Of all things, it was a fried corn silk garnish that made me well up during the fourth “Ravioli” course at Cariño, Uptown’s spectacular Latin American tasting menu restaurant from co-owner/executive chef Norman Fenton.
What’s maybe more noteworthy about this dish, in which al dente ravioli stuffed with puréed huitlacoche laze in truffle beurre blanc beneath a wave of corn foam, is that truffle isn’t rained on top like dollar bills. Rather it’s deployed subtly to enhance the corn smut’s woodsy, fermented qualities. Adorning the bowl’s edge with dehydrated corn and “popped” sorghum, the corn silk looked like little singed hairs. It tasted grassy and toasty, unlocking a childhood taste memory of eating ineptly shucked, grilled corn on the cob with butter. This stuck with me as I unearthed the grain’s diverse expressions one by one, then in a chorus—buttery, minerally, toasty, earthy like mushrooms, gently acidic, sweet as if sun dried. And I cried, just a little.
This was one of countless moments that solidified my sense that Cariño might be the best dining experience in Chicago right now, and a redemption of the tasting menu, which too often feels like it’s reaching for Michelin stars to the point of wanton tedium. Yes, you’ll find some fine-dining hallmarks: molecular gastronomy, occasional Wagyu and a truffle or two. Yes, there’s a hint of chef-bro one upmanship, namely a dessert in which a perfectly fried churro is doubly overpowered by foie gras mousse and a spiced cafe olla brewed garishly with duck stock.
But by and large, the 13 courses I ate at Cariño—Spanish for “darling”—moved and delighted me; they played, too. (After all, shouldn’t this be fun?) Dinner here doesn’t come cheap, at $190 (or $210 for the chef’s counter), plus $95 for standard or $165 for reserve wine pairings. But it’s a meal to cherish and ponder—and a glorious escape to enjoy the hell out of. Then again, and assuming you’re cool with 10pm dinner, Cariño performs a more accessible second act in the form of an eight-course taco omakase ($125 including two drinks), a masa-focused romp that upcycles some tasting menu byproducts.
But we’ll get to that later.
Dinner began with Fenton’s cunning take on chicharrón, Mexico’s ubiquitous fried pork skin street food. Owing to a painstaking, days-long process of boiling, icing down, scraping and dehydrating, the skin puffs into an airy meat chip when fried, issuing a satisfying craack! that sounds like cards being shuffled. It’s dusted with smoky, sweet BBQ spices, and presented with a foamy esquites dipping sauce infused with minty epazote, funky aged cotija and a nice punch of heat.
I washed it down with a remarkably balanced and soft mezcal margarita from cocktail curator Denisse Soto, with green apple, tangy nopal and a chartreuse ice cube that dispersed its just-cut herb flavors with increasing intensity as I drained the cocktail. Cariño’s wine list, from sommelier Richie Ribando, likewise zeroes in on Central and South America. Think hefty yet fresh Chilean vermentino and spicy, fruity Mexican garnacha.
The Michelada course that followed was not the easygoing beer cocktail, but rather a minerally oyster dunked in tomato dashi, then adorned with clamato pearls, sweet white soy, zippy citrus and Modelo beer foam—which went down as convincingly as the real thing.
“Slurp the oyster; lick the shell,” Fenton said plainly, noting the Tajín-coated edge.
The sense of humor at play seemed to sharpen my senses for what followed: a vivid-green aguachile that uplifted the fruity, vegetal qualities of jalapeños and serranos, with an assist from quenching cucumber jelly and lush hunks of ora king salmon and its sea-salty roe.
Then again, Detroit-native Fenton (or “Dee-troit,” as he’d say) knows his way around a fine-dining kitchen. After cutting his teeth at restaurants in Michigan, he joined The Alinea Group’s The Aviary and later the quixotic, Michelin-starred Schwa, where he worked up to chef de cuisine. He spent nine months in Mexico, visiting the states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, Michoacan and Monterrey, ending in Tulum, where he went to work with Karen Young (also Cariño’s co-owner) as executive chef at WILD Tulum. He divides his time between here and Mexico.
It’s his gift for zhuzhing the stuff of everyday nourishment that stopped me in my tracks over and over at Cariño, though most memorably in the taco trio, highlighting the house masa program. A little golden-fried taco dorado took flautas to France with its gently smoky and sweet chicken liver mousse and adobo filling. A tostada reimagined tacos al pastor as lush, marinated lamb tartare with freeze-dried pineapple atop a thick fried tortilla.
As instructed, we picked up the middle handheld—a blue corn tetela (masa pocket) stuffed with duck confit—using the single hoja santa leaf on which it sat, and popped it whole. The buttery, toasty masa; rich, gamey duck; and caramelized sweetness of roasted sweet potato heightened by the anisey leaf—teleported me instantly to Oaxaca. I was sweating in a humid market as I wolfed down tetelas and giant, crunchy tlayudas. I was inhaling aromatic smoke from drying beef in the Paseo de Humo at the Mercado 20 de Noviembre. I was pinching duck and mole with blue corn tortillas at an airy indigenous restaurant in the Centro neighborhood.
