All Well
★★★
111 N. Carpenter St., West Loop
Dinner for two: $450
Tip: Spring for the $80 wine pairing. While there are no surprises, the generous pours offer a nice tour of classic regions and styles.
★ Recommended
★★ Very Good
★★★ Excellent
★★★★ Exceptional
Fine dining today has become a rote performance. You pay your admission fee, and the chef prepares precisely the same tasting menu for everyone, give or take a nut allergy. On the plus side, you sample a bounty of primo ingredients, and you won’t leave hungry. But then you’ve got no say in the meal, do you? You can’t really get away with not being a sweets person. Or a “cilantro tastes like Irish Spring” person. You just know a luscious, fatty piece of wagyu beef will make its appearance on cue — “our final savory course” — because that’s the showstopper. That’s always the showstopper, whether you want it to be or not. “I’ve heard multiple times recently from seasoned diners that they’re sick of wagyu,” says Noah Sandoval of his Michelin two-star destination, Oriole.
So cheers to Sandoval and his chef-partner, Larry Feldmeier, who’ve torn up the tasting menu script at their new and more accessible restaurant, All Well. Their canny five-course meal ($145) returns some agency to the diner, alternating between dishes the chefs choose and dishes you choose from a selection of vegetarian, fish, and meat options. This back-and-forth hits right — like a tennis volley, or a conversation — and the format will excite both veteran and special-occasion diners who need a reset. It’s also an excellent vehicle for Feldmeier, a talented local chef who helmed the Bristol before working with Sandoval at Oriole. He takes the lead in the kitchen here, showcasing his personality and skill set on both the five-course menu and a selection of à la carte dishes at the bar. Between the two settings, you might just become a regular.
Set in the former West Loop home of La Sardine (the once-upon-a-time sister to Le Bouchon), the room still keeps a boisterous (read: loud) bistro energy. A divider extends through the center of the long space, nearly to the open kitchen in the far back, and it separates the bar area on the right from the dining room on the left. You can reliably walk into the bar without a reservation, although you probably won’t get a prime-time table.
More Top Picks Best Arch Support Insoles For Flat Feet
If you’re having the five-course menu in the dining room, start off with a cocktail — the dirty daiquiri, with green olive and Calvados, is weirdly lovely — because the canapés are all about settling in. Arranged on a wooden tray around a giant mum, each single bite is a mouthful of pow. A gushy corn beignet tinged with truffle, a Dungeness crab salad tartlet with avocado mousse, a sliver of compressed melon supporting a hillock of Serrano ham — each deserves your full attention for a beat.
Then the ball is in your court. How about scallop crudo with Virginia ham XO sauce? Or would you rather have a bowl of chewy-sweet candied beets with sake lees cream deftly pinch-hitting for the expected goat cheese and lending a funky flavor of ferment? I loved a plate of house-cured salt cod brandade served with June’s peak asparagus.
At this point in the game, it’s advantage kitchen, and it sends a spectacular serve your way. The evening’s centerpiece arrives family-style in a gorgeous copper casserole: luna pasta filled with lush Délice de Bourgogne cheese in lemon-chive butter, with a small beaker of double-rich chicken broth on the side. Try it without the broth, then with, then with a bite of crunchy puffed grain toast spread with sweet buckwheat butter. Pile up the ingredients and let them talk to each other. It’s both fun and insightful into how a chef builds complex flavors.
Now it’s your turn to pick an entrée from four choices ranging from maitake mushrooms en croûte to wagyu beef bavette. (If you gotta, you gotta.) The truffle-stuffed quail in an impeccable reduction sauce is so stupid good — tender meat, silky farce, flavor that goes on and on — that I’d have a hard time opting for anything else. I enjoyed the bite of my friend’s sablefish and savoy cabbage in a foamy amazake sauce even though I would’ve gladly unshared for more of that quail.
The 2022 De Forville Barbaresco that’s included in the $80 wine pairing loved this dish as much as I did; it was the best match of the evening. Beverage director Maxx Kleiner and Oriole wine director Emily Rosenfeld have assembled such a nice selection of midrange bottles from classic appellations that my heart leapt. When the first to come to the table is Billecart-Salmon reserve brut Champagne, you know you’re in good hands.
I wouldn’t have minded a choice of desserts instead of the single option: lemon semifreddo with Chartreuse curd and olive oil cake, one of those concoctions that sound light but eat heavy. No matter, the real dessert for me was the 2017 Pajzos Tokaji wine from Hungary, a sweet end to one of the most satisfying meals I’ve had this year.
I’ve taken a couple of cracks at the bar menu. It has big flavors, but they don’t always quite cohere. While lettuces with smoked Caesar drown in dressing, this kitchen knows how to fry (crisp lake perch with nasturtium tartar) and grill (a chicken thigh sweet and burnished from its marinade). The cocktails make bold statements, sometimes spunky like that dirty daq, but other times veering into the realm of movie theater candy. All that the Vodka Drink, with ginger, peach, lime, and absinthe, did was get “Tubthumping” stuck in my head (“He drinks a
whiskey drink. He drinks a vodka drink …”).
While I love All Well’s approach to dining, I could see how it might disappoint in some situations. It’s probably too casual for, say, celebrating your 40th wedding anniversary. But if poshness isn’t your priority, give it a whirl. This is chef-driven cooking at its finest, and Larry Feldmeier is a chef with something to say.
John Kessler is a freelance dining critic for Chicago magazine.