Erie Cafe



View of city from the restaurant

With Nick's parents still in town, we went to another restaurant that they heard about, Erie Cafe - an Italian Steakhouse located at 536 W Erie Street in Chicago .  We are not exactly sure how they heard about this restaurant, but we heard about it from an episode of Check Please.

We loved the location right by the Chicago river and we found free parking just steps away from the building.  We wished we could have gone there in the summer time to enjoy their outdoor dining overlooking the river.

It seems like a lot of regulars frequent this restaurant as the wait staff greeted and hugged many people as they came in. For a weekend evening we were seated quickly, but this may have been because we went there the day after Thanksgiving.

All entrees come with a salad and cottage fries.  Amongst the 4 of us we ordered 2 lasagnas, prime rib and veal Marsala for dinner. The prime rib was massive, about 26 ounces - enough for several meals.  We didn't taste it but Nick's parents said it was very tasty. The lasagna was good and filling but nothing out of the ordinary. In our opinion, the veal was the best presented and tastiest of the evening.  It was smothered in mushrooms which Nick enjoyed.

For dessert we ordered key lime pie and chocolate lava cake, both of which were very good  - so make sure to save room for dessert.  The lava cake was probably the second best lava cake Nick has ever had; second only to the chocolate lava souffle at Roy's.  It had warm gooey cake and a thick molten center which was very decadent. The key lime pie was better than average - there was a perfect balance of tartness of the lime and sweetness.

Final thoughts on Erie Cafe:
Food - better than average, good range of prices on the Italian dishes if you don't want to eat the more expensive steak dishes
Service - super attentive, the water glasses kept getting refilled when they were still more than half full
Atmosphere - great location, we tried to dress more business casual but we could have gotten away with a little more casual