Hermosa

We had lunch at Hermosa today. It was delicious and charming. Very nice vibes. We enjoyed:Fried Whitefish Lettuce WrapsPapaya SaladPickled Thai EggplantGriddled Rice Whole Cambodian Fried Chicken Phnom Penh Egg Noodles Roasted Acorn Squash Ice CreamHe should raise his prices. I felt like we should have paid more for what we received. Chef Ethan Lim is a Jean Banchet Rising Chef of the Year Award winner Here is a short 16-minute PBS documentary about him (free, streaming):https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/ethan-lim-cambodian-futures/24260/

Pre-meal: Reservations are a must as the seating for family meals is extremely limited. Chef Ethan Lim is really good about letting you know about upcoming available dates so get on his mailing list.Room: Small. There's room for 2 tables. Picture-taking: Lighting is good but I was there for lunch and there was a lot of natural light.Beverages: BYOBFood: During the day this is mainly a carry out place but for dinner (and weekend lunch) it becomes an upscale sit-down restaurant that serves homey but refined Cambodian food family style. The menu changes frequently - for our lunch, we had 7 courses in total that included small bites and large format dishes. Our meal included beef jerky, tamarind soup with crab, hamachi crudo, grilled pork salad, fried chicken, roasted pork belly. The flavors are very SE Asian with lots of herbs, fish sauce, vinegar and chiles. The food was so punchy and aggressively seasoned that we could have used some rice but didn't get any! Everything we ate was delicious but featured relatively few luxury ingredients that you would expect at the price point ($125 pp). Desserts were small but nice - yuzu sherbet over brown butter crumble with fish sauce caramel, and a tiny pandan macaron.Service: ExcellentPrice: Expensive (for the family meal)Value: LowSummary: Pricey but satisfying Cambodian food in a very private setting.

Exceedingly mid, especially for the location way out of the way, no parking and the questionable neighborhood. I had an order for 12, but food wasn't ready until 1215 not a great start. The fries have some nice seasoning and are a solid double fry crunch. The chicken sandwich is fine, but don't get the hype. Not crunch, not a ton of flavor, a decent papaya slaw. Eggplant, has a unique pickling vinegar, but another boring dish. Noodle dish is a giant fail. This whole meal just lacks flavor and excitement.

I have to give Hermosa one star simply based on their inconsistent and confusing hours of operation. Their website states that they are closed every day except for Thursday's 6:30pm-6:40pm. However, if you try to place an online order, the website states that you can pick it up as early as 12:00pm on Wednesday (one of the days that they are supposedly closed). What's even more confusing is that Google states that they are open Wednesday-Friday 12-3pm. I will give them the benefit of the doubt as restaurants may not be able to update the information on Google directly, but there also wasn't any hours located on the building itself when we arrived. We made the journey from Texas to eat there today since the hours on Google showed they were open. My partner is Cambodian and was looking forward to eating at Hermosa and this was a disappointing experience, overall.

This was honestly the most unique thing I've had in Chicago. It's not a staple of Chicago, but it's one of those restaurants that is unique and highlights a diversified cuisine in Chicago. Like some reviewers said, it's restaurant is easily missed because it is SMALL and is a takeout spot. There's not a dine in option, which is surprising because I'm sure many people would love the opportunity to dine in, but I guess it's due to COVID and that the place is limited.Now onto the Cambodian fried chicken sandwich, it was SO GOOD! It gets highlighted as combines southeast Asian flavoring in an American style chicken sandwich. The flavors were plentiful and very complementary. It definitely stood out as the unique in a city known for pizza and hotdogs. The fries were also pretty good. Food definitely stellar. I will admit that the pride is a little on the expensive side, but since I was visiting and not a local, I was willing to pay a bit more than if I was a local. Also be aware that a 15% tip is automatically added to the bill. I honestly don't like that because usually tipping is an option. Whether you're okay with the tip being defaulted, just know that it CAN be adjusted to either another percentage or even taken off completely , but I think the default should be $0 with an option to add tip as opposed to automatically 15%. Also, for being the only person it sure took a while to get my food. I'm glad I wasn't in a hurry and didn't mind waiting at all, but I caution people that are on a timely schedule. So definitely check this place out, nice owner, and STELLAR food!

It's nowhere near my house, and took careful coordination and a nontrivial drive through rush hour traffic in freezing rain, but I just had to find out why people were so obsessed with the cambodian fried chicken coming out of this joint. So one Friday I combined a trip to the auto shop with a pickup of their family meal of roasted and fried cambodian chicken.It was the most interesting delicious food I have had in a long time. The fried chicken was delicious, and the roasted chicken might have been even better. The crudites dips were weird and rich and savory. The salad was awesome, though the dressing was so intense that you may want a light hand. The fried bananas were compelling too. I was just blown away by how much was going on here, and reminded by how much I've missed out on this kind of dining in the past 21 months.To be sure, the meal had to survive a long drive back to my house so some of the fried things (bananas and chicken) would have been even better if I could have had them fresh. And some things were just pushing the envelope too much even for me. But that is exactly what I want in this kind of place. I want delicious food, flavor that punches me in the face, and maybe a little too hard.Some day, I'll be back in the dining room.