“It tastes like Oaxaca to me too,” Fenton later said, smiling. “It’s from passion, this whole concept.”
Reflecting further on the meal, I hold onto tiny revelations: The unexpected brightness one can taste in lamb loin when it’s draped in a tart hibiscus jus. That biting into fried hoja santa leaf with black cod reveals a hidden, almost grassy quality in the latter. That plantains sometimes taste like parsnips and vice versa—as they did in a dizzyingly busy dish involving tender fried sweetbreads in rich mole chiapaneco (with raisins, thyme, bananas, sesame seeds and plantains).
The music—curated by Fenton—teased us, too, hitting everything from reggaeton to Latin folk and Eurodisco. Sometimes it said, lighten up!—like when a throwback ’80s pop song, “Vamos a la Playa,” started up during the taco trio.
I suspect the playlist might’ve had a hand in my ravioli tears—gentle emotional manipulation via the plaintive, acoustic folk song, “Fuentes de Ortiz” by Ed Maverik. (In fact, I kind of hope so.) Because isn’t that what art is for? To articulate something we might not have the words for, to take us out of our every day, to challenge certain conceptions, to play. It’s a journey I’d take over and over if I had the means. For now, I’ll savor the delicious memories.
Cariño’s Taco Omakase
I’m not exactly sure how we as a culture might start to undo our desire for the pricey spoils of this globalized era, in which we flit to remote locales in hours, in which pristine sea creatures and massaged beef are jetted in from across the globe as emissions and food waste pile up. After all, travel provides perspective. And it’s nice to taste raw oysters and Alaskan salmon as they were intended while sitting in a landlocked restaurant.
Cariño starts to chip away at this brittle fantasy via its late-night taco omakase. The more affordable, 90-minute gateway to executive chef/co-owner Norman Fenton’s thrilling food also lends second life to the byproducts of such preciously tweezed fare. For instance, a cucumber gutted by a melon baller for the tasting menu gets juiced then turned into jelly, bound for a spicier, pared-back take on aguachile during the omakase.
The best—nah, the only—way to experience Cariño’s after-hours taco omakase is posted up at one of seven chef’s counter stools overlooking the open kitchen. The highlight? Watching each chef take a turn at pulverizing the nightly changing salsa de molcajete in a huge mortar and pestle—another technique for depleting veg trimmings. The night I was in, it featured a mess of charred alliums and blistered tomatoes, tomatillos and serranos, seasoned with lime juice and ancho chiles. The chefs explained this as they prepped the dish for which it was destined: A delicious, if slightly gristly, wagyu taco with hard-seared onions.
“A mí me gusta la gasoliiina!” chanted Daddy Yankee on the 2004 track that launched reggaeton worldwide. The soundtrack to omakase feels louder and dancier—as it should at 11pm. The service is still excellent, if slightly less buttoned up.
I was delighted that the Michelada and taco trio reprised their roles here, preceding an ethereal Alaskan king crab taco that got the Baja treatment—marinated in cochinita pibil spices and fried till airily crunchy—then soused with habañero salsa and sprinkled with pickled onions. I drank plump yet fresh Chilean vermentino, poured as generously as if I were at the Olive Garden. (We’d reached the end of the bottle, the server said, another benefit of dining here late).
My favorite taco of the evening was the suadero, a beef cut from between the belly and the leg that I’ve only experienced in its silky, braised form in tacos. Here it’s more akin to carnitas, cooking in its own luscious fat till the edges singe and crackle. A bracing glob of salsa verde cut through the richness. It’s a perfect bite, really—up there with the best tacos I’ve ever eaten in Mexico.
I savored the finale, a bracing mangonada garnished with strawberry chamoy, whose gently salty fermented tang recalled the Indian mango pickle condiment. The chefs, meanwhile, had no time to savor the encore. They’d already set about packing away the miniscule components of our transportive meal into delis, and cleaning and sanitizing the workspace. After all, Saturday night’s curtain was only 16 hours away.
The food: At this pricey tasting menu restaurant ($195 for 12-14 courses), modern technique and whimsy mingle with ancient Latin American ingredients and manipulations with invigorating and delicious results. The late-night taco omakase ($125, including two drinks) centers on Fenton’s skill and shines most in his street food preparation: airy chicharrones with foamy esquites, buttery masa pockets stuffed with duck, crisp-edged confited suadero tacos.
The drink: Riffs on classic cocktails highlight Latin American spirits beyond agave and mixers, like pisco; Träkál, the Argentinean pear and crabapple liqueur; and corn-derived pox (pronounced “posh,” and popular in Chiapas in southern Mexico). The food-loving, low-intervention wine list spans Baja, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Brazil.
The vibe: There’s a notably relaxed vibe at this pretty, 20-seater, which blends green-jewel tones and soft wheatish brown with earthenware light fixtures and a few mixed-media art pieces. Indeed, Fenton has been quoted saying, wear shorts if you’d like. Though at these prices, please consider dressing up just a little. Service is warm and attentive, with just enough schooling on (often dizzyingly complex) dishes.
