Baffo

Amuse Buche

We went to dinner at Baffo which is the formal restaurant inside of Eataly by celebrity chef Mario Batali.

We just ordered a few things.
Ravioli - braised beef cheek ravioli with black truffles and Castelmagno cheese.

Ravioli

Agnolotti - wild mushroom filled pasta with garlic and ragusano cheese

Braised short rib with heirloom carrots

So we wanted to try this restaurant inside of Eataly because it is the fanciest restaurant there and we wanted to see what Mario Batali's Italian food would be like.

Well we were disappointed. The service was just bad. It took a half hour from when we were seated for us to order food (and for at least 15 minutes we were patiently sitting with our menus closed and the waiter was nearby several times).  It seems they were way more concerned about people's drink orders than anything else, and maybe because we just ordered water we were not important.

Agnolotti

The food itself was very good but overpriced.  Especially in a city like Chicago we could get a lot of great Italian food for a much better deal.  In fact we were just in Napa Valley a couple of weeks ago and ate at an Italian restaurant also run by a celebrity chef and we had a much better experience overall and the food was better.

Also something weird about the menu, there were some appetizers but no salads or soups.  We looked at the appetizers and couldn't order any of them due to current temporary dietary restrictions, but we would have loved to have a salad instead but didn't have that option.

Final thoughts on Baffo:
Food - The food was good but not the best Italian food we have eaten.  Also it was quite pricey for the size of the entrees.  We left a little hungry but were no appetizers we could eat and the desserts didn't excite us that much.

Braised Short Rib

Service - we described our experience above, but this is once again an example of how bad service can taint the overall experience.  We probably would have enjoyed the food a little more if the service wasn't so slow.

Atmosphere - the restaurant is much smaller than we thought it would be.  It feels very separate from the rest of the Eataly experience, which is good for peace and quiet but since it has its own entrance you wouldn't even have to go in the rest of Eataly to eat at Baffo.

Umami Burger

We went to a late lunch at Umami Burger in Wicker Park. This restaurant has locations in other states but this is the only location in Illinois. We tried a couple of the burgers.

Umami Burger

Umami Burger (Original) - with parmesan frico, shittake mushroom, roasted tomato, caramelized onion, Umami ketchup

Throwback Burger - 2 patties, white cheddar cheese, miso mustard, Umami ketchup, pickles, minced onions

Throwback Burger

We also got a serving of Fries - they are thin cut fries which are served with 3 different sauces - umami ketchup, garlic sauce, and jalapeno sauce.  They fries were good not great, but the sauces were really good as a different option to regular ketchup.

Nick liked the Umami burger better but Natalie preferred the Throwback.  They told us the most popular burger is called the Manly burger but that didn't sound very appealing to us.

Final thoughts on Umami Burger:
Food - very tasty burgers, but a little pricey

Service - very good service. The server explained the whole menu and what the sauces were very thoroughly.

Atmosphere - This is a sit down restaurant which is different than some of the other casual burger joints. It is relatively small and they don't take reservations so we were lucky to be there on the late side of the lunch hour so we didn't have to wait.

Chicago Diner

Pizza Puffs

We went to dinner at the Chicago Diner.  The Chicago Diner is a vegan restaurant.  We heard about it on a show from the Cooking Channel about Unique sweets. That show was focused on the desserts and shakes but we tried out the other food as well.  Once again, we seem to like Karyn's (a raw and vegan restaurant)a little better.

For savory items we had:
Pizza puffs - empanada-esque items

Burger

Karma burger - sweet potato-tofu patty, grilled pineapple, sprouts, onion,

Gyro - sliced seitan, onion, tomato, lettuce

These items were good for what they were - non-meat items, but we still would prefer the real thing of these dishes.

Dessert items:
Mint Chocolate Chip Shake- very good, you can tell it is not really ice cream but it is delicious

Caramel Crunch Torte - almond cake with vanilla cookie crunch filling, chocolate ganache coating, caramel sauce

Gyro

The desserts were very good and you wouldn't be able to tell (even with the milkshake) that they were vegan. We would go again just for the desserts but it is quite a distance from us so that probably won't be happening.

Final thoughts on The Chicago Diner:
Food - it didn't feel like you were eating vegan; but it wasn't quite the same as the meat filled options for the savory dishes.  The desserts could stand on their own though.

Service - there were only a few people in the restaurant at the time we went so service was pretty quick.

