Mango Pickle

Calling itself an Indian Bistro, Mango Pickle opened a couple of months ago in Edgewater. We really liked our meal. The food is Indian, but with modern touches: more high quality vegetables, less ghee and other more "American contemporary" touches such as butchering their own lamb to make a a daily lamb special.

What we had:

Fried Okra & Vegetable Chips, which included Onion pakoras, spicy mustard, peanut-coconut chutney. This appetizer was fantastic. The okra was roasted until it was charred, but still had great flavor. The platter also included potatoes, sweet potatoes and onions that had been very lightly coated, fried and highly seasoned. The two dipping sauces were also well seasoned and quite unique.

Seasonal Saag with Paneer; Mustard greens, spinach, grilled paneer, almond-stuffed cauliflower, mushrooms. This was quite different than the saag paneer I'm used to, which is usually in a pool of sauce. This was a seasoned spinich puree topped with several vegetables.

Lamb special: Today's was a lamb shank with carrots and beets. The lamb was fall off the bone tender and the vegetables were excellent.

We also had plain naan. They have a bar with drinks that incorporate the typical Indian spices, and my chai after the meal packed a real wallop.

The menu is small, and nothing had much heat, but all the ingredients, including the vegetables were very high quality, and everything had oodles of flavor.

Service was friendly and the space was inviting and comfortable.

We'll be back for sure!

Mango Pickle
5842 North Broadway
Chicago, IL 60660
(773) 944-5555

Heading here later this week. The menu has a couple of items that I have rarely seen on US Indian menu's (i.e. Bengali fish fry). I will report back.

A while back, an Indian friend of mine told me he thought the food here was inedible but Sula wrote an effusive review . . .

at ChicagoReader.com, Mike Sula wrote:That vision involves almost crystallized spheres of crunchy pani puri filled with cool English-pea puree from which sweet pepper-and-garlic grilled shrimp poke out like the tail of a comma. It's conjured the smoky charcoal-fired eggplant-tomato dip baingan bharta, here garnished with roasted carrot halves and beet wedges, an arresting adjustment in texture for a typically homogenous dish. Something similar happens with her saag paneer, a finely rendered, incrementally spicy puree whose thickness is mitigated by pillows of fresh grilled cheese, bits of chopped almonds and cashews, and nuggets of roasted cauliflower and mushroom. It's a version that doesn't so much complicate an elemental dish familiar to anyone who's ever stepped into an all-you-can-eat northern-Indian buffet line as open it to the possibility of evolution.

Mango Pickle is as Indian as it wants to be

=R=

I was unfortunately disappointed with much of what I tried last night. Before I get to the food, I'll provide a mild warning. We arrived at 8:30 (Saturday) and the place was mostly full with only 2 2-tops remaining. Immediately after being seated, we noticed the tables to our right and left dealing with issues-both complaining about dishes not delivered, one later trying to flag down a waiter for a bill, the other complaining about an item on the bill...and a couple of glances around the dining room and you see raised hands at a couple of other tables, trying to flag a server down. Understaffed it would seem. It took at least 10 minutes (maybe a few more) before a server even came by our table.

By around 9/9:15, tables were clearing out and the chaos seemed to die down. Unfortunately, the food did not rescue the evening.

Lamb on a paratha-like bread, an appetizer at $10, was easily my favorite item of the night. We cut it in two and it was easily eaten as a sandwich. Rich lamb, crispy bread, some nice acidity cutting into the richness and freshness from the cilantro. I really enjoyed this dish.






After the lamb, things went south. Baingan bharta seemed to lack cumin and ginger, though perhaps excess tomato masked those flavors. I suppose it was tasty enough, and I enjoyed the addition of some charred onions. But it was also a little thick and not chopped up enough.






Pani puri was another mild disappointment. Shrimp and pea flavors came through loud and clear. But where were the Indian flavors? They were almost totally missing, but at least the puri were nice and crisp.






The biggest disappointment for me was the butter chicken masala. The dish was so tomato-heavy and lacking in other seasonings. And as you can tell from the picture, it was also lacking in cream, so I also missed that velvety sauce I'm so used to. On the plus side, the chicken was cooked beautifully and was plenty tender. Though the chicken could've been cut more evenly.






No complaints about the basmati rice. It was fluffy and fragrant, though I have had more fragrant. But it was cooked perfectly.






But damn that naan. For me, the best naan is bumpy, with alternating textures of charred, crisp bits and fluffy pockets. Well, this more resembled the naan you'd find in a bag at your average grocery store. I think the picture tells the whole story.






