Restaurant for staff outing near Garfield Park Conservatory

Our staff summer outing this year is a visit to the Garfield Park Conservatory for Nikki in the Garden. I'm in charge of figuring out what and how we will eat. I am aiming for a picnic, assuming we can eat outside at the Conservatory, but would like to also have some restaurants in mind in case of rain or extreme heat. Does anyone have any recommendations within say a 1/2 mile of the conservatory? One place that has come up is Edna's Restaurant. Has anyone eaten there? Any other ideas for good restaurants in the area that can handle a group of about 15? Thank you.

Edna's is both delicious and historic. Here's a threadabout a lunch that LTH Forum sponsored for the Tipitina's Youth Intern Program.

Edna's is great, highly reccomend it, and it is closest to the conservatory. Also in the area is Boston's Beef and Jalascience (sp?) at the corner of Grand and Chicago (1.5 mi). A little further east of the intersection is Feed, and just north of Feed on California is the newly opened Cosmospolitan and there's also Flying Saucer one block north of that.
as a disclaimer I own Feed, but live by the conservatory, and there ain't many sit down places around these parts.

Donna, I and others here are big fans of feed. Welcome to LTH.

Hellodali, I do think your only real option is Edna's. Which is no loss, because it's a great option.

gleam wrote:Hellodali, I do think your only real option is Edna's. Which is no loss, because it's a great option.

Hellodali,

Edna's is a terrific option, whether staff meeting or simply a nice meal. Depending on the number of people in your group you may wish to inquire about the party room.

Here is another Edna's thread, in addition to the Tipitina's thread.

By the way, nice to have DK from Feed posting, welcome to LTHForum.

Enjoy,
Gary

Edna's Restaurant
3175 West Madison Street
Chicago, IL 60612
773-638-7079

Edna's sounds absolutely perfect. Thank you all for the great ideas.

We had our staff outing today, and like HelloDali's group, we were heading to the Niki in the Garden exhibit at the Garfield Park Conservatory and then to Edna's for lunch.

I tried calling Edna's to see if they wanted me to make a reservation, but couldn't get an answer and so I figured 200 seats, weekday, we'd be fine walking in with a dozen folks. And perhaps we would have, except that when we got to the restaurant we discovered Edna and her crew are on vacation.

Fortunately we'd packed ourselves into the three cars in our party to get to Edna's, so we just did a u-turn and headed to MacArthur's instead.

We were not disappointed.

I'd never had MacArthur's fried chicken before. Now it will be hard to ever order anything else.


p.s. The exhibit is wonderful--by all means go if you haven't yet.

MacArthur's
5412 W Madison St
Chicago, IL 60644
773-261-2316