the heart shaped box

My restaurant club’s latest outing!

chicagorestaurantclub:

(Pictured above, starting left, going clockwise: Conor, Bethany, Tim, Genevieve, Denes, Robert, Greg, and Dave.)

The Chicago Restaurant Club Gets Sticky

Believe it or not, our lovely little club has amassed more than 30 Facebook members, and you never can tell who is going to commit to show up to the next event. (Except Genevieve and Bethany. They really, really love their food.)

This time, however, no less than eight of our members attended. This might have to do with the fact that the most recent restaurant in question was Sticky Rice, a BYOB, crowd-pleasing Thai restaurant in North Center that serves classic regional fare, as well as fried caterpillars and other varieties of bugs. At 8:30 on a Wednesday night, the place was bustling.

With a menu that has many pages as a children’s book and enough exotic dishes to pique all of our (already adventurous) appetites, deciding what to order was half the fun.

So, we did what any group of people who wanted to try as many different foods as possible, would: we ordered nearly two entrees per person, plus appetizers.

We started out with two orders of grilled squid, which was cooked expertly:

And followed it with some fiery yet refreshing papaya salad (this was quite hot. Greg got a little red in the cheeks):

We passed these dishes ‘round between servings of one of the most anticipated orders of the night, fried worms:

The worms weren’t all that intimidating once you tried them. They were like eating crispy, fried oil. Not a big deal.

The actual big deal was the Northern Thai sausage. Yumminess, encased:

We cleaned up our appetizers pretty quickly, and compared notes as we sipped the wine and beer we had brought. Then, plate after plate, the dinner entrees (some of which we ordered duplicates of, unintentionally) descended upon the table. One of the first we tried was this sweet and also savory lychee “nut” soup that Robert ordered. It was chock full of juicy lychees and flavored with coconut milk:

There was nothing quite like the ladyfish, either, which Denes ordered. This delightful variety of cuttlefish was slightly chewy and fried, and was mouthwatering with the peanut sauce with which it was served:

Two people ordered a mushroom entree, which I can’t recall much about, except that it was spicy and subsequently devoured:

Although they look alike in photos, the mushrooms are not to be confused with the cow intestines, pictured next. Bethany did us the favor of ordering these, and I daresay they were the best thing we ate that night. Rich and even creamy, you could hear people saying “Pass the intestines!” amid the clatter of forks and plates:

Let us not forget the awesome ice bucket with which we were provided:

Denes ordered ribs, which were quite tasty and meant to be eaten with our hands:

Greg didn’t know what to pick, and ended up choosing tilapia. This was the best tilapia I had ever had, and was served with a rich, unusual sauce, rendering it damn fabulous. 

Bethany also ordered the banana blossom chicken salad (which doesn’t taste like banana, but was a brilliant selection). It’s pictured here with a side of jasmine rice in a cute little basket:

We were filling up on the delicious food, and, every five minutes, more would arrive.

Like this chicken and vegetable dish about which I wish I remembered more:

And, gasp—an ant egg omelet! (It was very good. It tasted like an omelet.)

We stuffed ourselves and shared every plate. There was more that we ate that isn’t pictured, such as the frog legs I ordered.

After eating like kings, we got the check, and…

Only paid about $20 each, including the gratuity that was already included in the bill. What a deal!

The verdict: Sticky Rice was exciting, educational and very affordable and tasty. I bet it totally blows that unfortunately-located, name-I-can’t-place Thai place next door to it out of the water.