Try BonSoiree for brunch, lunch dinner or take away!

You must check out this new place in logan square. They have unique and delicious weekend brunches, gourmet food to take away and serve at home, lunch and dinner on weeknights, and underground restaurants a couple saturdays each month that are an experience not to be missed! Plus, it's BYOB, so that keeps the cost down nicely.

check out their website: www.bon-soiree.com to see some sample menus and sign up for an upcoming underground restaurant evening.

everything they serve has such a unique flavor combination - foodies will love this place. if you come for dinner, be sure to try the soup of the day and the martini special appetizer, which is usually some unique kind of risotto, like butternut squash with fennel and apple compote. whether you're getting breakfast or dessert, don't pass on the coffee either - it's the smoothest i've had anywhere.

Chicagoandi:

I was considering trying this place, but your post makes me rethink that. To be honest, it sounds very much like you are affiliated with the establishment, and are attempting to use the forum as a marketing tool. Could you please assure the forum that you have no affiliation, or disclose one if you do? As a point of comparison, perhaps you could also share some of your other favorite restaurants in Chicago, so that I may gauge whether my tastes are similar to yours. That would help me determine whether or not to try Bon Soiree. Thanks.

chicagoandi wrote:They

I usually like to give new posters the benefit of the doubt, but this post is shill-o-licious.

tapler wrote:

chicagoandi wrote:They

I usually like to give new posters the benefit of the doubt, but this post is shill-o-licious.

I agree. Sometimes new posters are so enthusiastic that they may seem affiliated with a place they simply love as patrons.

Hammond

tapler wrote:

chicagoandi wrote:They

I usually like to give new posters the benefit of the doubt, but this post is shill-o-licious.

Shill-tastic even, or shill-tacular.

The subject line of the post is what I find most obviously shill-ish.

Welcome, Andrea!

Busted.

Hilarious.

Aww

Andrea has no friends

-ramon

This is a bummer. Bon Soiree is relatively close to me and I was looking forward to trying it out but now...meh.

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. Honesty is the best policy, chicagoandi!

Yeah, pretty funny. I notice that their website talks about all the five-star reviews they have on Yelp so I checked it out. Sure enough, at least half of them are from people who are, amazingly, writing their first restaurant review ever! And then there's the person who's also reviewed Kuma's Corner (unfavorably) and in that context mentions she works in a restaurant. You think?

Are restaurants and PR people just so out of touch that they don't understand this kind of thing does more harm than good? Or do they honestly think they won't be sniffed out?

I also like this one from Centerstage. It's quite a bit older (if the date can be believed). Tough to say if the style has improved or not since then. "You should all start beating right now!!!" Amazing.

"1 Review(s) Total

Post Your Own Bonsoiree Cafe and Delicacies Review


Bob Merrilees says:
On Saturday 10/14/06 10:24 PM
Bonsoiree is great! This is the way food should be - interesting, innovative, tasty. I plan a winter of take-out soups and in-house dining. It's said that if you have you have a great product customers will beat a path to your door - well this product is definitely the best and you should all start beating right now!!! "

http://centerstagechicago.com/patronreviews/pr.cfm?ID=10570&which=place

Giving credit where credit is due, I also note that there is apparently no mention of the place on Chowhound. Or at least not anymore.

But that's not a hint that this post should be taken down. It's fooling no one and the snark is fun.

Ann Fisher wrote:Giving credit where credit is due, I also note that there is apparently no mention of the place on Chowhound. Or at least not anymore.

But that's not a hint that this post should be taken down. It's fooling no one and the snark is fun.

It's interesting to me that the community can spot, fairly readily, even the faintest hint of shilling. Part of the reason for that, I think, is that there's a level of discourse, a way of speaking about things that people pick up after relatively limited exposure to the board. Just dropping in, shilling, and hoping it won't be noticed is not easy (plus, if it's your first post, and you're just way too enthusiastic, suspicions will be raised, though I would not want to think that enthusiasm, per se, is suspect).

Hammond

Ugh. So I've actually eaten at Bon Soiree and had good experiences and want to write it up positively... Do I do so in this thread or start another and let this one die dishonorably?

clogoodie wrote:Ugh. I've actually eaten at Bon Soiree and had good experiences and want to write it up positively... Do I do so in this thread or start another and let this one die dishonorably?

I'd probably start another one or your good words could be lost in the turbulence.

Hi Guys, I am the owner of Bonsoiree and received information that we were recieving bad PR because of Chicagoandi's post. I want to clarify that Andrea is in no way affiliated with Bonsoiree other than the fact that she is a friend of mine. I apologize to the forum that she didn't understand that she needed to reveal her connection. However, Andrea is a regular customer of mine and eats at Bonsoiree about once a week. I hope that you can forgive this oversight of my good intentioned friend and try for yourself if Bonsoiree is worth the hype. Thanks for listening.

