World Peace on Chicago's Devon Avenue
Robert Lowes June, 2009
Devon Avenue draws Indians from throughout the region for shopping as well as food.
At
Hema’s Kitchen, a popular Indian restaurant on Chicago’s North side, owner Hema Potla asks her burly helper Alex to cook some
naan in a clay oven called a tandoor.
Alex grabs a lump of white dough, slaps it flat, and then presses
it against the inside wall of the charcoal-heated oven. In less than
two minutes, the dough bubbles and browns to the point where it’s ready
to be pulled out and brushed with golden clarified butter. Less than a
minute later, the warm naan sits on a plate before one of Potla’s customers, where this succulent flatbread of central and southern Asia won’t last long.
It’s another tastebud triumph of a 25-block stretch of West Devon
Avenue and its side streets in the Rogers Park neighborhood, where you
can enjoy not only the cuisine of India, but also that of Pakistan,
Israel, Morocco, Russia and a smattering of other countries. That
diversity, only a 25-minute cab ride from downtown Chicago, underscores
the more important triumph of Devon Avenue—peoples who’ve sometimes
clashed in their ancestral lands peacefully co-exist and even mingle
here. The result? A delicious melting pot.
Crossing cultures with kosher sushi
The yarmulkes and wide-brimmed hats seen on the western edge of
the Devon strip, bounded by North Kedzie Avenue, announce the Orthodox
Jewish community here. It’s the remnant, albeit a thriving one, of a
larger Jewish population that once lived and traded up and down the
length of Devon.
While Orthodox Jews aren’t likely to eat naan at Hema’s Kitchen, they’ve nevertheless taken kosher across cultural divides. At Good Morgan Fish,
for example, you can nibble on kosher sushi and sashimi. Esther Morgan,
who runs this fish market and restaurant with her husband Aron, says
customers include newly Orthodox Jews who are redefining their diets.
“They come in here and say, ‘I can have sushi again; I thought I had to
give it up.’”
Kosher eclecticism also rules at the Taboun Grill on nearby North California Avenue, which serves Levantine fare like baba ghannouj—roasted,
mashed eggplant—along with Moroccan dishes like, well, Moroccan
eggplant, flavored with red peppers and chopped pickles.
Traditionalists, however, will want to head to the Tel-Aviv Kosher
Bakery for a chocolate, apple or cinnamon babka, a soft and rich yeast
cake.
Going east, Devon gives way to a Slavic palate, since the street
has been a first stop for Russian and Eastern European immigrants since
the 1970s. One of their favorite hang-outs is the Three Sisters Delicatessen,
where they can bite into what the management calls a “Russian
hamburger”—a meatloaf-like concoction of beef, onions and garlic inside
a pastry shell. Splurging customers also can get their caviar fix.