Tzuco — Restaurant in Chicago

This review will not be enough to share just how AMAZING Tzuco is. Celebrated a friends birthday here and it was the perfect place! You feel “special” from the moment you walk in. We went during the end of October, closer to Dia de Los Muertos and they decorated absolutely beautifully. They have the traditional marigolds everywhere throughout the restaurant and patio. They even had an ofrenda. I recommend just go here and bundle up to enjoy the delicious food and experience on their patio.

During the restriction in place, they do have outside dining (with walls) and they opened an area of their restaurant that has high-top seating. The top is slightly uncovered, so it can get cold, BUT they do have a few heaters. All staff did have on mask and they require you to wear one, when a server or employee stops by the table. They do check your temperature at the hostess’s stand. Also, hand sanitizer was available. Once you are seated, the table has a QR code sticker to view the menu.

Tzuco is a upscale Mexican cuisine restaurant with a French twist! The menu offers traditional dishes from appetizers to dessert, even wines and cocktails. Every dish has so much detail to it and so much flavor. Even the food presentation has so much detail. Chef Carlos Gaytán is a true artist. Staff was friendly from the moment we walked in and our waiter Keevan made my friends birthday even more special. Keevan was friendly and provided great recommendations.

Every dish was memorable and had so much flavor, that I don’t even have a favorite. For appetizers, we tried:

Mejillones - which is mussels, saffron beurre blanc, dried chorizo, pickled jalapeños served with a baguette. This dish was so good that we even asked for extra bread to dip into the saffron beurre blanc. This was my first time trying dried chorizo and it was sooo good! Honestly, not to sound crazy, but I would have the saffron beurre blanc with a spoon.

Pulpo enamorado - this was a guajillo roasted octopus, with salsa macha, pickled carrot, peas, and potato in Tonnato aioli. This was a little spicy, not bad for me, however, my spice tolerance is high. The pickled carrot, peas and potato was interesting and added a nice crunch with the octopus.

I could have ate the portions for the appetizers alone, so I recommend if you are going to share with someone, try more than one appetizer.

For entrees, my friend and I split this as well, but the portions are good for 1. We tried:

Tzuco burger - I know why order a burger at a upscale Mexican French cuisine restaurant right? IT IS SO WORTH IT and I HIGHLY recommend it. The burger is a beef sirloin, with roasted tomatoes, gruyere cheeese, pickled YELLOW BEETS, black truffle sauce, and black truffle aioli, served with pommes fries. Again, soooo much flavor! I purposely capitalized the YELLOW BEETS, because you read that right. I have NEVER tried yellow beets, nor have I ever had beets on my burger, and this was sooo good! Every ingredient was tasty and the burger was cooked perfectly. I drenched the burger in the black aioli sauce and mmmmm it was so good! I even dipped my fries into the aioli! The fries are garlic butter and Parmesan cheese and again cooked perfectly, with a nice crunch.

Pesca Deli Dia - this is fish of the day in some mole verde sauce, had pickled red onions and then it is served with tamal Nejo which is like flat unstuffed tamales. If you never heard, had or seen this, it’s kinda like a cold potato. This dish was very good and the portion was definitely enough to share.

To end our meal, they brought my friend a...

We visited Tzuco with great expectations since it's was suggested by the Michelin guide. The experience left us unimpressed, even though certain dishes were tasty. In terms of flavors and techniques, there doesn't seem to be any emphasis on detail. On top of that our server was not great, never noted down our order, came back 3 times to check with us about what we ordered, quoting back wrong dishes and eventually confusing us. After we ordered our coctails, that were extremely well-made btw, we started our experience with the pulpo enamorado, an interesting dish even though the octopus was a tiny bit chewy and the potato salad blunt. Nevertheless, I don't really have any profound complaints about this dish besides the fact that our server offered no information about the dish when it was served, a practice he maintained throughout our dining experience at Tzuco.

We continued with the steak tartare and the pesquadilla, a stuffed squid ink tortilla with fish fillet. Both plates arrived immediately, less than 5 minutes after we placed our entire order. The plates ended crumping up our table and not really offering much to the tasting experience we were trying to have, which is mostly based on pacing plates to the tables, one after the other.

