A Critic Thinks Tied House ‘Is Among the Rarest of Neighborhood Restaurants’

Mike Sula calls Tied House an ambitious outlier in Lakeview. The stunning restaurant attached to Schubas Tavern shines the spotlight on Debbie Gold, an acclaimed Trotter’s vet who “takes simple, elemental ingredients to extraordinary places.” It starts with Parker House rolls and a selection of spreads, such as a green-tomato marmalade that’s “just barely sweet yet somehow deeply fruity and savory, with the texture of something you could pack into a hash pipe.” Maitake mushroom sits in a bowl alongside scrambled egg and finished with hot leek broth. It may look strange but the “concentrated allium intensity of the broth and carnal umamic meatiness of the fungus” sets the dish apart.

Among the meatier plates, duck-sauce-glazed mackerel fillet is aged in beeswax is laid across yellow beet coins amid dabs of horseradish sauce while “luscious” milk-braised pork belly sits under a funnel cake of deep-fried salsify batter. Desserts are “as abstract as some of the savory dishes” and include a “wedding cake” of torn angel food adorned with red currants and rose petals. To drink, a “crisp and bracing” tequila-and-Malort cocktail hits all the right notes. [Reader]

Golden Teardrops, the new basement bar from Land and Sea Dept., is “stylishly moody, an ideal spot for a cozy nightcap.” Maggie Hennessy wraps herself in the “snug semi-darkness of an old Brooklyn cocktail bar, thanks to black walls, vintage gold-vein mirror tile and lighting that consists mostly of votive candles and a jarring neon sign.” The Boulevardier-inspired Hot Flashes is a runaway favorite, a “near-perfect synthesis of rich, smooth and bitter,” while the tropical Jack in the Box is akin to an “adult juice box” that goes “down dangerously fast.” And on the “quenching” Jushu, honey’s “blossomy sweetness provide[s] the falsetto to mescal’s roasty, vegetal tenor.” [Time Out]