Frontera Grill

Ceviche Trio

We had to make our patronage to what some may say is one of Chicago's world renowned restaurants, Frontera Grill. It is one of three restaurants in Chicago run by Celebrity chef Rick Bayless of "Mexico: One plate at a time" and Top Chef Masters fame. The restaurant is so famous we made reservations almost 3 months in advance. For such a renowned place and higher priced resturant it was suprisingly casual and it's decore is much like any moderately priced Mexican resturant. That aside our dinner (i.e. food) was great.

Appetizers:

Meatballs a la Mexicana

Ceviche Trio: the trio included Frontera Ceviche (albacore, tomato, olive), Yucatecan Ceviche (shrimp, squid, orange, cucumber), Tropical Tuna Cocktail (big eye, avoado-tomatillo, mango salsa).  All served with tortilla chips.

- Frontera Ceviche: Hawaiian albacore, lime, tomatoes, olives, cilantro & green chile on tostaditas. 

Most traditional ceviche; the lime and cilanto made the tuna flavors dance on your tongue. This was Nick's favorite of the three ceviches.

- Tropical Tuna Cocktail: Sashimi-grade Hawaiian big eye tuna, tomatillo guacamole, honey Manila mango salsa. Also good. A little less traditional than most ceviches. The guacomole was on the bottom and you really needed a taste of the tuna, mango and guacamole all at once to get the dish - you really need all parts of the ceviche for the combination to hit the wow factor.   

- Yucatecan Ceviche: Steamed Mexican blue shrimp & calamari, lime, orange, habanero, avocado, jicama, cucumber & cilantro. Another more traditional ceviche. But due to the small size in the appetizer trio we only got two shrimp and a lot of thinly sliced calamari - which was ok but we were looking forward to more shrimp.

Meatballs a la Mexicana: Classic little Mexican pork meatballs, smoky tomato sauce, braised kale, poblano rajas, Kaskaskia cheese, served with corn tortillas (to make the dish into small tacos).  The meatballs had a great smoky flavor.  There was also a dash of sweetness.  It was a good starter for the two of us.

Entrees:

Mole Trio - pork (L), enchiladas, vegetables (R)

Mole Trio: 2 Mole poblano enchiladas, grill-seared pork in manchamanteles (chorizo, almond), roasted vegetables in green pumpkinseed mole (epazote).  

- Mole Poblano Enchiladas: Gunthorp free-range chicken, grill-roasted red onions.  

This was by far the spiciest dish of the night.  There was a hint of sweet with the chocolate in the traditional (albeit spicy) mole sauce.  The combination with the spice was amazing but be warned the dish is aggressive 

- Pork in Manchamanteles: Red chile-marinated Gunthorp pork loin, fruit-studded ancho-almond mole, sweet potato mash (ancho, bacon), braised kale, spicy chipotle pineapple, homemade chorizo.

This was definitely favorite dish of the whole night.  We would recommend to any one going to this restaurant to get this mole only instead of trio - especially since we really wanted to have more of it to eat.  The grilling of the pineapple brought out a lot of natural sugars.  The chipotle flavor wasn't that spicy but overall a great balance of flavors.
- Roasted Vegetables in green pumpkinseed mole.  The vegetables were asparagus and potatoes and it was a much milder mole sauce, to balance out the spicy mole enchiladas. On its own it might have been a little boring but it was nice presented with the other two mole dishes.  

Oaxacan-Style Carne Asada: Red chile-marinated Creekstone Natural Black Angus rib steak. Black beans, sweet plantains with homemade crema and guacamole

Carne Asada with sweet plantains

We heard about this dish from the Food Network show "The best thing I ever ate" (filled with envy episode)  It didn't disappoint.  The sauce with had a medium spicy flavor through the meat. The carne asada was wonderful in a corn tortilla with the gucamole and beans.  The fried plaintains came with homemade sour cream and fresh cheese.  The were definitely the best side dish of the night.  Not too thinly cut and not over cooked - the insides were warm with a light cruch on the outside

Dessert: 

Duo de Flanes: A duo of caramel custards: cream cheese-cajeta (goat milk caramel) & classic Mexican vanilla. Pecan polvoron cookies, cajeta drizzle. Both were great and wonderful sweet gooey custards.  Those that don't like flan don't know what they are missing.

Duo of flans

Final thoughts on Frontera Grill:

Food -  great! probably each dish can be found at the same qaulity at other authentic places here and there but not like Frontera all under one roof. We really enjoyed the pork mole, sweet plaintains and albacore and big eye ceviches (in that order).

Service - It was definitely slower than we were expecting.  Frontera Grill is not that large of a restaurant and there were a lot of servers so it was surprising that it took so long to get service sometimes.  We waited at least 10 minutes initially for a waiter to come to our table - so good thing we had an idea of what we wanted to order.  After that the service had spurts of being good and then spurts of no service - we would be checked in on by three people and then our water glasses would be empty for 10 minutes.  Now granted we seemed to have been seated by a wall so it was not easy for wait staff to check in or fill water.  But for a restaurant of this caliber we really had been expecting a lot more; so it really is a disappointment.  We heard that Frontera's sister restaurant Topolobampo just won the James Beard award for service so I guess we'll have to try that one sometime in the future.
Atmosphere - Frontera is much smaller than we envisoned and very casual; some people were in jeans and T-shirts and others were there for work dinners.  It is very difficult to get a reservation here so plan way in advance.