Comments: Fronterra Grill and Tru

Have recently moved to Chicago (for one year only, then back to Canada) and have been greatly enjoying exploring the local culinary scene. Some remarks on two of the restaurants that I've been to:

Tru. http://trurestaurant.com

Easily the best meal I've ever had. I feel blessed to have been able to experience such a culinary zenith in my lifetime.

'twas my birthday, and my SO treated me (so much the better!) Upon entering the unremarkable storefront near Michigan Ave, one is confronted with a dark, understated, quiet room and quietly greeted. Go forward to a room off the dining room featuring modern art pieces, and then enter the dining room, whites and blacks, angular and efficient.

The menu --- emblazoned with a personalized birthday greeting (they ask on the phone whether the reservation is for a special occasion) --- presents several choices of "collections" or a fixed price menu. We both chose the "Grand Collection," which in retrospect was mistake, as we should have chosen different collections so as to broaden the experience.

We started with glasses of delicious champagne (I don't usually choose champagne, perhaps only because I'm hesitant to pony up for that of sufficient quality to be truly enjoyed). Interrupted with a popcorn-themed amuse.

A quartet of single-bite pieces followed, as we switched to glasses of Pinot. Vanilla-scented julienne of leek, pork loin with peppers, a melon and ginger shot, and a single tiny piece of fruit (some of the details elude this reviewer two days hence, my apologies). Each was wonderful, and together they touched each of the five major tastes.

The first dish listed on the collection menu followed, Tramonto's caviar stairway. I admit I chuckled at his signature emblazoned on the custom serving dish, but constructing little bites of savoury, salty morsels of caviar, roe and complements on toast points was both entertaining and delicious.

Entertaining and tasty was then transcended. A dish of seared tuna, tapenade, beans, and potato; the single most wonderful dish I've ever eaten. I am an avid amateur chef and have eaten at many fine restaurants all over North America and Europe; this dish amazed me. One couldn't help but simply close one's eyes and grin. Sublimely, beautifully delicious.

Followed by: seared foie gras with peach marmelade and jus, potato and leek soup served in an ornate glass, roasted halibut over couscous, perfectly cooked beef rossini over wild mushrooms adorned with foie gras jus. All ranged from excellent to magnificent.

We declined the cheese course, surprised at how full we felt after seemingly just eating a sequence of nibbles. The petite four selection followed (we had a couple and lollipops!), then a ganache served on a plate emblazoned with a birthday greeting in chocolate, and of course the dessert plates. My plate consisted of chocolate brulee and a blueberry crumble with lime ice cream.

On exiting we received wee pastries, which the next day turned out to be extravegant wee cakes, moist in the middle and gradually becoming crispy and caramelized on the outside.

Overall, magnificent, if ludicrously expensive. All included our meal came to a little over $400, and that was without an excessive quantity or quality of wine. On the other hand it was an experience moreso than a meal, and one I won't soon forget.

My only complaint, if I must make one, is the service was overly formal. I would have preferred to not have had to wear a suit; I would have preferred to have a single `main' waiter rather than a revolving sequence of syncronized men (and one lone woman at one point) bringing us various items, and I would have preferred in general a less uptight atmosphere. In real terms, my second glass of wine was unsatisfactory, tarnished with an acrid aftertaste, yet I did not complain because, well, I felt somewhat intimidated by the atmosphere. But at a "lesser" restaurant I would have felt perfectly comfortable doing so. Blame me rather than the restaurant if you will, but I, for one, would choose the same food in a less sterile atmosphere.

But this is a minor complaint: overall, Tru is magnificent, mecca, a four-hour tour through culinary peak after culinary peak. If you don't completely balk at the bill --- think of it as rolling up three nice meals into one --- by all means, go.



Fronterra Grill. http://www.fronterakitchens.com/restaurants/

Easily the most disappointing meal I've ever had.

I know people rave about Bayless's food, and perhaps I was just there on an off day, or ordered something idiosyncratically not to my liking, or just expected too much. We had previously been to Chilpancingo and greatly enjoyed it, and I figured the master would best the student.

We split a jicama salad to start. Coarsely julienned jicama and supremed grapefruit and orange splashed with lime juice and a dusting of chile powder. Passable, but nothing anyone couldn't have made at home with scant effort.

My main course was grilled game hen. Absolutely awful. The meat itself was ok but overcooked and, for a Mexican dish, underseasoned. I was apparently supposed to use the poultry with the side dishes --- an unreasonably large portion of watery flavourless beans masquerading as frijoles charros, a sloppy pile of romaine dusted with some sort of cheese, and whole charred green onions (why? one must just cut off and discard most of the green) --- to fill tortillas. I rebelled and just ate the meal deconstructed, leaving most of the pasty white tortillas.

Overall, a poorly conceived and poorly executed dish. Particularly disappointing given our wonderful experience at Chilpancingo, which featured wonderfully and highly flavoured dishes draped in complex sauces the ingredients of which I am hesitant to even guess. Conversely, any second-rate Mexican restaurant could've easily tossed off what I received at Fronterra for half the price. I won't be returning to one of Mr. Bayless's enterprises.

