Dinner at the delicious Lula Cafe

A few days ago I finally made it to Lula Café with my friend Doug. Alas, I've been a little burnt out on blogging lately, so I decided not to bring my camera. I will have to regale you with words alone, which may not amount to much because I’ve been struggling with an unending cold and am not at my creative best right now. Luckily, this cold has not managed to dampen my appetite.

Lula is located in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood. I know nothing of Logan Square, but to my untrained eye it appears to be on the move in an upwardly mobile direction. Near the restaurant, there resides a slightly shabby-looking hot dog joint (is there any other kind, really?), but also a yuppie flower store called Fleur. When stores with one-word names start infiltrating your neighborhood, you know gentrification draws nigh. When the dog bakery hangs its shingle, it's all over.

We sat outside because it was a balmy May evening, and it was actually quite pleasant. Often outdoor seating in Chicago involves a few tippy plastic tables lined up next to four lanes of honking, belching traffic. But not here, where the street was quiet. There was also a canopy which came in handy later when it started raining halfway through dinner. Ah, spring in the Midwest!

We started with a bottle of Spanish rose (can’t remember the name, of course, owing to my incredible inability to retain any information about wine), a cheese plate starring Humboldt Fog, and a warm arugula salad with asparagus tips and a poached duck egg.

I love a nice crisp glass of good rose on a warm night. You get all the cooling refreshment of a chilled white, with a touch more intensity of flavor. Rose gets a bad rap because of those cough syrup versions by Beringer available in every supermarket, but you just can’t beat a good one. Don’t ask me what they have done to the supermarket varieties to make them so vile, but steer clear.

The Humboldt Fog was its usual decadent and velvety self. The plate came with some wafer-thin slices of Asian pear, bread and a very interesting slice of what appeared to be super-condensed, compressed spice cake studded with raisins. I’m sure there is a great word for whatever this was, but I don’t know it. I’m sticking with “compressed cake” for now until someone corrects me.

My salad was nice enough, but a touch on the bland side. The large, almost-raw egg didn’t add much flavor either. I’m trying to get over the repulsion I feel for undercooked eggs, but it remains a challenge. I gamely smeared the yolk all over the arugula, but it just made the salad sort of sticky and heavy. With a classic warm spinach or frisee salad with lardons, the yolk is a natural complement. Here it just contributed a kind of leaden ickiness to the dish.

For dinner, Doug got some amazing pork and polenta concoction that was accompanied by a cluster of tender asparagus wrapped in prosciutto. Good god! It was heavenly. The pork was melt-in-your-mouth tender. I think there might have been a balsamic reduction on the plate when it first arrived, but he vacuumed it up so quickly that I never got a taste. The garnish, a few strips of candied rhubarb, was dramatic but also amazingly delicious, with a tart, citrusy crispness that left us wondering what the hell it could be. Our disaffected hipster waiter nicely found out for us.

My dish, spaghetti with a spicy tomato salsa, queso fresco and bacon, was just so-so. It couldn’t help but be unexciting compared to Doug’s festival of pork across the table. And most of the good bits were buried in the bottom of the bowl, so if you feel compelled to order it, make sure to root way down (like the pig you are about to eat) to bring all the chunks of bacon up to the top.

For dessert, a chocolate gateau for the gentleman, and a carrot cake for the lady. My cake was made without raisins which earns Lula many extra points, but it did taste a teeny bit dry. Doug’s chocolate cake was outrageous. It was basically a giant lump of gorgeous chocolate, mixed perhaps with a smidge of butter, flour and sugar. It came with a few cherries, but they aren’t quite in season yet and were unremarkable.

Now that I’ve finished picking apart its flaws, I must say that Lula is the kind of place I fantasize about opening, if I was ever crazy enough to want to open a restaurant. It’s hip without being pretentious, and the chefs use local and organic foods creatively yet somehow manage to keep the prices totally reasonable. Yes, my dishes veered off track in a couple of places, but I will without a doubt return to try their other offerings. There's a $6 BLT that's calling my name…