Owen and Engine is the balls 0

If you’ve been to a bar that stocks more than one kind of bitters in the last three years, you’ve probably left thinking the same thing I have: What’s up with the mustaches? Or maybe more specifically, What’s up with the turn-of-the-century gear, bartender-guy? Since when is looking like Teddy Roosevelt’s driver considered stylish?

Of the bunches of hilarous trends that wormed their way into food culture in the last few years, the new bartender get-up might be the goofiest. Show me an open bottle of Chartreuse and I will show you a dude with a curly mustache and/or beard, suspenders and/or vest, and small, circular wireframe glasses. A cabbie or fedora cannot be far from reach. How is that every bartender in the city that works with classic cocktails decided to dress this way? Is there a club that meets to talk about suggested dress? Do they sit in leather club chairs and sip 100-year-old Madeira and talk about the Alien and Sedition Acts? Do they ride to these meetings on bicycles with really tall front tires? Do they own Victrolas? Do they fear polio?

Bartenders now look like caricatures of bartenders. I believe the academics call that shit simulcra.

Despite the hilarity of it all, I ain’t complaining. If someone’s gonna spend the time to make me cocktails that don’t taste like Bacardi and Diet Swanell, why should I care if he looks like he’s a got a hobo club behind the bar? I just want to drink your wares, sir!

Aight den. Owen & Engine. They’ve got a room full of these fellows. But no matter. What started a year ago as a promising curiousity, has become the motherfucking ish. Easily one of my favorite restaurants in Chicago. These dudes may dress funny, but in a world where hipster staffs like Telegraph’s operate like they’re shooting CK One commercials, Owen’s staff is a refreshing blast of genuine niceness and sincerity. Our last visit included multiple visits from the chef, complimentary rillettes and almonds, a shot of Old Overholt, and general comradarie with the staff. This is the kind of above-and-beyond shit that corporate slogans shill but rarely achieve.

Last year when Owen & Engine opened its doors they arrived in the vanguard of another trend: the English pub revival. We rolled in with a quickness once we saw they were serving up haddock fish n’ chips and immediately loved the upstairs fireplace and club chairs, the bubbles and squeak on the menu, the four handpulls, the tin ceiling. Then we ate the fish n’ chips. Buy the hype: they’re are dank. They kept us coming back for that first minute.

And from there it only got better. The fish n’ chips grew in popularity, and since everything at Owen is made in-house (try getting through a meal without your waiter telling you this–it’s impossible) and they’re flying shit in fresh, when they’re out they’re out. This forced me to order off the rest of the menu, and GD if that didn’t open up a brand new world. This joint puts a whole menu together.

But let’s start at the beginning.

As has been implied, Owen & Engine makes a dank cocktail. These are the kind of bartenders that concern themselves with proper muddling techniques and extract oils, but they keep the drinks simple here–usually around four ingredients–which helps to minimize the wait. They’re also sitting on a badass beer list, topped off by four hand pulls. When one of these is a stout, you’ve little choice but to order one and start with some oysters.

While streaky eating isn’t a necessity for Gluttons, it’s certainly a trait we share. (How better to display your commitment to food obsession than to eat Snappy’s fried scallops a dozen times in three weeks? Roy’s list of food obsessions reads like a Roman shopping list.) Currently, I’m on an oyster track. I want oysters more than I want the afterlife. I crave oysters like Steve Dolinksky craves attention. I need oysters like Paula Dean needs a muzzle.

Owen drops two oysters on us: one from each coast. I usually grab the East Coast ones. They’re plump, briny goodness . Top them with mignonette and chase with the hand-pulled stout and you’ll wonder why you even bother eating anything else.

The shellfish doesn’t quit there. Nah, there’s a big bowl of clams served in a buttery broth good enough to wash your hands in. And the coup d’ tat, a recent addition, the triumph of triumphs, the fish stew. This is the motherfucker. It’s served in a big cast iron pot whose lid, when removed at the table, releases a glorious rush of fennel-tinged fish steam that dissipates to reveal a big ass pile of fish. Oh, and what a pile of fish it is! PEI mussels, a big chunk of haddock, squid, and clams, all served in a tomato-fennel broth.

This stew is so good you have to pay it hush money after you’re finished with it. The haddock is cooked separately, not boiled in the stew ’til all it’s dried up and flavorless. Squids are served whole so you get big chunks of snappy squid leg tastiness. Mussels are mussels, so of course they’re good. The clams are the winner, little chewy sea bombs that I slurped like a pneumatic bank tube. Finally, the crusty bread, which heads know must be dunked in the broth and left to drown while you eat around it. When it’s fully saturated and nearly void of all structural integrity it’s time to eat. Like the crouton in French onion soup or a properly dipped Italian Beef, this bread transforms into some otherworldly fish juice shammie that makes soft serve feel like the Berlin Wall.

