The voice on the phone cracked with emotion.
“When I ask people, ‘Did you like it?’ I really want them to be honest. I mean, if there’s something about it that’s a mess, they can let me know as long as they’re not assholes about it. Because yeah, I’m a person. My feelings get hurt too.”
That was Rafa Esparza explaining the rules governing feedback on his notorious Malort grilled cheese sandwich. You know Esparza. He was the raw, weeping, exposed nerve of a chef behind Finom Coffee and Evette’s, and the industry rat who clocked time in dozens of kitchens like Momotaro, Kimski, and Yusho before he scaled back in pursuit of community organizing and the most relentlessly hilarious story feed on Instagram.
Lately, Esparza’s been sharpening his front of the house chops, hosting at Longman & Eagle. That’s because he’s opening a new restaurant called FAFO, which you can get an early taste of when Fuck Around and Find Out previews its upcoming menu at the next Monday Night Foodball, the Reader’s weekly chef pop-up at Ludlow Liquors.
Esparza and partner Anthony Baier, sous chef at Kimski, already have a (for now secret) location locked down, which they plan on opening some time in the next three to six months.
Why bring it to Foodball first? For one, I’d been bugging Esparza to play from the beginning, but also: “People who know how to eat go to Foodball,” he says. “That’s a good place to get the receipts from people who know what they’re talking about. They’re not going to be baffled by what you’re doing. They get it.”
Damn straight, chef.
Credit: Rafa Esparza
Esparza and Baier have raided Rodrick Markus’s Rare Tea Cellar (RTC) for this menu, which features brioche fried in A5 Wagyu fat, topped with ricotta espuma, smoked whitefish roe, wild American paddlefish roe, and powdered Tony B’s Steak Chips from Tony Balestreri, still recovering after killing it on Gordon Ramsay’s Food Stars.
There’s a crispy kale salad with Closed Loop Farms microgreens and an onion dressing inspired by the tomato tartare from Esparza’s days at Momotaro; and Japanese 7-Eleven-style egg salad with chorizo verde crumble from chef Danny Espinoza’s new Santo Chorizo venture. There’ll be deviled eggs piped with RTC’s Electric Blue Sweet Seoul Matcha, topped with uni, salted black sesame seeds, spirulina hot sauce, and citrusy, crunchy black ants—a Chicago debut for these tasty arthropods.
Tony B’s bringing steak and cheddar popcorn, and Esparza’s bringing up the rear with a tribute to his idol chef Paul Liebrandt’s legendary palate cleanser: a green apple and wasabi sorbet with truffle pearls, genmai cha, Okinawan brown sugar, and bergamot.
And then there’s that Malort grilled cheese, which Espazra makes by folding Jeppson’s concentrate into whipped Merkts cheddar, tempered by white American cheese and seared tomato on Texas toast.
“It’s like a noogie from your older brother,” says Esparza. “You know he loves you, but it’s gonna hurt for a little bit.”
How long will it hurt? Fuck Around and Find Out, beginning at 6 PM until sellout, this Monday, November 6, at 2959 N. California.
Meanwhile, I know you’re licking your lips in anticipation of the new Foodball schedule. Look for it to drop next week.