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.
Medhu vada, a fried lentil doughnut, is a specialty at Udupi Palace.
Little India’s fried lentil doughnuts
Going further east on Devon brings you to the heart of Chicago’s
Little India. Indian immigrants from Illinois and neighboring states
come here to try on saris, stock up on grocery staples like
water-chestnut flour, and, of course, eat home-style.
As with the other Devon Avenue cultures, religion permeates the
restaurants of Little India, since Jains as well as many Hindus
practice vegetarianism. They aren’t disappointed at the Udupi Palace,
specializing in vegetarian dishes from southern India. Cilantro and
fennel seed perk up a fried lentil doughnut called medhu vada on the
appetizer list. Mulligatwany soup (a dish with multiple spellings) made
from mashed lentils complements the masala dosai, a 30-inch-long rice
crepe filled with creamy potatoes and onions.
Hema’s Kitchen can satisfy the same vegetarian appetites, but it
also ventures into Indian meat entrees such as chicken korma, smothered
in a curry cashew sauce, and sag gosht, a marriage of seasoned lamb and
spinach. The matronly Hema Potla says she can live without meat, but
not without fresh herbs and spices, which she roasts and grinds on a
daily basis. “I find the flavors are more prominent when I do this,”
says Potla, who took over the restaurant from her late husband Sam
Potla.
“I didn’t know how to cook at first,” she says. “He taught me how to boil water.”
For Indian dessert, consider Sukhadia's, where owner Jayant Sukhadia carries on a family tradition of making sweets that goes back more than 130 years. Many of his brightly colored treats, like chena murki and burfi, are concocted primarily from milk and sugar. Coconut, mango, honey, rose essence, and almonds add depth and sophistication.
Little India slowly morphs into Little Pakistan (and an even littler Little Bangladesh) as you continue east on the Devon strip to its terminus at North Ridge Boulevard. Pakistani restaurants cater to Muslim immigrants who’ve flocked to the area as well as diners from across Chicago. Unabashed carnivores find themselves in seventh heaven, since Pakistani cuisine is famous for its meat dishes, marinated a thousand ways and commonly roasted and grilled kebab-style on skewers. You can get your fill at Devon’s many kebab houses, such as Khan B.B.Q.
Of course, all this beef, chicken, goat and lamb must be certified
“zabiha halal,” that is, it must satisfy the Muslim requirements for
animal slaughter (among other things, the animal should face Mecca
while the slaughterer invokes Allah’s name). To attract Muslims,
non-Pakistani restaurants on Devon like Zapp Thai and Italian Express
advertise that they, too, serve zabiha halal meat.
While some Devon establishments go by the Indo-Pak label—meaning
they reflect the cuisines of both countries—one restaurant here is
Pakistani without compromise. That’s Sabri Nehari, whose owner, Abdul
Butt, returns to his native country several times a year to gather new
recipes. However, one menu item never changes—the stew-like dish
bearing the restaurant’s name. Usually spelled “nihari,” it’s a piece
of beef shank that lolls over a low fire for eight to 10 hours in a
flour-thickened gravy until the meat is so tender that it’s hard to
tell where the meat ends and the gravy begins. Although cinnamon,
cardamom, nutmeg, ginger and black and red peppers jazz up the dish,
the spiciness isn’t overbearing, says Steve Koch, a connoisseur of
Pakistani cooking and a computer consultant from Wilmette, Illinois,
who eats at Sabri Nehari at least once a week. “They make the best beef
nihari on Devon.
Devon Avenue may look like a TV ad for blissful multiculturalism,
but hints of tension below the surface suggest that the ethnic
relationships here are like any relationship—a work in progress. The
Indian and Pakistani communities each hold parades on Devon to
celebrate the independence days of their respective homelands, but the
Indians don’t march east of Western Avenue, and the Pakistanis don’t
march west of this cross street, which roughly divides the two
communities. That sense of turf, however, apparently flares up only two
days a year. “Nobody’s afraid to walk on the other side of Western—not
yet,” says Mohammed Junaid, Abdul Butt’s son and manager of the Sabri
Nehari restaurant, located in the Indian zone. Likewise, Hema Potla
says that Devon Avenue is seasoned with enough goodwill for everybody
to get along. “Remember, Hindus and Muslims live together in India,”
she says. “We eat other’s food. We use the same sort of spices.
“I can be friendly with Muslims. They can be friendly with Hindus. The more the merrier, I think.”
WHAT'S COOKING ON DEVON?
2439 W. Devon Ave.
773/338-1627
Good Morgan Fish
2948 W. Devon Ave.
773/764-8115
6339 N. California Ave.
773/381-2606
Tel-Aviv Kosher Bakery
2944 W Devon Ave.
773/764-8877
Three Sisters Delicatessen
2854 W. Devon Ave.
773/973-1919
2543 W. Devon Ave.
773/338-2152
Khan B.B.Q.
2401 W. Devon Ave.
773/274-8600
2502 W. Devon Ave.
773/743-6200
2559 W. Devon Ave.
773/338-5400
Zapp Thai
2927 W. Devon Ave.
773/743-0297
Italian Express
2307 W. Devon
773/761-7700
Robert Lowes, the author of our MD Tech column, is an award-winning journalist who enjoys writing about tasty bites as well as data bytes.
