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A Coffee Shop That Serves Goulash Impresses a Critic

Plus Taureaux Tavern delivers mostly successful French cuisine

Taureaux Tavern
Taureaux Tavern/Facebook

Finom Coffee delivers comfort in the form of hot drinks and Hungarian delights. Mike Sula writes that the “old-timey wood-clad” shop is “one of those rare community spaces where the food is no afterthought.” A lecsó sandwich features buttery scrambled eggs, vegetable-and-sausage ragout, butterkäse cheese, and absinthe-spiked mustard on a croissant. Goulash, a “warming” beef stew, offers parsnips, carrots, onions, and a “defense against the Chiberian punishment we’re grappling with,” while marrow toast is a “delicate thing of beauty” — toasted sourdough topped with veal brain, chicken liver, smoky bacon, sliced watermelon radish, pickled tomato, cured egg yolk, and microflora.

Weekly specials also shine. Charred nopale tartare is a “constructed puck” of meaty cacti with pickled tomato, raisins, cauliflower, cucumbers, Erős Pista aioli, absinthe mustard, and sourdough bread crumbs. Mushroom paprikash is “boosted” by mushroom dashi and puree, and finished with wild porcini powder and truffle “caviar.” Complementary drinks include an Ibarra chocolate latte is dusted with paprika and crumbled Abuelita chocolate cookies; and the Hawaiian Fog, an almond-milk-and-hibiscus-tea latte dusted with dried cherry powder and turmeric. [Reader]

Taureaux Tavern showcases chef Mike Sheerin’s French cooking and gets a “thumbs up” from Graham Meyer. Wagyu beef dip and blue cheese fondue are both winning options, as are steak frites served with herb butter and béarnaise. French onion soup features a “densely flavored” beef broth. But there are speed bumps. Fries have an “overdone texture” and are “not up to par.” Worse, though, is the mayonnaise caviar that “tastes like half a cold soft-boiled egg.” [Crain’s]

Taureaux Tavern

155 West Van Buren Street, , IL 60605 (312) 624-8778 Visit Website

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