wow dish and contender for best dish of the meal.


Sea bass - Another daily special for which I don't have the detailed description, but it was really good. It was a Mediterranean sea bass.


Sticky date pudding - tamarind, vanilla ice cream.


Piloncillo sugar pie - malted whipped cream, pecan toffee. This was a terrific dessert, as good as the outstanding sticky date pudding.


I really enjoyed everything about this meal. Granted, a few of the dishes were just okay, but most of them were exciting, unique, and delicious.

One additional note:

nsxtasy wrote:Chips & Dips - guacamole, guajillo salsa, pumpkin seed hummus. The first two were excellent but not that unusual. The third, wow. The pumpkin seed seemed almost peanut-y, and it was really good and unique.

I mentioned to our server that the hummus didn't seem to have much chickpea taste, and he told us that there aren't any chickpeas in it. He said that hummus is a generic name for a dip with a pasty consistency, and their pumpkin seed hummus is mostly pumpkin seeds without any chickpeas. Again, wow!

Hahahaha! "Hummus" literally translates to "chickpeas". The things servers say...

Anyway, the food at Dos is great, so they can call that pumpkin dip whatever they want.

"Discovered" this place on Yelp while looking for a last minute Christmas Eve reservation. Had never heard of it before. What a pleasant surprise. Place was amazing!

We started with the ceviche, goat meatballs and shrimp taquitos. All great, but especially the goat meatballs. Fantastic dish.

For main course we had the veal shank. Wow, another great dish. Also ordered the sweet corn tamal cause it looked really interesting. Another winner.

Finished off with the chocolate cake. Had to get it based on the Chicago magazine blurb, but also had to get it after our 25 year old millennial waiter told us that the pastry chef was probably his favorite pastry chef in the entire world!!! That's not faint praise. the cake did not disappoint ,it really was the best piece of chocolate cake we've ever had.

Overall, LOVE this place. Great food, great service and the price was outstanding. We paid $100 for 3 appetizers, two $10 cocktails, 1 entree, 1 side dish and a desert. Take out the the cocktails (we rarely drink) and it would've been $40 per person + tip for that amazing meal!

Living in the neighborhood, we've eaten here 4-5 times since they opened a year ago and we're going tonight for their New Year's Eve dinner. Doing the 10pm seating with mariachi band and tequila shots at Midnight... since this is my first NYE not in Mexico in 20 years, and my wife's first in 10 years, figured a Mexican themed celebration was the way to go!