
I came to Chicago from a beautiful 132-acre farm in Ohio, so I know what farm fresh is. We raised cattle, chickens, turkeys, had gardens full of vegetables, and everything we ate during the summer was just-picked-it-or-killed-it fresh. So I know, literally, what farm fresh is.
A lot of places in Chicago that are representatives of the green/sustainable/blah de fucking blah movements talk a big game, but when you eat at their place you wonder how long this tomatoes you are eating was on the farmers market truck. Mado, on the other, refreshing, hand tastes fresh. Fresher than at home at least (and that pretty fucking fresh if you caught my drift).
If that wasn’t enough freshness for you: while I was there, a farmer walks in with a couple crates full of farm picked strawberries, then sits down and has diner at the place. To actually see the person who grew your food, eating in the restaurant with you, it is a powerful fucking message.
The menu changes daily (depending on what they have bought from the farmers), and everything, I mean everything is made here. Sausage, cured meats, and sparkling water

(are you fucking kidding me) not to mention, everything, is made on premises. Chef Rob Levitt (above) definitely deserves the bread he is making (I'm a fucking genius) (actually his wife, Allison, is the pastry chef so she probably makes the bread).
The ambiance is what you would come to expect from a Wicker Park restaurant: exposed brick walls, halogen light bulbs (oooh! How green of you), and walls riddled with abstract expressionist art (which seems very pedestrian in this day and age). There is a lot of space, and this restaurant definitely doesn’t try to stuff extra tables in (we’ll see upon success). The vaulted ceilings give the illusion of even more space, yet it feels that they could have done more things with it (chandeliers, track lighting, etc.). This place ultimately panders to the soon-to-be yuppie crowd of Wicker Park, while presenting nothing new, albeit nothing bad, to restaurant ambiance in general.
The service was good, but the servers can be overwhelmed by this restaurants fresh approach. Expect long waits for coffee drinks, mainly because they grind the beans, by hand, for every cup of coffee. Our server was helpful and attentive, but definitely overwhelmed because of the small plate needs of our table. The delivery of ten different dishes has to be vexing from a waiters A simple remedy would be to hire more servers, but seeing as this is a new restaurant, and knowing the chef, it’s a matter of time before this is sorted out.
The standouts of the meal, for me was the asparagus with a farm fresh egg on top, which was playful and in

teresting, without being over pretentious. The fresh snow peas, the cured meats, and all our entrees (I had the lamb sausage, which the server informed me was made 30 minutes before I ate it) were great. The Gorgonzola polenta was one of the best polenta dishes I have had. People recommended the shortbread cookies, which were a good texture, but there was too much sugar for me to handle. Even though it took a long time for the coffee drinks to come out, they were worth the wait.
Booze is BYOB, with plenty of good liquor stores around (there’s one on North, not to mention several others in the area). Pairing is a breeze; the light cuisine goes for hoppyer beers than maltier (my party bought several different types of beer, with the Dogfish 90 Minute working out the best). With wine, I’d go drier, but even sweet dessert wines such as Rieslings will work.
With small plates ranging from 5 to 12 dollars, and the entrees in the high teens and low twenties, this place isn’t going to break your bank. That doesn’t even consider the BYOB, but who knows…they could always decide to try their hands at bathtub gin, and foot pressed wine.
Fox-o-meter
Food: 9.2 jeez this is fresh out of 10
Ambiance: 7 Contrived Wicker Park skeet skeet out of 10
Drink: 10 byob always gets 10 in my book
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