El Che Is the Steakhouse John Manion Spent His Childhood Dreaming About

John Manion grew up partly in Brazil, spent years traveling Argentina, and then came back to Chicago and built the restaurant that had been living in his head the whole time. The centerpiece is a 12-foot custom-built parrilla, the traditional Argentine wood-fired grill, fitted with a crank-operated system that raises and lowers the cooking grate to control heat from the coals below. It burns white oak down to charcoal for the entire service. You can feel it from wherever you're sitting.

The room is dark and masculine in the way a good steakhouse should be, but Manion built in details that push it somewhere more interesting. Real candles, not the LED tea light situation that has taken over every restaurant in the city. Tall candles that burn down and leave their wax, and then a new candle gets melted over the top until you end up with these large, organic sculptural formations building up across the restaurant all night. The open kitchen anchors the back of the room with the parrilla at the center of it, and the kitchen staff looks like they're having a good time, which is always a good sign.

The food delivers on the promise. The Italian beef empanadas are the right start and I could have had more than I was given. The bone marrow was very good, and I'll be transparent: I have never met a bone marrow dish I didn't like, so calibrate accordingly. The prawns were the standout. On the steaks, everything is well-prepared and confidently executed. Did I eat a steak that I haven't had from any other upscale steakhouse in this city? No. That's not a knock. They're quite good. The fire just doesn't transform the beef into something you haven't tasted before.