Our Top Five Favorite Cicchetti at Cicchetti

By Melissa McEwen in Food on Mar 18, 2014 3:40PM

In Venice, cicchetti are small snacks reminiscent of Spanish tapas that are served in bars. Chicago’s own new Cicchetti has a menu of their namesake dishes. We tried them and then asked chef Michael Sheerin for some of his thoughts about each of them. Here are some of our favorites:

Sardines with horseradish gremolata (Melissa McEwen/Chicagoist)

Sardines: Not everyone likes these oily little fish. Some find their fishy flavor overpowering, but here they are balanced to the point where they taste fresh and luminous. Chef Sheerin achieves this through a process of marinating and then pickling them. “These are really nice sardines from California,” he said. “I want to pay respect to them and try to make them the best I can.” Inspired by Venice’s position in the middle of important trade routes, he serves them with a Germanically-influenced rye crisp and zesty horseradish gremolada.

Squid: This tender squid in its own black ink has a surprising and multi-layered spiciness. Chef Sheerin says that this comes from caramelized onions, fermented black garlic that gives a molasses-like sweetness, and from using quite a lot of black pepper alongside chili pepper. It comes with a creamy polenta with a fresh corn flavor that shouldn’t go unremarked. Chef Sheerin says he achieves that by using dried frozen corn in the coarsely ground polenta, accented with butter and parmesan.

Carpaccio with crispy cauliflower, raisin caper aioli, and sorrel (Melissa McEwen/Chicagoist)

Carpaccio: Definitely the must-have dish on the menu. Assertively meaty, thinly sliced hanger steak is flecked with bits of golden crispy cauliflower and splashes of raisin-caper aioli. Chef Sheerin said this dish is often taken for granted, but he wanted to use a more unusual cut that’s marbled with fat in order to showcase its potential.

Marinated Cobia Crudo: Refreshing cobia on crunchy, buttery rice crackers with slightly spicy harissa. Chef Sheerin told us this dish is often overlooked. Rice crackers probably don’t sound that exciting, but these get their complex flavor because they are made with Acquerello rice, an Italian risotto variety that they puff in-house. The cobia is marinated in lime juice and white vermouth. He said the harissa is an example of how they try to have a Venetian eye toward food, but want to pull in classic ingredients of other world cuisines that fit in well with Italian influences.

Pork crackings with parmesan and rosemary (Melissa McEwen/Chicagoist)

Pork Skins: The tangled pile of pork skins that comes in a black iron pot might seem intimidating, but that belies their true fluffy, zesty, and light nature. Chef Sheerin told us that making them is a long process that involves boiling the skin for “really long time” until it’s really tender, scraping off fat, rolling it into tendrils, freezing, drying it in an oven, and finally frying it.