Charlatan is well known as being a nose to tail restaurant - and I mean that literally. You can get either a whole pig's head ($60) or whole oxtail ($63) if you are one of the first few people ordering for the night. Deanna and I got there for what we thought was the early bird dinner (6pm on a Saturday) but when the table next to us ordered the pig head the waiter said that they had gotten the last order!
Obviously I wasn't going to get either of these options while dining with a vegetarian, but I was quite intrigued by the oxtail option since it's one of my favorite meats. But regardless, we moved on to the rest of the menu. The rest of the menu is a weird potpourri of items - it's mostly small plates and a few main pasta entrees and then a few seafood dishes. It's not a very big menu, so it was actually kind of challenging to find things for us to share. We opted to start with the cheese plate ($15) and I got the black pepper rigatoni ($17) and we also got a side order of focaccia ($5). I was originally skeptical of getting the focaccia because I was trying to steer away from eating carbs but the waiter told us that it was amazing and on Time Out's list of must eats in Chicago. All the pasta dishes come in a half size order as well but the waiter said that it was a very small portion which I why I got the full size, but that turned out to be totally unnecessary.
First, the cheese plate. It was a delicious selection of 3 raw cheeses - I can't remember what their names were but I did remember there was a fantastic blue cheese option. I would definitely recommend it as a starter if there's nothing else that strikes your fancy. Next we got our main entrees and my first impression was that the full pasta portion was huge! I mean I am a pretty big eater, but even I had a really hard time finishing it (and yes, I know that I didn't have to). The rigatoni came with wild boar ragu, parmesan, and brussels leaves - all good things for a pasta. Even though I knew going in that it would have a heavy hand of black pepper (I mean, it's called black pepper rigatoni), I was having a hard time with the strong black pepper flavoring. While it was a good dish, I wouldn't say that I was blown away by it. In fact, I thought that the pasta at Tocco the night before we more authentic and tastier. This place struck me as being more of a hipster Italian place while Tocco was more old school (despite the weird decor). But the one dish that did totally kick ass was the focaccia. Yes, the waiter was totally right about it. It was out of this world warm and delicious, complete with roasted garlic butter on the side. I originally told myself to only eat one piece but Deanna and I ended up devouring the entire thing because it was that good. I didn't try Deanna's black kale spaghettini but she mentioned that it was a bit on the cold side and that it was ok, but not mind blowing either.
We were thinking of getting dessert elsewhere but ended up getting gelato here because the gelato place we were thinking of going to was closed and because we were lazy. We ended up getting the sweet milk version ($6) and again, t was a huge portion, about 3 scoops worth, but it was a nice refreshing way to end the meal.
While my meal here wasn't awful, I was expecting a lot more from it given how talked about it was from a few food blogs and articles. Granted, we probably didn't order the star dish of the menu but to me a sign of a good restaurant is that you can order anything and it'll still be a great meal. I will give them kudos on the focaccia and they also made some pretty solid cocktails as well. It's worth a visit for those 2 things alone. Total bill: $60 with tax, tip and drinks
Photo Credit: Yelp
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