RIP: Skewerz

By Melissa Wiley in Food on May 14, 2012 6:00PM

It’s getting harder and harder for a business whose chosen métier is meat on a stick to make a living these days. Tragically, Skewerz, one of our favorite such establishments, has gone the way of the Pony Express and closed its doors. True, perhaps its memory won’t prove quite as legendary as that of the equine postal operation, but for us personally its services met a far more primal need.

Meat on a stick is a visceral requirement for us at times. Tearing into lightly charred steak (or perhaps tuna) brandished on a wooden sword feels more satisfyingly carnal and saves the bother with utensils. It’s also reassuring to know that you could start fencing with your dinner as a way of rebuffing assailants if need be. Win, win, win. So when we happened upon Skewerz just outside the Damen blue line stop, it caught our attention. Yes, it breathed a sort of a dive-bar atmosphere, and no, we couldn’t actually tell if it was going for a Caribbean or a Hawaiian theme (it’s Hawaiian), but it delivered the goods—the meat, fish, and tofu, on a bed of jasmine rice—blithely on a stick, proving more than sufficient for our purposes at the time.

Spotting our initial hesitation as we stood outside the window, some smiling patrons waved us in and urged us to put our money where our salivating mouths were. By the time we arrived, Skewerz had already sold out of the ahi tuna and the mahi mahi, which the aforementioned neighborly customers agreed deserved top billing despite technically being seafood, not meat, on a stick. But we were fairly impressed with the lilikoi salmon glazed in passion fruit, filet mignon, and red curry charred tofu—enough so to look the establishment up on GrubHub when we reached home to make sure we could easily satisfy an irrepressible late-night craving.

Needless to say, we like to keep our craving bases covered, and the fact that Skewerz just bit the dust puts a definite damper on our carnivorous fire. Of course there’s always Glazed and Confused across the street, so life does in fact roll on, even if our meat-on-a-stick levels are alarmingly low.