Camera in the Kitchen: Darwin's

By Rachelle Bowden in Food on Sep 18, 2006 3:41PM

We must have walked past Darwin's on Damen, just south of Armitage, a hundred times, but it wasn't until Friday night that we went inside. What we found was a great menu of upscale bar food, created by the Orange chef, and a pretty good selection of beers. For example, instead of having fried mozzarella sticks, Darwin's has "crispy brie"... and a generous serving, too!

For entrees, Chicagoist really wanted the brie + bacon burger, but we'd just had a ginormous piece of fried brie, so we went with the pulled pork. It came with some kind of fancy coleslaw both on the side and on the sandwich, and we swear the slaw had cream cheese in it. It was the perfect sweet offset to the spicy BBQ sandwich. Chicagoist's friend had the veggie burger, which we heard from the manager is made by hand. No frozen veggie patties for Darwin's, they Cuisinart the veggies up themselves.

As far as the beers, we had everything from Burning River made by the Great Lakes Brewing Company to Hitachino White Ale made by the Kiuchi Brewery in Japan to PBR. Our waiter, Theron, introduced us to a new shot that is bound to be a favorite, the Chocolate Cake shot. We should add that Theron was an awesome waiter. It was like we met a new friend.

The only thing odd was that there weren't many people inside. But we were sitting at the windows, which were open, so we didn't really notice. Plus it was nice not to be somewhere packed to the gills. We liked it. So, if you need somewhere casual to go that's got better than your run-of-the-mill bar food, check out Darwin's.