TXA TXA Club, an artful cafe that’s home base to a creative culinary collective, has quietly become one of the boldest and best new restaurants in Chicago.
Liz Bendure and Daniel Parker opened what they describe as a Euro-style cafe in Logan Square this past March. The co-owners met while working at Lula Cafe, where they were a server and bar manager, respectively, and eventually married.
Their culinary influences indeed include European pastry and coffee culture, but draw from American barbecue traditions and the multiverse of Asian pantries too. The menu is distinct. Yet the cafe as a whole remains delightfully difficult to define.
“It’s very much a neighborhood establishment,” said Bendure, creative director. “It’s small. It’s intimate. It’s meant to be a gathering space.”
A duo of dishes illustrates their identity. The ubiquitous breakfast sandwich becomes something breathtaking here, pairing a house-made sausage patty with a precise thick slice of egg soufflé, brightened by an umeboshi aioli and herbaceous salmoriglio. The sausage begins not so much with the meat, but with aromatics leftover from a barbecue pork curry. The tender chunks of pork and gai lan (leafy green Chinese broccoli) melt into a golden sauce, served with a waiting side of white jasmine rice.
“Something that is really important to us is using things multiple ways,” said Bendure. “When we make the yellow curry, there’s all these aromatics — lemongrass and chiles and lime leaf — that are sometimes thrown out.”
They take what’s usually considered detritus, grind it and make pork sausage for the breakfast sandwich.
“We started as a supper club,” she added, referencing the backyard pandemic project they began in July 2021. “And when you’re trying to make a meal stretch, you have to get creative.”
That complementary creativity has become a core tenet of how they cook.
“I’m also thinking of the pantry as a type of tangram,” said Parker about the geometric puzzle pieces. “Finding ways to use different combinations of components to create very different final results.”
He builds their breakfast sandwich on a Bays English muffin with the house pork patty and umeboshi aioli made from salted fermented plums. The salmoriglio, a Calabrian condiment with garlic and herbs similar to chimichurri, features dandelion greens, their bitterness a counter to some of the sweetness. The egg soufflé and a speared squiggly pickled pepper finish the sensational saucy sandwich.
The barbecue pork curry reflects Parker’s roots in Georgia and his journey far beyond. He tapped into taste memories of a tangy Carolina Gold style mustard-based sauce from childhood, and a warmly spiced Northern Thai-style curry from traveling through Thailand. His dish moves between those two realms.
The exquisite chicken liver mousse departs completely from the familiar with a fantastical painting of the silky spread as a thick impasto swath across the plate, scattered with charred grape gemstones, a hint of apricot hot mustard and a stunning Sardinian carta di musica crackling flatbread.
“Our third or fourth supper club, we wanted to do a play on mandarin orange chicken,” said Parker.
That reference was lost on me, but no matter. It’s provocative abstract edible interactive art. In further conversation, it also reveals a personal statement. After working in restaurants for decades, the couple realized that hospitality had become an industry.
“What we wanted was a hospitality practice,” Parker said. “We really just wanted to practice something that required a vulnerability, both on our part as hosts, as artists, but also that invited a great deal of trust from the guests.”
They’ve also had careers in art.
“It was never our intention to get to the point of a restaurant or an event company or catering in any way,” said Bendure. “It was just a way for Daniel and I to explore food together and hosting and hospitality in a way that we had been missing over the years.”
More Top Picks Best Steel Toe Work Boots For Women
They did intend to attract a crowd that, of course, loves food, but was looking for something a little different.
A complex crispy rice salad has become a newer favorite of Parker’s, and mine as well. Pear and cashew butter hides under red curry-spiced, toasted and chewy nuggets of grains. Fresh blackberries, fermented radish and jim jaew (a Thai sauce spiked with charred eggplant ash) finish the dish.
“Its lineage goes back to nam khao tod, but it’s different,” said Parker about the Lao fried rice ball salad.
The dramatic roast duck sets a burnished leg against a canvas of sauce, which seems surprisingly like a standard fancy entree. Panch phoron, a five-spice blend from Bangladesh and East India with fenugreek and fennel seed, along with palm oil and pineapple, transports your palate somewhere more tropical.
A cute silver coupe of the lovely pimento cheese snack with saltines, dotted with lime pickle coins and a spoonful of nam phrik phao chile sauce, is available all day, as is the refreshing cold noodles bowl, deep in XO sauce and more herbs; and a radiant cantaloupe dish with ripe melon orbs and halved Sungold cherry tomatoes while the season lasts.
