Jaunted

If you're in an especially excellent mood after the beers and maybe some hokkaido scallop or firebrick wagyu beef, tip your waiter well and try to convince him to let you peek into their nanobatch brewing room (little better than a broom closet) and glimpse the flavors they are brewing for future tapping. Our ordering a special cotton candy shot segued into an entire downstairs kitchen tour, and at the time, the nanobatches we spied were just as ridiculously awesome as pretzel beer— S'mores Stout, Banana Cove Amber Ale, Nacho Beer and some mysterious other Amber.

Fellow of-the-moment Chicago eatery Longman & Eagle may serve something called "pork soda," but that doesn't take like pork. iNG's beers, however, taste almost exactly like you'd expect them to from their odd descriptions. We've even heard rumors of a true-tasting doughnut nanobatch (!!!).

Now iNG isn't just making headlines with their booze. See the waffle in our picture below? Ceci n'est pas un waffle! That, our friends, is not a waffle but coconut, mango sorbet and stout fashioned into something that nearly perfectly resembles waffles. And let's not even talk about the churro spaghetti with doughnut ice cream. Whatever good things you're imaging about it are true.

Last but not least, iNG is experimenting with a little special something— a West African miracle berry that purports to take your tastebuds to another level. To try this, where eating a "miracle berry first and a lemon tastes like lemonade and sour cream tastes like cheesecake," you've got to reserve the 4-person kitchen table downstairs and come to dinner with an open mind. That costs of course, so it's a special occasion thing.

Regular entrees here run average $22, the waffle dessert is $9 and the 5-beer flight is $15.

[Photos: Cynthia Drescher for Jaunted]