Lunch at Slurping Turtle Chicago

This post is the second portion of the Food Tour 2012 for us. After an excellent dinner at Bacchus, we took a trip to Chicago for the weekend. My husband and I are big fans of various food-related TV shows, including Master Top Chef. In this show, we were very intrigued of Chef Takashi Yagihashi's cooking style on TV, combining eastern and western elements. We were so thrilled to find out that he has 2 restaurants in Chicago and one of the restaurants is open for public and it does not need a reservation 3 months in advance. My heart was set on having lunch here, and we were so happy with our choice.

This is our first time here. Fortunately, this restaurant is within walking distance to the hotel we stayed at. We arrived around 12.30 pm. The decor is minimalistic and modern. The restaurant itself is narrow in front, but it goes all the way to the back. It has one main floor and half a second floor that is built like a deck. There is a long table in the middle of the first floor, where a lot of people are sharing this table while slurping their noodle dishes. We were waiting for around 20 minutes, which was acceptable since it was during lunch hour on a weekday. Our patience paid off. We got seated by the window on the second floor.

For the first appetizer, we ordered a ceviche of baby octopus, Hokkaido scallops, shrimps, squid and some vegetables in Yuzu-ceviche dressing. It tasted wonderful and perfectly balanced. There were several layers of flavor that work wonderfully. The acid cut through the seafood wonderfully. We enjoyed this dish very much.

We were contemplating several choices for the second appetizer. Our helpful server told us that the Duck Fat Fried Chicken was a very popular appetizer, so we decided to give it a try. It was very good, but I think we should've tried something else. The portion was decent and it came with a mini salad to cleanse the pallet. The chicken skin was very crispy and the inside was still moist.

Since we don't usually get sushi or sashimi out of Milwaukee, we wanted to try the sashimi platter. The fish was all fresh, from salmon, tuna, and yellowtail. We both are big fans of yellowtail usually and this yellowfish sashimi did not disappoint.

For the main dish, which I had been excited for weeks, we shared a tonkatsu, a bowl of ramen with thick and rich pork broth. It has braised pork shoulder, mushroom, and some pickled green mustard. This is hands down the best ramen in Chicago. It was just so rich and comforting, especially in such cold winter days in the midwest.

After tasting such a high variety of lunch, we were pondering whether we should get some dessert or not. We were very full at that point, but we did not want to miss the opportunity to try unique dessert (American / French dessert with Japanese flavors). So we ordered a sampler set of macarons to go: yuzu, chocolate-sesame, oba, caramel-soy, and raspberry-wasabi. We had the macarons in the hotel, in between this amazing lunch and yet another amazing dinner. We really enjoyed these unique macarons, especially the raspberry-wasabi. We will definitely come back and maybe try the other Takashi's restaurant.