Shochu

Shochu is a new restaurant owned by Lynne Wallack (Deleece) in the old Platiyo space right next door to Mia Francesca on Clark. The restaurant is named for what is (apparently) the most popular drink right now in Japan. Shochu is basically a souped up vodka that actually tasted more like sake to me. It's not supposed to give you a hangover, it has far fewer calories than vodka, and it also has a ton of whatever enzyme red wine has that's good for you. Food is Japanese-fusion, with the menu divided into:

Curries
Appetizers
Raw
Yakitori
Fried
Maki/Nigiri

We were able to hit each section of the menu with the exception of the curries. Overall, I really enjoyed the food with two very very large exceptions.

Appetizers
Blueberry teriyaki glazed quail - Not nearly as cloying as it sounds. It really just tasted like a nicely glazed quail. The quinoa spaetzle that the quail was served over definitely elevated the dish
Octopus and edamame salad - Priced at $5 I should have known something was up. This dish was about 5 tiny pieces of octopus mixed in among a ton of shelled edamame. Tasty, but look elsewhere if you want a bigger serving of octopus

Raw
Kobe beef tartare - Excellent quality tartare served is gold ball sized clumps on top of shiso leafs. This is meant to be a one-biter (wrap the meat in the leaf and pop it in your mouth). The tartare was good, but the flavor of the shiso leaf slightly overwhelmed.
Kampachi tartare - Probably the standout dish of the night. The tartare was almost ceviche-like and served alongside some nicely crispy purple potato chips. The kampachi, when combined with the crunchiness and the saltiness of the potato chips, was outstanding

Yakitori
Shrimp and Asian pear - Nice sized shrimps skewered along side hunks of Asian pear. Good, but nothing special
Kurabota pork sausage - Now we're talking. I could eat these all night. So porky, and just greasy enough. Absolutely perfect drinking food (we were well into the shochu at this point, and yeah, we were loving the sausage along with it)

Fried
Bacon wrapped dates - A very traditional Asian dish. Good, but hard to screw up
Wasabi fries - Again, very good drinking food. The fries are covered with a wasabi "sauce" that gives the fries a nice kick without being too overwhelming

Maki
Here's where we rode off the rails. The maki here are definitely intended to be non-traditional, so we decided to give two of the more unconventional ones a shot

Crab/duck pate/carrot - Absolutely terrible. Like a reality show challenge gone wrong. Flavors so in conflict with each other that it was barely edible. No one should have to eat this
Kampachi with basil and saffron rice - Really bad, but not as bad as the other roll. The basil overpowered the whole thing and the saffron rice was gummy and just plain awful

We sent back both maki to the major shock of our waiter ("I'll check with the chef, I don't know why you didn't like them" and "Both of these usually get rave reviews". Well first, don't check with the chef, there's nothing to check, you have two really poorly conceived dishes on your menu. Second, there are plenty of people with bad taste, many of them attend baseball games right up the street). Both rolls were removed from our bill.

We finished up with three desserts: a chocolate mousse cake, a blueberry basque cake, and a green tea cheesecake. All three were very good in that they were very balanced and didn't hit you over the head with sweetness.

So, in general a good meal (and the shochu was some good stuff). I think it's a welcome addition to the neighborhood, and I will definitely be going back. I just won't be ordering any maki.

Shochu
3313 N Clark St
773 348-3313

Is "sochu" the same stuff at Korean "soju" in the same way the "kimchi" and "gimchi" are equivalent?

jonathanlehman wrote:Is "sochu" the same stuff at Korean "soju" in the same way the "kimchi" and "gimchi" are equivalent?

yeah

jonathanlehman wrote:Is "sochu" the same stuff at Korean "soju" in the same way the "kimchi" and "gimchi" are equivalent?

Yes, I believe this is correct. I think Shochu, though, may be a Japanese product, whereas Soju is a Korean one.

viaChgo wrote:

jonathanlehman wrote:Is "sochu" the same stuff at Korean "soju" in the same way the "kimchi" and "gimchi" are equivalent?

