Tomato bite and drink: A tomato with a filling and “leather” tomato skin on top. An okay bite, with the leather having a slightly unpleasant texture, but the drink was amazing.
Beignet: A fantastic bite. A crunchy beignet with a rich filling that paired well with the slightly salty and acidic eel on top.
Truffle Cracker: How can black truffle between two perfect cracker wafers not taste good?!
Tartare: A5 Wagyu tartare with different preparations of wagyu fat with caviar. Amazing!
Corn and crab: A nice, rich corn soup that pretty much tasted of a chowder with crab, but this was a bit too sweet.
Lobster Custard: I thought the lobster custard tasted quite strange at first, but by the end, I liked it quite a lot. One of the condiments on top was paprika, and they didn’t tell me which was which, so one spoonful was overwhelmed by the paprika, but overall pretty solid.
Lobster: Pretty good. Slightly smoked lobster with different nut/seed oils and a nut butter, I thought this could have been plated better, and while this tasted great, this was no different than eating any lobster you’d get at a good restaurant plus melted butter mixed with powdered peanuts.
Caviar: An amazing and novel dish. The light sauce was a perfect accompaniment to the caviar, and the “raviolis” of different leaves, each with a different vegetable filling, were great.
Avocado: A pretty bad dish, that’s apparently their only signature that never changes on the menu. Literally just a raw avocado served with two sauces, one of which was quite astringent, and the other was too spicy IMO.
Salmon: Perfectly cooked salmon with a great cherry sauce.
Quail: Amazing! Perfectly cooked quail served with an amazing sausage and creamy side. The leg was nicely smoked and was great with the foie gras dipping sauce, and the smoked quail egg was great too.
Lamb: One of the worst red meat courses I’ve had at a 2-3 star restaurant. This is the only time I’ve had lamb, which was from Elysian Fields in this case, at a restaurant of this caliber that had an undesirable gaminess. The diced organs on top and truffle ragout underneath were flavorless and did nothing, while the sauce was far too thin. I’d say the plating was very poor too. The bread on the side was a strange accompaniment. A bit too yeasty in taste, and the glaze brought an odd sweetness, while being way too sticky.
Chocolate: An amazing bite, and maybe the only time I think the chocolate-mushroom combination really worked.
Tomatoes: A very strange dish. Very chewy mochi dumplings had different sweet tomato fillings with a tomato sauce, and two rich tomato sauces on top. This wasn’t bad per se, but certainly not a 3* dessert.
Cake: Better than the mochi, but still a bit underwhelming. The cake was aerated and literally melted in your mouth, but was a bit too light and it truly felt like you were eating just the flowers. One of the sauces was good, and the other had way too much saffron. After one bite I thought they’d put way too many flowers, and removed 80%+ of them.
Overall, I was a bit disappointed. Smyth seems to promise lots of creativity, interesting flavor combinations, and super novel and interesting dishes, and didn’t really deliver on much of that for me. After quite a ton of negative reviews on here and online, it seems to me they’re playing it far safer than previous menus I’ve seen, and I don’t think it works. Due note the service was excellent, they upgraded me to the chef’s menu for free, and Chef Shields was wonderful to talk to!
by CaviarGlutton
2 Comments
I had a positive experience at Smyth but I don’t think I would return there before Oriole when in Chicago. The Loyalist (below Smyth) makes one of the best burgers in the city IMO. Cheers!
I also went in September and enjoyed the meal, but I do think they’re a lower 3* or maybe very high 2* for me. Not all of the dishes were the same and looks like there’s some changes to dishes that look similar. I thought that the bread was amazing. Loved the donut/beignet, too.