Restaurant Week Reviews: Big Jones

By Staff in Food on Feb 4, 2014 9:30PM

Melissa McEwen, for Chicagoist

I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve been burned by Restaurant Week menus before. What seems like a surprisingly good deal before the food arrives exacts its price afterward with rumbling hunger pangs as you receive the check. Some restaurants seem to think Restaurant Week customers are budget-conscious diners they will probably never see again, and that it’s therefore okay to serve them portions as tiny as their perceived food budgets.

But it’s not always a bad deal, particularly for more neighborhood-oriented restaurants that seem more interested in gaining new loyal customers than in grudgingly giving thrifty diners a taste of the high life. I decided to give Restaurant Week another chance at Big Jones in Andersonville.

By the end of the meal, as I stared at the last half of my rich buttery bread pudding, I regretted that tight-waisted skirt I’d decided to wear. I had certainly been well-fed. Despite having paired my dinner abstemiously with tea, I felt slightly intoxicated. I think I must have been drunk on pork fat and butter.

I hadn’t expected this. My first course, Angels on Horseback, looked pretty small when it came out. But it was packed with calories. The oysters had been breaded and fried, mounted on a saddle of rich boudin sausage and then stacked on buttered toast.

Then came the cornbread, a whole little cast iron of it, which was topped with a mound of sweet butter that would make Paula Deen blush. It was fluffy and luscious.

Melissa McEwen for Chicagoist

My main course was fascinating, a bright mild curry with tender flaky trout and fresh lightly cooked vegetables. It’s not the kind of thing you often see menus of Southern restaurants. That’s because it is a recipe from the 19th century, from the classic cookbook The Virginia Housewife by Mary Randolph. It’s from a time when spices like the nutmeg in this curry were expensive luxuries. It contains even more butter.

By dessert I knew I’d have to throw in the towel early, but the half of the bread pudding I had was glorious. “Restaurant Week isn’t so bad,” I thought as I waddled down the street with my belly full of good food. By not skimping on its Restaurant Week portions, Big Jones has won at least one new loyal customer... which I’ll prove once I recover from my butter-induced food coma.

Big Jones is located at 5347 N. Clark St.

— Melissa McEwen