Temporis

Feels a bit like damning Temporis, the Michelin-starred tasting menu restaurant in Ukrainian Village, with faint praise by initiating a post on them in regards to their (temporary) takeout menu; then again, we only ended up here because other places we had hoped to order from--El Ideas, Pacific Standard Time--had already sold out for the weekend.

The deal: $70 gets you two servings of kale salad, short ribs and grits, and brownie, which the restaurant generously divides up in individual containers. This is definitely comfort food a couple of notches in complexity below the level the restaurant normally aspires to, but everything we ate was textbook good: right-on short rib doneness and texture, with a jus sharpened by caramelized onion; the salad, while featuring a lot more field greens than kale, had a nice balanced mix of Parmesan and pine nuts, and the dressing was nicely tangy.

I do wonder about the value, though. The price here is about the same as Alinea's takeout concept, albeit with the addition of a salad (but a baked good rather than a composed dessert); it is also about $30 more than Pacific Standard Time, which also featured short rib and grits but provided an additional course and purports to feed 3-4. Anyone out there tried either and can weigh in?

933 N Ashland Ave
Chicago, IL 60622
(773) 697-4961