The Chicago Restaurant That Anthony Bourdain Called A 'Happy Place'

Despite working mostly at New York restaurants throughout his career, Anthony Bourdain loved Chicago. The chef, author, and TV personality was incredibly well travelled; he traversed the world for "Parts Unknown," "No Reservations," and "The Layover." Yet, in all three of his television series, he somehow managed to include a stop in the windy city, which he appreciated for its unique personality and lack of pretension. In an essay the beloved kitchen bad boy penned in 2016 and published on Medium, he calls Chicago "... one of America's last great NO BULLS*** zones." Unsurprisingly, when it came to eating there, he applied his trademark high-low taste with aplomb. One of Bourdain's favorite Chicago restaurants included the airport-adjacent sandwich shop, Johnnie's Beef, but the spot he referred to as a "happy place" was the somewhat more upmarket Girl & The Goat. He believed the restaurant, which is owned by "Top Chef" winner Stephanie Izard, represented Chicago's embrace of the modernist culinary movement of the 2010s.

The original Girl & The Goat opened in 2010 in West Loop, where it helped define the city's now famous Restaurant Row. The eatery has always focused on creating a familial atmosphere and a seasonal, local menu that serves the community. Now a Chicago fixture, it's also held a Bib Gourmand, Michelin's award for high quality food at fair prices, for several years. But Chi Town couldn't keep Izard's famous green beans to itself. With the support of longterm partner, The Boka Group, the chef opened a second location in LA in 2021. Izard also runs several other goat-inspired spin-off restaurants, including Chinese restaurant Duck Duck Goat and Valley Goat, which celebrates its Silicon Valley location by focusing on Northern California produce. 

While it's impossible to know how Bourdain would feel about Stephanie Izard's current culinary empire, when he visited her first restaurant for an episode of "The Layover" he was impressed both by its scope and by the hardworking attitude and typical Chicago toughness of its owner and head chef. Her menu, on the other hand, might not look like typical Chicago cuisine at first, but that was the point of Bourdain's visit. The chef was keen to show that one of his favorite, scrappy, ex-industrial cities is more than deep dish pizza spots and Chicago-style hot dogs (without throwing shade on it, of course). 

Between hearty, creative, vegetable heavy dishes, the charismatic TV personality joyfully discussed Chicago's place at the forefront of the U.S.'s expanding culinary scene with Izard. While they talked, Bourdain enjoyed a blueberry-topped kohlrabi salad with ginger dressing, roasted beets with green beans and anchovies, escargot ravioli flavored with tamarind, and roasted cauliflower with pickled peppers. The final two tasting courses were a little more meaty — a goat dish and a roasted pig face with crispy potato sticks and a fried egg. The meal represented the global flavors Izard still loves to cook today, which is something a jet-setter like Bourdain was bound to appreciate.  

If you visit Girl & The Goat today, you'll find versions of some of these dishes still on the dinner menu, including that elaborate roasted pig face. You'll have to pop in for Sunday brunch for the kohlrabi salad, but with extremely reasonable prices for such a lauded restaurant, two visits during a Chicago vacation wouldn't be unreasonable.