Alright my readers, time for another long over-due review. Eh, who am I kidding. My only two readers, Amanda my wife and Ariella my sister. Do you believe that!? Not even MY MOTHER reads my blog – granted, I never told her about this in the first place, but none-the-less…
So, a few weeks back my wife and I got together with a friend of mine from business school and his wife for a night out. Admittedly, neither Amanda nor I are very good at staying out late, hell I practically fall asleep by 9:45 when I’m back in Chicago – honestly. Well, we had a reservation for 9:30 or some ungodly hour on a Saturday night, and to make things worse, my wife decided to go against God and wear pants (Deuteronomy 22:5); I am not a pious man – probably even not a completely believing man, but religion does get things right ever once in a while… women only wearing skirts, I would have added only SHORT skirts 10 inches above the knee with some high heels!
Back to the story...so, the place we went to was Naha, located downtown right off Clark. First thing we observed was the valet right. NICE. Something like 12 dollars for <3 hours and 14 dollars for >3 hours. Perfect. I hope you all know my rule on valet. The price cannot exceed $3-4 more than the price of mass transit (this means always valet when you have more than 2 people in the car).
My wife being a huge lush concocted a plan with my friend’s wife to get there early and drink. We arrived sometime around 7:30 and waited a few minutes for our friends to get to Naha. In the mean time, the place was ok. A mix of urban trendy – which I dislike (think concrete floors) - and upscale. There was one weird aspect though. The place had its trendiness in style, but there were no hot chicks – sans my wife (yes, my friend’s wife was there too, but I only judge my wife and women I don’t know). I mean not even the hostesses were hot…really, the hostess…for crying out loud I think the Hooters hostesses are more attractive (we’re talking Chicago Hooters, not Florida Hooters).
A table at the bar opened up, the bar area was very expansive, and the four of us sat down some time around 7:50. This was nice, it turned out we could even order from those seats, sayonara 9:30 reservation.
Oh shit. Are you kidding me!? Seriously!? I was livid already and it wasn’t even 8:00. The bread, the FUCKING bread. I looked at my compatriots – fortunately our friends are as discerning as me, possibly more so – and I said something disparaging like “I can’t believe they just gave us Entenmann’s bread”, my wife piped up with “it’s probably Sarah Lee” – who knew I was married to a lush AND a comedienne? Our friends knew my dislike of bad bread. The night was so far a bit of a disappointment, no hot chicks and crappy bread, booooooo.
Tommy, the bar waiter, comes over to us, he seems to be a sincere guy and gives us each a few menus, both the regular and bar menu. “Arbitrage,” – huh, what was that, apparently our friends noticed an arbitrage deal going on between the two menus, the bar menu had a $12 oysters and $14 on the regular menu, they both had the same description. This night might turn out cheaper than expected (spoiler alert, I was wrong).
The drinks arrived, both our friends and my wife were very happy with their drinks (my wife had the Chardonnay and Riesling and both were nice, I can’t recall what our friends had).
Look, ya’ll know that I’m a fairly humble and subdued man, but let’s be honest, I’m a baller and anyone I hang out with is also a baller (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=baller). There was so much on the menu I wanted, I didn’t know what to get. A few of us noticed the “tasting menu available upon request” at the bottom of the menu, we decided to inquire. Tommy said it was 5.5 courses, Chef’s choice, for 125 a pop. Uhm, maybe. “Yes.” What!? Yes, to what…great Mike ordered the tasting menu, it’s not cool for one baller to do something and the other to decline, yes, I too got the tasting menu. My wife got the mushroom soup and the Quail while Mike’s wife got the Venison – medium rare (nice). We also had an appetizer of Foie Gras…mmm, close to perfection.
Wow, well this review is getting long already, let me start on all the food we had:
Foie Gras, Seared Scallop, Fennel and Turnip Soup with brioche grilled goat cheese, short ribs on grits with brussel sprouts, mushroom soup, gnocchi, risotto with bacon, oysters with béarnaise sorbet, whitefish with pepper mustard and crab, wild pacific cod, beef brisket, venison and quail. Well, I can’t really describe all this, if you check out the menu online you’ll see it.
Let’s cut to the chase. WOW. Foie Gras was good, my wife who doesn’t eat it liked it. Fennel and Turnip soup was ok, the grilled cheese was a tad coagulated. The grits on the short ribs were very good and Mike’s wife who doesn’t normally eat brussel sprouts or mushrooms actually enjoyed both. The mushroom soup was a bit eh and the gnocchi, quite frankly was actually subpar given the standard of the rest of the meal (probably a 6). Though what really ruined the meal was the risotto. I’ve actually made better at home. The oysters were ok, but the béarnaise sorbet…WOW, that put it into upper, upper echelon territory, damn that was good. I personally was not impressed with the whitefish, but Mike was, we’ll give that one a 7.5, I was NOT impressed with the wild pacific cod, the beef brisket was high quality, but Fat Willy’s Rib Shack, I think, makes a better beef brisket. The venison was delicious, as was the accoutrements that the venison came in. The quail, I thought fell a bit short, maybe a 5.5-6. My wife really liked it though.
