Lunch is Served at Bread & Wine Restaurant

You love it for its bread. You love it for its wine. You love it for the adorable hybrid of restaurant/market, conveniently combining all your food needs in one off-the-beaten-path locale. Now there's more to love about Irving Park's Bread & Wine, as the eclectic restaurant begins lunch service this week. The neighborhood standby hones in on some of its most popular dishes for its new midday menu, paring down the prices, the pomp, and the circumstance to offer northwest-siders a comfortable lunch alternative.

(Porcine feast on Bread & Wine's new lunch menu)

Lunch starts October 8, and henceforth runs every Tuesday through Saturday from 11:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m. A bulk of the menu is a concise riff on some of the most popular dinnertime items, such as charcuterie and the beef and chorizo burger. Executive chef Michael Dean Reynolds is the man behind the magic, and it's always nice to partake in a selection of housemade charcuterie items in the middle of the weekday. Reynolds has a way with cured, encased, and pureed meats, serving up succulent offerings such as chicken liver pâté, country ham, blood sausage, tasso ham, barbecue chicharron, and kielbasa. There's also a nice array of artisanal Midwestern cheeses. Moving on, Reynolds whips up a few seasonal salads, including a mixed greens medley with apple, cucumber, pecans, Gorgonzola, pickled onions, and roasted shallot vinaigrette; and roasted beets with barley, toasted horseradish, arugula, feta, and mustard vinaigrette. Along with the aforementioned burger, which you will want to eat on the regular, Bread & Wine's Restaurant bread-based creations include a meat-tastic sandwich striated with mortadella, tasso ham, pancetta, cheddar, and olive tapenade on ciabatta. Vegetarians can feast on the barbecue mushroom sandwich with marinated squash, roasted chiles, onions, queso fresco, and smoked tomato jam. And for the true pork fanatic, go for the Cubano-esque country ham-bacon-smoked pork loin juggernaut served on a Cuban roll. Finish your meal with one of Bread & Wine's humble, comfortable desserts. Warm brownies pair wonderfully with cherry custard, creating a gourmet cherry cordial sensation. The salted caramel popcorn panna cotta is a crowd favorite at dinnertime, and sure to become a lunch staple as well.