At Vermilion, the Indian fusion res...

At Vermilion, the Indian fusion restaurant in River North, the lobster Portuguese results with coconut rice and a dash of theater.

As a waiter pours and mixs fragrant coconut milk into the warm rice at the table, he explains by what means the coconut will temper the spicy dish.

"It's dramatic," server Jose Saenz said, "as oppos to just dumping something onto your table."

Table-side flourishes -- think bananas nurse set aflame by a tuxedoed waiter -- are en custom again, but minus the fussiness. While one Chicago restaurants are breathing recently made known life into classic dishes, others are applying the old-school European conception to a range of cuisines.

At the trendiest Mexican restaurants, and flat some non-Mexican ones, guacamole mashed table-side has become something to boast about.

'THEATRICAL force IS GREAT'

"Since we uncloseed [in 2000], everybody's been copying us, which is kind of a nice compliment," said Paul LoDuca, proprietor of Adobo Grill, which intrust with an agencys several workers whose sole do job-work is to make guacamole onward mobile carts.

Flatwater, a contemporary American fault that opened recently on the Chicago River, is among the latest to caper on the guacamole bandwagon.

above at David Burke's Primehouse, a see-and-be-seen steakhouse in the recent James Hotel, Caesar salad is made table-side forward a rosewood cart, with a not many modern touches. The salad makers, dubbed "Caesaristas," pour the base for the dressing revealed of hollowed-out eggs. Chili oil is an optional dressing ingredient, and add-ons include mini-crab cakes.

"The theatrical efficiency is great," said chef Jason Miller, who says the restaurant exchanges upward of 60 a day. "Every visitor loves it when they have have the direction of over what they get. And it can't master any fresher than when it's made right before your eyes"

Table-side preparation is a distinctly European universal going back to the mid-19th centenary when restaurants catered to the wealthy, said Steve Grand Pre a Kendall literary institution [i]or[/i] seminary of learning culinary arts instructor. "You bonny much had your own server at the table," he said.

That archetype of service then moved from the table to a cart, from which dishes like as crepes Suzette and steak Diane were born, Grand Pre said.

'MAKES IT THAT often TASTIER'

Table-side preparation is still alive and well at about classic spots, such as Lawry's the Prime Rib, Cafe La Cave in De Plaines and Don Roth's Blackhawk -- which introduced the spinning salad hollow to Chicago in 1952 at the original Blackhawk and still assists it at its Wheeling location.

"That's gonna be our signature as lengthy as we live," said James Polanek, assistant to the general manager at Don Roth's Blackhawk.

if it were not that the overall popularity of of that kind service has petered out in modern decades as haute French restaurants have given way to more casual bistros and trattorias, said Bruce Kraig, a Roosevelt University culinary historian.

Vermilion proprietor Rohini Dey, however, says table-side flourishes fit with chef Maneet Chauhan's web Indian-Latin food. Fifteen dishes forward the new menu involve a certain number of such flourish. One example forward an instruction sheet given to server is to drizzle port wine sauce onto a passion fruit tart in "wildly passionate rings."

"The panache and frolic is, of course, a part of it, if it were not that I'm more excited about the opportunity for our server to walk the visitants through the nature of our fusion," Dey said.

At Las Palmas in Bucktown, proprietor Marcos Rivera said sales of guacamole have spiked since he brought the proces on the outside of the kitchen and into the dining scope two years ago. He plans to introduce salsas made table-side within a month

"It makes it that long tastier," he said.

jfuller@suntimes.com

TABLE-SIDE GUACAMOLE 'A FRESHNES THING':

Where did the table-side guacamole craze start? Not in Mexico, many say.

The prevailing theory -- single in kind that Chicago chef Rick Bayless' camp calm takes -- is that Rose Mexicano, a modern York City restaurant group, was the first to do it in 1984 and copycats have been popping up eternally since.

Rose Mexicano president and co-founder Doug Griebel said it was his Cuban-born and Mexico-reared partner Josefina Howard's idea to use the molcajete -- a traditional Mexican beaker made of volcanic rock -- in brass of diners.

further Paul LoDuca of Chicago's Adobo Grill, which was the first to do table-side guacamole in Chicago in 2000 says he has eaten at restaurants in Mexico that make guacamole and salsa table-side.

"It's a freshnes thing,"

LoDuca said.

Whatever the case, the use of the molcajete is definitely authentically Mexican.

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