Then we had dessert. I’ll be honest, I forget what everyone got, though I did get a rocky road sundae that was awesome. The female chef even came out to meet us but we all were so drunk on food that we didn’t do her any justice.
This place was great. Really. The bill was a bit much (we haven’t gone out since), but DEFINITELY worth it.
I’m giving this place a 9-9.5. I would advise patrons to not order the typical stuff, get the fancy stuff on the menu, you’ll be much happier.
CHICAGO LAND, go here, make it a mainstay of your dinning locales.
Good Eats my friends.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Greek Islands
Great, I owe a couple of reviews….well, let’s start.
The evening of February 27th, my wife and I and some friends were hoping to finally get together for an evening out. Turns out, we couldn’t decide where. Was it going to Matsuya, Dunlays on Clark, or another. Well at first we weren’t going to do Greek, but we all agreed at the end. HOWEVER, get this…there’s a Greek restaurant called Venus . Venus, for crying out loud. Now if there’s one thing I know (and believe you me, I know a WHOLE lot), it’s which Gods were Greek and which Roman. Venus is Roman, Aphrodite is Greek, for proof you may Wikipedia it. Unbelievable. My gut is some Italian who secretly enjoys Greek food founded this place (the audacity, first you steal their beliefs, then you steal their food…I just hope they didn’t steal Moussaka – that stuff is terrible).
So we decide to go to Greek Islands. Here’s the thing, I love all of greektown for this one nuance – free valet. Honestly, I’m going to be spending a lot of money at your place, most likely, the least you can do is give me free valet or make it breakeven ($2.25 a head each way to commute via train means valet should be 10 bucks – now I’m willing to pay up for the service, so $12-$14 is about what I consider breakeven valet price).
We’ve got a large party, 8 folks, so we get there and tell the maître de that we’re here and our party is moments away. He tells us to notify him when the party gets here. Fine, whatever, I’ll indulge your desire to make me wait longer for saganaki. The party gets there, as I promised, mere moments later, at which point I inform the maître de that we’re all here. The waiting begins. The fucking waiting begins. Not a good way to start off the evening. We were promised it would take 20 minutes. It took 1h10m. LIVID, that’s what I was. It’s fine that it will take that long, JUST TELL ME. I’m at the bar sweating like a mad man because I guess the owners wanted to replicate Greek’s summer heat in Chicago.
We finally sit ourselves and the group is famished and without further ado (read: without reading the menu) we just start ordering stuff for appetizers. Well out comes the bread (5 minutes later). Ugh, the bread. And UGH, the butter. I’ve spoken about this many times, SHAKE IT UP, serve me good bread, or good butter, or preferably both. Granted they also served olive oil, but it was a little too standard for me. The bread was a regular bread loaf with sesame seeds on it and the butter was the kind you get in the small package that you need to tear off the plastic film. It’s a Greek restaurant, please, please, please give me some sweet Churek. Thumbs DOWN.
Some of the appetizers start arriving, we’ve got a mix of stuff including: Gryos (better than expected, not the frozen crap), Saganaki (surprisingly GI has among the best Saganaki in Chicago), Tzatziki sauce (very good), and a Greek Salad (terrible, wilted lettuce, bad olives). Here’s the thing, we specially ordered some tzatziki and the worst thing possible happens, no pita chips come with the sauce, they expect us to put the sauce on the crap-ass bread they have. Are you kidding me? Get me so pita chips damnit! See, this is something the Mexican restaurants do well, whenever I’ve ordered any type of dip, the chips are in HUGELY abundant supply (just supply would work for greek restaurants), GREEK RESTAURANTS, LEARN FROM THIS.
Ugh, do I have to talk about this? The main courses. There was categorically NOTHING to write home about. Let's start with the fact that we ordered at 7:30 pm on a Saturday night and 3 of the daily specials weren't available. This might be worth knowing as the waiter takes our order. Tsk tsk. Anyways, my wife ordered the Mediterranean Sea bass (it’s only fresher 4700 miles away) – Mediterranean sea bass is bad, it has very little fat to it so it quickly dries out and loses its flavor, much like what happened at GI. I also got some lamb leg slices – those were bad, like really dried out brisket and I love lamb, very disappointing. We had another person get the meat pie. Not bad, the meat was flavorful, but there was surprisingly no basting sauce that was used. That’s surprising both good and bad. Good because the meat was still flavorful, bad because in a meat pie you usually want the pie aspect to soak up the sauce as well that way if you’re left with a bite without the meat you can still taste the juices. Someone else ordered the…ah, whatever, not even worth mentioning. I’m just gonna cut to the chase.
