Yes indeedy, Azucar is another tapas bar/restaurant in Chicago. It is that.
As
predicted by me, and no doubt many other people, tapas is becoming a hot concept
(the dishes are plural, the concept is singular) no doubt in part because it's a liquor-friendly one, and I had been keeping an eye on a place that opened not too far from my house, Ole Lounge (not to be confused with Ole Ole, or maybe it IS to be confused with it). But early reports on Ole Lounge haven't encouraged me to take my recently-in-Spain self and family there for Americanized tapas and loud drinks, so tonight instead we checked out the slightly-more-promising Azucar! (it would be more promising without the "Viva la munchies at TGI Fridays"-like Exclamation Point!)
In a nutshell: liked the food, still didn't think it much resembled anything had in Spain, and indeed it supported the theory I've advanced that Spanish food in America winds up being subtly Mexicanized or Italianized-- the dominant spice was cumin, and more of it than I had on anything in Spain. There were also green flecks on a lot of things, as you'll see, something we never saw in Spain (where green vegetables are, generally, somewhat rare). Some of it was pretty nicely prepared, almost all of it was tasty, but the moments in which I was actually reminded of Spanish food I'd had were few. On a certain level, of course, that doesn't matter if it tastes good, which it mostly did.
The light was good so I took a lot of pics. Things we had:
The empanadas mentioned above, which the kids ate happily, and these patatas bravas decorated with Silly String-like ropes of pepper sauce. Potatos fried delicately, sauce didn't have that much flavor. Can't anybody just make a big sloppy plate of potatos in tomato sauce like Iberico's?
Queso de cabra, and like
Twist's, closer to pizza sauce than crushed tomatoes.
Meatballs in a sweet tomato sauce. I ordered these for the kids but found them a pleasant surprise, not heavy, not just bland meatloaf-flavor.
Some sort of red pepper salad thing on hummus. Gluey and with no dominant flavor, this was a real miss.
And these were a real hit: scallops, perhaps overcoated with cumin, but with a nicely balanced broth with roasted onions and various other hearty flavors worked into it.
Grilled Spanish chorizo, a little too dry for grillable sausage in my mind, but if any dish came close to something we had in Spain, this was it, reasonably closely evoking the grilled fresher chorizo at Maceiras.
Pork tenderloin. Again, too much cumin, but the other stuff around (dried cherries and so on) helped, mostly (spinach seemed out of place as a flavor in that company), and somebody definitely knows how far to cook pork like this, and no further.
We had two desserts-- one of donuts and chocolate sauce, which came very close to the late-night Spanish snack of churro and chocolate to dip it in, and this "strawberry tart," which was actually much more strange a dish than that name suggests-- an eggy, sweet ice cream, a salty manchego "mousse," and a shortbread-like wafer underneath. The sweet vs. salt thing was so pronounced I was instantly reminded of desserts at places like Schwa and Achatz-era Trio, which seems way too ambitious and quirky for a fairly simple place like this. Anyway, the salty manchego overpowered the sweet and the fruit, it didn't quite come off.
Service could hardly have been friendlier, maybe the presence of the kids helped, maybe they're just glad to be there. Price struck me as maybe just a hair high for this amount of stuff, but we did over-order, I think you could be economical here and still have a good time. Is Azucar! at long last the authentic great Spanish restaurant in Chicago? Well, no. But it's a nice neighborhood place, with an outdoor dining space overlooking the blue line station, that seems to have gotten past its minor growing pains described above and settled in for a long life in Logan Square.
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