Last week Erin and Cinnamon and I met up for dinner at Mercat a la Planxa, Chicago’s only Catalan restaurant, on South Michigan Avenue. I was up on North Michigan between work and dinner and I thought “oh, I’ll just walk down for dinner.” Right. That’s a long walk from Chicago Avenue. I ended up arriving wet from the rain, blistered from my shoes, hot, late, and frazzled. Erin and Cinnamon were having drinks in the bar and I joined them for one before we headed up for dinner. Nothing like booze to calm the nerves.
I took this photo of the bar. When I pulled out my camera to take the photo, Cinnamon and Erin both gasped, “a point and shoot!?!??!” Yes, I got a new point and shoot a while back.
Mercat a la Planxa’s bar is on the first floor, street level. The dining room is one floor up. I didn’t realize beforehand that the restaurant is located in the Blackstone Hotel. The interior is really beautiful. Warm colors. Modern touches. I thought it was cool how the kitchen is wide open, making it almost part of the decor, a show of the process.
Chef Jose Garces is the the owner of Mercat a la Planxa. I’d heard of him from the Food Network, where he won the Next Iron Chef challenge. Think what you like about the Food Network and it’s challenges, but Chef Garces also won the James Beard Award for best mid-atlantic chef.
Our waitress that night was a firecracker. And really good at her job. Funny, but not trying too hard. Friendly. And she knew her stuff too. She mentioned to us that Chef Jose Garces was in the kitchen. I commented that I was suprised, since he owns 6 restaurants in Philadelphia and only one in Chicago. Our waitress said Chef is in Chicago a lot and told us that he’s from Chicago and attended Lane Tech and Kendall College.
For dinner we decided to split 6 small plates and a pitcher of the seasonal sangria. We were first served tomato bread, which was so light and fresh and delicious. Next up we got the chef’s selection of 3 cheeses. Each of these cheese were served with a special side. The goat cheese was paired with a garlic dulce de leche. The sheep cheese with a orange marmalade. The cow’s milk cheese came with a pistachio truffle side. So good. The pairings were right on and just as delicious as the cheese itself.
Next we had some delicious croquetas of potato and cheese with some jamon (ham) inside. We also had pimentos de padron, flash fried padron peppers with salbitxada and sea salt. The croquetas were very rich and salty, but in small little pops, were so good. Cinnamon had a dish similar to the peppers somewhere in New York and ordered them to compare. She said the ones at Mercat were better than the ones she had in NY.
We were loving this food so far. So it was no surprise, after eating this deliciousness, pondering over how local the Chef is and how much he’s accomplished, we were forming little foodie crushes. We looked up and Chef Garces was standing next to our table talking to a few people. Someone at our table may have made some saucy gestures behind Chef’s back and been really embarassed when our sassy waitress called her out. May have happened. Or may have just been a sangria daydream.. but it would be quite a coincidence then when we saw the waitress talk to Chef and then when he came over to our table to introduce himself. Blush blush blush!
Ahem. Back to the food….
It was coming out fast and furious at this point. We had the pinones con boquerones, which was a flatbread with white anchovies, pancetta, goat cheese and marinated pine nuts. We also had some slow-cooked pork belly with cider glaze, green apples and truffle. There was also a dish with mussels. All very very good.
For dessert we had croquetes de xocolata – milk chocolate croquettes with banana marshmallow, rosemary caramel and arbequina olive oil. OMG. These were so good. There were six little croquetes and I remember sitting and talking a bit before eating my first when Erin interrupted me and yelled to just eat it already because she had eaten hers and it was THAT good. Cinnamon was making a face while she ate hers. I couldn’t tell if it was pain or pleasure. Turned out that’s just how good they were. Make sure you get this dessert if you visit Mercat.
The food at Mercat a la Planxa was really well done. Great dinner. And not too expensive. We were stuffed at the end and including the drinks, the bill was about $45/person. So, a nice dinner, but not going to kill you when you get the bill. More importantly, I had a great time catching up with two of my favorite ladies, Erin & Cinnamon.
There was no wait to get seated and were maybe about 8 groups of people seated and eating dinner. Actually, there were quite a few more people just having drinks at the bar. The space is cute, with small tables in the front and a bar in the back. We could imagine coming just for a few cocktails, if we weren’t in the mood for food or needed a drink before going somewhere else. 
Overall we enjoyed dinner. There were some things we really liked and some things that were just ok. The salad was good, but we realized we could get a salad like that anywhere. Nothing outstanding. The patats bravas were not what we expected. They were more like french fries with some sauce on the side. Probably our least favorite dish of the night. On the otherhand, we were still talking about the olives days later and the scallops were to die for.. so savory and delicious. The waitress came to take the plate away and we wouldn’t let her. Instead we requested more bread and then used it to sop up the sauce from the scallops. It was THAT good. The dates were also delicious. We hadn’t intended for them to be dessert, but they were served last and were just sweet enough to finish off the meal right. 
