Adamus, Chicago Loop Restaurant and Lounge, Serves Up New Fall Menu

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“Adamus” could refer to so many things … like Pomus Adamus , the thyroid cartilage better known as Bruce Jenner’s bane, the Adam’s apple. But with regard to the restaurant and lounge in the Silversmith hotel, we have a feeling it might refer to the “Latin”^[1] word for diamond, which would make sense, since Adamus is located in the heart of Chicago’s Jeweler’s Row.

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Adamus’ New Fall Menu

Adamus invited miLam to sample their fall menu. Chef Nelson Erazo prepared a flawless meal of eight gorgeous and exceptional courses.

If you don’t know of this fantastic Chicago chef, or haven’t yet sat at one of his tables, get it in gear NOW. Adamus opened this past spring; some of your friends may not yet have been there. Act quickly! You can be the guy who discovers Adamus for your tribe, which, as you know, is worth millions in street cred.

Dinner went down like this:

Creekstone Beef Mini Empanadas: roasted piquillo pepper, remoulade, horseradish crème. White Asparagus Bisque: jumbo lump crab, morel mushrooms, fresh chervil.

Bartlett Pear & Soft Chevre Salad: mulled Bartlett pear, baby arugula, Marcona almond, goat cheese mousse, sherry vinaigrette. The mulled pears were splendid and the goat cheese mousse was like nothing we’ve ever had. We love goat cheese, so when we say that it’s rich, heavy, and requires your mouth to shift into low gear, we mean those as good things. This goat cheese mousse, however, seemed less dense – yes, LESS DENSE than whipped cream. We don’t know how that’s possible, since, it’s usually made by folding whipped cream into whipped cheese. The flavor of goat cheese was muted, which allowed it to support the arugula, rather than compete with it. The contrast in texture between the mousse and the greens made the salad as texturally interesting as it was delicious.

Foraged Mushroom Flatbread: crisp‎ pancetta, wilted baby spinach, shaved parmesan, truffle cream. Bronzed Walleye Pike: fingerling potato hash, wilted spinach, tiny heirlooms, saffron citrus emulsion.

Juniper Pork Tenderloin: herb‎ roasted garnet yam, mulled apple flan, ginger cream. Some of the best pork we’ve ever had. Jucier than you’d expect even really good pork to be. The flavors in the crust were bold, but didn’t overshadow the taste of the pork, and it all harmonized perfectly with the cream. Taken altogether, this dish was like a brilliantly orchestrated symphonic work by Ravel. His predecessors relied on homogeneous blends of strings, woodwinds, and brass, but Ravel – one of the most distinguished and innovative orchestrators of the 20^th century – often preferred combinations in which individual instrumental sounds maintain independence even as they aggregate into a larger, blended texture. This is what Chef Erazo pulled off in the tenderloin dish: each of the elements had a distinct beauty of its own, but rather than competing, they complemented one another like Toscanini leading the New York Philharmonic through “Boléro.” Much like that legendary performance, this dish brought “shouts and cheers from the audience^[2].”

Chocolate S’Mors Crème Brûlée: torched marshmallow, toasted graham cracker crust. Too many pastry chefs want to murder people with chocolate. This chocolate will make you remember how good chocolate can be. And again, it will reinforce Chef Erazo’s ability to create harmony among independent flavors. Some of you will be delighted to find that it arrives in something the size of the cereal bowl. Others of you will be happy to know that it’s surprisingly light and fun to share.

Bellwether Farms Fromage Blanc Pumpkin Cheese Cake: caramel sauce, candied pecans

Recommendation: Wholehearted

If you’re interested in exquisite Contemporary American cuisine with this kind of sophistication, you’d be hard-pressed to find it a restaurant/lounge atmosphere like this – and certainly nowhere else in this neighborhood.

Notes:

[1] “Adamus” as a Latin term: in the course of doing research for this post, we came across several sources connecting “Adamus” to the Romans. True enough, they used the word. But the story’s a bit richer than that. Diamonds weren’t important enough to Roman culture to merit an actual Latin term. Romans, when they wanted to refer to diamonds, borrowed the Greek word “adámas.” That may seem like an esoteric point, but in the not-so-distant future, when affordable time travel is finally a reality, you’re not going to want to take diamonds with you on your vacation to ancient Rome. You’re going to want to take salt. No doubt many of you will dismiss this with a “whatever” kind of eye rolling, and one day even the ancient Romans will regard American tourists as obnoxious.

As any pissed off ex-fiancé knows, diamonds are incredibly tough, which is why they’re the tool of choice for keying the car of someone who’s cheating on you. We cannot condone vandalism, but we admire a good sense of history. “Adamus” has ancient connotations of “unconquerable” and “indestructible.” That’s why, from the root word “adamus,” we get English words like “adamant.” Also “adamantium,” which is the stuff they injected into Wolverine to make him invincible. Along those lines, we really hoped to discover that Adamus is where you hang in Chicago when you want to meet other mutants on the down low. What we did discover, however, is that after a couple Silversmith cocktails, Jeff the Chef started to feel like he had superpowers.

[2] Ravel & Orenstein: pp. 590–591

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Adamus Chicago

Adamus is located at 10 S. Wabash Avenue. The Madison/Wabash stop on the Purple Line will dump you off literally at their doorstep.

On the internet, You can find Adamus and the Silversmith here: Adamus on Facebook, Adamus’ Website, Silversmith on Facebook, Silversmith on Twitter, Silversmith on Pinterest.

Credits for all images on this page: hover over image and/or green caption text. Click to jump to source.

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