Something about the cold, steel environs of Streeterville’s Loews Chicago Hotel makes the experience of entering its restaurant, Rural Society, a surprise to the senses. You particularly notice the aromas: campfire, leather, tobacco. And, of course, meat—this is the new Argentinian steak house from Jose Garces, the Chicago-raised chef who left to build an empire in Philadelphia and beyond. Counting a Philly taco truck, Rural Society is the 19th restaurant in his stable, and his second on the home front since Mercat a la Planxa, which opened in 2008.
But they can’t touch the morcilla—perhaps the richest, most potent blood sausage I’ve ever encountered. It contains no rice but raisins, pine nuts, and such measures of clove, nutmeg, cinnamon, and orange that it could be served as a Christmas dessert. At my table we tempered its intensity by spooling it up with saffroned pasta tossed with cockles, rock shrimp, and bottarga. Beef-and-pork chorizo and Proveleta-stuffed pork sausage don’t nearly approach the depth of flavor of the morcilla, but the asado mixto, an assortment of the three plus some sweetbreads, provides an inexpensive way to satisfy a hankering for flesh—relative to some of the pricier steaks, anyhow, which top out at $55.
455 N. Park Drive 312-840-6605chicago.ruralsocietyrestaurant.com
