What the Cafe Tu Tu Tango Menu Was Actually Like
The Cafe Tu Tu Tango Menu used to be one of those things that looked simple on paper but required actual coordination to pull off. The place ran out of Andersonville in Chicago, and when it was open, the kitchen was smaller than you'd expect for how much volume they moved through on a Friday night. I sat at their counter maybe six times between 2015 and 2020, which is enough to form an opinion. The menu was organized into a few clear sections: small plates, big plates, sandwiches, and a rotating selection of cocktails. The small plates were where the kitchen actually showed what it could do. I remember eating the crispy kale chips with a tahini dip that somehow managed to be both heavy and light at the same time. That dish stayed on the menu for maybe eighteen months before it disappeared without any announcement. The big plates were more predictable — pasta, steaks, stuff you could eat without thinking too hard about it. Here's the thing most people miss about that menu: the portion sizes were deliberately inconsistent depending on the night. On busy nights, the kitchen would slightly reduce the protein portions on the big plates to keep turnaround times down. It wasn't obvious unless you paid attention, but I caught it twice during visits where I went back two weeks apart on similarly busy Saturdays. The sandwich section was actually more consistent, probably because there was less prep involved.
The cocktail program deserved more credit than it got. They had a drink called the "Tango" that was basically a whiskey sour with a smoked rosemary garnish. It showed up on the menu for about a year, vanished, then came back. The bartender at the time, I think his name was Dave, would adjust the smoke intensity based on how busy the room was. Less smoke when the place was packed because the kitchen exhaust was fighting against it and the aroma just didn't land right. One edge case that bothered me: the menu listed several dishes as "daily specials," but the daily special was always printed on a small card at each table, not on the actual menu. This meant if you had a photo of the menu from a previous visit, anything marked as a special was effectively invisible to you. I once spent ten minutes asking the server what the daily special was, only to realize she was looking at the same card and had no idea either. The workaround was to just ask what they were feeling that day — the kitchen would tell you something that was actually good, usually whatever ingredient had arrived fresh that morning. When the restaurant closed in early 2020, the menu files that were circulating online started becoming unreliable. People were reposting screenshots from 2017 and 2018 as if they were current. If you're looking for an accurate version of the Cafe Tu Tu Tango Menu for archival purposes, the best source I found was a Wayback Machine capture from March 2020, right before everything shut down. Even that didn't have the daily specials section since those were always separate cards.
The pricing structure was another thing worth noting. Appetizers ran roughly $10 to $16, entrees $18 to $32, and sandwiches $12 to $17. Drinks were $11 to $14, which was about average for the neighborhood at the time. Not cheap, not outrageously expensive. The value proposition was decent on weekdays when the lunch special brought the entree price down to around $14 with a drink and a side. If you're trying to recreate any of those dishes at home, the pasta dishes were the most straightforward to replicate. The kale chips were actually easier than they sounded — just massage the kale with oil and salt, bake it low and slow, and finish with a good tahini. The smoked rosemary drink is worth trying if you have a torch and a glass cloche, but the timing matters. Smoke it right before serving, not thirty minutes earlier.
Get the Full Details
