It was just about a year ago that I was happily proclaiming the ascendance of the Iberian way of eating in Chicago, most notably with my review of Wicker Park’s Bom Bolla, which so far had come closer than any place in town to approximating the casual Spanish tapas bar, where no wine is ever drunk without a bite of something to wash down. Just a little more than six months later, it shut its doors, unable to capture the imagination of Wicker Parkers with fried whitebait, bocadillos, and splashes of vermouth.
And from there . . . wipeout. The remainder of the menu comprises classic and tweaked pu pus and plate lunches. Tennis-ball-size Spam meatballs barely register on the potted-meat spectrum, instead getting filled out with pork and beef and drenched in a sweet coffee barbecue sauce, all which approximates a fair representation of mom’s meat loaf. The promised chile heat and saline soy barely register in pulled-pork fried rice with bean sprouts, corn, mushrooms, and midsummer asparagus. Dumplings stuffed with lump crab and enrobed in oversteamed wonton wrappers are drowned in globs of coconut cream redolent of canned curry paste. These bites are redeemed somewhat by the kitchen’s version of Spam musubi—a slab of the canned meat sandwiched between rice wrapped with nori and here rolled in panko and fried for a crispy exterior—though a better-quality sushi rice would certainly avoid the mush in the middle. A salad featuring sweet, gently poached shrimp, arugula, cashews (no macadamias?), and a winning pineapple vinaigrette is sabotaged by overripe papaya, barely sweet, barely aromatic, with all the charm of a December cantaloupe.
1501 N. Milwaukee 708-328-3091mahalochicago.com
