One is East (Room 22, at 22 E. Hubbard St.), the other is West (Rockit Bar and Grill at 22 W. Hubbard St.), and never the twain shall meet. And that’s what we like about urban life–unmet twains. These new hotspots may be aiming for the same prime clientele (young, handsome, upwardly mobile), but they couldn’t be less alike. So if one ethos doesn’t suit your personal taste, just walk a few blocks and–presto chango–here’s one that does.
Rockit, brought to you by nightlife impresarios Billy Dec and Brad Young (of Le Passage), has a dude-ranch air, but without the cowboys–the theme is actually rock ‘n’ roll. In an attractively rough-hewn room full of bare bricks, beams, banquettes and backward baseball caps, Rockit serves a bar/comfort food menu that aspires to greater things. Still, the Rockit Burger (made of that omnipresent new combo of Kobe beef and foie gras), the Thanksgiving Day Turkey Dinner, Black Angus Meatloaf and BBQ glazed salmon really seem built to be eaten while simultaneously flirting, people watching or talking attractively on a cell phone. I’ve seen it done.
On a recent night at around 7:30, the Rockit dining room was populated mostly with big tables of pretty women exhibiting their tans in creative ways; the few lawyerly looking men dressed in suits may as well have been wearing bulls-eyes. Naturally, the place has a bar/club atmosphere with eardrum-rattling rock as its soundtrack, and people were clearly having a blast. “I think they’ve had too many Rockitinis,” one of my dining partners suggested after a particularly loud bout of hooting from a nearby table. (In addition to Rockitinis, Rockit also serves Rocktails.) We may have subconsciously lowered our culinary expectations after someone left their half-drunk gin and tonic on our table, but some dishes were better than we expected.
My friends Ginger and Gay and I liked the Buffalo mozzarella salad; the cheese was sweet and light, and the tomatoes were ripe and juicy. We also had good grilled asparagus and prosciutto di parma drizzled, unnecessarily, with lemon butter, and a fresh tasting shrimp cocktail that included, for the first time in my life, enough cocktail sauce. It seems like a small thing, but as probably the only person in the world who still orders shrimp cocktails, I can tell you it’s not. The mushroom salad had fried mushrooms in it, which was a surprise in a flashback sort of way. The Kobe burger was nothing exotic but it had a lot of flavor and was satisfyingly greasy (although the fries were forlorn). The barbecued salmon was . . . barbecued salmon. But the crispy pork, with vinegar braised kale and applesauce was uncrispy, gray and confused. If I were queen, I’d remove it from the menu. The chocolate mousse was sweet and gloppy, the profiteroles were surprisingly prissy and sterile. But who cares? Party on.
Down the street, Room 22 looks like a nightclub–sleek dark surfaces, padded patent-leather wall, velvet curtains, L.E.D.-lit bar–but it acts like a restaurant, with warm but professional service. The place wasn’t packed and hopping like Rockit (it was only 6 p.m.) so this time around Gay and Ginger and I were forced to focus on a different kind of fun: eating.
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Room 22 has gotten on the small-plate bandwagon, which is often encouraging. (Bad food tends to arrive in jumbo portions, for some reason.) The chef, Patrick Robertson (who also consulted on the quite different menu at Rockit), is in the process of making the food more seasonal (which is not a bad idea), but there were several dishes that I’d order any time of year.
A starter plate of Serrano ham with two fat deviled eggs had me at hello, but I’ve always been a deviled egg loyalist, even when they weren’t fashionable. The roasted Pequillo pepper with a chorizo and medjool date filling was rich and satisfying. Gay’s candy stripe and golden baby beets with micro-greens and creamy French feta was pretty much all a beet lover could ask for: sharp and sweet and mellow all at once. I also liked the octopus, which had smoky-black tendrils and was cooked to just the right kind of tenderness, then placed atop cool chunks of tomato in vinaigrette with shaved fennel; it was interesting, but it’s also the kind of dish that grows on you without fully charming you the way a plain old deviled egg will.
In spite of the small-plate label, these were all quite large dishes, which might partially explain why the chicken and fish entrees were a bit overwhelming. The pistachio-crusted skate in particular needed to be turned down a notch; the fish was sweet and meaty, but in combination with the pistachios, the orange braised spring onions with brown butter and kumquat were overpowering, and reminded us all of some kind of Christmas concoction. Gay’s pan-seared halibut was bland, despite the puttanesca sauce, and the abundant bed of wintry barley didn’t help. Even our favorite dish, the sea-water-brined chicken with bacon-braised yellow wax beans, had a wintry, stew-like appeal. But it still tasted nice.
Ginger and Gay and I didn’t exchange much important information, on cell phones or otherwise, until dessert time (a light but caramelly banana tian, a fine chocolate creme brulee, a runny saybayon with a few blackberries). It wasn’t the antics of the crowd or the noise that stopped us. We could hear one another perfectly, but this time we were focused on the food.
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Rockit Bar and Grill is at 22 W. Hubbard St. 312-645-6000. Open Mondays through Saturdays for lunch and dinner; Sundays for dinner only. Entrees $9-$27. Room 22 is at 22 E. Hubbard St. 312-527-4900. Open Mondays through Saturdays for dinner only. Entrees $14-$19.