 Vie Restaurant Review: Chef-owner Paul Virant (Ambria, Blackbird, Everest) has a gem of a restaurant in a town that has hardly known fine dining before --- despite its affluent status. The winding floor plan and neutral dining room with black and white photography offers a low-key (and stylish) backdrop for innovative, artful but not over-the-top cuisine. Virant comes up with some interesting and creative combinations; he’s particularly touted for his innovative pickling, canning and aigre-doux techniques, which are seamlessly (and often surprisingly) incorporated into dishes that, at their root, are familiar. A great supporter of local and sustainable produce, Virant fashions fleeting delights on his ever-changing menu. Dishes have included crispy Parisienne gnocchi, roasted red kuri squash, Prairie Fruits Farm chèvre and Meyer lemon sauce. Virant has a formula that keeps diners coming back, be it for wood-grilled Loch Etive trout, braised spaghetti, spinach, heirloom citrus, preserved garlic crème fraîche and fried onions, or pan-roasted Gunthorp Farms duck breast. Save room for finales like sugared donuts, vanilla bean ice cream and peach and blackberry jams, or dark chocolate mousse and basil white chocolate cream accented with limeade and cocoa streusel. The wine list is a nice one: it's flush with atypical selections, many of which have a story to tell. Among specialty cocktails is “The Doctor at Bay” mixing apple-infused Ketel One vodka, Berentzen, Aperol, lemon, egg white and Angostura.
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Vie Restaurant is one of GAYOT's 2013
| Top 10 Chicago American Restaurants
| Top 10 Chicago Food Rating Restaurants
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Visit the photo gallery of Vie restaurant.
