Remember back in Stephanie Izard’s restaurantless period between her win on Top Chef and the opening of Girl & the Goat, when everyone was waiting, waiting, waiting to eat her food again?
Us neither, although you can re-experience the waiting in miniature not only by trying to eat at Girl & the Goat, almost five years old and still one of the toughest reservations in town, but by waiting for the summer opening of Duck Duck Goat (857 W. Fulton Market), a 100-seat Chinese place that will be Izard’s third Chicago restaurant.
“We’re definitely going to go for what Chinese people think of as Chinese food,” Izard says, specifying a Szechuan tilt to the menu (including hot pot) and promising hand-pulled noodles and house-made wrappers for won tons and spring rolls. She says a pupu platter and crab Rangoon will also appear on the menu. “I know those have nothing to do with [authentic] Chinese food,” she says, “but they are my favorites.”
She’s excited for the tea program and a late-night takeout window offering the likes of noodle sandwiches. Jan Rickerl, a colleague since her pre–Top Chef days at Scylla and her current chef de cuisine at Girl & the Goat, will head Duck Duck Goat’s kitchen.
Izard and her press team timed the announcement for the Lunar New Year, the beginning of the year of the goat. But given the uncertainty about exactly what animal this year is the year of, maybe we should just all agree it’s the year of the Izard.