Restaurant Review: Bacaro

Every year, we take a foodie adventure with our friends, Nathan and Kara. In the past, we've gone to The Gilt Bar and Frontera Grill in Chicago. This year, we decided to stay local and go to Bacaro, a wine lounge in our hometown with amazing food. 

We're going to tell you what we had, but the thing about Bacaro is, the menu changes constantly. They use amazing seasonal and locally sourced ingredients. One thing you can count on though, is whatever you order will be sensational.

We started with a bottle of the Coudoulet de Beaucastel Cote du Rhone 2009. Zack loves a good Cote du Rhone, and this one did not disappoint. 

We had two appetizers, the first was flatbread with fireball sausage, sun-dried tomato pesto, cipolline onions and goat cheese. We really liked this. The sausage had a nice spice that went really well with the goat cheese.

We also tried the grilled octopus with German potato salad and a mustard vinaigrette. This was possibly the greatest octopus we've ever tasted.

Our friend Kara enjoyed the braised pork shoulder over roasted cauliflower, horseradish mashed potatoes, braised kale and a pork jus. It was very juicy and delicious. Kara previously though she didn't like cauliflower until she tasted this cauliflower.

Nathan sampled the seared beef fillet with lobster, blumenthal potatoes, spinach, a lobster hollandaise and paprika. The steak was (of course) cooked perfectly and the lobster hollendaise was exactly perfect to complement the steak.

Michelle had the sea scallops  with cabbage, sweet peppers, bacon, sweet potato puree and a cumin vinaigrette. There are few things better in the world than a perfectly cooked scallop (at least in Michelle's opinion). We never would have thought to pair sweet potato puree with scallops, but this worked amazingly well. Oh, and if anyone can tell us the type of pepper that was used in this, we'll forever be thankful.

Zack had the pan seared duck breast with a potato duck confit hash, mushrooms, arugula and topped with a chipotle vinaigrette. As you can tell from the picture, the duck was succulent and juicy. The real star here, in our opinion, was the confit hash. de-lic-ious.

Since we were on our foodie dinner, we were required to eat dessert. It had nothing to do with the fact that they looked irresistibly tasty.

Nathan and Kara had the chocolate tart with a caramel creme anglaise and bourbon whipped cream. This was rich and creamy, like you would expect from a chocolate tart. It was so irresistable, we couldn't get a picture before someone sampled it.

We split the buttermilk panna cotta that was topped with chocolate sorbet and almond praline. It's possible that there's a spoon invading my shot here. This had Michelle questioning the decision not to purchase that ice cream maker she's had her eye on. Everything tasted delicious, and even though the four of us cleared both appetizers and every drop on our plates, we finished both desserts.

We splurge on our foodie dinners, so this is by far not a typical night out for us. Bacaro is a tad pricey, but you get every penny that you pay for. We loved every minute of our experience and we highly recommend it!