Tanta opened in the River North area of Chicago back in August 2013. In the short time since its opening, Tanta has been on every food-related website, touted as THE hottest opening of 2013. How could I ever miss the opportunity to try such a place?
So I did some research for this post, and found Tanta's owner to be Gaston Acurio, some celebrity chef from Peru, who I'd never heard of. But he did have an extensive list of restaurants according to Wikipedia, so celebrity status confirmed.
Tanta's interior sure fits the
see and be seen type of restaurant: dark wood interior, passionate music and colorful art. Unfortunately I picked Super Bowl Sunday for my dinner, so the bar was pretty dead. Surprisingly there was still a good number of people dining here.
We started out with two little baskets of fried plantain chips, accompanied by a peach-colored sauce that tasted oddly like spicy thousand island dressing...in a good way. The chips were thin & crispy and not greasy at all, a good start.
Since I've read several posts about Tanta's ceviches, I was excited to see it on the RW menu. It's an assortment of very fresh, raw pieces of seafood, marinated in a spicy citrusy sauce. But it was accompanied by those strangely alien looking giant corn kernels, which everyone at the table mistook as garlic at first. I love corn, but this is unlike the sweet, juicy corn I remember from summer's farmer's markets. This was rather waxy and tasteless. Meh. The piece of sweet potato masquerading as carrot was more up my alley. I wouldn't mind replacing my corn with that. While I was generally satisfied with this dish, I have to say this definitely sent a shiver down my spine when combined with the snowy day out. I think ceviches should be served only in summer...
For the main course, I got the arroz criollo, which tasted pretty fantastic on the first bite: it's like a bite of extra shrimpy paella loaded with lovely morsels of seafood. I have no idea what ingredients contributed to the flavor, but I liked it. But after 5 bites, I was ready to raise the white flag. It was just too greasy in large doses. While the criolla salad (marinated onions, grape tomatoes, arugula & peppers) on top was crisp & zesty, it was overpowered by the rice. I think this dish would be much more interesting if they reduced the amount of rice and paired it with something less assertive. The giant corn kernels made an appearance here too. Though I didn't mind them as much because they disappeared behind the strong flavors of the rice.
Dessert was such a disappointment. After the exotic ceviche & arroz criollo, this pie de limon was simply key lime pie sans crust, plus a scoop of mint lime sorbet. I appreciate the fact that it wasn't cloyingly sweet, and the custard was silky smooth. But...YAWN....zzzzz.....
Interestingly, the other dessert choice was passion fruit cheesecake. The friend who ordered it commented on how tart it was, until he realized passion fruits are naturally tart. Just goes to show how processed most passion fruit desserts are. (Not that I have anything against it...)
So my take home lesson from Tanta was: don't go to a restaurant with high expectations. Not that I didn't enjoy the food, but it was definitely not the kind of mind-blowing experience I was expecting. Having said that, I do appreciate that Tanta is one of the few, if not the only Peruvian restaurant in town. So I'll pop back in when I get tired of American cuisine...in summer...for the ceviche.
118 W Grand Ave.
Chicago, IL
(312) 222-9700
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