How the Tasting Menu at Oriole Comes Together, in Four Exquisite Dishes
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When guests enter Oriole, they are in for a journey, not just a meal. Hidden down a quiet street just off the highway, the West Loop tasting menu destination has received awards from pretty much everywhere a restaurant can: the James Beard Foundation, the Michelin Guide, and the Banchet Awards, among others. The accolades reflect not just the exquisite food, but the entire experience of dining at Oriole.
Said experience begins even before you enter the building. From the first steps into the garden from the street, the urban noise starts to fade away. Crossing the threshold inside, you’ll enter through a freight elevator, dressed as a small lounge, where you can relax before being led through the meal, in which 12 (give or take) different courses are served across several different rooms.
Executive chef and owner Noah Sandoval and his team have created an edible tour through the entire building, from a one-bite snack in the bar area that sets the tone, to a signature dish served within the cavernous kitchen itself, to later courses in the intimate dining room, with its exposed brick and wooden ceiling beams. The effect overall is that of a moveable feast, as you move seamlessly from one course – and one space – to the next.
Recently, I visited Oriole and got a peek into parts of the pilgrimage diners make each night, with guidance from Sandoval, chef de cuisine Colin McHugh, and recently departed pastry chef Kyra Farkas. Here’s a look at how some of their most iconic dishes come together.
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Bar Bite
McHugh: “This is tuna from the Baja coast in California. We get the belly for another dish on the menu, but this is from the top loin. It’s diced, then dressed in a yuzu kosho vinaigrette, yuzu gel, toasted genmai rice, and a salad of Thai basil and oxalis, sitting in a charcoal tart. The charcoal tart itself has been a part of the identity of Oriole – it comes on and off the menu, but it’s a staple.
It’s the perfect one-biter. When guests sit at the bar, [bar director] Maddie Balintona will instruct everyone to take it in one bite. It’s got this burst of citrus, then you taste the tuna, which wakes up the whole palate, then there are two other bites that sort of sequence you through before you get to the foie [next, below] and you’re like, ‘wtf did I just eat?’
Kitchen Bite
Sandoval: “There have been a lot of iterations of this course. Everybody likes [a traditional brioche, foie gras mousse, and fruit], so we’re just getting everything in one bite, stacking the flavors, and doing our version of the brioche that everybody loves.
The fruit usually changes with the seasons; today it was strawberries. We get our local strawberries from Seedling and Mick Klug Farms. For strawberries, I like pink peppercorn, so we do a pink peppercorn gastrique. If we use blueberries, we do a blueberry vinegar; if we use figs, it’s a fig vinegar and maybe smoked black pepper or green pepper, but it’s always the same: it always has an acid, foie gras, and brioche.
We serve it in the kitchen because I know everybody’s gonna like it. If you don’t like foie gras, fine, we’ve got tofu [prepared similarly], but you know, it’s a layup, so we don’t have to watch anyone be disappointed (laughs).”
Dining Room
McHugh: “We poach this skate wing in butter, then lightly torch it to give it that brulée color to show off the wing. It’s sitting in the bowl with a smoked skate wing rillettes as well as double-shucked favas, a salad of bronze fennel and nasturtium – whatever we can get from whichever farmer decides to drop stuff off. And then it’s finished with a sauce that’s a skate wing fumée, seasoned with a bunch of fennel and lovage, broken with a lovage oil. It’s very herbaceous spring dish.”
Dessert
Farkas: “For the cacao course, I really wanted to highlight the fruit from which chocolate is actually cultivated. The pods themselves come from Ecuador, and I wanted to make sure that all the ingredients were also central to that region. Starting with the cacao pulp pâte de fruits, the pulp is not really used in chocolate, so I wanted to bring that to the attention of guests as well. It has these nice tropical fruit flavors notes; a passionfruit, banana-type thing.
The second bite is a cocoa nib custard, highlighting the cocoa nibs themselves, and then rolled in candied cocoa nibs and a 66% dark chocolate also coming from Ecuador. We finish with the dark chocolate bonbon encasing a caramelized milk chocolate ganache.”
