National Culinary Review

So if you crave ingenuity and subtle perfumes, let the Brothers Sheerin invite you to become a culinary daredevil. This former 1920s bathhouse is just the place for you to fall into a pool of invention.

Mount the high dive with organic Scottish salmon with braised red cabbage, pumpernickel dumplings and wonderful candied quinoa. Dive into little fried pickle tots on bubblegum-pink yogurt with ribbons of smoky chicken bresaola. Or languish in baby-soft gnocchi in melty ricotta cream with fresh ham and truffles.

Real culinary esthetes must try the chestnut agnolotti with pickled red grapes, butternut squash/miso broth and Thai basil. Joined by pastry chef Lisa Bonjour, Trenchermen will put smiles on your face just like that other Lisa (think, Mona). Still, diners beware! No magical phone booth exists. You cannot doff your street clothes and don your Super Trencherman/SuperTrencherwoman tights and cape. But who cares?

Devour the fried chicken thighs with fresh mushrooms and sweet popcorn grits. Try skate wing or aged Pekin duck. Bonjour’s light-as-air focaccia makes the efforts of others seem like hockey pucks. And her delicate, lively desserts, including citrus cake with grapefruit, deserve a whole review all by themselves, homage to her gutsy inventiveness. Soon, we were upside-down on the culinary trapeze, diners as daring as these culinarians working with talented sous chef Rebecca LaMalfa.

Trenchermen is a tribute to audacious culinarians unafraid to stand as their true selves.

Starters: $5-$15 // Entrees: $21-$30 // Desserts: $9

Bottom left: Sepia noodles with avocado, chive, garlic and pickled watermelon at Trencherman.

FLYING AT COMFIER ALTITUDES

While the chef’s family is from Calabria, where folkloric witches (stregas) are rumored to prescribe tortoise blood or puppy dog’s hearts to heal what ails you, Bar Toma promises not to stretch your palate beyond its comfort zone. It’s a chummy kind of a place, orchestrated by Chicago celebrity chef Tony Mantuano. Prepare yourself for a few surprises, though, as the menu balances flavors you know and those you don’t.

Just to be festive, we ate antipasti, entrees, pizzas and desserts in any order imaginable, and we’re here to inform that you can’t start an Italian meal with gelati. But you don’t have to wear a cocktail dress or don a jacket in this glammed-up Italian pizza “palazzo” with enough TV screens to double as a sports bar and enough counters, tables and bars to accommodate all the pizza and gelati lovers in Chicago.

We were savoring marvelously spiced Sicilian chicken with sour-tasting pachino tomatoes. And enjoying bitter arugula strewn atop a salad of gorgonzola, hazelnuts and beets. Then, just as we reached for our licorice Calabrian potato chips, in pranced, guess who? Strega Fregula, a wild and woolly witch straight from Calabria, who plunked herself down at our table.

You can’t stop Fregula. She’s up. She’s down. She’s all over the place. “Fantastico!” she screamed, as she wolfed down the caprino pizza with goat cheese, hazelnuts, Acetaia San Giacomo