Sorry folks, had a really busy day Thursday that culminated in a trip to a steakhouse for a Christmas dinner with the fellas'. The restaurant du jour was Sullivan's Steakhouse downtown on Kinzie. The atmosphere is, well, smokey. There's no other way to say it. Upstairs is a bar area where cigar smoking is allowed. We found out that you could also smoke at the bar downstairs. The restaurant is in a third room where, while there was no smoking per se, plenty of smoke made it's way. I didn't think it would be too bad, but my clothes wreaked of smoke when I got home.
The funny thing about me wreaking of smoke, is that I spent virtually no time in either bar area! Ricardo and I left from the office, valeted the car and went in to find one of the boyz. We did and so I left Ricardo, a cigar smoker, in his capable hands while I went to find stocking stuffers for MWrigley. Upon my return about 45 minutes later, our fourth arrived and we went to eat.
The wine was unbelievably overpriced! A bottle of Estancia was $50 and there was nothing less expensive on the list (and few choices for under $100). We went with a Stag's Leap Cab I believe, which was a 1.5 liter bottle for $175. Still, yowza! The escargot and French onion soup were very good and the steak was pretty darn good...even at $38.
The most interesting part of the meal happened when someone who just arrived two tables over, fell backwards in their chair and toppled into the table next to us. This table had 8 people at it and the force of the guy falling caused their wine and all their drinks to spill. The maitre d' rushed over with several helpers. First, they checked on the guy who fell. Turns out he was drunk and they ushered his party (of 6!) out. Then they turned to the party of 8 asked them to move to the bar for a few minutes. In that time they stripped down their table, changed everything, brought out new drinks and new food, all in about 10 minutes. Pretty nicely done. So the restaurant, while smokey, does get kudos for service.
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4 comments:
whatever will they do January 1?? No more smokey treats in public! The Sullivans in Naperville can get pretty polluted as well...
I thought smoking was already banned in bars in Chicago? That sort of tyranny is making its way over to Europe too now. Boo!!! It's like smoking prohibition.
As you know, I'm getting pretty pissed off about the way some restaurants are ripping people off with their mark-ups on wine. It's like flaunting it in you face and saying, "well you're here, you have no choice, pay triple for this crap."
That's why I go straight to the hard stuff.
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