Starting with the steak, the tartare was placed on top of guacamole, with the guacamole constituting the vast majority of this dish. The ration of guacamole to steak was 1 to 5, and I was actually wondering if I paid for a steak tartare or for a guacamole plate that had a tiny bit of steak there. The "baguette" was surely not a French baguette, so the term doesn't apply, it is actually misleading. The bread, that pretended to be a baguette, was stale, barely toasted, with a ton of microgreens on top, so many that it looked like a salad. While both the tartare and the guacamole we tasty, the plate was a miss.

The mushroom cazuela was the worst of them all. In this catastrophe I traced several pieces of burned, not charred, shallots, an completely uncooked clove of garlic, various unseasoned mushrooms, that needed way more salt to bring their flavor forward, and innumerable inedible branches, not leaves, of rosemary. Had we a proper service, I would have returned that in a heartbeat. Our server was extremely uncommunicative so I decided to waste my money but not my time.

The pescadilla looked promising, but the flavor was mediocre, not really complex or profound. It looked more impressive than it tasted, a phrase that describes our entire experience.

The cochinita pibil, the braised pork shank, was very-well marinated, extremely tender, and not smelly (this part of the animal has a distinct smell). A great plate to share between two people. Once more though, the black bean puree was NOT puree but mashed black beans, blunt, underseasoned, uninteresting, bringing the plate down. Don't call it a puree if you cant siv it. Yes, the pickled red onions did add something to the plate, but barely enough. The cilantro on top of the shank was so much, you could also call it a "salad."

I would go there for drinks. Their cocktails were good. And the food wasn't bad, but when I pay for fine dining, I require fine-dining standards, complex flavors, attention to detail, quality control and excellent service. This wasn't it at all. I actually regret visiting this place and not a different Michelin guide restaurant.

Only the night before we paid less at Sepia, an one Michelin star restaurant in Chicago, for a 4-course menu that was literally at a...

I want to start this review by saying I was genuinely so excited to have a solo date here. I had heard from many friends that this restaurant had phenomenal food and just great! I had a reservation for 8:30 PM on a Saturday night on the outside patio. I arrived five minutes early checked in and went to the bathroom before I was seated. I sat down at my table around 15 minutes later for my waiter to come and take my order. This continued the whole night of waiting to catch my server. I was able to look through every item on the menu, including the drinks list twice before my waiter came to take my order.

I was excited to see that the themed food was from Acapulco, Guerrero as my family and I often visited the city growing up! I loved the fresh food and the vibrant flavors. So I was really excited to try both the pozole verde ($18) and the chilajo ($30). I also got a dragones margarita which was probably the star of the show.

The pozole verde I felt was innovative and the presentation was beautiful! I enjoyed the tostada inside of the pozole and thought that was very different. The flavors were good but I think I was expecting more robust flavors to show the 7+ hour slow cook pork but it was tender! I was thinking the mole verde would bring out more flavors and vibrancy but this was not the case. Considering mole is a labor of love that takes numerous hours to make it was definitely a short fall. The hominy left me wanting more and questioning what sort of hominy was used in the dish. Maybe the area was too loud but when I asked my waiter, all he could tell me was that the pork cooked for 7+ hours and that there was less hominy than a usual bowl of pozole but it was to allow the pork to be the main component of the dish. I had never had hominy be so small it was almost like the size of a bean.

The chileajo was a chorizo-stuffed quail, the plate was beautifully plated and the black charcoal was a sophisticated sprinkling. The beans upon which the quail was sitting on were smooth and creamy black beans, classic! The red guajillo chile was really lacking in flavor outside of the ajo (garlic) and the plate needed more sauce. The quail its self was also lacking seasoning even just salt. I will say the quail was tender and not at all gamey, so props to the kitchen for that! I think the chorizo may have been forgot in my quail as I didn’t taste any.

All in all I didn’t see the hype in the dishes, I’ve had better pozole in the city. The love I felt was missing. I’m not sure if I’ll return but I’m happy I tired it! The DRINK was phenomenal although at $26...