When Lamar Moore took over the kitchen at the Currency Exchange Café in January, he did not mess with the greens.
Moore does have some changes planned for the menu at @cexcafe, as it’s known on Instagram, and on his own carefully composed posts of dishes that will soon be coming forth from the kitchen. There’s a pair of cakey, moist, buttery drop biscuits topped with turkey sausage patties and over-easy eggs dripping with peppered sawmill gravy. There’s a trio of crispy Belgian waffles mounted with amber-colored chicken legs glazed with chipotle-maple butter. Another, unconventional variant on chicken and waffles features sweet potato waffles topped with country-fried chicken with cornflakes in the batter.
Food writers in recent years have bemoaned the decline of the classic soul-food restaurant in American cities, and Chicago is no exception to the downward trend: surrounding neighborhoods have lost theirs, including classics like Gladys’ Luncheonette and Izola’s. The great Miss Lee’s Good Food is still going strong just a block west of the cafe, but there’s no place to linger at that spot unless you want to eat your otherwise excellent herbal chicken and bread pudding al trunko on Garfield Boulevard.
305 E. Garfield 773-855-9163 currencyexchangecafe.com
