Prairie Grass Cafe in Northbrook - Huge Disappointment!

I am a longtime lurker on this board, and this dinner was so disappointing it has brought me out of hiding!

Last Friday night, I went with a group of 6 friends to the Prairie Grass Café. We arrived on time for our 7:30 reservation, we were hungry, we brought money, and we were ready to eat! We had heard great things about the restaurant and I had looked forward to this all week. Following is a timeline of our evening:

7:35 -- We were seated, and our waitress asked if we would like to order some appetizers. We did, and they were delicious! We thought we were off to a great start. During appetizers, the busboy tried to serve us coffee, twice. We should have taken it as a sign of things to come.

8:00 -- We were getting anxious to order our entrées, but unfortunately we could not locate our waitress.

8:15 -- The orders are placed.

8:20 -- We are informed that they are out of Moussaka, and one order will have to be changed. We are also told that if you wish to have Moussaka, and are planning on a dinner as late as 7:30, then you should really order it over the phone when you make your reservations.

8:30 -- we are informed that they are down to one last serving of Mushroom Ragu in Phyllo Dough. Another order change, and we wait. Another bread plate is brought to the table.

8:45 -- Still waiting.

9:00 -- Bread plate #3, still waiting, and our waitress is M.I.A.

9:15 -- We seek out the Manager, as one of our friends has to leave and needs her dinner to go.

9:16 -- Our waitress appears and informs us that we did not have to speak to the manager; our dinner is taking so long because placed our appetizer order separately from our entrée order. From our collective experience at dining establishments, we believe that it is standard protocol to order appetizers prior to entrees, especially when the waitress asks the question “Would you like to order any appetizers?”, but perhaps we are mistaken.

9:20 -- Our dinners appear. They were really, really good, and not just because we were really, really hungry! Our waitress again tries to explain to us how the 1 hour, 45 minute wait for our entrees was our fault due to our separate ordering of appetizers and entrees, and twice ordering things that were on the menu, but all sold out. We are not interested in discussing the excuses any more, so we ask to speak to the manager, again. The manager appears over 10 minutes later, clearly not concerned with unhappy diners. He explains to us that the chef had to make the Mushroom Ragu in Phyllo, from scratch. Furthermore, he explains to us how difficult it is to roll out phyllo dough. I do not claim to be a famous chef with a four-star pedigree, but I seriously doubt that anyone was in the kitchen making phyllo dough from scratch. And we were previously told that they were down to the last serving of this dish, which is why we had to change one of our orders! I suspect that if they were making one, then they would have been able to make two. Liar, liar pants on fire! At this point we inform him that all we want is for him to take responsibility for the hour and 45 minute wait, and apologize for the mistakes of his staff. He told us he would go to the kitchen and speak to the chef. Upon his return, he offers us one free dessert, but NO APOLOGY! One member of our party points out that he is looking at 6 unhappy customers who are going to go back to our friends and tell them about our negative experience at Prairie Grass Café.

9:40 -- We are kicked out of the restaurant by the manager, who now tells us that he is the owner.

If you are still reading this, the point is that the Prairie Grass Café has good food, but not so good that it makes up for terrible customer service! We will never be back.

Good grief, that sounds simply abysmal. I could see it was going to go way downhill once they were admonishing you for not having called in your desire to have that very exotic dish of moussaka at the late time of 7:30 on a Friday night. Sorry you had such a miserable experience but thanks for sharing - no matter how good the food may be it could never be good enough to endure that type of service or attitude.

Wow! That sounds absolutely horrible. Some friends of mine have experienced service lapses at PGC too, but nothing like what you describe.

I'd really like to hear the restaurant's side of the story . . . not that I doubt your account at all, but there are 2 sides to every story. It sounds like the server was clueless -- or took you to be, anyway.

=R=

I have had very long waits at Prairie Grass closer to their opening, and I just chalked it up to working out the kinks in a new place, but this seems to have been of another order altogether. As a north suburban resident, I have more than occasionally felt that customers are taken for granted in popular north suburban restaurants -- the captive audience dynamic, perhaps?

My sympathies. There is nothing worse than having people lecture you the way that server did and keep telling you you are wrong, wrong, wrong. Sounds to me like that particular server has some issues that maybe management is not aware of yet.

I am still determined to drag my boyfriend to this place, but maybe we should sit in the bar and order some food rather than order a regular dinner. Service with attitude drives him nuts-- and then his griping about the service drives me nuts. (That's why we're in such a restaurant rut.)

You can sit at the bar, or in tables in the bar area, and order the full menu. We did it once, and service was very pleasant, and fairly relaxed. I have also eaten at the restaurant once. I, however, found on both occasions the service fine, but the food not very exciting.

Thanks, Jonah.

Not very exciting is right about my boyfriend's speed. What he really likes is a steakhouse, but I'm not as much into that. We seem to be able to compromise fairly well at neighborhood bistros and Italian and Greek places. I'm sure the burgers and stuff on the Prairie Grass menu would appeal to him. A place that has a lot of red meat is nice because that's one thing I don't cook so well.

Sorry to hear of your misfortune. Sad to say, I'm not surprised.

My own (not very enthusiastic) review of Prairie Grass is at: http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=1734&highlight=prairie+grass

It's the last post on that thread.

