Restaurant Review: The Girl and the Goat, Chicago, IL

Happy Friday!  I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and were able to spend quality time with loved ones.  I am sure you are pretty tired of looking at food this week, but I would like to continue sharing the delicious meals we enjoyed during our recent trip to Chicago.  This time, the restaurant is Top Chef winner Stephanie Izard's The Girl and the Goat.  The Girl and the Goat was opened by Izard and team in 2010, serves a menu of tasty rotating dishes, and is still incredibly popular four years later.  This restaurant's name was inspired by Chef Izard's last name: Izard is also the name of a type of goat that lives in the Pyrenees Mountains.  In 2013, Chef Izard won the James Beard Best Chef: Great Lakes award for The Girl and the Goat, and its popularity does not show any signs of slowing.  The dishes are a great size for sharing, but ended up being larger than we anticipated.  We were definitely hungry and ordered what we thought was the right amount of food, but could have skipped the bread and probably one of the desserts.  These dishes ended up being a ton of food for two people.  Oh, and the team also worked with a Washington winery to create their own blend - how neat is that?  Please read on for photos and details of our meal.

Country sour bread with tuna​ creme and nicoise tapenade.

Fried naked cowboy oysters with egg salad and capers.

 Celery root and cheddar dumplings with mushroom ragout, apple, and brussels leaves.

Table shot of the bread, oysters, and dumplings.

Escargot ravioli with bacon and tamarind-miso sauce.

 Confit goat belly with bourbon butter, lobster, crab, and fennel.

Crisp braised pork shank with buttermilk dressing, butternut-shiitake kimchee, and naan.  This dish was by far our favorite of the night, we absolutely loved the combination of flavors.

 Close up of the pork shank - the meat fell off the bone.  So delicious!

Bittersweet chocolate with shiitake-caramel gelato and toffee crème frâiche.

"PB & J:" salted peanut kulfi, concord grape granita, and brioche donuts.

I hope you enjoyed these photos and details of our meal at the Girl and the Goat.  The menu rotates frequently, so there is always something new to try.  I can totally see why both visitors and locals both compete for a seat here, and The Girl and the Goat is definitely a restaurant that we would return to on a future visit to Chicago.  If you'd like to read more about it, the website link is below:

http://www.girlandthegoat.com/

Thank you for visiting my blog today, and I hope you have a great weekend!