WELCOME TO SHIKAGO
We are open Monday through Friday
Lunch Hours 11:30 amt o 2 pm
Dinner Hours: 5 pm to 8 pm
Bar Service: 3 pm to 8 pm with bar menu
all of our menu items are available for carry-out
We have been making changes - new menu - re-focusing on Asian cusine. We now offer offer sushi at dinner. I have always enjoyed the simple but extravagant flavors that you find in modest places when travelling: there was the fried snapper made on a propane burner in a partially built garage on the ocean in Hua Hin; the giant prawns grilled by the side of a highway and served with a garlic chili sauce outside Bangkok; the flat yellow chicken meat, bound with bamboo, that is grilled, that you pull apart and eat while sitting at the beach in Pattaya.
Chef James Okuno is Japanese, and we both like izakaya food, the type of small plate food that you eat at the bars in Japan. Last time I was in Tokyo, one of my favorite meals was in a small basement bar where I told the chef to just bring me anything he wanted and I would tell him when to stop. He kind of thought I was crazy, this was not a fancy place, but he did a lovely job with finger food that you can eat with your friends while drinking sake. It was simple food but not really simple, the flavors were layered and they had character and punch and the presentation we just right, no sauce swirls, but clean and pleasing.
I have always wanted a restaurant that serves that type of food and sells it at a reasonable price – so you can eat without worrying about how much it is costing you. That is the type of restaurant that Shikago is moving towards becoming now. It will continue to evolve as we (chef James Okuno and I and our team) find the time to add some of the things I have mentioned and others that are best tasted rather than spoken about.
The sizzling platters already on our lunch menu, were inspired by a small restaurant in Bangkok’s red light district. It was started by a Japanese soldier who stayed on after the war. It was all sizzle plate food. Who can resist – okay, I know some people can – and we do have vegetarian items – the sound and the smell of meat fat sizzling? We serve it as they served it (the soldier went back home some years ago) – on a platter with mashed potatoes and a vegetable. It is a fine meal at $16 a platter.
We opened for lunch with lots of small plates but we have found that small plates are probably more of an evening thing. Now lunch has more composed plates. We have started doing bento box lunches. Six different items provide and fun, attractive, tasty, healthy, meal.
We are on Adams (160 W. Adams St.) next door to the W Hotel, just West of LaSalle St.. We are East of the Lyric Opera, West of Symphony Space and South of the Theatre District – not far from any of them. If you happen to arrive a bit after 6:00 pm, you are likely to find parking on Adams right across from the restaurant. Street parking becomes legal after 6 pm.
Thank you! Come by and have a bite to eat!
Alan Shikami