I, too, had a lousy experience at Prairie Grass. So lousy, in fact, that at the time I wrote a "review", before I had even discovered this site. This was back in May.
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There’s something to be said for going into a restaurant blindly, so you have little-to-no expectations. Maybe it was the mixed criticisms I’d heard about the Prairie Grass Café, maybe it was my heightened sense of attention-to-detail caused by recently finishing Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, but whichever it was, my experience at Prairie Grass located at 601 Skokie Blvd in Northbrook, for my 5-year anniversary with my boyfriend was disappointing. We chose the restaurant because my boyfriend’s brother had given us a gift certificate, which he purchased based on the fact that they were rated one of the best new restaurants of 2005 by Chicago magazine, who described it as “down-home”, and a “spacious setting.”

Just to give you an idea of what my point of comparison is, one of our favorite “splurge restaurants” is Wildfire. Is it the most authentic, adventurous steakhouse in Chicago? No, but the prices are reasonable for the level of service and the amount of well-prepared, consistently good food you receive. Even though the main dining room is quite large, when you’re there, you feel like you’re on your own island- you hardly notice the din created by the other diners and your waiter is personable, attentive (without being annoying), gives off a feeling of confidence and is knowledgeable about the food. While the menu and atmosphere of Prairie Grass are different, the price range and clientele are comparable.

It’s clear from the physical ambiance of Prairie Grass that they’re trying to re-create a serene prairie with a modern twist- the walls are covered in wood and natural-cut stone with steel arched support beams that create some curves and flat-screen TV’s that silently display images of wildflowers and grasses, and other natural parts of a prairie.

However, these carefully-chosen design elements were not enough to calm the feeling created by the bickering host and hostess, who were quite flustered with all of the parties waiting to be seated. Even with reservations, we waited 15 minutes for a table, during which our optimism waned.

When we were finally seated, we noticed that the empty water glasses that were waiting for us were covered in grime- fingerprints all over, smudges of butter or some other greasy substance. Before the busboy could fill them, we asked to have them replaced, which he did without any argument. The restaurant is very loud. Rather than a quiet, secluded meal in a prairie, this is like eating in a barn with all the other diners. It’s not really tightly-packed, there was just no effort made to dull the sounds of the restaurant- no carpeting, or half-walls- sound just flows uncontrolled. The people at the next table had obviously had a few drinks and their voices just kept escalating to compete with everyone else, who in turn, were doing the same. I don’t mind loud, raucous restaurants, but the jarring noise level at Prairie Grass does not fit in with the mood trying to be created.

Our waiter was pleasant and attentive, but did not have the sense of composure and professionalism I’d have expected. For appetizers we ordered the Baked Feta Cheese with Spicy Banana Peppers and Tomatoes. It came in a stoneware baking dish, about 5 inches across and an inch deep, barely larger than the piece of melty cheese in it. I usually scoff at servers who are overly concerned about hot dishes when they serve you (“Well, I should hope my bowl of soup is hot, duh!”) but in this case, the warning would have been appreciated. Because of the size of the dish, it was nearly impossible to not burn yourself on the edge when cutting the feta into portions! And, oh boy, was it hot! I don’t have the “professional chef grade” calluses on my hands, but I do have some tolerance for hot dishes and this was beyond hot. I stuck my finger in my water glass and fought back tears. Fortunately, the cheese was very tasty, although, when I went back to look up the exact name of the dish on Prairie Grass’ website, I was surprised to see that they claim it had banana peppers in it, as I don’t recall any spiciness in this dish. Our other appetizer was Crispy Rolls of Medium-Rare Ahi Tuna Wrapped in Basil with Soy. The combination of basil and tuna was good and fresh. I would have liked the tuna a little more rare, but it was a good texture with the crispy shell on the outside.

For the entrees, I had the Homemade Italian Sausage with Rigatoni, Sweet Peppers, Greens, Tomato Coulis and Mozzarella. This was very good. There was one piece of Italian sausage, still in the casing, on top of the pasta and loose pieces of it throughout it. I am not a spinach fan, but it was pretty good in this dish. The pasta was undercooked by about a minute, but I’d rather that than overcooked. It was very flavorful and zesty.

My boyfriend’s entrée, Penne Pasta Tossed in a Basil-Tomato-Meat Sauce with Parmesan and Bread Crumb Topping, on the other hand, was bland. He said that it was good at first, with the Parmesan and bread crumbs on top, but once that was all gone, he noticed how tasteless the sauce and meat was. He said it was like institution food. Like the banana peppers they claimed were in the baked feta, I question whether or not there was actually basil in the sauce, at least enough to warrant making note of it in the description. It was about this time that I realized they never offered us Parmesan cheese. I’m not sure if this is just a snooty upscale restaurant thing, like “our dishes don’t need it”, but if it is, I beg to differ, at least in the case of that dish (although it needed more help than Parmesan could have done for it, anyway.) I didn’t feel my dish was lacking without it, though.

The restaurant is well-known for its pies because the chef’s mother comes in a few times a week and makes them from scratch, and the filling is seasonal. This time they were offering a coconut cream pie, so we went with that and the vanilla bean creme brule. Again, I’ll turn to Wildfire for a comparison- they have a coconut-banana cream pie that is unbelievable- it’s served refreshingly ice cold, with the perfect ratio of coconut-banana cream to whipped cream, shredded toasted coconut and fresh banana slices on top. When we got the pie from Prairie Grass, it was about an inch of coconut cream and 2 inches of not-very-rich whipped cream, at room temperature. The crust wasn’t bad, but nothing special. I’ve been more impressed with pies at Baker’s Square. The creme brule was okay- the caramelized part was a little thin and the custard was lumpy and airy, not rich and dense, as I prefer.