Rook - Revisit

Rook, you guys, is one of the most creative and tasty places we’ve got going around here. Hubby hadn’t been to the new location so we headed over there on one of those nights when it was still unseasonably warm and sat outside—they’ve done a nice job with the outside seating. Even though it’s pretty near the street, it feels a little calmer than many places.

We started out with the steamed pork bun ($5). A friend had insisted we get the Spam bun because she says it is amazing, but hubby couldn’t be swayed from the pure pork version. And it is really delicious. The soft doughy bun and the just right crispy pork belly with no too much fat. My favorite part is the homemade pickles giving it a fresh crunch and some acid. There’s a sprinkle of peanuts and some hoisin sauce too. So good.

We also got an order of the fried pigs’ ears with fermented black bean mayo and a 63-degree egg ($8). We have had tasty pig’s ears before, but they are often too chewy. THESE WERE SO GOOD. You couldn’t sop eating them. It was almost like eating light fried pork skins—super crispy and not at all chewy. That mayo had a little tanginess to it as well, and well, you know me, put a perfectly runny egg on top of that mayo and it may just be the perfect dish. No way we would ever pass this by if it’s on the menu. Dipping the pigs’ ears into that runny egg and mayo was just perfection.

For our second round, we had the Ora King salmon poke ($18) and the Vietnamese crepe ($17). We really enjoyed the salmon—really nice-sized cubes of raw salmon—and if you aren’t familiar with Ora King, it’s super buttery and delicious (you can get it at Caplinger’s if you want to experiment at home). And then the salmon was served in a bowl on a bed of rice and flavored with soy, charred seaweed, sesame seeds and an avocado cream. There was also a big egg yolk in the middle of the dish, which made it into a rich, decadent dish. We really enjoyed it, but it was so rich, I was glad to be sharing it. I don’t think I could have eaten this whole thing on my own.

If I was going to pick a least favorite item of the evening, it was the Vietnamese pancake. And these are typically one of my favorite things in Vietnamese cuisine. It was stuffed with a large amount of duck confit, boiled egg, bean sprouts and bacon. It was drizzled with fermented chili aioli and had a side of a fish sauce-based sauce to season with. I’m not sure what made this dish a little lackluster for me, but I think it was the fact that there was a little too much of the filling inside (you couldn’t really appreciate the crepe itself) and the fillings were on the whole cold. When I have had this elsewhere in the past, the fillings are quickly sautéed or something so they are warm. Maybe they just put so much in there, it couldn’t all get warm before the crepe was totally done. The boiled egg was a new thing for me in a crepe like this. I appreciated some of it, but still, there was just a little too much.

All in all, this was a really good dinner. The first two items blew us away and we were also really impressed with the salmon. I love the way the menu varies from visit to visit. Hubby was also really impressed with the new (ish) digs, as they just feel more sophisticated, while it remains casual and approachable still.

If you haven’t been to Rook, you owe it to yourself to check it out for sure. It is certainly one of the most interesting places we have going and the food quality (and service for that matter) is very high. Can’t wait to try some other new things.

Rook

501 Virginia Ave

Indy 46203

317/737-2293

www.rookindy.com

Rook - New Location Revisit

I was excited to meet a friend for lunch the other day at Rook—I hadn’t been yet to their new location. Wow, so much more sophisticated. I always felt like the old Rook’s location didn’t do enough to live up to the interesting food.

It’s a more spacious place as well, with individual tables, a bar area (looking into the open kitchen) and some larger communal tables. The menu is larger as well, although you will recognize many items from the old Rook location.

One of these return items also happens to be one of my favorites—the mushroom dumplings ($6). These are so delicious. They wonton skins are thin and delicate and having a mushroom filling gives it a fairly intense earthy flavor, but without the routine pork dumpling taste. They’re rich, but not typical. The light sauce is made with soy and vinegar and even the chunks of cucumbers (which aren’t typically my favorite thing) were tasty. I love these things and was glad they are still on the menu. 

I ordered one of the two ramen bowls ($14). It was a very interesting bowl of ramen. Besides the obvious broth and noodles, there were pickled greens, mushrooms, cabbage and a chicken rillettes with pickled mustard seeds on top. Oh yeah and one of those wonderful 63 degree eggs that are soft and just the right amount of runny inside. The flavor of the dish was very deep and almost grassy with all those greens, but I really enjoyed it. The one thing that didn’t really do it for me was that chicken rillette. I couldn’t quite figure out what I was supposed to do with it. If you cut into it in the broth, it just sort of dissolved and lost most of its flavor. It was difficult to eat. I sort of wished I had a side plate to put it on separately. I mainly just didn’t eat much of the rillette, but enjoyed the rest.

