Restaurant review: Petite Vie by chef Paul Virant brings buttery French market priced potatoes near Chicago

Chicago Tribune

17-02-2025

Petite Vie, the newest restaurant by award-winning chef Paul Virant, who's made Western Springs a culinary destination for 21 years, dares to offer market priced potatoes on a simple yet inventive menu that explores France by way of the Midwest.
Virant, also the chef and owner of Gaijin okonomiyaki shop in the West Loop and Vistro Prime steakhouse in suburban Hinsdale, describes his latest establishment as a brasserie.
'It's a gathering place that's got good energy, and food that's well prepared,' he said. 'Not super complicated, a lot of which is based on traditional French food.'
Petite Vie opened last May around the corner from his former flagship, Vie, which closed after 19 years due to a landlord dispute in 2023.
The brasserie is not quite a descendant of its namesake, but a return to the chef's French professional roots. Petite Vie is more casual with classic references. Its predecessor Vie was a contemporary American restaurant that won a Michelin star when the guide actually traveled as originally intended.
'The bestselling dish at dinner is for sure the steak frites,' Virant said when I asked about Petite Vie. 'But depending on the plat du jour, those sell really well.'
Boeuf bourguignon, the current plat du jour, or dish of the day, is more le plat du mois, or dish of the month, with good reason. The tender beef stew, braised traditionally in red wine with carrots, takes a detour from Burgundy when it's served over a silky celeriac puree, and under a tangle of grated celeriac dressed in a bright remoulade. It's a Midwestern declaration on the dish, but I do wish there was far more of that defining and delicious red wine sauce.
'I gotta give Vinny credit for that,' Virant said about head chef Vinny Gerace, previously chef de cuisine at The Publican. 'I was more like, let's just do it right, and send it out with some sourdough.'
They source the sourdough bread from Publican Quality Bread, but pastry chef Angelyne Canicosa bakes everything else in-house.
'But he had this whole idea with celery root,' added Virant about Gerace, and the remoulade with a little bit of horseradish, which is not traditional at all, but clearly a great flavor with beef.
That skilled culinary curiosity is why I would order the plat du jour at Petite Vie every single time, whatever it is.
'The plat du jour, and stuff like that, is what I really enjoy,' Virant said. 'Because that's kind of my thing.'
That's definitely my thing too. Some other wonderful stuff can be found in the blackboard specials, including a small, but significant side: a steak butter. It's currently au poivre, a compound butter with brandy, shallots, reduced beef stock and lots of black pepper.
And then there are those market priced potatoes! They're on the board as pommes de terre inspirée d'Escoffier, or potatoes inspired by Escoffier, as in Auguste Escoffier, who codified French cuisine in his cookbook 'Le Guide Culinaire,' published in 1903. At Petite Vie, the current market priced potato dish is aligot, the legendary mash with an epic cheese pull.
'So that's a lot of fun,' Virant said about the potato series. 'I tell my crew, 'You all know the book. Now take a look at the potato chapter, what do you want to do?''
It's another modest Midwestern affirmation, since market-priced items are usually steaks or seafood, not our most common root vegetable.
At Petite Vie their aligot is about a third Gruyère cheese, suspended in soft clouds of russet potato, which needed a touch more salt, always a challenge when seasoning potatoes.
But why are they market priced?
Because what some might consider the lowliest root vegetable has historically been taken to culinary heights. Rather than simply reprinting the menu every time, Virant took each dish as an educational moment.
'We did the tartiflette,' he added about the iconic baked potato casserole, which they made with Alsatian wine, bacon and creme fraiche. 'That was a higher-cost item than the aligot, so I knew the prices would change.'
The pithivier aux légumes de saison, a puff pastry pie with vegetables of the season, also changes. And the current variation is breathtaking. Luxurious ribbons of marinated butternut squash, crisp fried parsnips and green pea shoots curl over buttery golden pastry, filled with velvety squash puree, bejeweled with toasted pumpkin seeds and white wine-braised shallots. It's so stunning, and complex yet comforting.
'We wanted to have a vegetable entree that could again work with the seasons,' Virant said. 'And we've had a handful of variations, ratatouille, and the first one was spring peas with cauliflower and French curry.'
Theirs is not the traditional pithivier, which is like a pot pie that can be savory or sweet.
'But it is sort of,' added the chef. 'I think being in the Midwest, you can do pot pie with so many different things, and it's great.'
That includes their next interpretation of the pithivier already in the works, with black truffles, chestnuts and charred cabbage.
