Restaurant News: Bridge House Tavern Opens, Tribute Releases Menu

By Anthony Todd in Food on Jun 3, 2011 4:20PM

- Bridge House Tavern, the new bar/restaurant in the old Flatwater space, officially opened yesterday. The restaurant has been soft-open for a few weeks. We'll withhold a full review until they've had a few more weeks to ferment, but here's our capsule review from a visit a couple weeks back. Bacon milkshake? Thumbs up. Beautiful riverfront space? Thumbs up? Entire drink menu? Thumbs way down.

- Tribute, the new restaurant inside the Essex Inn on Michigan Avenue that lost its executive chef a couple weeks back, has released the opening dinner menu. Eater has the whole thing, but here are a few highlights: watermelon-strawberry soup with cucumber and feta sorbet, beets with smoked trout, arugula and hazelnut and hamachi crudo with succotash. Everything will be locally sourced, and the prices look fairly reasonable.

- Patrick Fahy, the award-winning pastry chef at Blackbird, is leaving. His pastries, which made us very very happy on every visit to Blackbird, will be missed - and no replacement has been announced yet. According to Paul Kahan (via The Feast), Fahy is "looking for something that will allow him to start a family." Good luck to him.