Review: At LeTour, ‘perfect’ steak frites and French-Moroccan fare are the Gold standard
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When I lived in Paris, a cousin called on his way out of the French capital with a Chinese tour group. He wanted to meet up that night after they visited Versailles, Monet’s garden and the Louvre, all on the same day.
A few years later, when I was location scouting across the south of France, that memory flickered as I rushed from one historic village to another, grabbing local specialties, from ratatouille to pissaladière, whenever I could.
When you find your way to the new French-inspired restaurant by restaurateur Amy Morton and chef Debbie Gold, you’ll see a menu that covers a lot of the country, along with a detour to Morocco, which might have you wondering if they’ve gone too far.
LeTour not only road trips around France, but also travels by way of the American Midwest. Morton and Gold, luckily for us, have prepared for this journey their entire lives. All you have to do is sit back and enjoy everything they’ll unpack, from buttery Burgundy escargots to spicy southern mussels, along with the personal stories behind them.
You might start with the tagine of chicken, which has become their most popular dish, with tenderly braised legs, breasts and thighs.
“The beautiful, very fresh, green olives are super important, and the preserved lemon,” said Morton, owner and operator of the restaurant that opened in November. “The triad was meant to remember the essence of days in Morocco.”
It’s not quite like the chicken tagines I tasted in Marrakech, or Paris for that matter, but focused instead on melding a bright bounty of ingredients.
“I don’t want to say this is a traditional Moroccan dish,” said Gold, professional partner and executive chef of LeTour as well as the parent restaurant group. “It’s got onion, lots of ginger, cumin, turmeric and saffron. Then there’s dried apricots, the preserved lemon and the olives, so when you put it in your mouth, hopefully it’s a beautiful burst of flavors.”
The history between Morocco and France is long and complicated to say the least, but the origin story behind Gold’s tagine started somewhere else completely.
“Amy and I went to this little restaurant in New Jersey,” said the chef. “They had a chicken tagine. Amy said, ‘Oh my god, I love this so much. We have to order it.’ And it was OK.”
“It was not even OK,” Morton said, laughing.
“She just looked at me,” Gold said. “And then she goes, ‘I know you can do better than this.’”
As expected of any Morton restaurant, there is indeed great steak. (Late family patriarch Arnie Morton founded the steakhouse chain that still bears their name.)
LeTour’s steak frites offers a meaty bavette, perfectly cooked to order then rested correctly, sliced carefully and served with a deep red wine demi-glace, plus a mound of immaculate thin and crispy fries.
LeTour began as an “unconventionally French” restaurant, with just a hint of Moroccan flavors. “Who we have emerged as is not exactly what we thought in the beginning,” Morton said. “But we are modern women in Chicago, so regardless of how classic a dish is, these are our takes as we see them.”
It’s not just the dishes, but the restaurant itself. Instead of a classic cafe, you might imagine a midcentury modern space near the Pompidou. The curved facade with floor-to-ceiling windows opens into a cozy eclectic decor.
“One of the most important things to me about this entire project is coming full circle,” Morton said. “And I think it’s illustrated a thousandfold by a 360-degree space.”
She and Gold first worked together in the restaurateur’s southern French provincial bistro Mirador.
“It was my first restaurant,” said Morton, who would leave the industry for nearly 15 years to raise her family. “It was her first chef job.”
The women reunited with French food again, perhaps bolder than ever, but not just in flavor.
Burgundy snails, typically hidden in shells under garlic herb butter, have been whipped out naked on a bowl of silky mashed potatoes studded with bacon and drizzled with persillade. Your server may suggest quickly stirring them in, presumably to hide the bits whose unlovely appearance belie their deliciousness.
The brothy banger mussels, too, upend expectations of a mild-mannered moules marinières. A spectacularly unconventionally French spicy red broth bathes every shell, but the toasted bread accompaniment may steal the show. Sourdough sourced from Publican Quality Bread gets toasted two ways in a stone oven, as crackling shards and a torn wedge.
“Spanish spicy paprika adds its own unique flavor,” the chef said about the dish. “But we also put a little hint of harissa in there just to bring out the spice. And then to everybody’s delight or disappointment, it’s got a fair share of butter, because it is French food, and that’s what makes the sauce good.”
The Lyonnaise salad with classic frisée greens and fried lardons tossed in a Dijon mustard vinaigrette was surprisingly under-seasoned, and a poached duck egg too cold both times I ordered.
The ratatouille, famously a dish with the power to transport even the surliest of food critics back to a time of innocence and Provençal produce, could not have been more disappointingly bland, even with my tempered expectations in the middle of winter.
The mille-feuille, however, with figs, oranges and its proverbial thousand layers of pastry and vanilla mousseline cream took this food critic to a place where pastry chefs caramelize a whisper of sugar on puff. The rare crackle is more conventionally French than you’ll find in much of France now. That makes all the difference in the world.
Who is the pastry chef?
“Me,” Gold said. “I could never really just stay on one side of the kitchen.”
The chef doesn’t mention that she trained on every station at Charlie Trotter’s, before becoming the pastry chef at Everest. After Mirador, Gold became executive chef at The American in Kansas City, where she won the James Beard award for best chef in the Midwest. She also opened her own restaurant, 40 Sardines, earning a Beard nomination for best new restaurant. That’s all before Gold returned to Chicago to become the opening chef at Tied House, then rejoined Morton at Found Kitchen in 2020.
The bittersweet chocolate mousse features brandied cherries the chef makes herself with fruit from Mick Klüg Farm in Michigan. Mousse is often confused with pudding. The former at its best, as Gold’s is, tugs with intensity.
The wine list is primarily French with one notable exception: Sex, a provocatively named sparkling brut rosé by Mawby Vineyards and Winery, also in Michigan.
The Marrakech cocktail mixes the sparkling rosé with Bigallet China-China, a bittersweet orange liqueur, and Dolin sweet vermouth, served over an orb of ice for a drink that’s effervescent and unexpectedly complex.
Also a bit complex is the name of their restaurant group, which also includes The Barn Steakhouse and Stolp Island Social.“AMDP stands for Arnie Morton’s Daughter’s Place,” Morton said. “My dad had a corporate name, which was Peter Morton’s Father’s Place, and it’s just a little nod to him.”
Her late father named the company after his oldest son, co-founder of the Hard Rock Cafe chain, who has a twin sister, Pam Morton, also in the industry.
“I have two daughters, who are now both in the industry as well,” Gold said. “It’s a better place than it was in the late ’80s for women, but honestly, I’m not so sure how far we’ve moved the needle.”
Meanwhile, the chef seems truly surprised at the positive reception to her menu, despite a lifetime of accolades.
“I know it tastes good to me,” she said. “But to have the person try this new place in Evanston and enjoy it? That’s all I need to be successful.”
Morton needs a bit more.
“To me, everything has to have a meaning,” she said. “How can we create without a reason behind it?”
LeTour
625 Davis St., Evanston
224-999-7085
Open: Happy hour weekdays 4:30-5:30 p.m. Dinner Monday, Wednesday and Thursday 5:30-9 p.m.; Friday 5:30-10 p.m.; Saturday 5-10 p.m.; Sunday 5 to 8:30 p.m. Closed Tuesday.
Prices: Appetizers $9 to $175; entrees $19-$60; desserts $4-$10; wine by the bottle $52 to $240
Noise: Conversation-friendly
Accessibility: Wheelchair accessible with restrooms on single level
Tribune rating: Excellent, 3 stars
Ratings key: Four stars, outstanding; three stars, excellent; two stars, very good; one star, good; no stars, unsatisfactory. Meals are paid for by the Tribune.
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