Mariela is magnificently strange and easily State Street's best restaurant

Rarely have I stared at a menu as magnificently strange as Mariela’s. I thought years of menu decipherment studies would prepare me for anything thrown my way. But Mariela shocked me.

The restaurant’s website wasn’t much help, either. Mariela claims it has “a deep reverence for the sea and everything it carries with it.” But don’t expect a rebirth of the Cape Cod Room. Instead, the menu dances around the Mediterranean, Mexico, and Southeast Asia, picking ingredients and dishes seemingly at random, then combining them in ways that seem to tear up tradition whenever possible. Thailand crashes into Mexico with the tom yum aguachile, while India bumps into Italy with saag burrata.

It’d be really easy to call this all fusion nonsense. But to flip the first sentence around a bit: Rarely have I stared at a menu and wanted to try everything. Some of this is perverse wonder — what the hell is Oaxacan ponzu dip? But there was also pure desire.

As soon as I read the words “papad tostada,” I wanted to devour it. Sure, swapping the fried corn tortilla for crackly papad, an Indian flatbread, isn’t the most radical move, but even the sauces can’t stand still. An almond salsa macha is spiked with vanilla of all things, while the aioli is mixed with achar, spicy South Asian pickles. Yet, when combined with sweet and plump grilled scallops, instead of clashing together at full speed, these disparate components coalesce seamlessly.

Mariela is the work of Rishi Kumar and Zubair Mohajir, two Chicago chefs best known for the acclaimed Mirra in Bucktown. Located at the corner of Washington and State Street, Mariela is technically the hotel restaurant for Staypineapple, the oddly named hotel in the Reliance Building. (I swear this won’t turn into an architectural Substack, but this skyscraper is glorious.)

Which is another way of saying they could have played it safe. Not only do hotel restaurants usually try to appeal to as many guests as possible, but this is also State Street. No one expects great food here. The street’s scant offerings include national chains like Jimmy John’s and Chick-fil-A. A recent editorial in the Chicago Tribune isn’t exaggerating the current state of the street.

Instead, the two decided to leap off the deep end.

Essentially every dish here is spicy. While the heat never becomes overwhelming — at least to someone on the upper end of the spectrum — it’s always lurking in the background.

Even the best dishes throw curveballs. A starter of smoked white fish is delightfully smoky and salty, but instead of coming with bread, you get a dish of tlayudas, a toasted tortilla speciality of Oaxaca, and more papad.

With a light, yet crackly coating that gives way to a meaty mushroom interior, the tempura oyster mushrooms are an obvious highlight. A lovely pumpkin seed pesto on the side adds a fresh creaminess. But the dish also comes with the aforementioned Oaxacan ponzu dip that’s genuinely fascinating, if slightly confusing.

Another highlight is the seafood kebab taco, where tender grilled octopus joins seafood chorizo on a crispy roti perfumed with fenugreek. On top is more of that almond vanilla macha, lending a smoky, nutty, and spicy kick. While undoubtedly a bit expensive for two tacos, the quality on display is so evident it’s impossible to deny.

Even when things don’t perfectly connect, they fascinate. The Singaporean chili crab agnolotti features little pockets of dough stuffed with some ludicrously sweet and clean crab meat. They rest in a creamy and complex chile sauce that certainly tickles the tongue, but there’s also wildly more sauce than agnolotti and nothing to mop it up.

Mariela’s dinner menu is also astonishing for what it lacks. On the main dinner menu, there’s no burger, pork, or even chicken. (Technically, there is a cornish hen, but you get the idea.) You will find chicken tenders on the kid’s menu, but picky eaters might as well stay home.

If you do want chicken, drop by the bar for happy hour Monday through Friday, between 4 and 6 p.m. Then you can score the South Indian specialty, fried chicken 65. Boneless hunks of chicken are marinated in a slew of spices and chiles, coated in a rice flour batter, and fried until crackly. Served with a cooling cilantro crema, each bite is absurdly juicy, genuinely spicy, and utterly irresistible.

Happy hour is where you can also score $1 oysters, an astonishing deal for the Loop.

Equally delicious is the Mariela ceviche, which features plump chunks of albacore marinated in a spicy ponzu liquid.

Things are slightly more approachable during lunch, where you can order the “best fish sandwich.” While not confident enough to crown it the best in the city — only someone like Titus could make that call — the batter is astonishingly crisp, and the fish mild, clean, and tender. This being Mariela, there’s also some heat, along with nods to Thailand (green papaya salad) and Mexico (a crema mixed with chintextle, a smoky and spicy red chile paste).

I can go on. Mariela’s desserts are just as imaginative, especially the pandan. But I think we’re all getting a bit of ingredient-listing fatigue.

Mariela certainly isn’t for everyone. But if you don’t mind stepping up to the edge of the diving board and taking a chance, it’s a thrill. That it popped up in a hotel restaurant in the middle of the Loop is nothing less than miraculous.

Mariela
1 W Washington St, Chicago, IL 60602
https://www.marielachicago.com