New to the 'Scene'
With Valentines day near I've decided to go soft again. Well not really, there's nothing wrong with having a mate especially one that's willing to take you out to celebrate some Hallmark holiday with some good food. Granted we dont need designated days to tell us we can eat well but whatever. I'm taking us to a couple spots this week that fit the bill of a nice place to take a date.
One of the many new hot spots on Randolph aka Restaurant Row
Maude's tries to be a casual low key restaurant with French flavor and they do that very well. It's dimly lit with a little bit of a homey feel inside. If that home was part of a million dollar empire like Maude's is. This is just one of a few places run by Chicago restaurant entrepreneur Brendan Sodikoff and his associates. This was my first visit here.
Smash Drinks and Mussels to start
While I enjoyed the Smashed drinks which come with a variety of liquor options I thought they were overpriced for what seemed like a shots worth of booze. From the app menu we had the mussels. The dish itself was good with nice little hunks of powerful bacon but the problem was those little hunks of pork were bigger than most of the mussels. This isn't a problem I've only encountered here though. I wish I'd encounter it less as I'm a mussel man.
Pork Paillard
We had much better success off the entree menu. We both ordered off the "traditional French" part and enjoyed each plate to the point where I'd be happy to order the same thing again if/when go back. The Pork Paillard is a Parmesan crusted pork loin sitting atop a puddle of mayonnaise style cold egg sauce, popular in French cooking. Topped with fresh arugula this was very good as was their house cassoulet. The traditional French stew was rich like Diddy. So much so in fact I could only eat half. The other part of it was just as good the next day. A fine thing to eat on a cold winter night. See y'all next time.
Maude's House Cassoulet
Maude's Liqour Bar
840 W Randolph St
Chicago, IL 60654
(312) 243-9712
Website
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