Fireplace Inn

LTH,

This past Saturday, my lady and I felt somewhat adventurous and opted to dine in one of my favorite neighborhoods in Chicago - Old Town. If I could get even close to the bang-for-my-buck from a 2-bedroom condo in Old Town that I have up in Lincoln Square, I would probably reside there. But, I love Lincoln Square too.

As we walked over from the Sedgwick "L" stop and began a southern stroll down Wells from its intersection with North Avenue I searched my head trying to recall my preceding dining experience down here. Sadly, I could not. What ashame.

We had no preconceived notions of what fare we might try other than I seemed to remember a bistro, some sushi and a rib joint were options. A nice hustle and bustle of Saturday in the City in the middle of a somewhat unseaonsably cool evening enveloped us. We passed a few dining options much of what seemed still packed after 8 p.m. Bistro Margot looked primed for a maiden voyage until we remembered that we dined the prior evening at Cotes de Rhone (a place which to me after only two visits has worked its way into my "favorites" dining rotation). We passed by Fireplace Inn and partly with a taste for ribs and partly because of immediate availability we opted for this dinning establishment.

As your walk into FI you meet at the hostess counter in the back of a loud bar. With little wait we were whisked off to main dining room which I must say quickly earned honors from me as one of the best in the City. The main room is adorned on one side with almost floor to wall paneled wood wth a big decorative fireplace and mirror smack in the middle of the room. The opposite wall was exposed brick. A nice bar with 5 or 6 seats was further down this wall. There was also a lofted dining area overlooking the rest of the room. Very nice decor and old world Chicago feel to me. Really couldn't get a higher grade from me for decor and ambience for this level of dining. Tonight, the ambience was enhanced by a trio of tuxed musicians bolstering the spirit of the room by moving from table-to-table offering various tunes. I didn't find them annoying in the least - they did a good job sort of confining their song to the immediate area around which they were playing while increased substance to the vibe of room.

Service was solid absent a notch lost near the end of the meal by an almost ridiculous wait for the bill - 15 minutes - with the restaurant 70% full after having repeatedly asked every employee who came by the table for the check including of course our main server.

We opted for the chicken chili starter. It was a nice bowl of chicken chili with sides of onion, peppers and cheddar to be self-administered. The lady immediately dug right in and pouched a giant-sized steak fry out of the bowl - for an instant we feared the fry might have been something much worse, thankfully it was not. Not a huge deal in and of itself but a sign of inattention from which I'm afraid the kitchen suffered greatly.

Having imbibed a great deal the night before we just had a few diet cokes to drink.

The lady ordered a full rack upgrade from the half rack for only an additional $3 as mandated by her SO. This allowed me to opt for the steak. Yes, yes I know - Bster, what in the hell were you doing ordering a steak at a place that claims to be "#1 in Chicago for Ribs". My response is that I felt like a steak, had a half portion of the ribs coming from my GF and was curious to see how FI does steak. It was a fatal mistake.

My petite Filet Mignon was ordered medium-rare and the kitchen came close enough to satisfying the level of doneness requested. However, the steak looked horrible and nowhere near the described 7 ounces (I know that's a precooked weight) the menu claimed. The taste, I'm afraid, was worse. The steak tasted like it had been cooked for 5 hours at 225 F to achieve proper doneness. It was fatty, mushy and bland as hell. The quality of the meat was suspect at best. Really low-grade Filet. Not taste to speak of whatsoever. $22 for this petit filet - that's robbery.

The blandness of the filet was only surpassed by the tasteless, allegedly sauteed-in-butter button mushrooms. How in the hell do you screw up sauteed mushrooms? A blind, mediocre chef can accomplish very good sauteed mushrooms in less than 10 minutes. This really got me mad. $5 for disgusting mushrooms - the GF literally gaged when she tried one and spit it out. Sickening.

The steak fries were the best part of the meal. Even the diet cokes were not mixed properly at the bar and tasted funky.

The bread basket contained fruit bread (yuk), bland white/french bread and stale, tasteless hard breadsticks. Disgusting.

The lady's ribs were bad. Not horrible, but bad. By way of background, I like all types of ribs from the fall-off-the-bone to the traditional heavily smoked Texas-style BBQ version. FI's ribs were the former variety and at a $21 price point for my money the worst rib dinner in the City. The ribs were par-b(r)oiled/baked which is fine with me but meat did not fall off the bone, tasted extremely bland and very unsatisfying. No discernable rub. Even the BBQ sauce was underwhelming and watered down. I think the pork ribs they use lacked in quality. Ick.

Although the steak and rib supplier FI uses needs to change, the kitchen did nothing to enhance to flavors of either dish.

The GF felt the best part of her meal was the baked potato. Are you kidding me? Sadly, no.

We had heard good reviews from a few people about the ribs here...seems some labotomies are in order...or at least tastebud implants...can't tell you how bad the ribs were...really saddened.

I can't remember a past meal where I so frequently reached in desperation for the salt shaker - but alas, to no avail.

For one bowl of chili, two entrees, one side of mushrooms and two diet cokes and tax and tip it ran $75. Criminal.

On the taxi home along LSD my frustration turned into downright anger. If I drop $20-30 and the food is bad, fine - you'll never see me again. But I want my $75 bucks back. What a ripoff - I'm really pissed. What a waste of fabulous decor and ambience in one of the best locations in the City.

Now, I suppose it's possible that this was just a horrible off-night but the underlying lack of quality of the ribs and steak won't change even if I could imagine better preparation from the Chef.

"#1 in Chicago for Ribs"??? LOL! Those ribs wouldn't be #1 in the alleyway next to restaurant.

What a waste.



Bster


Fireplace Inn
1448 N. Wells St.
(312) 664-5264

Sorry to hear about your dinner. I guess the moral of the story is to always check with LTH Forum first.

http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=4137
http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=6202
http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=13925

Yeah, I hear ya Steve, I did do some browsing on here including of FI before heading down there and could find no glaringly negative reviews. In fact, very few reviews of FI at all on here. Oh well, next time I'll probably try Bistro Margot down there.

Bistro Margot is probably better, but a recent visit reconfirmed my opinion that it's just not a very good restaurant.

The saddest part was a crepe with egg and some other stuff inside (this was lunch) where the crepe had clearly been made long, long before and held, and then stuffed with scrambled egg. The crepe and eggs managed to both be rubbery. We were expecting more like a crispy buckwheat crepe runny yolk dribbling out when you cut it.

I'm not looking for it to be stellar, but competent would be nice. My meal last night at Coquette Cafe in Milwaukee blew margot out of the water, and CC wasn't really exceptional or mindblowing, it was just well executed standards.