New link, and Bacon and Halibut at Elate

First off, I received an email from Michael, author of The Daily Bacon, asking if I could post a link to his blog. So here it is, The Daily Bacon. Bacon recipes, info on bacon sales at grocery chains in Michigan, and lots of Twitter updates.

Secondly, I never really know if this kind of thing is worth posting about*, but I ate some tasty bacon food last night. My boyfriend and I went to Elate, the new restaurant at Chicago's Hotel Felix. We were a bit agog at the prices, but also tired and hungry and unsure what to do, so, well, we stayed and ordered some food. This is why the good lord made credit cards, right?

Sidegripe - I love tapas and small plates. It's a brilliant concept. At a place like Province, where I had a delicious dinner the other night, it's a way to get a lot of different dishes. However, although Province offers a plethora of different small plates, they also do "Bigger" plates, which are basically entree sized, and run you about $12-$17 - entirely reasonable, I think, and you'll get a proper amount of food. Elate, on the other hand, is the kind of small plates place where you need to order at least 6 of them between two people to get a decent meal. Even the "Plates", ie what are presumably the bigger ones, are pretty effin' small.

ANYWAYS.

Amongst other things, we ordered the Halibut, which the menu described rather provocatively as Halibut: chanterelles / favas / mussels / bacon broth.

Which is pretty much what it was, I guess. Oh, except also: / delicious.

The halibut was perfectly cooked, crispy on the outside, tender on the inside. The chanterelles were juicy and a gorgeous earthy compliment to the delicate fish, nicely balanced with the somewhat woody favas and the chewy, salty bits of bacon. The broth was delicate and wonderful - I seriously deliberated drinking the rest out of the dish. The mussels were also done just right, and a wonderful accompaniment to the whole. All in all - very nice, and an intelligent use of bacon. It added a nice bit of saltiness, but didn't overwhelm the other flavors at all.

* I generally imagine that the most useful thing in this blog are the recipes. I figure that posting pictures and descriptions of bacon-related things I've eaten in restaurants might be nice, in that you could easily be a better cook than I, and could perhaps recreate these delicious things I've eaten (if you do, please post a recipe in the comments!). On the other hand, you may not be such a talented chef, and you may also not live in the city of Chicago, in which case, reading a post like this just makes you an angry, bitter human being. So I dunno.