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Frontera Grill
Address: 445 N Clark St Zipcode: 60610 Phone Number: 312.661.1434 Website: http://www.fronterakitchens.com If you’re a fan of Rick Bayless’s TV series, you may not even need to read further, once you know these are his restaurants. One address gives you two options: the boisterously festive, casual Frontera Grill and the serene, elegant Topolobampo. But don’t think that these are simply the same place in different price ranges. The two restaurants have very different personalities. What the two do have in common is Mexican food that takes you miles beyond the usual border fare with which most Americans are acquainted. The lower-priced Frontera Grill actually has the longer menu. There are more than a dozen small dishes, from cheese- and chile-stuffed plantain fritters (plátanos rellenos) to crispy corn masa cakes filled with shredded pork chilorio (gorditas). Specialties include a sour-orange marinated, wood grilled pork dish from the Yucatan (puc chuc de puerco) and serrano-marinated sea scallops in a sweet corn and chile sauce (callos de hacha). Next door at Topolbampo, a good place to start is with sopa Azteca, in which a bowl artfully heaped with crisp tortilla strips, cheese, and avocado is presented and the flavorful broth is poured in at the table. Or perhaps you’d prefer the empanadas de chivo, turnovers filled with chile-braised goat. Among the entrees, roasted lamb with a classic Oaxacan sauce of dark chiles, sweet spices, and ground almonds (chichilo de Borrego) beckons, as does the adobo-marinated, pan-roasted duck breast with lentils (pato con lentejas). Or you can opt for the chef’s tasting menu, which brings five courses, ending with a best-of-the-day dessert sampler.
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