In summary: Tru good, Fronterra Grill bad. (Even conditional on the respective prices.)

Agreed!

I took my fiance to Topolobampo for his birthday a few weeks ago. We both ordered the 5 course tasting menu and the oyster starter, and were both disappointed. While the meal was ok, it did not justify the $250 price tag. We ate at Tru about a year ago, and felt the meal was spectacular, and well worth $400.

The difference? The dishes at Topo felt repetitive (I believe 4 out of 5 courses featured the same green chile sauce), and overused. You could almost taste the chefs' boredom in the dishes. The menu was tired and flabby, which was tremendously disappointing after reading so many raves about Bayless' inventive cuisine. We will not return to Topo - better to save up for Tru!

I completely agree about Topo. Way overpriced for what it is. That's not to say it isn't good, just that it isn't that good. With all the options in this city, dropping that kind of coin on a restaurant like that is just silly. Especially since, in my experience, Chilpancingo has better food at a third of the price.

I was also dissapointed with my single Fronterra experience. Worthy of neither the wait, nor the hype.


Not a fan of the legend that is Bayless. Maybe it's fluke experiences, maybe he's gotten complacent over the last 3-4 years, maybe he never merited the hype.

Tru sounds incredible but why in the world does a 4 course meal with little wine intake cost $400??? That's insane.

My description may have been poor: the paragraph beginning "followed by" lists a sequence of different courses, not components of one course. We were served:

1 amuse
2 appetizer
3-9 7 course meal
offered (and declined) cheese course
10 petite four
11 dessert (two distinct servings on same plate)
12 chocolates

We spent 2 x $110 on the meals and each had three or four glasses of wine each of which was $20 give or take $5 or so. Add tax and tip you're sailing over $400.

My birthday was earlier this week, and the lovely Susan took me to Tru. In general, I can say that ChrisA’s descriptions are spot on. Susan had the Grand Collection, and I had The Chef Tramato Collection. In the latter, the courses are not spelled out on the menu; the chef just throws together whatever he has lying around the kitchen. (Well, okay, maybe it’s a little more formally structured than that. And, probably to the unexpressed horror of the overly formal waitstaff, we both sampled each others’ food, even occasionally exchanging plates.)

We also started with corn panna cotta, topped with onion marmalade and popcorn – an amazing depth and variety of corn-y flavors. This was followed by the Grand-Amuse – four amuses, really – different than the ones described in the first post, all fascinating, but I didn’t take notes and so can’t really describe what they were (except the last was a fruit water). But I think this dish says a lot about how the restaurant views a “course.” Both collections were billed as 9-course meals (and of course the amuses don’t count as courses), but many courses consisted of several disparate but complimentary items that happen to be on the same plate. At lesser places these might be considered separate courses.

This was followed by the signature caviar staircase, but each of ours was topped with a different type of Iranian Osetra Caviar, which added immeasurably to the interest.

While my partner then got the same tuna/tapenade dish described by ChrisA, my appetizer #1 was a thematically similar Peeky Toe Crab and apple salad matched with apple-lemon verbena water and mint syrup. This demonstrated another technique that was to become somewhat of a theme throughout the meal – pairing savory and sweet ingredients. To my mind, it didn’t always work, but it was always interesting.

The remainder of the Grand Collection was pretty much as ChrisA described it, so I’ll just describe what was in the Chef’s Collection. Another example of pairings that didn’t quite do it for me, but interesting nonetheless –the foie gras course paired the star ingredient with a banana chutney, French toast and a chocolate sauce. (We were asked ahead of time if we wanted the foie gras course or something else in its place.)

But this was followed by what was possibly the highlight of the evening – a cappuccino-style lobster bisque, with a spoonful of lobster ceviche on the side. Intense and sublime at the same time.

Only then did the entrées begin. I had Scottish Salmon, with squash and gnocchi – these flavors and textures melded well. Following was the meat entrée, an excellent seared, farm-raised venison, not as gamey as some venison can be, in a red wine sauce … but the fruit/sweet thing was going on again with the summer fruit included. The fruits were great on their own, but for me they really didn’t particularly enhance the venison.

Then, full and winding down, we shared an excellent cheese course (three selections from what looked like 24 choices or so), followed by a inspiring Pear Ginger soup – an idea I’ll probably steal next time I host a dinner party. Then choices from about a dozen offerings on the dessert cart, (we were bursting now) followed by mignardises that we had to have boxed up to take home (apparently this is fairly common). Then, walking out the door, we got wrapped small sweets for our morning coffee.

The prices quoted above were similar to what we paid.

Was it worth it? When one person raised that question, I compared the experience to seeing a film that you thought was pretty good as you walked out of the theater, but then you find yourself remembering little bits of it for weeks. I liked it as a once-in a-very-long-time thing. But I know people who do these kinds of meals on a monthly, or even more frequent, basis. I think I get about as much enjoyment trying appealing, high-quality places like Los Nopales, or Honey 1, or Dorado. And seeing what kinds of places get the most commentary here, I don’t think I’m alone in that predilection.