Perennial

Description:

• It's inspiring to lend help to a great big project -- when an Amish family raises a barn, everybody brings the lumber, and when Annabel Chong makes a movie...everybody brings the lumber. Doing it with food, Perennial. Decked out with floor-to-ceiling windows and a nominally nautical theme (birch trees = masts, gold draperies = sails), Perennial's an American bistro collaboration between the BOKA/Landmark guys and half the population of Chicago. For the menu, the duo brought in both BOKA's current head chef and the former Butter No. 1 to co-create grub like 4-cheese orecchiette mac, Wings & Beer (crispy confit chicken legs, beer-braised onions, blue cheese foam), surf & turf carpaccio (Big Eye tuna, Angus strip loin), and a braised lamb roulade & grilled lamb chop tandem dubbed the X2 (savor it before Mag-meato yanks it from your clutches). To create their Reserve Wine List, the owners went broader, asking 30 prominent Chicagoans to select their favorite bottle, e.g. Alinea's Grant Achatz' '90 Krug Champagne, The Big Hurt's Miner Sauvignon Blanc, alderman Vi Daley's Nelm's Road Merlot, and Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead star Josh Charles taps Masi Costasera Amarone (to order a 2nd bottle, tell waiter "the Masi is done, man"). Later this summer, even breakfast'll be outsourced to a ringer, with Hot Chocolate's Mindy Segal's award-winning sweet-&-savory pastries available -- but don't look for maple logs, as they're all in the service of the insatiable Annabel Chong.
• © Thrillist 2013