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Chicago is a lot of things: beautiful, tough, a union town. Most importantly though, Chicago is a city of neighborhoods. From Rogers Park to Garfield Ridge to Hegeswich, the second city is an amalgamation of sediments, concreted into a whole. Take any one of these areas and you get a distinct culture, history, and sentiment. Place some together and you get the beautiful mosaic of people, pasts, and presents that is Chicago. Each neighborhood be a small town on its own. Together, they make up the best city in the world.
West Loop is one of those neighborhoods. West Loop can get a lot of flack from some people, and depending on who you’re reading, can get ranked as one of the worst ‘hoods around. It’s really not that bad. In fact, I quite like it. Despite being an old manufacturing district recently turned into a morass of new restaurants and condos, it it has plenty of charm. Lots of brick, easy-to-navigate streets, and a short-ish walk from the Blue Line. Also, really really good food. Rooh is one of those places to get really, really good food in the West Loop.
The West Loop is an odd choice for an Indian place. Most of the well-known Indian joints are up north, famously on Devon Ave, home to a large Indian and Pakistani population. This isn't to say that they’re not other Indian places across the city, but most people in the city will tell you to go to Devon Ave if you want good Indian food. Rooh manages to break that mold, offering an excellent menu of small plates, mains, desserts, and some wonderful drinks not on Devon Ave. That’s one of the great things about Chicago’s neighborhoods, they’re not prescriptive. Their borders, identities, what-have-yous, are all porous, multifaceted, and ever-changing. Just because something has been done a specific way, that doesn’t mean it needs to continue to be done that way. Chicago and its constitutive neighborhoods are an evolving, ever-mutating thing. Chicago is not a staid place. It moves, and breathes, and grows.
They say to review a restaurant is to review one’s soul. Whether this is true or not, I’m not sure. Also, the “they” in this situation is me. If it is true, then you’ll certainly learn a lot about me from reading the rest of it. If it’s not true, then at least you’ll have a restaurant review for the next time you’re in Chicago and need dinner plans.
Rooh is an Indian restaurant, a step off West Loop’s restaurant row. It has a cozy first-story bar, and a more spacious second-story dining room. It was cold on the night we went but the decor and atmosphere were warm and inviting. The company was excellent (Hi Robert, Nancy, Zoe, and Sarah! Thanks for the amazing meal!) the drinks were phenomenal, and food was quite good. They also had one of the spiciest chutneys I’ve ever had in my life.
A quick note: I am not a spice fanatic. I do not seek heat. I am not a freak for spice. I do not live for the burn. I don’t mind a pleasant tingle, the warming sensation of a deftly applied pepper. That can be quite nice. Anything more than that though and I wimp out. I’ll try it of course, which is how I once ended up trying a hot sauce rated at 1 million Scoville units, but I don’t yearn for it. I'm saying all this because I’m about talk about one of the hottest parts of my meal.
Indian cuisine is known for its multitude of spices, both in magnitude and genus. Much of the meal was spicy, in a quite pleasant way. Like many Indian restaurants, Rooh serves much of its food with chutneys. At Rooh you have to pay for these chutneys. Unfortunately, a fundamental part of the West Loop dining experience is getting price-gouged, but they are quite good. The fermented chili chutney was insanely hot. The peanut based chutney was excellent, and the mango was even better. There was a fourth that was green, and that’s all I remember. It was probably good. Back to the fermented chili chutney. I was sweating after trying a small dab, as were some of my other less spice-tolerant dining companions. I’m not saying that it was gross or disgusting, just that it was spicy as hell. Like damn. The staff sensed that we, well, I, was in pain and kept re-filling our waters which was very generous of them. They could have let me sweat my way out of it if they wanted to.
That kind of experience is the beauty of restaurants like these. Being introduced to new flavors, spices, and ways of eating. Though I was born in New Orleans, I’m a midwestern boy at heart and stomach. I stay away from everything hotter than a jalapeño popper in my own cooking. Usually. Things like the fermented chili chutney force me out of my comfort zone, often in quite uncomfortable ways. I’m not saying that this chutney was a life-changing experience, or that I have a new outlook on my own moral code, or whatever, just that it’s good to eat some stuff that makes you sweat from time to time. Really clears your head.
I guess I should do follow that up with a more formal food review. We had a number of dishes, the best being the avocado and chickpea bhel, and the Rooh dal. The butter chicken was also quite nice. Everything was quite good, if not knock-your-socks-off excellent. The cocktails were also another high point, with the Pistachio Paradise and Queen of Spice drinks taking the number one spots. The high point of the meal, however, were the desserts. If you go, save room for the saffron cheesecake, the toasted milk ice cream, and the mango sorbet. All three were out of this world. Pricewise, it was a little spendy, but in line with other West Loop joints. I’d recommend checking it out if you have the chance.
Shout out once again to the Moss clan for treating Sarah and I to a wonderful dinner!
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