Remember these French restaurants in Chicago in 1980s?

French Restaurants in Chicago, a 75 year retrospective. Part 4: 1980-1989

As some of you know, I love French food and I have been working for a few years on a pet project: A 75 year retrospective on French restaurants in Chicago covering the period 1924-1999.
Writing part 4 of that piece (1980-1989) took me much longer than I expected. A few of my contacts asked me to let them know when it would be completed.
Well, after a too long hiatus, I am happy to report that I just posted the Part 4 of my story on my blog " French Virtual Café". http://frenchvirtualcafe.blogspot.com
If you find a moment to scan it, I am sure that some of the places I write about will sound familiar to you and bring some happy memories back to your taste buds.
Thank you for your interest.
Alain

P.S I finished researching the restaurants of part 5 , the '90s, which will be the last one of this series , and I have started the actual writing. I hope to be able to complete it before the end of the year.

I appreciate your posting this update. I spent quite a bit of time browsing your site a while ago, and have bookmarked the articles on restaurants through the years and some others for leisurely evening reading.

Thanks, Katie, I appreciate your interest.
Alain

Sincere thanks for the stroll down memory lane. I dined at many of these but not often at any particular one.

I well remember a grande dame asking loudly and persistently for some mint jelly for her lamb at Ambria. We unfortunately were finished before that played out completely. We went for many years across the hall to Mon Ami Gabi at the holidays, ordering -always - the Roquefort steak frites, escargot, and a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape to fortify ourselves for the Christmas lights display at the zoo.

I was way too young to go to any of these but reading about them is fun in itself... What a dream some of these places sound like!

Monique's ...... She changed the way I understood food what you could do with it, and how it could taste. She was doing catering for one of the businesses in the Merchandise Mart during the NEOCON show in the early 80's and had a woman working for her, Bernie, who I knew from another caterer. I was making a delivery to the site and Bernie offered me some chilled raspberry soup and a salad and a sandwich. It was one of those meals that the taste, texture and color all, well it just was not like anything I had ever tasted before (I was 18 at the time). I made sure every day I was delivering to that site around lunch.

A labor of love!
Much appreciated!
WE found Heaven with Carlos(Roland in the kitchen) and Le Francais(Banchet) in the late 1970's and 1980's.
What wonderful service and meals.
I particularly remember rare duck breast at Carlos with a sauce made in heaven.
A meal at La Francais started with a seafood puff pastry and delightful sauce. Champagne.
Followed by veal surrounded by a mousse of veal, all wrapped in puff, sliced at table-side. Pommard.
A few years ago, a memorable rabbit at Froggy's for luncheon. Wine escapes me but probably US.
With the advent of the 'celebrity chef's' we have gone mostly to ethnic family run restaurants. Chains of any kind are avoided. We still go to Nieto's and particularly their wine dinners and lunch served in December. Last I followed Roland he was at Miramar and constrained by the menu.
Again, thank you.-Dick

roland is back in the kitchen at les nomades and is involved with some other projects

Hi,

Neil O'Brien, Jean Banchet's sommelier at Le Francais, opened a French restaurant in Hyde Park in the early 1980s. I went through your article and did not find any reference to a Hyde Park French restaurant.

Is it possible, it was not included (if it exists) because it did not meet your standards?

Thanks!

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:Neil O'Brien, Jean Banchet's sommelier at Le Francais, opened a French restaurant in Hyde Park in the early 1980s.

In 1981 O'Brien opened TJ's in the Flamingo Hotel at 5500 South Shore Drive. It was reviewed in the Trib by Carol Haddix on March 7, 1982. Her article was titled "A proud French papa spawns a pair of pleasers", a reference to Jean Banchet's former FOTH employees Carlos Nieto opening Carlos in Highland Park three months previous, and O'Brien opening TJ's nine months previous.

Cathy and Nsxtasy:
You are right I did not include Tj's in my list because I thought, perhaps wrongly, that it was more a Continental restaurant than a French one. Having not dined there myself, I based this assumption on a Sun-times review dated December 4, 1987 which describe the menu as "offering a variety of "American-Continental" cuisine". And most dishes are actually typical of this type of restaurant.
But it could have been that in the early days (1981) of this restaurant when the 2 original owners were Tom Ward and Jorry Zordani, who named the place after their two first names initials, the menu's French touch was more evident. I had not read the 1982 article by Carol Haddix that you mentioned in your post which seems to indicate that " French touch".
Sorry, but my 75 years retrospective on French restaurants in Chicago does not pretend to be an academic exhaustive work, but rather a French food lover's compilation of names, memories, personal contacts, and descriptions found in my own and newspapers archives. So it is inevitable that errors and misses did occur.

I was a clueless undergrad in Evanston during the golden age (70s) and missed most of those great temples, but it's great to remember the 80s bistros which I could and did frequent after graduation and moving into Chicago. Particularly (for me) La Fontaine/Jean Claude, Le Chochonnet, Jackie's, Un Grand Cafe, Yoshi's, and the Sheffield incarnation of Le Loup---truly affordable and with a great garden to eat in in summer. Thanks.

Really enjoyed your blog-brought back terrific memories.
Jean Claude may have been my favorite restaurant ever in Chicago!
My grown children will attest to Le Bastille as the staff provided wine glasses for all and let the parents decide who could have wine even when they were early teens.
I thought you gave short shrift to Michel Maloiseau whose St Germain had the best baguettes.


Question. Why does/did New York have dozens of French Bistrots in midtown often half a floor below street level when we have so few?

MLS:

Saint Germain was opened in 1992, by Jean-Luc Heitz. It is true that their baked products were quite good.
So you will have to wait a few more weeks to read about it in the 5th and last segment of my 75 year retrospective of French restaurants in Chicago. Sorry it took so long.