Shin

I took a look at their website, and this looks really interesting, so while crow is not on the menu, I hope the snarky posters above won't have to eat too much of it (although, Andrea, you really do need to temper your enthusiasm with some discretion). Anyway, I'm not going to hold it against a restaurant that somebody loves it so much, and look forward to reading clogoodies comments. The Saturday prix fixe "underground" meals, based on the two posted menus, look like an amazing deal at $48/five courses, with no charge for BYOB. If the product matches the presentation on the website, I am very anxious to try it. I've signed up for the underground dinner invitation list and will report back.

JimInLoganSquare wrote:While crow is not on the menu, I hope the snarky posters above won't have to eat too much of it

Can I get fries with that?

Dmnkly wrote:

JimInLoganSquare wrote:While crow is not on the menu, I hope the snarky posters above won't have to eat too much of it

Can I get fries with that?

I'll let you know ... after I have eaten there.

Well, then.

For more perky prose you can use on your next pr campaign check out:

http://metromix.chicagotribune.com/sear ... nue?page=1

jbw wrote:For more perky prose you can use on your next pr campaign check out:

http://metromix.chicagotribune.com/sear ... nue?page=1

I especially like that "Zoom" clearly wrote his review in MS Word and copied and pasted it into Metromix. I wonder who drafted it for him/her.

This sort of thing never happens in the NWIndiana thread, even though Tiebel's delightful and accommodating dining rooms are perfect for any occasion. Don't leave without sampling the local specialties including mouth-watering pond chicken and Tiebel's tempticious fountain creations. Why not end your meal with a relaxing Chesterfield King at Tiebel's vintage bar?

CHESTERFIELD KING tastes great . . . . yet it smokes so mild!

I have nothing to add to the snark except a sad, long sigh. I really liked this place - I brought my mom there for dinner one night. But I don't like shilling of any kind, thinly disguised or in-your-face. Any credibility they were gaining as a dining establishment just went flying out the window.

A pity. Next time, Shin, talk with other friends in the business. The reason people pay a lot of money for 'word of mouth' campaigns is that usually they are a little more subtle and less like a paid endorsement.

...and that's why I use denblan toothpaste.

Since I started this with a thinly veiled accusation of shilling, I now wonder whether it should be tempered. There is no question that the original poster here is at least a "friend" of the restaurant, and is trying to use the forum as a marketing tool. However, it's entirely possible that the restaurant neither encourages nor endorses this practice. For example, if I opened a restaurant, it would not be hard for me to imagine my very proud and perhaps overzealous grandmother doing something similar to what chicagoandi did here.

I think it's right to be hard on chicagoandi, as she should disclose whatever relationship she may have with the establishment. However, we may be making the wrong assumption that the restaurant itself has anything to do with this.

Kennyz wrote:I think it's right to be hard on chicagoandi, as she should disclose whatever relationship she may have with the establishment. However, we may be making the wrong assumption that the restaurant itself has anything to do with this.

I would tend to go a little easier on chicagoandi.

Last month, I read a good review by Phil Vettel regarding Sequel in Yorktown. In the article, he admitted that his kids play soccer with the chef's kids. This, I feel, should have prompted him to recuse himself from reviewing the place. His opinions, it seems, would be inevitably tainted (and, as it turned out, I didn't like the place anywhere as much as he did).

However, chicagoandi and most of the folks on this board do not -- I feel -- share Vettel's professional responsibility to avoid saying nice things about the place a friend or neighbor works. It would have been very good if chicagoandi had disclosed her friendship with the owner, and it surely would have spared her the rain of (still possibly righteous) invective showered upon her, but she is a new poster, and it's my sense that other sites may not expect posters to make such disclosures. I would tend to give her a pass based on her apparent lack of clarity about LTH rules.

There's no "official line" on how to handle the current situation, but my tendency would be to cut both chicagoandi and Bonsoiree some slack and actually try the food.

Hammond

I don't understand why any person with the slightest shred of honesty would require "rules" to tell her that pretending to be a neutral party whose life has been forever changed by this amazing new restaurant that you too should go to, and by the way don't forget the appetizers and coffee, is maybe just a tad slimy.

David Hammond wrote:...my tendency would be to cut both chicagoandi and Bonsoiree some slack and actually try the food.

Yeah, Hammond, sure... is this another one of your insidious attempts to... "increase the peace?"

(in all seriousness, I couldn't agree more.)

FWIW, in the wake of this thread, I've actually had a little E-mail correspondence with both Shin and Kurt, the owners/chefs. Like everybody else I was sure this had to be some PR person. The post just really read that way. And then I thought to myself -- perhaps naively -- well, gosh, wouldn't it suck if a PR person tasked with getting the word out via the internet were posing as a regular diner without the owners' knowledge or consent? So I dropped them a line that basically said, hey, if you knew this was going on, it sucks. Don't do it. But if you didn't, you may want to find a new PR person.

Taking their replies at face value, it's even more innocuous than that. As Shin mentioned above, this is a friend of his (theirs?) who it seems got a little overzealous in promoting the place. It wasn't clear to me whether this was a friend who predates the restaurant, or somebody who has become a friend as a regular customer. But either way, whether or not this scenario is true, it's entirely plausible and -- though I'm sure there are some who will insist I'm being horribly naive -- they deserve the benefit of the doubt, IMHO.