Yes, I believe this is correct. I think Shochu, though, may be a Japanese product, whereas Soju is a Korean one.

I'm pretty sure that's correct. I can't seem to find any difference between the two other than one is a Japanese product and the other is Korean.

The Wikipedia entry for Shōchū is pretty in-depth -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sh%C5%8Dch%C5%AB

I've been drinking it a fair bit recently, as one of my favorite restaurants here in Portland (Biwa) has a nice selection.

The Daily Herald wrote:Soju and shochu

Although they're similar, soju and shochu aren't quite the same, Samuels explained. Both are distilled beverages, stronger than sake.

Soju, sometimes called "Korean vodka," is distilled primarily from potatoes or sweet potatoes, usually with added ingredients like barley, wheat or tapioca, and ranges from 20 to 45 percent in alcohol by volume. It's a bit sweeter than vodka, with added sugar or other sweeteners

Shochu, an earthy distillate from Japan, can be made from any number of ingredients -- such as rice, barley, buckwheat, wheat, sweet potatoes or brown sugar -- and is usually 25 percent alcohol by volume. In November, "shinshu" or new shochu, is celebrated in a tradition marking the beginning of the shochu-making season.

Both beverages are commonly made into cocktails. In Korea, soju cocktails might be made from soju, Sprite and a flavoring like sour mix; in Japan, a similar shochu highball is known as a "chuhai."

Locally, Naomi Sushi in Arlington Heights serves a "Green Dragon" sojutini mixed from soju, melon liqueur and lime juice, and Wildfish in downtown Arlington Heights offers a sojutini flavored with apple.

A stronger Korean tipple called a "poktanju" ("bomb drink") consists of a shot of soju in a glass of beer, like a boilermaker.

Originally, soju was made from rice, but from 1965 to 1999, due to shortages, South Korea's government food policy banned the use of rice in manufacturing alcohol, and many sojus began to be made by diluting ethanol with other ingredients.

Today, sojus are divided into the higher quality "jeungryusik" ("distilled") and cheap "hiseoksik" ("diluted") categories, and a few manufacturers, like Andong Soju, have returned to making traditional folk soju distilled from malted wheat and steamed rice. (These liquors, which can be up to 90 proof, are not to be confused with milder "cheongju," a rice brew that's the Korean equivalent to sake.)

I checked this place out the other night and while a welcome addition the the neighborhood I found it mediocre

+Shrimp and pear yakitori
+Ono tataki
+Smoked quail
+Bacon wrapped quali (but how can you not love anything wrapped in bacon?)
(all of these were decent)
++Wasabi Fries- Great!

-Wings- too "gloppy" and the habanero curry sauce was way too hot (easily would be the hottest+ at a wing joint)
-Pork sausage tasted like a hot dog
-Kobe beef tartare, way overseasoned
-Saffron Kanpachi role was universally disliked

Server was very nice, and many dipping sauces are always fun.

A few issue to work out in the front of house such as busboys who run away when you make eye contact with them and paper towels overflowing in the wastebasket.

This is a good place for a few drinks and a snack, maybe not for a full dinner.

Chico

We enjoyed the smoked quail: tiny legs, meaty, one-bite, satisfying.

Tried the following dishes last night:
kobe tartare - pretty gross. just not seasoned right at all. could barely tell it was beef
oysters with tobiko - the oyster was fine but with the tobiko was just not a good combination

From the yakitori:
bacon wrapped quail breast - this was yummy.
kurabuta pork sausage - this was also good...but then again i've also had breakfast links just as good
short rib - this is basically kalbi...so it was fine except for being really really expensive kalbi

wasabi fries - couldn't really taste any wasabi

really spicy tuna maki - definitely was spicy with the thai chiles. not bad.
lobster and mizuna maki - this was the best dish of the night

Between a friend and I, we each had a couple of beers and the bill before tip was around $95.

If I was forced to return, I would probably stick to only their maki.