The popular corn cake with olive oil and coconut for a satisfying crumb comes topped with a ribbon of espresso and orange blossom whipped frosting plus a dusting of fennel pollen and a sliver of candied orange zest.
“This has become an all-time favorite birthday cake,” said Bendure. And it’s the favorite sweet in the cafe.
She came up with the concept, which a wedding client ordered, before Parker actually created it. He now makes slices daily with pastry lead Nat Wood and their team.
A striking morning bun slathered with sweet green curry is another newer item, with a touch of heat over an impeccably textured pastry. The coconut panna cotta with a wonderful and wobbly gelée of tepache (Mexican fermented pineapple drink), and a pina curd packs so much flavor into vivid layers. A fragrant matcha creme pie with sesame halva and black sesame cookies sandwiching a Swiss buttercream filling, rolled around in crushed dried rose petals, is so beautiful, but much more subtle.
The savory vol-au-vent with pear and onion jam, tart tamarind and pecorino cheese is ambitious, but the pastry itself was a bit heavy, the layers not quite flaky enough for the abundant stuffing.
A daily congee, so velvety and luxurious, changes toppings often (not quite every day). It’s intensely infused with freshly ground white peppercorns, which overwhelms the bowl’s cozy intention. I wish the spice had been offered on the side, like the brilliant bottle of house-made hot sauce with the breakfast sandwich.
A cloud of yogurt showed how to play gently with pink peppercorns, as well as house-made granola and peaches for a last fleeting taste of summer.
A gorgeous gradient within the Snakes ‘n Ladders coffee drink with pandan banana-flavored milk foam can be made with espresso or matcha, hot or cold, boozy or not. The hot espresso variation I tasted was delicious. The TXA TXA house aperitivo or Ungardening nonalcoholic drink represents their ethos again with dried herb trimmings of borage, juniper berry, nutmeg, chrysanthemum and white peppercorns transformed into a botanical garden tea. A Pink Moon cocktail with gin, limoncello and the delicately astringent Apologue Aronia liqueur, made in Chicago, sips like a cousin to the Negroni.
A seasonal dog-friendly patio on an extra-wide sidewalk can be found on their stretch of Fullerton Avenue. The vintage brick building has two steps up to the front door, so the indoor space is not wheelchair accessible. The space inside is an ever-changing gallery by exhilarating emerging artists, and the open and airy dining room and back bar feel more like a studio than a restaurant.
Bendure and Parker designed and sourced the cafe inside and out, with Logan Square’s Moss Design as their architect and contractor.
But it’s the wonderful staff who bring their magic, notably my terrific servers Taji Chesimet, Elena Dern, Maura Ford and Maddy Goynes. They worked so seamlessly together, and with cooks and bar staff who served as well. The pacing can be leisurely, allowing you to linger as one does in a European cafe.
“TXA TXA is a derivative of the word txoko,” said Bendure about the traditional Basque gastronomic society.
The name also refers to the Cuban dance cha-cha-chá.
“When you hear cha cha, that summons something fun and playful and bodily,” said Parker. “Something familiar, but you don’t know where it’s going to take you.”
TXA TXA Club
3268 W. Fullerton Ave.
773-799-8511
More Top Picks Best Glute Kickback Machines For Home Gyms
Open: Tuesday to Sunday; brunch 8 a.m. until 2 p.m.; “staples” 2 until 4 p.m.; dinner 4 until 9 p.m.; closed Monday (reservations available by phone and Resy)
Prices: $6 (morning bun), $8 (corn cake), $14 (bfast sandy), $23 (bbq pork), $15 (chicken liver mousse), $22 (crispy rice salad), $9 (Snakes ‘n Ladders fancy coffee or matcha), $8 (TXA TXA house aperitivo aka Ungardening nonalcoholic drink), $15 (Pink Moon cocktail)
Accessibility: Indoor dining room and bar not wheelchair accessible; seasonal sidewalk patio wheelchair accessible
Tribune rating: Excellent to outstanding, 3.5 of 4 stars
Ratings key: Four stars, outstanding; three stars, excellent; two stars, very good; one star, good; zero stars, unsatisfactory.
Meals are paid for by the Tribune.
Big screen or home stream, takeout or dine-in, Tribune writers are here to steer you toward your next great experience. Sign up for your free weekly Eat. Watch. Do. newsletter here.