So why at this point would we order dessert? Great question. But we ordered the carrot halwa. There was a nice ice cream, but the carrot halwa itself lacked sweetness and seemed to also lack cardamom. I sometimes complain about Indian desserts being too sweet, but this is the first time I've found an Indian dessert to lack sweetness. Well, at least we enjoyed the ice cream.






We also ordered the mango pickle . . . but it never arrived . . . and we then had to request that it be removed from the bill.

I'm perfectly okay with fusion if that's what Mango Pickle aims for, but Indian-American fusion still requires Indian flavors and I found those aromas and flavors missing for the most part, or at least significantly understated. Those intoxicating flavors and aromas of spices - cumin, cardamom, garam masala, cinnamon, ginger, etc. - and herbs were missing. Maybe this was an off night, but unless others here have vastly different experiences, I will not be giving Mango Pickle another try. With Ras Dashen next door, I was wishing that Mango Pickle had been too full to accommodate us.

Thanks for the detailed review. I was making plans to eat here later this week after reading Sula, but looking at Yelp gave me pause. (I realize that Yelp is -- to put it mildly -- controversial, but I find that it can still be useful, especially when, as in this case, many of the reviews are consistent in pointing out the same issues.) Your experience confirms my suspicion that this place is Bhabi's Kitchen 2.0.

I had checked out the reviews on Yelp -- most complaints seem to be service related and a few plainly ridiculous (as unfortunately happens when the masses begin reviewing with little thought). Mike Sula's review was one of the reasons I gave it a try. I trust his opinions. So of course I was disappointed with what we ate given what I expected. But it's possible that there was simply something amiss in the kitchen yesterday. I just don't know. I hope other LTH'ers will try it and offer an opinion. All I can say is that it didn't scratch my Indian itch, so I'll be headed elsewhere this week!

I have to side with BR and Ronnie's anonymous friend on Mango Pickle as I had a thoroughly disappointing meal tonight. It started off okay with the pork belly vindaloo. The sauce, which included kashmiri peppers, had a nice kick. The meat was fine, but if it was actually pork belly, it was some of the leanest pork belly I've had. But I'm easy to please and if this had been the average quality of the meal, I'd have been okay. Unfortunately, it was the best thing I tried.

The Baingan Bharta was borderline inedible. Rather than the traditional mix of roasted eggplant and cooked tomatoes, this was an eggplant dip with a small handful of raw tomatoes sprinkled on top. It tasted like the kitchen was playing a game of "how much smoke can an eggplant absorb" and the answer was a whole hell of a lot. You know what's worse than liquid smoke? Solid smoke.

Finally, there was the purported star of the menu, "Today's Lamb Biryani." The restaurant buys a whole lamb every week from Slagel Farms and uses it to make a variety of dishes throughout the week, an admirable goal to be sure. This was allegedly leg, and was served with basmati rise, saffron cream, cardamom, laurel leaf, cinnamon, and yogurt. I'd estimate we got about 4 to 6 ounces of meat in the $24 dish. I'd be upset about not getting enough meat but it was cooked into oblivion so I was actually okay with the ridiculous rice to meat ratio as I was at least able to fill up on the very good basmati rice.

On the plus side, Mango Pickle has a comfortable feel and the service was friendly, albeit a little slow. I can't imagine I'll go back.

It sounds like Mango Pickle should think about taking the former Thali Bites space to lower overhead. Two positive Sula reviews might equal one sustainable venture.

I may very well be ignorant for thinking so, but trying to upgrade/contemporize Indian and Chinese (Won Fun had like 2 people in it at 9.45pm Thurs, go NOW if you really want to try it) is just a losing proposition. Absent unique characteristics and an uncapturable revenue stream (eg. Shanghai Terrace), it is just begging for expectations to be unreasonably high and impossible to satisfy. If Customer X pays twice as much for the same Biryani he loves, it could be the best he or she has ever had, but still not twice as good as the previous best. Optics, economics, literally everything is going against this type of place in a non pure-tourist location. I hope they turn it around and prove me wrong (lie, I never want to be wrong), but Sula has hardly had the King Midas touch as of late.

bweiny wrote:but Sula has hardly had the King Midas touch as of late.

Well, he's not cooking the food or ensuring its consistency . . . I appreciate that he visits and reviews a lot of places that don't otherwise receive much attention, but he does not determine the viability of a restaurant.

