Fox & Obel Market: Good Food, Great Parking
By Caroline Clough in Food on Mar 16, 2007 5:10PM
Chicagoist is in the process of forming an opinion about a new cookbook we received a few weeks ago. Part of this process is obsessively paging through the recipes with the intent of, eventually (today), making one of them. We got hung up on one particular recipe that features clams as well as chorizo. When the introduction to the recipe suggested going to Fox & Obel market and cafe for ingredients we figured it wouldn't hurt to branch out in our grocery shopping experience and locales. We were slightly put off by its downtown location (we live in Andersonville) and imagined ourselves loaded up with perishable goods on the 147 bus in deadlocked traffic ... a potentially smelly situation. That's when we noticed that Fox & Obel offers free valet parking, a service our 16-year-old Volvo has never gotten the chance to experience, so we figured we might as well drive.
After an initial problem actually finding the store, which was our fault, we and Lola (our Volvo) were tickled by pulling up to a grocery store and having a valet hand us a ticket before speeding off to some unknown and unseen parking lot. Because it was around noon on a weekday, the store was pretty dead, which is probably for the best since we could see how the layout of the store might drive us crazy if we had to contend with throngs of upwardly mobile gourmands. Unlike many a corporate grocery store, Fox & Obel has eschewed the more conventional vertical aisles configuration in favor of a more meandering set-up. We started out near a shelf of hot sauces, just a little ways away from a freezer full of frozen goods. Our own interests in the store were geared towards seafood, cured meat and cheese, so we made as much of a bee line as we could in the direction of these three departments. Passing, on the way, a very impressive collection of oils (oh, truffle oil, if only you weren't $30 a bottle we'd be best friends).
Our first stop was the seafood case. We were excited that they had kumomoto oysters (one of our favorite kind and, in our experience, not usually found outside of a restaurant) as well as sushi-grade tuna. We were amused that "previously frozen" translates into "refreshed." And we were relieved that they did, indeed, have the clams we were looking for. The fish guy (for lack of a better title) seemed a little miffed when we asked for four cups worth of the suckers, but that may have been the way we phrased it. All the goods were displayed beautifully, and we wished we could really go crazy and throw budget concerns to the wind ... but we couldn't.
Next, we fell in love with the cheese selection. Along with an extensive selection of pre-cut and pre-packaged upscale cheeses, there was also the option of getting cheese freshly sliced from pre-existing wedges. We had thought the fish case would be the death of us but the cheese case blew us away. We witnessed the fromager (fancy word for cheese guy) help a woman find cheeses that could be eaten by a pregnant woman and were impressed by his knowledge. When it was our turn we got a little paralyzed by all the choices. We ended up getting a bit of the Fougerus (makes the typical Brie seem the equivalent of American cheese in terms of taste), Cypress Grove Humbolt Fog (makes the goat cheese you can get at Jewel-Osco awfully pedestrian), and Tomme De Levezu (a hearty raw sheep's milk cheese perfect for a picnic on the Alps). They also had a wide selection of blue cheeses, including three different varieties of Roquefort.
Our last stop was at the cured meats counter where they were offering samples of salami, very tasty salami. We ordered our chorizo, and our companion looked lovingly at the prosciuttos, salamis and other meats offered. We also passed by the the Butcher's counter, and now we know that if we ever wanted to make veal or duck dishes of any kind that this is the place to go.
Fox & Obel also has quite the dessert counter. We didn't linger there long because the tarts and cakes were calling our name in an insistent and slightly pushy manner (with a bit of a French accent) that didn't hold water with us. Their produce section is small but does offer a few items you probably couldn't find at a mainstream grocery store. They also have a cafe where you could have truffled eggs Benedict for breakfast or a Maine lobster club sandwich for lunch or dinner. Perhaps not the place to buy your cereal, Fox & Obel is worth a look if you're searching for hard-to-find ingredients or, perhaps, an opportunity for valet parking (for a maximum of two hours and with proof of purchasing something in the store).