BREAD = 3. APPETIZERS = 6.5 (it was the saganaki and gyro that made it palatable), entrees = 4.5-6. Valet = 10.
Total Meal + Experience…drum roll. 4.5-5.5. I know, why so low? Well, all-in-all it was as expected with some kinda low hits and kinda high hits. Nothing special.
The evening of February 27th, my wife and I and some friends were hoping to finally get together for an evening out. Turns out, we couldn’t decide where. Was it going to Matsuya, Dunlays on Clark, or another. Well at first we weren’t going to do Greek, but we all agreed at the end. HOWEVER, get this…there’s a Greek restaurant called Venus . Venus, for crying out loud. Now if there’s one thing I know (and believe you me, I know a WHOLE lot), it’s which Gods were Greek and which Roman. Venus is Roman, Aphrodite is Greek, for proof you may Wikipedia it. Unbelievable. My gut is some Italian who secretly enjoys Greek food founded this place (the audacity, first you steal their beliefs, then you steal their food…I just hope they didn’t steal Moussaka – that stuff is terrible).
So we decide to go to Greek Islands. Here’s the thing, I love all of greektown for this one nuance – free valet. Honestly, I’m going to be spending a lot of money at your place, most likely, the least you can do is give me free valet or make it breakeven ($2.25 a head each way to commute via train means valet should be 10 bucks – now I’m willing to pay up for the service, so $12-$14 is about what I consider breakeven valet price).
We’ve got a large party, 8 folks, so we get there and tell the maître de that we’re here and our party is moments away. He tells us to notify him when the party gets here. Fine, whatever, I’ll indulge your desire to make me wait longer for saganaki. The party gets there, as I promised, mere moments later, at which point I inform the maître de that we’re all here. The waiting begins. The fucking waiting begins. Not a good way to start off the evening. We were promised it would take 20 minutes. It took 1h10m. LIVID, that’s what I was. It’s fine that it will take that long, JUST TELL ME. I’m at the bar sweating like a mad man because I guess the owners wanted to replicate Greek’s summer heat in Chicago.
We finally sit ourselves and the group is famished and without further ado (read: without reading the menu) we just start ordering stuff for appetizers. Well out comes the bread (5 minutes later). Ugh, the bread. And UGH, the butter. I’ve spoken about this many times, SHAKE IT UP, serve me good bread, or good butter, or preferably both. Granted they also served olive oil, but it was a little too standard for me. The bread was a regular bread loaf with sesame seeds on it and the butter was the kind you get in the small package that you need to tear off the plastic film. It’s a Greek restaurant, please, please, please give me some sweet Churek. Thumbs DOWN.
Some of the appetizers start arriving, we’ve got a mix of stuff including: Gryos (better than expected, not the frozen crap), Saganaki (surprisingly GI has among the best Saganaki in Chicago), Tzatziki sauce (very good), and a Greek Salad (terrible, wilted lettuce, bad olives). Here’s the thing, we specially ordered some tzatziki and the worst thing possible happens, no pita chips come with the sauce, they expect us to put the sauce on the crap-ass bread they have. Are you kidding me? Get me so pita chips damnit! See, this is something the Mexican restaurants do well, whenever I’ve ordered any type of dip, the chips are in HUGELY abundant supply (just supply would work for greek restaurants), GREEK RESTAURANTS, LEARN FROM THIS.
Ugh, do I have to talk about this? The main courses. There was categorically NOTHING to write home about. Let's start with the fact that we ordered at 7:30 pm on a Saturday night and 3 of the daily specials weren't available. This might be worth knowing as the waiter takes our order. Tsk tsk. Anyways, my wife ordered the Mediterranean Sea bass (it’s only fresher 4700 miles away) – Mediterranean sea bass is bad, it has very little fat to it so it quickly dries out and loses its flavor, much like what happened at GI. I also got some lamb leg slices – those were bad, like really dried out brisket and I love lamb, very disappointing. We had another person get the meat pie. Not bad, the meat was flavorful, but there was surprisingly no basting sauce that was used. That’s surprising both good and bad. Good because the meat was still flavorful, bad because in a meat pie you usually want the pie aspect to soak up the sauce as well that way if you’re left with a bite without the meat you can still taste the juices. Someone else ordered the…ah, whatever, not even worth mentioning. I’m just gonna cut to the chase.
BREAD = 3. APPETIZERS = 6.5 (it was the saganaki and gyro that made it palatable), entrees = 4.5-6. Valet = 10.
Total Meal + Experience…drum roll. 4.5-5.5. I know, why so low? Well, all-in-all it was as expected with some kinda low hits and kinda high hits. Nothing special.
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