Han wrote:oysters with tobiko - the oyster was fine but with the tobiko was just not a good combination

The last time I was at Raw Bar they had something like this. It was pretty awful there too (actually, everything I had a Raw Bar was pretty awful, which is why I haven't been back).

It's interesting that there have been a couple of comments on the seasoning of the beef tartare. Did you try it with or without the shiso leaf? I thought the flavor of the shiso leaf overwhelmed the whole thing, making it impossible to tell if the beef was properly seasoned or not.

I ate it without the leaf. The green onion was very oniony.

I can't even describe exactly what was wrong with it. But the flavors were out of balance.

Thanks for the tip on the restaurant.

I definitely plan to visit, particularly because I just got back from 18 days in Japan (like two days ago), and I sampled my share of Shochu in Tokyo and Kyoto.
Very curious now to check out the local take on both the libations and cuisine that I discovered in Japan.

One tiny quibble with the original post... I can say with definitive authority that Shochu can and does give one a hangover that screaming babies on airplanes do not particularly help to cure.

During the early 1990s, I traveled extensively to Japan since I was managing the U.S. operation for a Japanese consulting firm. One of my Japanese associates introduced me to shochu distilled from sweet potatoes. Since I'm a Stoli vodka drink, I really enjoyed the various brands of shochu that were available in Japan.

One evening we were with a client and he heard about my fondness for shochu. He laughed and told me that in Japan shochu is considered a poor man's drink. Supposedly it's quite popular with the blue collar workers.

Keep in mind that he made that comment in the early 1990s. I understand there's a boom in Japan and shochu now exceeds sake in production and consumption. So the beverage is probably moving away from the poorer Japanese and becoming "fashionable" with the general Japanese population.

Best regards,
GP Bob

Grandpa Bob wrote:During the early 1990s, I traveled extensively to Japan since I was managing the U.S. operation for a Japanese consulting firm. One of my Japanese associates introduced me to shochu distilled from sweet potatoes. Since I'm a Stoli vodka drink, I really enjoyed the various brands of shochu that were available in Japan.

One evening we were with a client and he heard about my fondness for shochu. He laughed and told me that in Japan shochu is considered a poor man's drink. Supposedly it's quite popular with the blue collar workers.

Keep in mind that he made that comment in the early 1990s. I understand there's a boom in Japan and shochu now exceeds sake in production and consumption. So the beverage is probably moving away from the poorer Japanese and becoming "fashionable" with the general Japanese population.

Best regards,
GP Bob

My understanding is that it can be quite acceptable for Japanese executives/professionals to drink Shochu, but it depends on the tone of the evening. If the host orders sake or wine, the evening is meant to (at least through the dinner) be of a more restrained formal nature. If Shochu is ordered, the formal rules of hierarchy and etiquette are put away for the night. As Sinatra would have said, "it's boozing time, Baby!"

I went with friends to Shochu this past Saturday night and was really disappointed. Echoing some of the early reviews, flavors just didn't match and the food was eh.

For apps, we had the fried calamari (which oddly tasted of bacon), fried tofu, edamame and octapus, and the quail. The fried calamari was the only app that worked for the table and the seven sauces seemed pointless and didn't add any flavor value. The BBQ sauce with the tofu was awful.

The manly beef eaters at the table were sorely disappointed in their beef while those of us eating lower on the food chain were equally unhappy. I had the miso salmon, which was OK, while one friend had the lemongrass chicken rice noodle bowl (boring) and a smoked salmon roll (awful) and another friend tried a trio of rolls, none of which impressed him.

The shochu cocktails were equally unimpressive. Overly sweet and heavy on the Rose's lime.

We decided that the odd flavor pairings and oversweet cocktails must have been meant for the 20-something Lakeview/Cubs crowd. We didn't bother with dessert and instead headed up to Julius Meinl on Southport for dessert, hoping chocolate would erase the bad food memories (it helped).

The saddest point of the night for me was when we passed Tango Sur after dessert and the birthday boy gazed wistfully at the better beef he could have had.