Mint Chocolate Chip Shake

Atmosphere - good size space.  We couldn't get too much of a feel for the atmosphere because there weren't that many people there.

Caramel Crunch Torte

Roy's

Appetizer Trio

We went to dinner at Roy's Hawaiian Fusion restaurant in Chicago.  We have been to Roy's restaurants before in Las Vegas and Hawaii but not this Chicago location. We were there to have their Restaurant week menu.

We have enjoyed eating at Roy's in the past and wanted to see what they would do for restaurant week.  Overall the food was good, but we had such a bad service experience that overall we were quite disappointed.

Course 1 - appetizer trio of pork & shrimp gyoza, Szechwan pork rib, vegetable spring roll.  Small bites to be able to try everything.

Lobster Dim Sum

Course 2 - Maine lobster dim sum - with lobster cream sauce.  The lobster sauce was great. We enjoyed this dish and wish there had been more of it.

Course 3 Macadamia crusted mahi mahi - with red potatoes, asparagus and lobster cream sauce or braised beef short ribs - with yukon mash and broccolini.  Both options were good.  The same lobster sauce for the dim sum was with the mahi mahi so that was great.

Course 4 Dessert - either strawberry lemongrass creme brulee or chocolate spice cake.  The creme brulee was good and we should have ordered 2 of those as the chocolate spice cake tasted more like fruit cake than anything else so it wasn't that good.

Mahi Mahi

As for our service experience.  We got to the restaurant right at our reservation time.  But they didn't seat us because they said there weren't any available seats.  But there was an entire section of tables that didn't have anyone at them so that was weird.  We waited about 20 minutes and they told us that it would be longer but we would want to sit in the empty section.  We said that was fine but maybe we should have waited longer because the service we experienced was very slow between each course and that may have been because we we in the no man's land section and they may have forgotten about us.  It just felt like we were there forever when we could have been done in half the time.

Short Rib

Final thoughts on Roy's
Food - good food but misleading on the chocolate spice cake.  Overall doesn't compare to Roy's in Hawaii.

Service - see above.  We were definitely disappointed with the service and it definitely tainted the whole experience.

Atmosphere - nice overall feel.  Bar upfront and main dining area in the back.  There is an open view to the kitchen.

Creme Brulee

Farmhouse Tavern

Fried Cheese Curds

We went to dinner for Restaurant Week at Farmhouse Tavern in Chicago.  We had seen this restaurant featured on Check Please of couple of months ago and decided to go when we saw they were participating in Restaurant Week. They offered a 3 course $33 dinner.

1st course
Fried Cheese Curds with house made catsup and spicy sauce.  These were amazing.  I guess you have to like cheese.

Winter Salad

Winter Salad with endive, bibb lettuce, cranberries, pistachio, mint, white balsamic.  So this salad offset whatever guilt we were feeling about the cheese curds.  It was light and refreshing and tasted great. Definitely one of the better salads we have had recently.

2nd course
Braised Short Ribs with celery root, puffed wild rice and wheat berries.  We enjoyed the short ribs themselves and the whole dish had a lot of flavor.  What we didn't like was that the short rib was presented still attached to the bone.  It was extremely difficult to get the meat off the bone and would have been so much easier to eat if the kitchen had just done that part for us. It probably was part of the presentation to have it arranged this way but was quite challenging.

Pork Loin

Grilled Pork Loin - with cabbage, mushrooms, bacon and peanuts.  So this dish was a lot spicier than we would have ever imagined as there was no indication of this on the menu. The flavors of the pork with the veggies and especially the peanuts was neat. We didn't like the bacon that was part of the meal as it tasted like all fat to us.  Fortunately it was arranged as 2 larger chunks that we could easily avoid eating without mixing with anything else.

Chocolate Budino pudding with toffee and ice cream - the pudding was good and it went down easily as we were starting to get full.

Rice Pudding - milk jam, pistachio and cherry brittle. Very sweet and a little more liquidy than other rice pudding, probably due to the milk jam.

Chocolate Budino

Final thoughts on Farmhouse Tavern:
Food - we didn't know what to expect from the food, but we enjoyed most everything.

Service - pretty good service, but nothing special

Atmosphere - the interior of the restaurant is a bit cramped.  There are 2 levels but both levels have large bar areas so the actual restaurant seating is tight.  We were at a very small table and felt a bit crowded when others were seated at a table next to us.

Rice Pudding

Lawry's

We went to Lawry's for dinner during Restaurant Week and man did it deliver.

