Chilam Balam

Arriving mere hours after Check, Please! was filmed at Chilam Balam, a BYOB locavore-type Mexican restaurant in Lakeview, I marveled that such an unassuming space had attracted so much attention. It looks as though someone emptied a bodega of its shelves and replaced them with a booth running the length of one wall and no more than 15 tightly packed tables. Add some kitschy south-of-the-border decorations, and the scene is complete. Of course, no one is here for the atmosphere, which is dispensed with as soon as one opens the windscreen door with its thin metal bars, enters, and is essentially sitting at a patron's table. Told the wait would be 45 minutes at least, no more than five minutes after walking to the bar next door, I received a call summoning me back. The morning after, I feel similarly summoned; the food was playful, mostly successful, and entirely delicious. The small menu, presented in a book of fragile paper, is half blank pages, a good metaphor for where the restaurant is going and perhaps what it may become. The menu is about 20 small plates, half rotating specials, and three or so large plates, none of which I sampled, as they seemed uninspired. Of the small plates I tasted; creamy squash blossom soup with goat cheese and fried leeks, slightly fiery guacamole with chips and pickled onions, bone marrow with toast and sweet pickles, chicken flautas with a mess of vegetables, a sliced flank steak in a spicy red sauce with fried onions and tortillas, and scallops in a thick green sauce similar in taste to a mole with corn, mushrooms, wax beans, and roasted tomatoes the size of a dime, the scallops were the clear winner. Perfectly roasted, a sauce I would have taken home by the quart, and tomatoes so sweet the waiter and I both commented on how much they added to the dish. Of the remaining dishes, the soup was delicious, the guacamole was overpriced, the marrow bones held too little marrow, the flautas presented a nice textural contrast between the fried shell, soft chicken and crunchy, creamy vegetable mixture, and the flank steak was unsuccessful, limp, and given flavor only by the peppy red chile sauce. For dessert, a slightly overbearing but addicting dish of cinnammon-sugared empanadas that were stuffed with crunchy peanut butter and accompanied by small dishes containing a not unpleasantly grainy Oaxacan chocolate sauce, and crushed blackberries. The service was friendly as we discussed other restaurants and helpful as the waiter demonstrated his knowledge by properly suggesting how to course our meal. I would absolutely return, but not until the special dishes have rotated.