Rick Bayless Truly is a Top Chef

Yesterday was my lovely wife Elizabeth's birthday and to celebrate we went to Topolobampo, which for those who do not know is a local Chicago staple owned by famed chef Rick Bayless.  Lately Chef Bayless is a local facination (we made reservations months in advance) after he was the winner of Season 1 of Bravo's Top Chef Masters (which is one of my new favorite shows).  The thing that sets this chef apart from the crowd was obviously his food... what wasn't so obvious is that most would NEVER guess what style of cuisine for which he is known.   Mexican.  Mexican is a food style that is typically reserved for the likes of On the Boarder, Taco Bell or if your lucky a little family owned Cantina and if you mentioned Mexican food and fine dining in the same sentence then laughter would undoubtedly follow.  After last night I can unequivically tell you that if you are eating this man's food, Mexican food and fine dining belong in the same sentence. 

That's enough background onto the dining experience.  First and foremost do not even look at the any part of the menu that does not say Chef Tasting that is for sure the way to go, 5 courses of heaven is what it should be called.  Scratch that, don't even read the menu at all.  Period.  It won't help, you won't understand it, too many fancy cooking words that probably only 1-2% of people that don't have Chef on their business card even understand.  The only thing you need to understand is one word: delicious.  I'm going to be Frank for a min, during about 50% of the meal I had ZERO clue what I was actually eating, none what-so-ever, all I knew was that I ate and loved every last crumb.  Busselsprouts.  That's right the most hated of all foods, I wanted seconds they were delicious.  I digress... in all seriousness the menu is very complex and extremely fine dining, which as I mentioned, is pretty counterintuitive, given the cuisine.  As someone who is very interested in cooking I read over the menu and was simply in awe over how many different ways there were to do things, I mean I know there are 1,000s of ways to cook, but to see so many complex and different ways written down on a menu was truely an amazing experience.  Throughout the entire meal you know you are eating Mexican food because you can taste the staple flavors and influences, but these are staple flavors on steroids.  Simply amazing.  There was no chicken, beef, cheese and onion enchiladas here.  We had pork belly soup, goat, rabbit leg, walleye, just to name what I can remember, so not only is the food amazing, it's also an adventure in trying new things.  Every course brought out a new surprise and new flavors that were just perfect in your mouth.  Independently each element was good, but when you took a bite of all the components together it was a pretty amazing thing the way all the flavors worked together to form a copmlex and delicious experience.

Now would be I guess as good a point as any to note that the price tag as you likely have guessed is also fine dining, but I will say that if I'm going to drop fine dining money I was so glad it was at this place versus some of the other well know establishments.  Despite my likely obvious man crush on Chef Bayless (see past posting for more on the Man Crush), it was very cool to sample the types of food that we watched Chef Bayless prepare in the weeks of Top Chef Masters.  If you want a truely amazing dining experience I highly highly recommend this place, however if fine dining is a bit steep then he has another restaurant that's a bit more casual Frontera Grill, and while I didn't get to try it this go around (to quote a certain left coast gov. I'll be back) I feel pretty confident that the food there is equally as amazing and experience in it's own way.

Below is a video of and interview with him on Bravo after he won.  PS I did actually catch a glipse of him in the kitchen while we were eating.  Too bad I didn't get to actually meet him because that would have been super.