You’re gonna pay for the fish n’ chips. Literally pay–not like you’re gonna pay for asking Opart Thai to make your curry Thai-spicy–but pay like shelling out more ducats than you might expect. These are $17 fish n’ chips, and not very large of a portion at that. But, and this is a big but (cue shot of Newt Gingrich’s wide load): they’re so goddamn good it doesn’t matter. Again, we’re dealing in fresh haddock here, so the meat is firm and translucent. The breading is thin, not overly crunchy, flavorful but still lets the fish shine. The Owen update comes in the form of a malt vinegar aioli, which would typically annoy me (they’re fish n’ chips–give me malt vinegar, tartar sauce, and lemon) but not at all in this case. There’s enough vinegar and mayo flavor in this sauce to make it work.

And then the pasty. The motherfucking pasty.

If you’re Finnish and from Michigan, you learn to eat pasties before you learn to wipe your own ass. My grandmother pumped them out like most grandmas pump out cookies. To this day, when the family church needs them alms, they get straight to the kitchen and pound out a couple hundred pasties, set up a table in the parking lot, and start stacking loot cakes. Where I’m from, hotcakes sell like pasties.

The pasties we make came out of Northern Michigan’s copper mines, where Cornish miners imported the midday meal from across the pond. So technically I suppose the English joint gets to be the pasty expert. But I went into this with way too much history behind me, and expectations lower than Danny Devito’s balls on a humid day.

Owen & Engine stepped up.

First of all, these dudes are elevating. They don’t settle for mere ground beef. Depending on what’s in the house, they’re using beef cuts (tongue, the first time I had it) or pork belly. The dice on the vegetables (and no matter what, there must be potatoes and onions in a pasty) is perfectly sized. You don’t want your pasty full of big ass potato chunks. You want to be able to taste everything in one bite. The crust is stunning, better than any of the pasties I grew up with. It’s flaky, dark golden on the outside, soft and chewy on the interior. If ever I wanted to emulate something I’ve eaten at a restaurant, it’s this crust. If I rolled through the U.P. with a sack of these things, mu’fuckers’d be trailing me like paparazzi. I understand the amount of hyperbole I’m smearing across the page threatens to undermine everything I’m saying. But ask a Finn: a good pasty gets you into heaven.

I grew up putting ketchup and butter on my pasties. Others use gravy. I didn’t need ketchup for Owen’s, but I couldn’t fathom any pasty sans butter. You shouldn’t either. If you order the pasty, get a side of butter and smear your bites with it.

Surely they can’t keep this up, right? A spot-on pasty, arguably the best fish n’ chips in town, and a fish stew that competes? Don’t bet against it. We’ve been working our way through the menu, and although nothing hits quite as hard as the aforementioned trio, there are a ton of winners. The Lyonnaise salad is shit-yourself good. It’s made with a duck breast that’s smoked, then finished on the flatop, which gives it a deep red center with a crispy outer layer (on all sides, not just the fat side). Then brioche croutons? Fucking delicious.

The burger is actually a tasty revelation. I didn’t expect it to fail, but I definitely didn’t expect to be as good as it is. The french fries are addictive thick cut steak fries with the consistency of mashed potatoes. The rashers and egg sandwich gives most breakfast sandwiches a run. Mole pork rinds are the single loudest thing I’ve ever eaten. Biting into one of these sounds like someone’s running a Catherine Wheel in your ear. The rillettes were nicely understated, rich enough to warm the part of me that craves fat like a chubby chaser but not so rich that a dollop had me quivering with nausea. We spread them across chunks of bread like Shawshank tar. I can also rep the chicken wings and the farm egg with little brioche rectangles for yolk dipping.

Breakfast ! It’s what’s for dinner.

Years ago, when Gluttons hit London as part of mini UK tour, we were consistently warned to expect shitty food. A lot of people, it seems, accept this as fact. Maybe that was true in the past, but no longer. We loved eating our way through the UK. We had some of the best tandoori we’ve ever had, discovered Welsh rarebit, got fat on English breakfasts, and fucked up a lot of fish n’ chips. (Granted we also tried barfy haggis, but that was for science.) We ate and drank well in England. Likewise, at Owen & Engine. The place has worn nicely. It’s remained true to it’s “roots,” never straying too far from traditional English fare but always slightly updated or tweaked.

But the area in which Owen & Engine has most succeeded, what has transformed it from a solid restaurant to the kind of joint I want to hang out in on a rainy weeknight with a book, is its personality. There are no airs about this place. When they let you know the bread is made in-house it’s out of earnest pride, not calculated buzzwordery. Last time we were in, unsolicited, we were invited to join the bar in shots of Old Overholt. That kind of thing is typically reserved for neighborhood taverns and regulars. But that’s where Owen & Engine gets it right. They’re serving extremely delicious pub food and slinging high end cocktails, but they’re treating service and atmosphere like a neighborhood bar. It’s goddamn refreshing.