Brunch Bites: New Chef at Cru Kitchen & Bar and Soul Brunch at Untitled

In this week's batch of brunch bites, get to know Cru Kitchen & Bar's newly appointed chef and acquaint yourself with his new brunch menu, then eat your way through Untitled's new soul brunch.

There's a new culinary deity in charge at The Goddess Restaurant Group, and his name is Paul Carrington. The Australian native brings a fresh new verve to Cru's already eclectic menus. If you haven't heard of Carrington before, that's probably because you're not Rihanna. The man has spent the past several years itinerant, conducting large-scale catering operations for world music tours for the likes of Rihanna, Madonna, and Sir Paul McCartney. All under the umbrella of The Goddess Restaurant Group's catering branch, Eat Your Hearts Out! So he's a big deal. The man finally settled down in Chicago this summer, continuing to cater for Lollapalooza and other big-name concerts, but now it's time for him to park himself in a kitchen and curate some stable menus. Later in the day he cooks dishes such as chicken schnitzel, Thai shrimp cakes, and tagliatelle with lamb ragout, but let's talk brunch. Carrington's new brunch fare begins with housemade beignets served with Nutella and raspberry jam, really the only ways you can improve upon deep-fried pockets of dough. Caramelized bananas, salted caramel sauce, and mascarpone cream enliven plates of buttermilk or buckwheat pancakes, while the Gold Coast Benedict features a classy compilation of poached eggs, lobster cakes, caviar, and asparagus over English muffins. Eat this and you'll feel like rock star royalty.

(This is happening: chicken-fried head cheese at Untitled)

Over at Untitled, things are getting pretty soulful. That's bound to happen when chicken-fried head cheese and live soul music are involved. The restaurant's new Sunday soul brunch program offers a fun, lively approach to brunch, taking classic a.m. ideologies and jazzing them up substantially. For example, chicken-frying head cheese, saturating it in Calvados white gravy, and pairing it with buttermilk biscuits. The menu is sheer decadence and likely not for the faint of heart, what with pork belly scrapple Benedict, blueberry-chestnut pancakes with bourbon butter, a bison brunch burger bedecked with Tabasco aïoli, and brioche French toast "in a blanket" with smoked banana fluff (!). Tip of the iceberg, folks. There's also a Bloody Mary bar and a couple interesting brunch cocktails, like the 7th Hill laced with Old Heaven Hill, Galliano Ristretto, Amarula, and cream coffee. Go get soulful.