Spinning Salad

Natalie had been to the Lawry's location in Las Vegas for lunch and it didn't even come close to comparing to the food, service and ambiance here.

Lawry's is located in the River North area of Chicago about 1 block away from Michigan Avenue. It is housed in an old mansion that has fantastic decor inside.

The wait staff is all dressed up for a different era and the prime rib is cut to order by a carving cart that is brought to your table.

Prime Rib dinner with potatoes, yorkshire pudding & lobster tail

The restaurant week deal was fantastic - salad, prime rib, lobster tail, mashed potatoes, Yorkshire pudding and dessert for $44 per person

Salad - they call it a spinning bowl salad because of the way it is presented and served to you. The salad consists of Romaine and Iceberg lettuce, baby spinach, hard boiled eggs, beets and croutons. It has a house made dressing that kind of tastes like Thousand island and they put it together table side by spinning the salad in a bowl while the dressing is drizzled on top of it to coat everything. It wasn't the best salad ever but they do try to ratchet up the flair.

Prime Rib - nice cut of meat, not the most tender we've every had but certainly quite flavorful. Once again the presentation wins out on this because a carver comes to your table with a massive cart where he cuts the piece to order and he doles out the mashed potatoes as well. The Restaurant Week menu included the smaller cut of meat which was quite a big size to begin with but Nick opted for the Lawry cut - a little larger and probably the traditional size cut of prime rib served there.

Carving Cart

Yorkshire Pudding - popover type of bread that is used to mop of the juices and gravy. It is served at your table in a skillet.

Lobster tail - so this is the something extra that puts this deal over the top. It was not a super large lobster tail but it tasted great. With this being put onto the restaurant week menu it went from being a small deal to quite a nice dinner deal.

Dessert - choice of sticky toffee pudding or bundt cake.  We probably should have both ordered the toffee pudding but we wanted to try one of each. They were both quite sweet and we barely had enough room to eat them at all.

Final thoughts on Lawry's.
Food - we loved the food and definitely want to return.  This is a special occasion type of place.

Service - the service is amazing. They definitely have all the bases covered here with the presentation both of the salad and the prime rib.

Sticky Toffee Pudding

Atmosphere - The setting is very neat being in an old mansion. It is quite fancy and different than most other restaurants we had been to.  We would consider this a special occasion restaurant but there seemed to be a lot of business diners there as well.

Bundt Cake

Wildfire

 We went dinner at Wildfire in Oakbrook.  This was our first Restaurant week dinner for the year.  We had been to this restaurant before but it had been a few years. For their restaurant week option Wildfire offered both a $33 and a $44 dollar dinner option and we chose one of each.

House Salad

$33
House Salad - slightly fancier than the typical house salad as it had hard boiled eggs and artichokes, it was presented kind of like a cobb salad with all of the ingredients in their own sections
Bourbon Tenderloin tips with broccoli - this was a much larger dish than we were anticipating so we were so full that we had to take 2/3 of this home with us

Shrimp and Crab Bisque

Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie - because we were on the full side we took a lot of this home as well, This was really good with chocolate and peanut butter combined in a graham cracker crust.

$44
Shrimp and Crab Bisque - good soup

Petite Filet

Petit Filet Mignon with Mushroom Crust and Au Gratin Potatoes - the steak was great and the mushrooms on top made it even better
Chocolate Cream Pie - we might not have chosen this selection given the other options but this seemed to be their main dessert.  As expected it was a rich pie - super cholateley.  We finished this at the restaurant because it was way to delicate to be transporting home.

Final thoughts on Wildfire:

Tenderloin

Food - overall there was a lot more food than we would expect from a fixed course/price meal. Probably the cuts of meat offered were not as high quality as from a regular meal served there, but we liked the options we had.  We really loved the chocolate peanut butter pie and wish it had been an option for both meals.

Service - good service; even though it was quite a busy weekend evening.

Atmosphere - nice steak house feel. Good thing we had a reservation because it was very busy and there was a large private party.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie

Chocolate Creme Pie

Forno Rosso

Barese Pizza

We went to lunch at a place called Forno Rosso.  We saw this place a little while ago on Check Please. This is a brick oven pizza restaurant that has the distinction of being one of 2 restaurants in Chicago that have a VPN rating. VPN stands for Verace Pizza Napoletana - True Neapolitan Pizza.  This is an association from Naples.  In order to be certified with VPN a restaurant has to serve Neapolitan style pizza in a 900 degree oven. The pizza can only be cooked up to 90 seconds and must be made with only certain types of ingredients. There only about 500 restaurants in the world that have this certification.

