I’m not usually one to jump on a restaurant bandwagon, but when one of my regular baristas told me that her boyfriend took her to West Loop Chicago restaurant Girl and the Goat for her birthday and gave it a rave review, I decided that I needed to try it for myself. I made my reservations for this past Sunday in July. I could have made a reservation sooner, but that would have meant eating dinner at 10:30 on a Tuesday. Our reservations were for 8:00, but once we got there we had to wait a few minutes for the party at our table to finish. I was a little annoyed, but I after my meal understand why they took their time. Girl and the Goat is shared plates, served family style. I think I preferred it this way. Too many times you go to a good restaurant and end up wanting to taste everyone else’s food anyway.
To make things more difficult on our server and the kitchen, a friend in my party has a severe aversion to dairy. Not being able to make food with butter can make it tricky but they were accommodating.Our server recommended that we order 8 – 12 different dishes. These are the 10 that we ordered:
Busta Rye Bread – served with some butter concoction and a thousand island type sauce. Delicious.
Rice/Vegetable Crepes – Basically carrots and rice crepes in a sauce. Delicious. (I cannot remember the correct name, nor can I find it on the internet.)
Hiramasa Crudo – Pork Belly (tasted like bacon) with aji chili and caperberries. I mostly tasted bacon. Awesome.
Wood Fired Wiley Point Oysters – Grilled and served with a horseradish sauce and some bacon on top. It looked like an oyster BLT. It was delicious. And I usually only like fried oysters.
Sweet and Sour Cod Cheeks – Fried cod with sweet and sour sauce and fried broccoli, potato aoili on the side. I think it’s usually served over the fish and broccoli, but they put it on the side so my lactose intolerant friend could eat it. The first piece of fish I got was ok, but the second was much better. A bit of the breading on my piece of broccoli was a bit mushy, but still ok.
Seared scallops – Very good. Sauce was on the side due to dairy content, but still delicious.
Pan Fried Shishito Peppers – Probably the only thing I truly did not enjoy. The peppers were just sort of limp as if they had been over cooked. They might have been a little better if they had a little bit of crispiness.
Grilled Pork Ribs – These did not contain any dairy, so we got the full effect of how they should be prepared. The ribs were served with a tomatillo sauce underneath. The meat just fell off the bone. I don’t think these would really measure up to anything at a barbecue place, but they were still good.
The two finale dishes:
Wood Roasted Pig Face, served with a sunny side up egg and potato stix. This reminded me of breakfast. They give you this dish and tell you the messier it is, the better. You break apart the yolk on the egg and mix everything together. You mean you are encouraging me to play with my food? Sure! The texture of the pig face reminded me a bit of pulled pork.
Confit Goat Belly served with bourbon butter, lobster and crab and fennel. Definitely the richest dish out of the 10. It was excellent, but I liked the pig face better. The butter was a finishing flavor, so there was nothing the kitchen could do to remove the dairy so my friend could eat it.
For dessert we got the Chocolate Bouchon and Raspberry Sorbet (which was not on the menu). The sorbet looked like a dinosaur egg with candied ginger on top. The Chocolate Bouchon was amazing. It was served with milk chocolate sorbet and foie fluff that tasted just like a marshmallow. It was a great way to end a fantastic meal.
Overall, this meal was worth the wait. The only disappointment was the peppers. If you do make it out here, we were advised by two different people to avoid the ham frites, so avoid those as well. However, the menu does change occasionally so there is a chance that neither of those things will be on the menu very long. Aside from the food itself, the best part of the meal was the bill. There were four of us, 10 dishes and we each had two drinks. I was expecting at least a $400 bill. We came in at around $270. I would most definitely return to Girl and the Goat.
First image from here.
Second image by clarity83.
