Photo: Maggie Faircloth
Photo: Maggie Faircloth
Ah … summer in Chicago. Restaurant patios are filled for three months straight. It’s the perfect time to open a casual eatery with a garden patio and the newest pizza place in Chicago, Crust, which must have one of the largest patio dining areas in the city.
Guests enter the restaurant via the kitchen where cooks greet them as they roll pizza dough and then top the rounds with eccentric ingredients like béchamel, caramelized onions and caraway seeds. The interior design leaves something to be desired with red plastic chairs and diner-style tables — kind of a funky urban chic, on the cheap — but the restaurant’s clean lines let diners focus on the food.
The bar serves organic Rain vodka specials and the menu offers a varied list of cocktails including a Grapefruit Mojito and Watermelon Margarita, both with freshly squeezed juices. There’s also an infused vodka list including Meyer Lemon and Lemongrass, Vanilla Bean and Cacao, Grapefruit and Bergamot, Cucumber and Mint and Strawberry and Sweet Woodruff which we were told by the server is “a sweet herb.” We had to look it up on Wikipedia to get the real skinny: sweet woodruff is often used in potpourri and as a moth deterrent. Maybe that’s why the server kept his description short. Either way, the strawberry and sweet woodruff cocktail was nicely balanced between sugary and herbal and was quite tasty. Crust has a great list of local microbrews including: Unibroue, Great Lakes (Cleveland); Jolly Pumpkin Bam Biere (Dexter, Mich.); a much-loved local Two Brothers; Dog Fish (Milton, Del.); Lakefront Organic (Milwaukee) and a few well-chosen beers from Germany and England.
However great the drink menu is, the real highlight of Bucktown’s new gem is that Crust is Chicago’s only certified organic restaurant — which means 95 percent of the ingredients used are organic. Crust has been approved by the Indiana Certified Organic organization, which has been certifying organic products since 1995, and is also recognized nationally by the USDA National Organic Program (which, it should be known, only requires ingredients to be organic, but not the produce). We hope more Chicago restaurants follow Crust’s lead.
Crust is new and new restaurants always need time to iron out their kinks, typically the worst of which is service. That is definitely the case here. While everyone was quite friendly, Crust doesn’t seem to have it all together yet. We waited 10 minutes for a table outside to find three open tables when we walked out. The server was pleasant and attentive, but gave vague responses to our questions and didn’t offer to follow up and find the answers. The service team was accommodating, but inconsistent each time I went. The first night dining at Crust, I asked for an egg cracked on the pizza just before it finished cooking, to which the server responded “Sure, Caterina style. We get that request a lot.” But the kitchen refused, claiming adherence to food safety codes. The second time I went, the server said he would ask the kitchen, and then the sous chef brought out a burnt pizza with a barely cooked egg, even the whites were still clear ... which of course left us confused as to whether it was a health issue or a service issue. Either way, the organic egg was quite tasty.
The summary for Chicago’s only certified organic eatery is that if you’re looking for a cool scene, this isn’t the place. If you want really great ingredients creating fantastic salads, good pizza, decent drinks and a nicely-priced bill, this is your summer 2007 favorite eatery.
Note: We called Chef Michael Altenberg, also chef of Bistro Campagna and Campagnola, for an interview regarding the organic certification at Crust. He was very kind on the phone, but unfortunately he wasn’t available for an interview. We wish him well in his newest endeavor.
Crust, 2056 W. Division, Chicago; 773-235-5511.
Tanya Fritz is a professionally trained chef, oenophile, slow-food fanatic and yoga enthusiast.