Chicago Eats - Union Sushi and Barbeque

Seeing as how I live about 5 minutes away from Union Sushi & BBQ, I figured that I would have gone here much sooner. However, they didn't take reservations at first and there was a always a long wait, so I never bothered. Seems to be a running theme in my life - easy access = procrastination. Well one night, I was trying to hit up Roka Akor's happy hour omakase (and you know how much I love those damn omakases), but we were running a bit too late. So instead, I decided to drive by Union to see how packed they were at 6:00pm on a Thursday. Almost empty. Perfect!

We decided to sit at the sushi bar to watch them make food and to <hopefully> help our decision process. In the end, we decided to get a bunch of stuff:

Let's start off strong - what we had here was the fried gnocchi with pulled pork belly, and my favorite dish of the night. I've never had a fried gnocchi, but it just worked. Combined with the savory pulled pork belly which was perfectly moist and tender, and it was a home run. The peas were great too. Not too much salt, more on that below...

I was less impressed with the duckfat yakisoba with duck meat. I mean, it had all of the right things - duck, fat, duck meat. So what's the problem? Salt. There was simply too much salt in the sauce that the yakisoba (fried noodles) was fried in. Or maybe the sauce was just too overpowering. I ended up eating everything because I hate to see food go to waste and also because I regret not finishing food, but this was actually a chore to put away. I think I drank 3 glasses of water in an effort to desalinate my mouth.

Hooray for bbq skewers! And hooray for cheap, special skewers! This is where the "barbecue" part of the name comes in. The two at the top were the "happy hour" special beef filet skewers, the red one was the alligator, and the last one was the chicken thigh skewer. My favorites, in order: alligator, chicken thigh, beef. The alligator had a dusting of some cajun spices, and that really stood out. This alligator was a juicy white meat that had a smoother texture than chicken breast, but a suprisingly mild flavor. You would think that something that lives in a swamp would taste more swampy. Not that I know what swamp tastes like <ahem>.  The chicken thigh actually brought me back to my childhood when I would shop at Mitsuwa, a Japanese grocery superstore (formerly Yaohan until Mitsuwa bought them out). They have this terrific food court, and I remember getting some chicken skewers as a kid, and this definitely brought me back.

'tis the season for pumpkin everything. So naturally, we got the pumpkin mochi with cream cheese ice cream. So was the pumpkin mochi actually reminiscent of real mochi? Yep, except maybe a bit fluffier than I'm used to (as opposed to being much more dense). The fluffiness also made it seem stickier as the mochi would stick to the roof of my mouth after each bite. Oh and the cream cheese ice cream? It tasted better than it sounds as you read it. The one thing I wasn't a fan of was the caramel topping. There was something off about it - like they were going for a salted caramel but then decided to stop halfway in the salting process. The cream cheese ice cream made up for that.

After this experience, I'm glad to say that there's another solid option close to home. And now that the initial hype has worn down, stopping by here for a quick bite to eat is a real possibility.