June 25, 1998 On any night late in the week, an aerial view of the broad esplanade of Randolph Street’s reupholstered market mile will reveal the antlike crawl of restaurant row traffic, gathering and disgorging clusters of the peckish and moneyed. There is the dance of car hikes and taxis and speed-walking pedestrians along the stretch just west of the Kennedy Expressway. Even when the faces aren’t pretty, most of the clothes are. A local magazine with a prodigious inferiority complex Second-Citied this ever-bustling stretch of eat-and-be-seen real estate as “The future SoHo of Chicago.” But if you want to effectively extend that belittling metaphor, move east, out of the mosh pit of graying diners, past the white-noise whishhh of the expressway until you come upon a pristine storefront, a glass facade with almost no detail in the only occupied building for a few blocks. Through the doors, a crowd eats within a minimalist Edward Hopper canvas that is marked by flattering highlights instead of grasping shadows. You would have to say that Blackbird is its own standalone Tribeca: a small, fresh ripple in Chicago’s tireless dining scene. Blackbird, which sounds utterly midwestern, draws its name from the Merlot grape (in French, “blackbird” is “merle”; “merlot” is a nickname for a young, small one). Open since late November, the seventy-seat storefront has not suffered in any of its reviews, particularly those from outside the city. Qantas flew a correspondent from the Financial Times, London’s equivalent of the Wall Street Journal, around the world to immerse himself in the newest restaurants, and Blackbird was among the eight chosen. In the May 30th edition, lucky correspondent Ian Holmes wrote of chef and co-owner Paul Kahan’s work: “With clean flavors, strong taste-texture combinations and palatable prices, this food is the most sought after in the city.” Taking things for granted is taken for granted nowadays. Questions are seldom asked about the succession of actions, the chain that delivers a good meal to the table. How can momentary, faddish “heat” translate into durability? Few restaurants thrive, mature, last. A 1992 Cornell University hotel school study asserted that half of all new restaurants are gone within three years. Media puff announces the new sensaysh and hangs its first menu out to dry. Reviewers seem compelled to convey “heat” more than the fire that gets a restaurant off the ground and keeps it running. A skein of randomly assembled phrases from Blackbird’s sheaf of mouth-watering clips: “Trendsetters are flocking… The local glitterati… Chic-chic… hot-hot… one haute spot… a sea of expensive and mostly black clothing… the bartender, dressed in black (naturally)…
Ray Pride