This summer in Gravy, the journal of the Southern Foodways Alliance, John Kessler, a former restaurant critic for the Atlanta Journal- Constitution, published a bemused and amusing essay about the Chicago restaurant community’s current obsession with southern cliches and its penchant for clumsy cultural misappropriation.
Before McKenna opened his barbecue joint he was also a veteran of fine-dining restaurants such as Avenues and Tru, and at Dixie he seems to be celebrating the slaves’ food through that lens, taking elements, or in some cases just the ingredients, of classic southern dishes and placing them in new, sometimes dissonant contexts—on small, shared plates.
If you aren’t picking this up already, Dixie at present is a mixed bag. Dishes of powerful deliciousness share menu space with true head-scratchers, such as a plate of hard-fried sweetbreads done “Nashville hot style” wallowing in a thick, mucilaginous sauce meant to evoke the white bread hot chicken is normally served on. Here it approaches something like Elmer’s glue.
1952 N. Damen 773-772-5500dixiechicago.com
