About us
Window to the World
Attendance policies:
a) Three (3) no-shows without updating your RSVP (for standard meetups) and you will be banned from this meetup.
b) For any meetups in which food has been pre-ordered family-style, any no-shows may result in an immediate ban.
c) If you've RSVP'ed "YES" and changed your RSVP to "NO" within 3 hours before the event starts (Unless you have a REAL emergency), I will consider you as a "no-show".
Chicago is a wonderfully diverse city; each culture has its personality, language, customs, traditions, and cuisine. Each month we will explore various geographical regions by visiting restaurants deemed representative of the cuisines of those regions.
Each restaurant has been selected based on critical reviews, uniqueness, or Zagat or Michelin recommendations. Selections run the gamut from simple street food to 12-course meals fit for royalty. This means sometimes there will be dishes and dining practices that are very unfamiliar, but that's the fun of culinary exploration.
All meetups have been planned with the goal of enjoying a wonderful meal with wonderful company in mind. However, while meeting new people and reacquainting with old friends make the meal more enjoyable, the meal is, and always will be, the chief focus of each meetup. Please do not take up precious spots if you are not interested in the main attraction (like going to Garlic Fest if you don't like garlic in your food or a "meat-heavy" dinner and you're vegetarian).
If the presence of another member makes you uncomfortable, please let us know immediately so the offending member is removed and banned.
Banned members will not be reinstated. There is no period after which a banned member can re-apply to join.
Anyone who has been banned or has had their membership revoked and attempts to attend an event either by attending as another member's guest or without a proper RSVP may be asked to sit elsewhere if the event is held at a public venue or asked to leave if the meetup is a private event.
For more meetups, be sure to check out our sister groups: Chicagoland Culinary Explorers and Adventurous Eating. Chicagoland Culinary Explorers focuses on casual and fine dining restaurants in and around Chicago, while Adventurous Eating focuses on unusual culinary experiences.
Click here to learn more about ISCChicago.
Let's explore authentic cuisines together!
Upcoming events
1
- $2.00
Japan, Part III - Okonomiyaki @ Gaijin
Gaijin, 950 West Lake St, Chicago, IL, US*NOTE: The $2 meetup fee is charged to pay for fees charged by Meetup.com. The payment can be made via Cashapp/PayPal/Zelle - I will PM you payment details upon RSVP.*
Menu: https://gaijinchicago.com/menu
We will conclude our tour of Japan (which started with ramen @ Akahoshi Ramen and conveyor belt sushi @ STR Sushi Taku Rotary) by visiting Gaijin, an okonomiyaki restaurant run by Paul Virant (Vie, Vistro, Petite Vie, Perennial Virant). Virant chose the name "Gaijin" because that word means foreigner/outsider in Japanese.
Okonomiyaki are traditional Japanese cabbage pancakes, and the Osaka variety has the ingredients mixed in, while the Hiroshima variety has them layered with the addition of yakisoba noodles. The restaurant also has a 4-course menu for $45 as well.
The restaurant has been reviewed by the Michelin Guide, the Chicago Tribune, The Infatuation, and Time Out Chicago.
From Time Out Chicago:
"When I was 26 years old, I indulged in a life-changing bowl of bucatini carbonara made by chef Todd Stein at now-shuttered Cibo Matto in the Wit hotel. Ever since then, I’ve labored obsessively in my home kitchen to recreate the perfect alchemy of fat, salt, chew and heat. After a decade of tinkering, I now claim a derivative sliver of this Roman classic, though I’m not even 1 percent Italian.
Questions of ownership and origin become more profound when someone opens a business aiming to profit off of said recipes—a thought that lingered in my mind when I dined at Gaijin, the new Japanese-inspired West Loop restaurant from white chef-owner Paul Virant (Vie, Vistro and bygone Perennial Virant).
The focus at this bustling newcomer is okonomiyaki—savory Japanese pancakes crammed full of meat and vegetables and strewn with flavorful sauces. Virant’s wife fell in love with this Osaka-born comfort food while living in Japan as a student, and the chef has spent the past 25 years perfecting home-cooked iterations through his seasonal Midwestern lens. Virant playfully acknowledges that his take is at best that of an enamored outsider—the name Gaijin means “foreigner” in Japanese.
“The deeper sentiment is that we’re doing something that’s a super-popular comfort dish in Japan—a place where people really have a reverence for their food and culture,” Virant told me. “Out of respect for them, we’re trying to do it as best we can.”
Gaijin slings two expert versions of okonomiyaki that top out at a refreshing $16: the mixed Osaka variation with eggy batter as well as the layered, eggless Hiroshima version that incorporates yakisoba noodles.
The Osaka-style was a textural triumph, with a crispy griddled exterior shielding a custardy center. Crowned with curls of tempura shrimp, sweet corn, creole butter, puffed rice and squiggles of okonomiyaki sauce (a cross between ketchup and worcestershire), the dish easily catapulted into best-of-2020 contention. The vegetarian version of the Hiroshima-style didn’t work quite as well. Layers of tofu skin, yakisoba noodles, mushrooms and boiled kelp tasted like a mishmash of fungal and oceanic funk.
Bar manager Julius White (Vie), who doubled as our server, nudged us toward the sleeper twice-cooked garlic served with seeded rice crackers. Toasty, togarashi-scented chile oil amplified the cloves’ mellow sweetness. I’d come back solely for pork belly yakisoba, too—a tangle of toothsome ramen noodles, cabbage and luscious cubes of slow-roasted Slagel Farms pork belly redolent of toasted sesame—all glossed with tart, savory sauce.
Next time I’ll request that the kitchen staggers my order, as our limited countertop real estate at the bar proved no match for the slew of starters, noodles and pancakes that were deposited almost all at once. (An apologetic White immediately re-fired our pancakes.)
The symphony of savory flavors found a refreshing, delicately aromatic counterpart in my gin and shochu 950W-Hai highball, infused with floral oolong tea and oolong syrup. My date’s bittersweet Hibiscus Under the Tracks with Japanese bourbon, lemon and aperol, was juicy and magenta-stained from hibiscus liqueur.
Even the painfully stuffed must find room for Gaijin’s other Japanese-inspired specialty, kakigori, hulking bulbs of feathery shaved ice drizzled with sweetened condensed milk. The pineapple variation, which is speckled with brown butter crumble, channeled syrupy upside-down cake; we excavated velvety spoonfuls of tangy buttermilk-pineapple sherbet from the snowy mound’s center."
8 attendees
Past events
257
