Yet fine dining's influence is spreading downstate. Two restaurants worth your time next time you drive to Central Illinois:
June
June is the type of progressive, fiercely local, $30-an-entree restaurant that garners 3 stars or more from critics in Chicago. If only it were in Chicago.
Instead, it's as if excavators lifted the modern space from Lincoln Park and shipped it 170 miles southwest to a strip mall in Peoria Heights. Frankly, it's not the type of restaurant you'd expect to — as the saying goes — play in Peoria. But this isn't a denigration of Central Illinois as much as a matter of percentages: If you figure that 5 percent of any population pays top dollar for fine dining, Chicago would have 168,000 more high-end diners than Peoria.
And yet, June has thrived for 2 1/2 years, driven by clientele from Caterpillar plus legal and medical professionals. The gambler behind June is a largely self-trained chef named Josh Adams. He spent time working at Vie in Western Springs, where chef Paul Virant shares the same ideology of working with local farms and seasonal menu constructions. I find June and Vie to be kindred spirits.
Adams, however, owns a lot more toys in his open kitchen, ones that might affix him with the molecular-gastronomist label. But those modern techniques are utilized more subtly, and aside from some examples of daring plating, the kitchen never seems like it's pushing out science experiments.
The most conspicuous application is a freeze-dried duck pate with cocoa nibs, preserved cherries and crushed almonds — it looks like granola mix, eaten with a spoon like dried cereal, and tastes like astronaut ice cream with a rich, foie finish. Less avant-garde is the outstanding seared gray mullet with spring peas, ramps, maitake mushrooms and a caramelized coconut milk-Thai chile sauce. But by the time you read this, spring pea and ramps season will be over, the dish likely replaced by something else entirely. So blow-by-blow accounts would hardly be useful here, and a more helpful assessment would be: trust the chef, this guy knows what he's doing.
877-682-5863, junerestaurant.com
Station 220
Several years back, Bloomington-Normal native Ken Myszka was a fresh-eyed graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, the Harvard of cooking schools. He landed a position in Las Vegas cooking for chefs Thomas Keller and Guy Savoy, both regarded as living legends of gastronomy.
But Myszka soon tired of the grind. Then he took interest in the sustainable and local foods movement — he was so inspired by Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma," he read it three times.
So Myszka moved home, dreaming to make Central Illinois a dining destination. He started Epiphany Farms on 77 acres of family plot (Myszka had no farming experience), hoping to supply his eventual restaurant with produce he grows and animals he raises.
Until Myszka's restaurant opens next year, he and farm partner Stu Hummel (an alumnus of Joel Robuchon's in Vegas) are cooking at Station 220, housed in a former fire station in downtown Bloomington.
Station 220 still bears its previous tenants' menu holdovers — nachos, bruschetta, fettuccine alfredo. But Myszka's touches are creeping onto the menu. The Seoul Burger is a nod to Myszka's Korean wife, with house-made kimchi, fermented soybean mayo and a fried farm egg atop. Pork schnitzel is a crispy pounded pork cutlet (their farm pork) in a brown butter and mustard demi glace, finished with a fried duck egg and a parsley-fennel salad counterpoint.
A high point is the roast chicken with potatoes, proving that in less-capable hands, some obligatory menu standards are easy to cook but tough to execute well. Not here. It's straight from Thomas Keller's Bouchon playbook, brined for 16 hours in honey, lemon, thyme and garlic, then roasted to peak moistness. The accompanying butter sauce will render weaker diners to pick up their plate and lick it clean in open public.
309-828-2323, station220.net
kpang@tribune.com
Twitter @kevinthepang?
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