It is a fond dream of mine that someday (although probably not in my lifetime) people will no longer be referred to as “foodies,” chefs will work in kitchens attached to restaurants rather than television studios, and the rest of us will be able to go to dinner and just . . . eat some food.
“Beats me,” people will blithely proclaim when asked to pinpoint the origins of some elusive flavor.
“I have no immediate plans to try Tibetan food,” they’ll tell new acquaintances, without fear of plummeting down the social ladder like yesterday’s corporate raiders.
None of which has much to do with Lakeview’s charming new Mexican cafe Caliente. I bring it up only because on the night I visited, both my dining companions made what I consider unnecessary claims about having unrefined palates. This is what the Foodie Nation has done to us.
At Caliente, you can relax. It’s so easy to like the Chicago-born chef Victoria Medina-Lollino’s straightforward big-flavored cooking that you don’t even have to think about it, and the atmosphere inside the chili-red storefront space, which is decorated with Dia del Muerte skeletons and devils, has the welcoming air of a family-run enterprise, because that’s what it is. Medina-Lollino–who is 27, runs a catering business by day, and is the mother of a 3-year-old daughter and a 4-year-old son–created the menu with the food she grew up on as her inspiration.
“It’s what we ate at home, but I might twist a dish up a little,” she said.
In fact, her Mexican native mother and grandmother were in the kitchen with her in the early days before the opening in late January, testing their recipes. “My grandmother thinks it’s funny when I deglaze a pan with white wine,” she says.
Medina-Lollino works with just one other cook and a dishwasher, but her husband Onofrio or her in-laws bring in the kids often. On the night I was there, you could hear their laughter coming from the kitchen, which was almost as nice to hear as the cool Latin tunes Onofrio has picked for the sound system.
The two “palates” and I started with some terrific tequila marinated shrimp, a rustic corn soup with roasted red peppers, and the Queso Flameado (melted panela cheese, portobello mushrooms with tequila), which the waitress set aflame momentarily and then extinguished by squeezing lime over it. We ate this on mini-tortillas, and it was really good. The Empanadas Triple (garlic cheese potato, guava and sirloin and almond) were kind of a bore (the guava one reminded me of a Pop-Tart), but the Red Chile Pork Tamales more than made up for that letdown.
In fact, I thought about quitting my job so I could dedicate my life to doing nothing but sitting at Caliente and eating tamales–that, or erecting a shrine to Medina-Lollino’s grandmother, who taught her to make them. “You were here on Wednesday?” she asked me. “They had just come out of the pot. There’s nothing like tamales that have just come out of the pot.”
There’s also nothing like the Pipian de Pollo–chicken in a red chile and pumpkin seed mole–a dish that I loved and that the chef says you don’t see that often around these parts. An entire breast in slices as well as a leg and thigh came coated in the Georgia-clay colored sauce, sparky and slightly smoky.
My fellow diners also made good choices. I was surprised to like the Enchiladas del Mar (a large plate of panela-cheese filled tortillas with shrimp, scallops, crab and a plum tomato jalapeno sauce), because I don’t generally like the idea of cheese with seafood. But these were light and fresh tasting.
My favorite dish, though, just happened to be one of Medina-Lollino’s favorites, too: Puerco en Chile Verde con Nopales (or braised pork with cactus and chile verde). “It’s so good!” she said, before telling me how she makes the chile verde (fried green tomatoes, jalapenos, white wine). “I grew up on it.”
To be quite honest, it’s not the most gorgeous looking dish in the world–just some chunks of pork with the strips of drab green cactus in a greenish sauce. But beauty is not really the point. “I really just want my food to be inviting,” Medina-Lollino said. “I hate walking into a place and being overwhelmed or intimidated. I want people to feel comfortable.”
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And we did. In fact, we felt the kind of comfortable that might put off your average food snob. Which is their loss, and just leaves more tamales for us.
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Caliente is at 3910 N. Sheridan Rd.; 773-525-0129. Open Tuesdays through Saturdays for dinner only. Entrees $12-$18.