The quiche de saison has not changed yet, available only at brunch, served on weekends since last June, and Fridays since January. When I asked about the brunch bestsellers, Virant said people love the savory buckwheat crepe and the classic American breakfast, as well as a duck confit poutine. But the quiche is a big one — literally. A colossal, quivering wedge somehow holds so much spinach, Gruyère cheese and mushrooms cooked in a garlic confit oil. That quiche is worth whatever the price of eggs will be.
A pâté maison, a platter really, with hearty slabs of perfect house-made country pâté, studded with pistachios and drizzled with a bracing black currant gastrique, comes with a generous quenelle of chicken rillettes, grilled sourdough bread and coveted house pickles. Virant wrote the book on pickles, ' The Preservation Kitchen: The Craft of Making and Cooking With Pickles, Preserves, and Aigre-doux,' with award-winning author Kate Leahy.
The vegetables of the season, also market priced, are radiant curry roasted sunchokes with an almond aillade, the nutty garlic condiment that you will want to eat by the spoonful.
A nougat glacé dessert, which Virant said is inspired by a recipe from the Le Bec-Fin French restaurant in Philadelphia, is exquisitely reimagined by pastry chef Canicosa. It presents a frozen honey parfait topped with candied cherry and orange, embedded with crushed hazelnuts and pistachios, and finished with an ethereal honeycomb tuile.
Bar manager Patrick Swanson suggested a Pomme de Vie spritz when I visited at brunch, a beautifully balanced cocktail mixed with a pommeau de Normandie, an apple aperitif. At dinner, when I asked for a low or no-alcohol drink, he recommended his Tigre en Papier, probably the best spirit-free cocktail I've ever had, so lovely and layered, made with aromatic herbal nonalcoholic Lucano amaro liqueur.
Back at brunch, the crêpes Suzette were so light and infused with orange and brandy, but I do wish they had been flambeed tableside. The viennoiserie (kouign-amann, pain au chocolat and almond croissant) seemed so promising with flaky puffs, but had lost their elemental crispness. At dinner, the chocolate soufflé, finished with a tableside pour of creme anglaise, was a touch too soft and runny.
Demi baguettes are baked in-house and served all day two ways, both with salted butter, and either cute cornichons and Dijon mustard, or house-made jam. They were priced at a surprising $9 each. I will emphatically reiterate that good food costs money, and great bread and butter cannot be free. But the crumb was dense and close.
The dough recipe was originally a boule from Vie, Virant said, which was served sliced. It's ambitious to bake any bread in-house at a restaurant, no matter the fiction of 'The Bear.' Even Michelin three-starred restaurants in Paris have dedicated bread bakers. And the demi baguettes at Petite Vie are popular with regulars. But the house style was unusual for the two I had, and missing an elusive crackling crusty chewiness that's a fundamental foundation of French food.
Canicosa makes an impeccable financier, however, and it's only available as a free side with coffee. The tiny cake-like cookie tells a love story between beurre noisette and blondies. It rivals Éric Kayser's famous financier, and took me back to his first and only Maison Kayser in the fifth arrondissement.
The petits fours at Petite Vie, a seasonal selection of three French pastries offer Canicosa's artful study in butter, with three pairs of teeny crumbly sable cookies, airy madeleine cakes and caramelized canelé pastries.
They're served on some of the prettiest plateware with delicate floral toile, chosen by designer Jody Tate, said Virant, and his wife, Jennifer Virant, a physician.
'They are the dream team on the interior,' he added.
The chef bought the building directly across from the charming village Metra station, near the historic town water tower.
'It was a breakfast lunch joint,' he said. A bar in front, near windows that fully open when weather permits, leads to a chef's counter. Banquette tables are lit with tall taper candles in the main dining room, and the quieter back room where an antique table from Provence has found a new home on handsome tile floors. The Virants' personal collections hang on exposed brick walls throughout for an organic immersive feel.
And they're open seven days a week, increasingly a rarity even in the city.
The restaurant has superb service and such a sense of place, a neighborhood French restaurant by way of Western Springs.
Petite Vie Brasserie
909 Burlington Ave., Western Springs
708-260-7017
petite-vie.com
Open: Open daily, dinner from 4 p.m., Monday through Thursday to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday to 9:30 p.m., Sunday to 8 p.m.; brunch Friday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Prices: $15 (aligot), $23 (pithivier), $38 (beef bourguignon), $16 (nougat), $18 (quiche), $14 (Tigre en Papier non-alcoholic drink), $6 (drip coffee with financier cookie)
Noise: OK (65 to 70 dB)
Tribune rating: Excellent, 3 of 4 stars
Ratings key: Four stars, outstanding; three stars, excellent; two stars, very good; one star, good; no stars, unsatisfactory. Meals are paid for by the Tribune.