In the 13 years that the Boka Restaurant Group has opened as many restaurants, it’s been a rare event when it has launched one that’s not outstanding. Number two, the late Landmark, was a sophomore slump from which the company quickly recovered, but it hasn’t faltered since. The rest, from the flagship to Stephanie Izard’s Girl & the Goat to Perennial Virant to Balena and Momotaro, have been dependably delightful to eat at and write about, ideal syntheses of food, service, and design. And with that kind of average, I’m always confident that each new spot will meet the impossibly steep standards already set. That certainly happened in the case of Swift & Sons, Boka’s lavish steak house, recently opened in the repurposed Fulton Market Cold Storage building with chef Chris Pandel of Balena at the helm. And I certainly expected it of Cold Storage, Swift’s more casual seafood-focused sibling located in the same space, with marbled high-tops, flat-screens, and specials scrawled on the mirrored walls.
On the other hand, almost as many of these dishes can be poorly executed. Salmon-skin chicharrones, a snack I’ve enjoyed plenty of times in other venues (see Yusho), tastes scorched, overburdened by a muddled spice blend, and denuded of any fat that could help it go down easy. There were similarly bitter burnt notes on the tough octopus, at least mitigated by spicy nduja. A prep cook had to have muscled a blade through the rock solid, underripe avocados accompanying a wedge Crab Louie salad, though my spindly twigs weren’t strong enough to do it. Meanwhile, a pair of sandwiches arrived on overly doughy rolls long after having expired on the pass—cold, leathery fried clam strips drowned in dill-forward tzatziki sauce on one, and an acrid walleye fillet on the other.
1000 W. Fulton Market 312-733-9420 facebook.com/coldstoragechicago
