My thoughtful server also brought hand wipes in anticipation. You can remove the head and shells if you prefer.

Huge head- and shell-on shrimp are cooked so perfectly, they seem encased in shattering crackers. Get the salt-and-pepper shrimp, she said, and you should too. She also apologized profusely for not offering hot tea or hot water (the traditional Chinese cold-weather drink of choice), because she didn’t think they would be hot enough for me, but brought water with no ice instead. She immediately spoke to me in Cantonese, though I heard her seamlessly switch to Mandarin and English with other diners. When I was seated at the restaurant on the top floor, my server culturally identified me in the best possible way. (The number eight is considered luckiest in Chinese culture.) So Wang and Briglio in turn recruited her parents, Moon Palace owners Jennifer Wang and Zhong Pei, plus their Nine Bar chef, Elvis Mom. Kitchen 888 needed consultants to create an Asian menu under One Off, collaborate with Bally’s and train their staff too. “He’s the one that reached out to us for this project,” she said. There, Wang met Terry Alexander, managing partner at One Off and founder of The Violet Hour. Long before Lily Wang and Joe Briglio transformed her family’s restaurant in Chinatown into the neighborhood’s first craft cocktail bar, she worked briefly at Big Star in Wrigleyville. The salt-and-pepper shrimp is seen at Kitchen 888 inside Bally's Casino Chicago. “So, yeah, Paul Kahan knows best,” added Browne laughing. I’m obsessed with the memory of tender and tangy collard greens, roasted mushrooms and provolone cheese, overstuffed in Publican Quality Bread seeded rye. It’s selling well so far, and worth going to the casino just for the melt you can’t get anywhere else. And if it doesn’t sell, we’ll take it off. “But Paul pushed and said, ‘Let’s leave it on. “And they didn’t think that their customers would like it,” she said.

I’ll try those drinks eventually, and hope the mushroom-collard melt is still on the menu, because Bally’s didn’t really like it, said One Off CEO Karen Browne. You may also recognize four fan favorite cocktails from Dove’s, only available at the bistro, but made at the adjacent bar with some variations: the Cantarito, with tequila and Jarritos grapefruit soda the Temple Margarita, also with tequila, and peach puree, which should change seasonally a classic michelada, with Pacifico beer and Louisiana hot sauce plus the Medinah Mary, made with house bloody mary mix.

The Medinah menu also features a smash melt, loaded with Pepper Jack cheese and caramelized onions, but incongruously layered with thick-cut garlic fries inside too.

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