One of my dealers in Chicago recently opened a new location on North Ave. in the Bucktown/Wicker Park area - an upper middle class to upper class area full of middle-aged people in Chicago. There are a number of great little restaurants that the guys at my dealer have turned me on to. One of the restaurants that we went to recently was Cafe Matou, a quaint little French restaurant on Milwakee Avenue (see map).
Chef and owner Charlie Socher studied French classical and country cuisine as an apprentice in France at the highly rated Au Quai des Ormes and Jacques Cogna restaurants. 
A Chicago native, Socher came back to the Windy City to be the head chef at The Chardonnay, a highly acclaimed restaurant that closed years ago. In 1997, Socher opened Cafe Matou and based his menu on contemporary French country cuisine.
In 2004, Socher and his wife, Susan, opened Charlie's on Leavitt in the Lincoln Park area of Chicago. The restaurant featured contemporary American cuisine in a casual setting. But that combination didn't work well in the yuppified Lincoln Park area and the restaurant closed earlier this year.
Cafe Matou offers a menu that changes daily, seeking to integrate the freshest available food products each day. You'll find a number of game meats available including venison and duck on any given day.
The wine list was almost exclusively French. I don't have the knowledge of French wines as I do with wines from California or South America. I asked our waitress what she suggested. We told her our preferences - a rich, hearty red. She immediately suggested a Gigondas wine from a small winery in the Cotes du Rhone region of France. Since I had many Cotes du Rhone wines on my trip to France last fall, I said that was fine.
Cafe Matou also has a nightly prix fixe (or fixed price) menu that averages around $20 to $25 per person - considerably less than comparable restaurants that offer French cuisine at fixed prices. Going that route leaves you at the mercy of the chef as to what he is serving that night, but sometimes that's kind of fun.
We thought about trying the prix fixe menu that evening, but it was a seafood entree and only one of us wanted seafood. We started out with a choice of salad appetizers. I got the gorgonzola stuffed grilled breaded red pepper in a tomato sauce. One of my guests got the house salad with bleu cheese topping. And my other guest went with a seafood cake blend.
For my main entree, I got the broiled flank steak on risotto with button mushrooms in a light sauce. It was just outstanding. One of my guests went with the lamb ribs, five small meaty and marbled ribs in a wine sauce. My other guest ordered the herbed salmon on bed of wild rice. Their's was equally outstanding, as well.
After dinner, we looked at the dessert menu, but opted to pass. I, instead, went with a good top shelf Scotch and my guests followed suit.
Cafe Matou is a small, quaint and unique restaurant. Like many of the restaurants in Europe, it doesn't get busy until after 8:30 p.m. The service was outstanding and even though the bill was a little pricey ($250 plus tip) it was a great culinary experience. It was a very memorable dinner, to say the least.
(Update - I was informed in November of 2010 that Cafe Matou has closed. Charlie Soucher is approaching 60 years of age and he wanted to slow down. The Soucher's are planning on moving to Mineral Point, WI and possibly will open a restaurant there.)
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