Farra

I needed to be in New York on relatively short notice a week ago, and I was only going to be in town for Monday night. A few of my coworkers tasked me with finding the dinner spot, so on the preceding Friday, I pulled up Resy, filtered for Highly Rated or whatever they call it, clicked into Farra, read about it for a few minutes, then booked the reservation for 3 days later.

It is a sister restaurant to Atera, a Michelin two-star restaurant next door, and it is a tiny little spot with the bar, the table seating, and a cooktop all together in what is probably about the size of the studio apartment I lived in there. Conceptually, I am obsessed with this place.

Unique would be too strong, but it is a rare setup, and the vibe is really quite nice. They present a reduced wine list upon arrival, but they share a wine list with Atera to the extent you want access to a specifically overpriced bottle or glass. They seem to describe themselves as a wine bar, but the food was very good, likely a consequence of getting access to the same ingredients and cooks as the attached 2-star restaurant.

The oysters were ideal for me, buried in a ponzu with some pickled shallot. Real oyster lovers will tell you that they would prefer to submerge their head into the ocean, but I will add all the fixings to a regular oyster, so I much preferred this method. It was obviously better tasting, too, even if you can't claim you love "oysters" because of this one. The hamachi crudo was doing what hamachi crudo always does, but the peanut butter felt genuinely different.

The shrimp ravioli and the crispy rice were recommendations based on what people enjoy most there. The ravioli was excellent, and I enjoyed the presentation, but this bordered on being "too cute." The dishes are designed to be shareable, and breaking off an individual piece of this required at least a little more brainpower than I thought was appropriate. Beyond being good-tasting, the crispy rice with scallops was a texturally clever way to use familiar flavors. With a non-crispy rice, this could have very easily taken on a "slop bowl" consistency.

The duck leg was very good, but I don't have any interesting observations on that front. It is just nice to mix things up from the standard chicken and beef approach to meat-eating with confidence that it is going to be high quality. The burrata was another fan favorite, as it seems to be at every restaurant that serves burrata, but it didn't move me much.

We went with the raspberry mousse dessert, which reminded me only some of what I tried to pull off on Valentine's Day in terms of flavors and textures. Except mine looked like what a child would put together and theirs is a clever and beautiful piece of art that makes the shell that carries all of the ingredients into a big raspberry. If you have ever spent even a small amount of time trying to cook and create simultaneously, it is genius.

On the wine front, it must be said that the bartenders - who doubled as servers near as I could tell - were knowledgable and helpful for our group of diners with no useful wine knowledge. I even learned what "noble rot" means. Which, it turns out, explains the name of one of my favorite London wine bars and magazines. All of the wines I had were good, and there is something nice about trying to put an understanding to the taste when you have a little bit more background as to what you are drinking.

I love my city, but it's just not worth lying about what differentiates NYC from all of its close dining counterparts. I won't sit here and pretend that the Michelin-starred restaurants in Chicago don't have sister restaurants or restaurants under the same restaurant group that serve excellent food. But the availability alone for this concept - and quality - of restaurant would be nearly impossible to come by in Chicago. (We went on a Monday, yes, but feel free to explore the availability yourself.) Not to mention there are just fewer highest-quality restaurants to build this concept from, which, although only a simple acknowledgement of a difference in size, matters.

I don't want to write a long piece on NYC vs Chicago dining, as it would be riddled with the caveats that Twitter food discourse never bothers with, and that makes for a pretty uninteresting read anyway. This really stuck in my mind after eating at Farra, though. No different from NYC, it can be more effort than one cares to make to find a reservation at a highly-touted and currently-popular restaurant in Chicago, but the ability to pop into a cute wine bar with the ingredient and preparation quality of a 2-star restaurant instead just barely exists, if at all. It was a reminder that you could go a whole lifetime trying new and interesting food in Chicago, but you could probably go three or four doing the same in New York.