My friend had the Galbi rice bowl ($16) with Korean short ribs, avocado, pickled cucumbers, kim chi and pork cracklings. This is a solid choice—and I liked all the texture variations. It was maybe a little dry before you cracked into the egg on top, which gave it some more moisture. I loved the addition of avocado, as I always do—but in this case it lent a little bit of creaminess that was nice.

Rook is a cool spot—again one of the more interesting and creative menus you’ll find in Indy. I also appreciate that they change it up a bit all the time. And there’s beer and wine as well as cocktails now in the bigger space, which is really nice. Mostly, I appreciate the feel of the new space because it feels like it can easily be a dinner spot as well as a lunch spot. In the old location, it was hard to imagine it feeling like a destination for dinner for me anyway. Glad to see the progress.

Rook

501 Virginia Ave

Indy 46203

317/737-2293

www.rookindy.com 

Rook - Dinner

Recently I went to a dinner with a bunch of people at Rook—I had been wanting to try dinner here for a while, but just hadn’t made it happen. I was excited to get to go with a lot of people, knowing I could pick a little off other people’s plates and get to try a bunch of things.

To start with, Rook’s food is certainly unique to Indy. There are a couple of sort of “appetizer” portions of steamed buns and dumplings. Then, there are larger items that run in the $8-12 range. For a larger appetite, you may want more than one of the larger things, as they are moderately portioned (and reasonably priced in my opinion). For two people, maybe 3 of the larger plates would be ideal.

Hubby and I started with the two flavors of buns-the pork bun ($3.50) and the avocado bun ($3) (each order is one bun). Both of these were very good. The pork bun had that melty pork belly in it and was topped with pickles, cilantro, and a sprinkling of ground peanuts. It was a great proportion of savory/salty and the tangy/acidic with a decent dose of spiciness. The avocado had similar flavors—the pickle part here was kimchi cucumber though. I loved the slight crunchiness from the outside of the avocado, which had been lightly fried in a tempura batter. This was great combined with the creaminess of the avocado itself (let’s face it, avocado in my mind is one of the world’s most perfect foods). Both of these buns were worth ordering again for sure. I was a little sad I managed to miss out on the dumplings though—as I saw them come out of the kitchen, I wished I had ordered some.

As far as mains, we sampled several things—the pig face hash ($10), the Japanese fried chicken (karaage) ($8) and the shrimp toast special ($10). The pig face hash was good—lots of small pieces of shredded pork with pork cracklings and pickled peppers and topped with a runny egg. It felt like an Asian breakfast dish. Hubby loved this dish and ate every last bite. The pig face certainly has a concentrated, pork flavor and I enjoyed it, particularly with a bite of the egg, and a squeeze of the accompanying lime, but I sort of wished for another egg—the dish was just a little dry when you didn’t get some egg on it. I think I would just ask for an extra egg, extra runny, and see if they’d do that. 

The karaage (fried chicken) was probably my favorite main dish of the evening. It is bite-sized pieces of chicken thigh that are fried very crisp, with a spicy seasoning and served over rice and topped with onions, peppers, sweet chili oil, cilantro, and a bit of mint. I love the tenderness of using thigh meat (as well as the extra depth of flavor that you don’t get with white meat). I loved the freshness that came from the crunch of onions and cilantro—this is one of my favorite things right now, the balance of fresh raw herbs and other veg (onions, bean sprouts, etc.) in Asian dishes.

The shrimp toast was a bit of a miss for me—maybe I am particular because I make a version at home myself that I really like and this was very different. The biggest problem for me was the size of the bread—it appeared they were just using the bread from the Banh Mi sandwiches and it was just too thick for the light shrimpy topping. I was excited about this dish when I read it on the menu (with bone marrow too!) but it just tasted like very lightly shrimpy bread with some of the fatty marrow on top. The recipe I use says that the bread layer should be the same thickness as the shrimp layer and I sort of like it that way. And while there were some sliced shallots on top, I missed the freshness and acidity that was part of most of the other dishes. I also had a quick bit of a friend’s rice bowl, which had a lot of nice things in it—the bite I had was sausage and a bite of a beautiful poached egg.

I like Rook, and I like the creativity that’s coming out of the kitchen. Chef Salazar is incredibly talented and inventive. My biggest question about this place is whether it is just a little too unfamiliar for many people to be a regularly frequented place. It also has quite an austere interior, which to me lends itself better to lunch (although you can’t get the wider menu at lunch, just the banh mi sandwiches and some of the dumplings) than it does to dinner. Also, while a friend pointed out to me that the target market here is probably beer drinkers, I miss the fact that they don’t serve wine. I understand it’s a small place without much more room for wine, but a couple of well-paired selections would be nice. We’re lucky to have Rook though, and hopefully there are enough adventurous eaters in town to keep them going!

Rook

719 Virginia Avenue

Indy 46213

317/759-5828

www.rookindy.com