The Purple Pig Chicago: very good, but noisy and with perfectible service

The Purple Pig offers friendly, tasty food in a lively setting, but it didn’t quite strike my fancy.

Choosing the restaurants for this trip required a bit of organizational work. Since these weren’t originally joint vacations, but Olivier and I managed to fit them together in the end, we had to work around each other’s pre-arranged agendas. So some meals together and others solo (when I was still flying and he’d arrived with his wife, or on another night when I’d already planned something else).

However, the Purple Pig was a unanimous choice: although Olivier chose it, it was also on my short list.

You’ll find all the articles about this vacation in the USA at the bottom of the page.

Restaurant concept

The restaurant sign says it all: “cheese, swine and wine”. Perfect for a French-style dinner, even if the restaurant claims to be inspired by Italian, Greek and Spanish cuisine, the chef having worked in the first two countries.

Setting

As happens in major US cities, unlike our European counterparts, the restaurant is located on the ground floor of a large office building, which you have to enter to gain access to the property. It’s always fun to line up in the corridors of an empty building after it’s been emptied of the employees who bring it to life during the day.

As for the interior, we hesitated to find a word to describe it… A large room in the style of a French or European brasserie/bistro, with a slightly industrial feel.

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Long benches and chairs in leather, wood…one thing’s for sure: it wouldn’t look out of place in Paris.

The menu

Cheese, swine and wine we told you…

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I’m quite surprised to see seafood and pasta. From my point of view, when you have a concept, you have to stick to it, otherwise you’ll end up doing anything you like, and won’t be any good anywhere… Mixing genres is detrimental to the perception of a property… well, that’s just my opinion.

Perhaps a reminder of the chef’s Italian or Greek days….

The dinner

We arrive right on time for our reservation, but have to wait ten minutes outside before our table is free.

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We’re finally picked up and seated at our table. The room is noisy, very noisy, even more so than a Parisian brasserie.

Luckily, we’re placed in a small corner near the entrance, where the tables are further apart and the noise (a little) less noticeable, allowing us to chat without having to shout.

The waiter in charge of our table will quickly introduce himself, give us the menu and ask if we’d like a drink. While we’re making our choice, he comes back to try to fit in a few more dishes, but is politely but firmly rebuffed by Olivier, trying to make him understand that we’ll go at our own pace and that there’s no point in pushing us.

The message will obviously be understood.

Eventually, we’ll make our choice and it’ll be a single dish for each of us We’re well aware of the doses served in restaurants in the USA, and given the restaurant’s theme, we expect it to be very hearty, so we’re not taking any chances.

For me, it will be pork belly, ginger glaze, pickled carrot, frisée.

Olivier’s dish arrives quite quickly…then his wife’s about ten minutes later….and finally mine another ten minutes later. It’s a good thing he’s a slow eater or he’d have been done by the time I was served.

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The presentation is very appetizing.

And the dish is as good as it is beautiful. The meat is excellent, perfectly cooked and melt-in-the-mouth. The glaze is a little sweet at first, but then fades.

It will be a real treat, tasty and fine, to be eaten with relish. So much so that I’m a little disappointed: the dish isn’t nearly as hearty as I’m used to here, and I really wish it had been bigger…or else I should have had an appetizer.

But it’s better to have a delicious dish in a reasonable quantity than a mediocre, hearty one.

We’ll then have dessert: a mango sorbet in my case…. which I’ll forget to take a photo of.

All in all, it’s a light but very tasty meal, and the bill is rather sweet.

Service

I was going to say that the server had been a bit of a pain at first, but I’ll hold back because you’ll soon see that we’ve had infinitely worse later on, so much so that in retrospect I’ve forgotten any complaints about this one.

On the other hand (and it’s not the waiter’s fault but the kitchen’s), when you’re a table of three, one dish per person and the last dish is served 20 minutes after the first… That, on the other hand, is intolerable, especially as it’s obviously a normal service for them: it comes out of the kitchens when it comes out of the kitchens.

Atmosphere

Noisy, very noisy. I like the atmosphere of the brasseries, but this is a step up: people talking naturally loud, music to cover the voices and people trying to cover the music.

It’s not the conversations that create a loud background noise, it’s really a contest to see who can speak the loudest.

Bottom line

Quite simply: delicious food, not-so-great service and a tiresome atmosphere.

The articles about this vacation in the United States

#TypePost
1DiaryPlanning summer vacation 2023 in the USA
2HotelFairfield Inn by Marriott, North Conway (New-Hampshire)
3HotelAC Hotel by Marriott, Portland (Maine)
4FlightParis-Copenhaguen – SAS – SAS plus
5LoungeSAS Gold Lounge Copenhagen
6FlightCopenhagen-Gothenburg – SAS – SAS Plus
7HotelAvalon Hotel – Gothenburg
8RestaurantCarbon, Gothenburg
9LoungeSAS Lounge – Gothenburg
10FlightGothenburg-Copenhagen – SAS – SAS plus
11LoungeAmerican Airlines Admirals Club lounge, Boston Logan
12FlightBoston – Chicago O’Hare – American Airlines – Domestic First
13LoungeEventyr lounge, Copenhagen
14FlightCopenhagen-Chicago – SAS (operated par Hifly) – Business Class
15HotelThe St. Regis, Chicago
16HotelW Chicago Lakeshore
17RestaurantSignature Room at the John Hancock Center, Chicago
18RestaurantThe Purple Pig, Chicago
19RestaurantObelix, Chicago
20RestaurantCabra, Chicago
21RestaurantMiru, Chicago
22DiaryVisiting Chicago
23LoungeAmerican Airlines Flagship Lounge, Chicago O’Hare
24FlightChicago O’Hare – Indianapolis – American Airlines Domestic First
25FlightIndianapolis – Boston – American Airlines Domestic First
26LoungeSAS Lounge – Chicago O’Hare
27FlightChicago O’Hare-Stockholm – SAS – Business Class
28LoungeSAS Gold Lounge, Stockholm
29FlightStockholm-Gothenburg – SAS – SAS Plus
30HotelScandic Rubinen – Gothenburg
31RestaurantProject, Gothenburg
32FlightGothenburg-Copenhagen – SAS – SAS Plus
33FlightCopenhagen-Paris – SAS (Operated by Jet Time) – SAS Plus
34DiaryDebriefing summer vacations in the USA
Today’s itinerary
Bertrand Duperrin
Bertrand Duperrinhttp://www.duperrin.com
Compulsive traveler, present in the French #avgeek community since the late 2000s and passionate about (long) travel since his youth, Bertrand Duperrin co-founded Travel Guys with Olivier Delestre in March 2015.
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