Last Minute Birthday Dinner Ideas

Hi all!

It was my birthday last week, but my wife and I are going out to dinner tomorrow night to celebrate, since my mother-in-law is in town to babysit.

We were planning on going to Chalkboard and I was really looking forward to it, but unfortunately, I've got so much going on that I totally forgot to make reservations and now they're all booked up.

So I'm brainstorming to come up with a similar place where I might be able to get a last-minute saturday night reservation.

I'm looking for a nice place, but casual. Quality food, somewhat interesting, but also comforty. We don't want to have to get dressed up. And I'd like to try some place that I haven't been before, or at least haven't been for a while. We like pretty much everything.

This group is always good for lots of ideas, so.....let's see what you all can come up with for me!

Thanks in advance.

Eddie

oh, sorry. we live in the city on the NW side, and we're willing to drive a bit, so pretty much anywhere from the loop up to highland park would be fine.

West Town Tavern? More of a trek from your hood, but not terrible.

I've had good luck with last minute reservations at Sweets and Savories.

Go into opentable.com It's the perfect way to find out, with a few clicks of the keyboard, what places have openings at the time you're looking for, even for last-minute reservations. (If there's a place you're counting on, and opentable shows them as full, you might also try calling them; occasionally places hold some space back from opentable.com)

For example, it took me about thirty seconds to find out that, right now, there are openings on opentable.com for a party of two people tomorrow at 7:30 (or within half an hour) at the following good places in the geographical area you mentioned:

Adobo Grill (Wicker Park location)
Bistro 110
Brasserie Jo
Butter
Coco Pazzo Cafe
Kiki's Bistro
Meritage
one sixtyblue - I WOULD GRAB THIS ONE!
Park Grill
Saloon
Shaw's Crab House
Sweets and Savories
Vermilion

So, where did you end up? Hope all went well!

hi, great suggestion of using open table.

we ended up trying graze, which is downtown at dearborn and ontario.

the chef there is a friend that i used to work with and i decided to go see him and say hi and try his new restaurant.

the food was great. it's small plates, so we had a bunch of different things.

we had a poached pear dish with prosciutto and maytage blue, a beet salad with warm nut-crusted goat cheese, a braised rabbit dish with grain mustard sauce and green gnocchi, seared scallops that came with red pepper spaetzle, corn sauce, and prosciutto-shallot vinaigrette, a goat cheese-caramelized onion tartlet with a peppercress-strawberry salad, a pumpkin-sage pizza, a dish with trout rolled and stuffed with prosciutto and herbs, and white cheddar mashed potatoes.

desserts were really good. i had an espresso creme brulee that came with three freshly-fried cinnamon doughnut holes, and my wife had an orange-dreamsicle-like bombe that was covered in chocolate and sat on a little flourless chocolate base. i'm not usually a fan of orange-chocolate combos, but this was stellar.

the place is really nicely-designed. the owners have clearly put a lot of money into it. there were some very minor issues with the service. nothing glaring, but they just seemed really inexperienced and not very well-trained.

the place was nearly empty, on saturday at 8pm, which is not usually a good sign. but i'm not sure why this place isn't doing better. i haven't heard much about it, so maybe they're not investing in more PR. you'd think a small plates concept would do well down there, and quartino, which is italian small plates, is always crowded.

anyway, i recommend it to this board. full disclosure--i'm somewhat biased, as the chef is a friend, but i wouldn't recommend it if i didn't think it was up to snuff.


Graze
35 West Ontario St.
Chicago
312.255.1234
http://www.grazechicago.com/index.html