Review: Brunch at Storefront Company
By Melissa Wiley in Food on Apr 25, 2012 7:00PM
Storefront Company is the neighborhood diner that people in the suburbs can only dream about. Of course it’s not a diner at all—far from it—but a coup d'état of intricately spun cuisine borne out of locally sourced ingredients. Somehow Steve Harris and Claudia Gassel, the driving force behind Debonair Social Club, have managed to make this upscale Wicker Park eatery feel more casual than it really is, and that’s a testament to its harmonious vibe in the midst of one of Chicago’s most eclectic neighborhoods. With Chef Bryan Moscatello at the helm, Storefront serves up farm-fresh modern cooking fit for the most discriminating of palates in a crisp, inviting atmosphere.
We ventured inside for Sunday brunch and ordered a shared plate of beet-cured salmon, fennel jam, pollen créme fraiche, and brioche. Separately, we opted for a caramelized pear pancake with sage butter and maple syrup and fried rice and eggs festooned with coriander hollandaise and pomegranate caviar, which meant that we enjoyed one item from all three categories on the menu: share, sweet, and savory.
On our next Sunday morning visit, we’ll suppose ourselves to have some sort of mysterious ailment if we fail to try the shared cottage cheese blintz with herbed sage crepes, blackberry, and ginger preserves. Likewise, we plan to dig a little deeper into the savory side of things with beef pastrami hash and eggs, garnished with onions, carrots, celery, fennel, brussel leaves, grain mustard, and rose hip catsup. We’re suckers for catsup, and we like our roses to have hips, if only for the sake of some humorous personification. Don’t let these longwinded, virtually rococo names mislead you, however. Store Front is not fussy. The cleanness of its lines and its airy, minimalist decor bespeak an essential simplicity reflected in its food. The proof, as they say, is in the soufflé, and everything we sampled proved as light as the décor, with its gleaming black tiles outlined in white tuck pointing. The flowery menu descriptions proved pleasingly understated.
Gently wiping the sides of our mouths with linen napkins at meal’s close, we were sated but not overfull. Portions are on par with appetites on the effete side of the hunger spectrum—no grand slams here—but that’s how Store Front’s uniformly attractive patrons keep their streamlined figures, many set off to striking relief against Gary Weidner’s 34 x 13 foot black and white mural.
The only potential drawback to Store Front’s gustatory élan is its price tag. All told, with coffee and orange juice (sans sparkling wine), our tab hovered around $60, which was not unreasonable considering how darn tasty everything was, but a tender reminder that we had feasted upon somewhat rarefied locally sourced ingredients prepared by the expert hands of a former Food & Wine Best New Chef. So in case we had forgotten, this is not in fact our neighborhood diner. It may, however, play host to our next anniversary or birthday merrymaking, and that’s something ever so sophisticated to look forward to.
Storefront Company is located at 1941 W North Avenue.