This review is for dinner at Hermosa which was a magical and intimate experience - one that's booked 6-8 months out. Dining here feels like eating dinner at a friend's home, it's cozy and you're the only ones in the restaurant. Chef's tasting menu is centered around his Cambodian heritage and we really enjoyed the flavors, the balance of fresh herbs/veggies with the fried chicken, lobster with crab paste and tomahawk steak. One of my favorite dishes was chef's mom's homemade sausage. Everything was so delicious and we left with full stomachs and hearts. At the end, chef hand wrote the menus for us! Hope to have the opportunity to dine here again.

01/07/21 - From the moment I saw their Fried Cambodian Chicken Sandwich on Yelp I was obsessed & knew I had to try it. FYI the address for Hermosa on Yelp has It located at 4356 W Addison Ave. Hermosa is actually located on Kostner Ave on the east side just north of Armitage & Googoo's Table. Even though it's located on Kostner Ave it has an Armitage address. As I later found out there is a parking lot just to the north of the restaurant for both Hermosa & Googoo's Table. Hermosa is a carry out or delivery restaurant. (It appeared too small to dine in or w/very limited capacity. Everything @ Hermosa is ordered on line and paid through either debit or credit card. You place your order and are given a time when you can pick it up or have it delivered. One thing that kind of bothered me is the lack of timeliness on receiving your order. Granted they had some issues w/some of the equipment but it's kind of hard to plan your day around a food pick up and by that I mean I placed my order and was given a specific time when my food would be ready. I went to the location & called, Ethan told me he had some issues w/some equipment & would bring it out to me when it was ready. After about a 15 min wait I didn't see Hermosa on Armitage Aves so I got out of my car and walked acrossed the street and found the storefront on Kostner Ave. I went in through the door and introduced myself to Ethan. Kind of expecting my order to be finished or almost finished when Ethan saw me he started to put food in the fryer? It's a good thing I was off & didn't have to be back at work as there are issues w/placing your order and picking it up in a timely matter. That being said if you are given a time for a pick up (Hermosa is 20 mins from my house) & you still have to wait an extended time. Not too good for repeat business. I ordered 3 items.* Cambodian Fried Chicken Sandwich the object of my obsession. This sandwich comes w/piece of fried chicken seasoned w/Cambodian spices on a bun & covered w/julienne cut papaya & julienne cut carrots. Unfortunately this needs to be eaten right out of the fryer immediately. By the time I got home the bun along w/the papaya & carrots were soggy. NEEDS TO BE EATEN IMMEDIATELY WHILE HOT!!! This is a good example of a sandwich that looks much better then it actually was. (Sometimes expectations can be a let down) This sandwich was $9 - 3 stars* I also ordered large fries which were absolute delicious. The fries were the best part of my lunch. I picked on them as I was driving home. They were piping hot, seasoned good & had a crunchiness that held up all the way home and beyond - $4.95 - 4 .5 stars* Garlic Mayo side - I'm a garlic fiend and to me this sauce was a bit lacking in there wasn't any garlic flavor & had a subtle sweetness that I didn't really care for - $0.95 - 2 Stars In fairness Ethan was very polite & seemed to want to provide good quality food. I asked Ethan about the name and he said it was named after the Hermosa area of Chicago in which the restaurant is at a way to pay homage to the neighborhood. I was curious as he is Cambodian w/a Latino name for the restaurant.One other thing on the final Bill they add a 15% charge for a tip. For a carry out is this customary? I don't mind tipping but usually a tip is something that's earned by service not automatically added to a bill. Overall the lack of timeliness on my food & what I considered ok food but nothing exceptional I can only give them 3 stars. My total bill out the door for a sandwich, fries, garlic Mayo tax and tip was $18.74 a bit pricy for what I received. I would probably go back and try some of their other food items

Ethan Lim's Family Meal is transportive -- An embrace from an imagined yet realized culinary future that was destined not to be in his family's homeland of Cambodia. Ethan's thrilling comfort food is as exotic to a native Chicagoan as it is accessible. Our dinner celebrated the memory of some near dear departed ones, as well as the prestigious Gold Hugo awarded by the Chicago International Film Festival in 2023 for the short documentary, "Cambodian Futures." You can read more about Ethan's life, work and family story here, and also screen the extraordinary film by the gifted Dustin Nakao-Haider, who was at the table along with his parents, aunt, uncle, and my niece and nephew. I have known Dusty since he was born. Be sure not to miss the links to a second article, as well as to the film itself: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/ethan-lim-cambodian-futures/24260/

One star because I've lost count how many times I've tried to eat here. Six months ago I was laughed at because you didn't update your Yelp hours. Today, even though the lights were on, and someone was inside and made eye contact with me, you couldn't even bother to open the door and let me know what hours you ARE open. Food looks good but not sure if I'll ever know!