Berrista (Homaro Cantu)

Cantu's new coffee/donut/pastry type of place, which will utilize a "magic berry" to turn sour food into sweet and eliminate the need for so much sugar in those products will be opening up in Old Irving Park near the blue line stop there. Pretty cool he picked that area and not River North, Loop, West Loop, Streeterville, Gold Coast, Wicker Park, or Lincoln Park. He's been living in that neighborhood for the last decade.

http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20131219 ... rving-park

Very excited for this venue to open; such a wonderful concept (making junkfood healthy - or at least much less unhealthy than normal - without sacrificing taste) and Chef Cantu is the perfect person to execute this. Really hope it is a big success and a Berrista opens in my neighborhood soon!

Gonzo70 wrote:Very excited for this venue to open; such a wonderful concept (making junkfood healthy - or at least much less unhealthy than normal - without sacrificing taste) and Chef Cantu is the perfect person to execute this. Really hope it is a big success and a Berrista opens in my neighborhood soon!

Yep, and I forgot to mention he hopes to open up more, as someone could infer based on what you said. I think it will be a success because Cantu is a proven good chef who knows what he's doing. Can't wait to try it..

from article, this got an eye roll from me...

"Put Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts out of business, hire their employees and pay them better wages."

if he really does do that, the berry won't be the only miracle coming out of there.

dudefella wrote:from article, this got an eye roll from me...

"Put Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts out of business, hire their employees and pay them better wages."

if he really does do that, the berry won't be the only miracle coming out of there.

He's obviously having fun and being facetious - especially if you know his sense of humor. However, if it's a success, they will probably want to look into the miracle berry he uses and take notes. That goes for a lot of places.

Everything I've ever had that uses miracle berry tastes terrible to me, from my own experiments at home to the menus at InG. Maybe I'm some kind of a mutant though. It always gives me a bitter metallic taste, which some of my friends do not report.

mgmcewen wrote:It always gives me a bitter metallic taste

Miracle berry is people?

mgmcewen wrote:Everything I've ever had that uses miracle berry tastes terrible to me, from my own experiments at home to the menus at InG. Maybe I'm some kind of a mutant though. It always gives me a bitter metallic taste, which some of my friends do not report.

Perhaps it's genetic and doesn't work on everyone the same way. Much the same that cilantro and basil tastes like soap to some people.

mgmcewen wrote:Everything I've ever had that uses miracle berry tastes terrible to me, from my own experiments at home to the menus at InG. Maybe I'm some kind of a mutant though. It always gives me a bitter metallic taste, which some of my friends do not report.

The stuff they served me didn't do a thing. After the dinner, that chef who was on top chef (Chris Jones?) came by and I told him. He went and got something else to try that worked marginally.

What I mean is, good luck Homaro.

I'm not sure if sugar addictions are real, but I do know that I have a problem eating too much of it. So it was with high hopes that I checked out Berrista this morning despite reading about some negative experiences on the Twittersphere. After all, if I can get my sugar fix in quality products without actually eating sugar, then I could just eat more sweets! This conveniently ignores the fact that it would only keep up my sugar cravings while eating pastries that, while perhaps devoid of the calories and carbs from sugar, are by no means healthy, but that's an issue for another day.


The physical space at Berrista is nice - clean, modern, and with basil growing on the walls of the counter that separates customers from the open kitchen. The tables in the front of the restaurant are packed pretty closely together, but once I managed to get to my seat, there was plenty of room.

Before getting to the food, I'll take this opportunity to clear up some confusion about how the food works here. Some news outlets have reported that miracle berry is used as an ingredient. That is not accurate. Instead, you buy miracle berry in some format (whole berry, pill, cube (made from sorbet), and a vial of liquid) and eat it before before trying your sweets. Purportedly all of the sweets are designed to be enjoyable without the miracle berry but I didn't try any before altering my ability to taste. There is no refined sugar whatsoever in anything at Berrista but there is some pineapple extract.*
*I'm positive he said pineapple, positive he didn't say juice, but only pretty sure he said extract.


The menu makes clear what items are miracle-berry friendly. This is a little confusing because there are published quotes from Berrista like this one that say there are elements of savory dishes affected by the berry. Since I was focused on sweets today, I didn't ask for any clarification.

We ordered two pastries and coffee. We were told by one employee that drinking hot coffee would deactivate the miracle berry but then told by another employee (who claimed to have worked with the berries a lot) that unless the coffee was scalding hot, that wasn't something to worry about. To be safe, we both held off our coffee until after eating most of our pasties.

If it's your first time, Berrista will give you a miracle berry tablet and a piece of lemon so you can see how it works. There's no question the miracle berry works - I ate the lemon and it tasted like very sweet lemonade.


The first pastry we tried was the raspberry coffee cake. The frosting seemed very sweet, the cake not too sweet at all, and there wasn't a lot of raspberry flavor. For something without sugar, it was pleasant enough in terms of flavor. But the problem here was the texture - the cake was far too dense.


The chocolate banana donut also suffered from textural problems. It was too dense and chewier than I'd ever want a donut to be. The donut without chocolate didn't have much flavor at all, though the chocolate was surprisingly chocolate-like. Neither my dining companion nor I detected banana flavor.

After eating most of the pastries, I drank some coffee. There's an impressive selection of coffee at Berrista. My El Roble Microlot from Bowtruss by way of Costa Rica was excellent - floral and fruity. I followed that with the remainder of the pastries, which tasted identical to pre-coffee so it appears it's safe to drink the coffee at any point w/o affecting the miracle berry's impact. I don't think the miracle berry affected the coffee flavor - my understanding is that miracle berry only affects sour flavors.

There are loads of reasons to eat less sugar - both health-related and, depending on one's political beliefs, a host of issues within the international sugar industry. But the pastries at Berrista are not going to inspire an anti-sugar revolution.

That said, the idea is a good one and Chef Cantu is incredibly talented. I'm curious to see how Berrista does with the miracle berry in other applications, but I'm going to wait to see some positive reports before making the 4-mile trek to try it again.

Berrista
4219 West Irving Park Road, Chicago
Apparently no phone number listed

Very nice report! I've been wondering about the place and you cleared up a lot of confusion . . . I'll otherwise refrain from commenting on the place/concept without having tried it (which I will do).

Berrista Closed 'For the Summer' as Homaro Cantu Lawsuit Nears Resolution

http://chicago.eater.com/2015/7/14/8954 ... t-resolved