As for making ethnic food contemporary . . . or fusion . . . or other ideas along this spectrum, to me if food is good, it's good, plain and simple. I try to go into every dining experience with an open mind. The problem with Mango Pickle was that it just didn't deliver delicious food. And while they were purportedly offering Indian flavors, those flavors were largely absent my evening. But some of the most highly acclaimed restaurants in the world were initially rejected for eschewing traditions: Osteria Francescana and Gaggan are a couple that quickly come to mind. And though this is probably not the right place for this debate, I hate the suggestions/arguments that certain cuisines are not appropriate places to use high end ingredients or to substitute locally available ingredients for ones that are customary but not local. Those are not the reasons I reject places like Arun's these days.

bweiny wrote:It sounds like Mango Pickle should think about taking the former Thali Bites space to lower overhead. Two positive Sula reviews might equal one sustainable venture.

I may very well be ignorant for thinking so, but trying to upgrade/contemporize Indian and Chinese (Won Fun had like 2 people in it at 9.45pm Thurs, go NOW if you really want to try it) is just a losing proposition. Absent unique characteristics and an uncapturable revenue stream (eg. Shanghai Terrace), it is just begging for expectations to be unreasonably high and impossible to satisfy. If Customer X pays twice as much for the same Biryani he loves, it could be the best he or she has ever had, but still not twice as good as the previous best. Optics, economics, literally everything is going against this type of place in a non pure-tourist location. I hope they turn it around and prove me wrong (lie, I never want to be wrong), but Sula has hardly had the King Midas touch as of late.

No fun in West Loop: WonFun restaurant and 2Fun bar closing Saturday

http://www.chicagotribune.com/dining/ct ... story.html

I don't think bweiny was condemning attempts to upscale ethnic food, but merely commenting on its probability of being a successful venture. I commonly root for Imperial Lamian, Hai Sous, Parachute etc. to be successful. However, most of the time they are playing around the edges of their home cuisine and often not even improving upon their more bourgeois counterparts around the city. And they charge you at least twice as much for the privilege. That is not a value proposition I can get behind.

botd wrote:I don't think bweiny was condemning attempts to upscale ethnic food, but merely commenting on its probability of being a successful venture.

Yes, thank you. If the food is good, the food is good. But we all know that's just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to viability. When the undertaking is successful on both the food quality and business ends (eg. Topolobampo, Parachute), it is all the more impressive. I just wouldn't want to bet my last dollar on the concept. It only seems to work where high margin alcohol is ingrained with dining experience, like Mexican and Japanese places.

In all honesty, making it the additional 7 mo's was impressive for Won Fun with the exorbitant costs at that location. I would bet on the chef Baker's next project being successful. I think the concept is so difficult, I won't be surprised if Duck Duck Goat doesn't make it through 2018.

Had an excellent meal here last night. I find the restaurant conversation friendly, with good relaxed service, and tasty food. This is clearly an very individual take on Indian food that apparently, as the comments above show, suits some, but not others.

For those who like it (or want to try it), I'd note that they have a small "regular " menu with 5 appetizers and 3 main dishes. But they also have two "pre-fixe" menus with different dishes that would be very good values at $49 for the vegetarian an $60 something for the non-veg. We didn't want that much food, and found plenty to enjoy on the limited regular menu.

We were also had dinner at Mango Pickle last night and it was outstanding. We opted for the ala carte but the prix fixe menu looked interesting as well. This place should be seeing far more traffic than we saw last night. I hope others discover it soon because there's magic coming out of that kitchen!

We did take-out from Mango Pickle on Saturday night.

Mango Pickle currently offers daily rotating Indian-inspired Comfort Meals, for pick-up or delivery by one of our own team (up to 4-miles)!

Base price is $14/person for a multi-course meal. Vegetarian option available. Our meal (quotes are theirs):

Charred Eggplant "Bharta"/ Mighty Vine Tomatoes, Farm Radish
Slagel Frams Chicken Butter Masala / charcoal grilled, low & slow tomato masala, spot of cream
Braised Kidney Beans "Rajma" / ginger-garlic confit, red chilis, red onions
Housemade "Naan"
"Kheer" Rice Pudding Parfait
Added: vegetarian samosas ($7 for two), Lake Effect Brewing Bitchin' Blond for $6 (2 bottles)

This was a great value. We split the meal across two nights. (Learned our lesson from the Alinea anniversary spread.) The samosas were great, as was the naan. The chicken was nicely done. We thought the beans were tasty as well -- the flavor was unexpected. The eggplant was unusual. I liked it more than Mr. X did but we didn't keep it for day 2.

They are changing the menu daily. I'd like to see them stick around so we'll add them to our "support local" cycle.

https://www.exploretock.com/mangopickle/