We ordered 2 regular pizzas and a dessert pizza.

Capricciosa Pizza

1) Capricciosa - tomato sauce, artichokes, olives, mushrooms, prosciutto, fresh mozzarella
2) Barese - brocolli rabe, sausage, burrata cheese

The pizzas had thin crusts but still had a good texture (not cracker-like). The Barese pizza had a little more of a char to it than Nick would prefer. But over all we enjoyed all of the ingredients.

Nutella Dessert Pizza - nutella, strawberries and bananas
We had to try the dessert pizza because we love Nutella.  We made sure to box up some of the regular pizza to save room.  The dessert pizza was fun due to the ingredients but nothing overly special.

Nutella Pizza

Final thoughts on Forno Rosso:
Food - good pizzas.  If we lived closer we would go back.  Nick didn't find it that much different than other wood fired pizzas.

Service - in the middle of the day so a bit slow. But maybe they were going for a more relaxed European vibe.

Atmosphere - casual. There was a large group of people watching soccer matches on the televisions.

Mana Food Bar

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We went to dinner at Mana Food Bar in Wicker Park after seeing it on Check Please.  It is a vegetarian/vegan restaurant that focuses on meatless dishes from around the world (there are no meat substitutes)

Horchata

Most of the food options have a small and large plate option.  We decided to go with small plates so we could try more of the menu. 

We started with drinks - horchata with almond milk and a chocolate, banana, peanut butter and almond milk smoothie.  Natalie requests that Nick makes smoothies like this more often - it was a good blend of the 4 ingredients.  The horchata was nice, but tasted pretty similar to traditional rice water horchata.

Smoothie 

Maki

Here is the food we ordered:

Maki - raw vegetables wrapped in collard greens with ponzu sauce (sushi style).  This was like a sushi roll but it was filled entirely with vegetables - carrots, avocado, asparagus, mushrooms and lettuce. Nick liked the freshness of the dish but Natalie missed some more of the traditional sushi aspects such as sushi rice (and seafood).

Curry

Curry - seared okra in a spicy tomato and hominy sauce with corn chutney garnish. We were worried that it could be too spicy but it was just right. Nick actually tried the dish with the restaurant's hot sauce and it complemented it very well. The okra were well cooked and due to their texture we didn't miss meat in the dish at all.

Rice noodles - with green curry, sweet potatoes, garlic chives and spicy peanuts.  This was the spiciest dish of the night. It had a great flavor profile and reminded us a bit of pad thai with all the peanuts.

Rice Noodles

Mushrooms and Polenta

Sauteed mushrooms over creamy polenta. There were a few different kinds of mushroooms in this dish and they tasted amazing with the smooth polenta. It was a break from the spiciness of the noodles we had just eaten. We definitely could have eaten the larger size of this dish. 

Ravioli - spinach filled ravioli with tomato sauce, ancho-hazelnut pesto and asiago cheese.  Excellent ravioli but perhaps least interesting in terms of the vegetarian aspect of it because except for the anchos this dish could be found at most Italian restaurants.

Ravioli

Potato Pancake - sweet and white potatoes with a quince and currant chutney and crema. The potato pancakes were very light and thin and not super filling (unlike what you would get at a European restaurant). The fruit chutney sweetened it up and almost made it seem like a dessert.

Final thoughts on Mana Food Bar:

Potato Pancake

Food - All of the food was fresh and delicious.  We did not really miss having meat.  But that being said we felt the raw/vegan restaurant Karyn's was a more unique experience for us because of the creativity that goes into making vegan options (i.e. cheese) without cooking it above 120 degrees. These vegetarian options were nice to have all together in one place but are certainly dishes that could be ordered at other restaurants.

Service - We got there right when the restaurant opened so we didn't have to wait for a seat.  The service felt a little slow in the beginning and there didn't seem to be many items coming out to any table for a little bit.  Once the food did come out the waiter and kitchen did a good job of pacing the meal so that all of the items didn't come out at once.

Atmosphere - the interior of the restaurant itself is quite small so we were lucky to walk right in. It sounds like there is a patio space for more tables in the summer. It is a trendy spot with modern decore. There was a mix of patrons and it seems like the couple next to us were there for the first time and had also heard of it through the Check Please program.