Rogers Park is not the first choice a Chicagoan would make for fine dining, and it probably shouldn't be. The Loyola neighborhood especially suffers from a college food glut, and while good sit-down restaurants exist, a "destination" restaurant is hard to find in the area. So where does one go to show their taste buds or their significant other what the good life is like?

A good candidate for Rogers Park fine dining magnet would be the former team behind Pasteur, with the addition of very visible mixologist Rashed Islam. With an elegant, bright lobby-like bar area stretching out in front of diners as they enter – and most likely Rashed himself behind the bar – the venue makes quite an entrance. Sit down for a cocktail or two (Rashed is known for his smooth mixing) or for a glass of wine from their top-flight collection.

A quick jot to the right and an elegant dining room is available, with a good amount of seating for the space. The menu is priced a little lower than Pasteur, and a little higher than you'd expect from a typical sit-down pan-Asian restaurant – but the care shows. The beef noodle soup ($8) with onion, garlic, tomato, peanuts and cucumber has a bed of noodles to both sop up the broth and balance the fire of the spices. The cochichin ($20) – chicken and shrimp over thick rice noodles – has a pleasing nutty balance, without getting too bland in the process. For the seafood-allergic and the vegetarians, be warned: a good number of the options are geared towards fish, or have other meats in the dish.

Even the salad in ginger-lime sauce with mint, savory cabbage, and peanuts has duck thrown in for good measure (for $8 total). But with flavor combinations made maturely and without intensity compromises, it’s certainly a time for anyone on the seafood/Vietnamese cuisine fence to explore the careful craft that goes into Viet Bistro’s cooking.

Centerstage Reviewer: Dan Morgridge