Until two years ago, fine dining in Hyde Park was an oxymoron. The University of Chicago community has never lacked for a sophisticated, affluent clientele, but somehow no decent French or contemporary American restaurant had succeeded there. Not even the renowned John Snowden–who ran La Provencale for a few years in the early 60s–could pull it off. But now there’s hope, thanks to a workaholic neighborhood bartender who dropped out of the U. of C. but graduated from the Cordon Bleu in Paris at age 40, even though she’d never worked in a restaurant.
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In 1974 Mary Bartholomew was a chemistry undergrad. She quit in her fourth year and got an administrative job showing people around Rockefeller Chapel and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House. She also took a gig at the legendary Woodlawn Tap–known to regulars as Jimmy’s–where she met Mike Mastricola. “He taught me how to tend bar,” she says. “I was working 40 or 50 hours a week at the university and putting in another 40 hours at Jimmy’s.” Mike, meanwhile, was holding down three jobs: serving up brews at Jimmy’s, teaching high school dropouts in a GED program, and coaching at the U. of C. Lab School.
“I was 39–the oldest one in my class. Most were in their early 20s.” Mike taught himself French and learned about wine. “I’d come back to our fifth-floor walk-up with badly burned hands, ready to quit, but he kept me going.” After an intensive year she graduated, and the head Cordon Bleu chef placed her in a neighborhood restaurant in the 15th arrondisement, near Montparnasse. “I wanted to work in a little chef-owned restaurant, not a hotel or big kitchen, so I could see the way they do things.” Next she was placed in a small two-star restaurant near the Eiffel Tower, to get a taste of higher cuisine. “French chefs are incredibly generous in sharing information,” Mastricola says. “I learned more working at the restaurants in a few months than I did in the year at school.”
What she wants, the customers relish. A superb napoleon of smoked trout with chive-horseradish cream is layered with crisp, flaky pastry. The goose liver pate with cepes and onion confit is as lush as anything you’d find in Alsace. The sesame-crusted cod is enhanced by a green peppercorn sauce made with reduced veal stock and wine–right out of the Cordon Bleu–and paired with garlic mashed potatoes. A distinctive fig flan sets off the perfectly cooked duck breast. There are lots of fine wines by the glass and a surprisingly good cellar, tended by Mike. The menu changes every three or four months.
