Lincolnshire Gourmet-Highland Park

I could not find any other mention of Lincolnshire Gourmet on this forum, so i am starting this thread.

Lincolnshire gourmet occupies a space on the Northeast corner of Central and Green Bay Road in downtown Highland Park. They have been open for a little more then a year and up until yesterday I had not had a chance to try it and, suprisingly, I don't know anyone else who has either. After a beautiful morning walking around the Port Clinton Art Fair we decided to skip the "Taste" of Highland Park and sit down for lunch at Lincolnshire Gourmet. When i drove past on Friday night the place was really rocking, the patio was packed and people looked like they were having a great time. I have never been sure if this place is a sit down restaurant or purveyor of gourmet sundries ala Foodstuffs. I decided that I needed to visit.

The restaurant is really a small indoor space with two very nicely laid out large patio areas. In front of the restaurant they have large communal tables and wicker couch seating with fire pits and tables out onto the sidewalk. The West patio falls within a climate controlled tent and is sat more like a traditional restaurant. The decor is really very nice. This is definitely a restaurant and not a take away prepared foods type place.

The menu is mostly salads, sandwiches and wraps with a smattering of entrees. The website claims that they have a food boutique and do some catering. I didnt see much evidence of either at the restaurant.

I found the menu to be a little uninspiring for a restaurant that bills itself as "gourmet" whatever that means. Chicken Caesar Salads, Greek Salads and Turkey Sandwiches are also available across the street at the Corner Bakery at about half the price. Lincolnshire Gourmet doesnt seem to really advertise the use of premium ingredients or house made foodstuffs on their menu or website and when the food arrived it became readily apparent that this was for good reason, the food was ordinary and often times not very fresh or even good. Service was also a problem.

Case in point, bread service. We were served stale bread not once, but twice, in the breadbasket. Even after they complained they brought us another basket of stale bread. This is simply unacceptable. If my two year old was not starving we would have left. There is simply no excuse for serving customers stale bread.

We ordered a variety of salads and wraps. Without getting into the details of each particular meal they were all mediocre at best. It was obvious that the ingredients had been sitting around and were either preassembled in some cases or not made fresh to order. Rubbery chicken in the salad and soggy wraps were a dead giveaway. On a positive note the iced tea was freshly brewed.

Finally, and this is a pet peeve of mine, we went out of our way to inform the waiter and manager that our son has a severe peanut allergy and it would be a real problem if any of the foods offered were prepared anywhere near peanuts. i usually feel like my wife goes a bit overboard explaning this to everyone we encounter at a restaurant. Bless her heart, after explaining our predicament to our waiter and the manager an ensuring that the turkey sandwich on the kids menu was safe for our son's consumption they brought him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich which we thankfully caught in time.

Nice space but food and service were the pits. Wont be back.

Lincolnshire Gourmet
675 Central Avenue
Highland Park, IL 60035
Phone: 847.432.6600
Fax: 847.432.6601
www.lincolnshiregourmet.com

iblock9:

Just this past Friday my wife and I were driving up Green Bay road (to Miramars) and noticed Lincolnshire Gourmet for the first time. I intended to look it up here, but found your post before I even did a search. Good timing. In any event, thanks for the post, and it looks like you took one for the team.

Jonah

My carry-out lunches from this place have been pretty good but certainly not spectacular. The menu is pricey but offers a lot of healthy options. Quality of ingredients seems high to me. Ironically, relative to the comments about bread posted above, I really love their multigrain baguette, which in my experience, has always been fresh, although I have no idea where they source it. As my experience has been strictly carry-out, I cannot speak to the quality of the table service. Our carry-out has always been ready at the promised time.

I'd say give it a shot and decide for yourself because one meal here is not going to break you.

=R=

If it's any consolation you wouldn't have done any better at the Taste of Highland Park. Not a good representation.

Yup, took Sparky and Mr. Zuko here after an errand - everything we had was fine, and the prices were outrageous. Portions were small, too - although that's a good thing for me at least, but it left me feeling even more like I should post in the bend-over files...

For instance, Mr. Zuko had the Whole-wheat cheese pizza with a "paper-thin crust" that said it was "for 2" for $6 - maybe they meant 2 girls, or a boy and his invisible companion...I swear that the whole-wheat thin crust was a whole-wheat burrito-sized tortilla; it was topped very well and they used good quality cheese, but I doubt there was $.60 worth of ingredients. Sparky did worst with the "Mini pearl noodles with cheesy sauce" which was mac and bland cheese with broken angel hair pasta, fairly difficult for a kid to eat, also $6 for a small individual gratin dish full. I had the half-salad and soup for $10, a not bad smallish green salad with a few grocery-store-style (halved grape tomatoes, several kalamata olives) vegetables, nuts, and a reasonable portion of bland sliced chicken breast and a mug of decent gazpacho of the bread-free variety: no accompanying bread, very good for my diet if not my wallet.

Soft drinks were not on the menu, were $2.50 apiece (at least they didn't charge for refills) and when we asked what non-caffeinated drinks they had, the waiter sold Sparky on a $4 non-refillable strawberry lemonade that came in a wineglass - without mentioning the upcharge. (It was good, Sparky was happy with it, but I'd have made him get Sprite if I'd known.)

I don't often spend time in Highland Park, and looking around, I realized that the usual clientele for the place doesn't blink at spending nearly $40 taking two kids out to lunch, but when I spend that kind of money, I have to say I expect better.

Mhays wrote:I realized that the usual clientele for the place doesn't blink at spending nearly $40 taking two kids out to lunch, but when I spend that kind of money, I have to say I expect better.

Yeah, that's been my experience in Highland Park over the past 15 months I've been working in an office there. They just don't have any decent food at a decent price, people don't know better or care, and it basically sucks (and costs 2 to 3 times what it does one burb over). That is, with two exceptions I have found. First is Once Upon a Bagel, which is sort of an old friend of mine, as I was a regular at Once Upon a Grill, their offshoot in Northbrook, where I lived ten years ago. The "Once Upon" chain is a very decent deli experience, consistent from one outlet to the next, and I have no trouble recommending it. Any chicken soup option is going to be good (or at least, it can't hurt). The second place in Highland Park I can stand ... actually, kinda love ... is Taqueria los Mogotes de Michoacan. Cathy2 posted a bit about this place a few years back, and I'll say it's pretty much as good as she noted then. I've become a regular, enough that they know my orders and smile a little at the gringo who eats like a Mexican. I have actually converted my boss and some others I work with, demonstrating that Mogotes de Michoacan delivers better food for one-third or less the cost of the Chipotle and Tamales, just three or four blocks west.

We just received an e-mail at work informing us that Terri Rogers, the person who's been running LG, is moving on and as such, the restaurant will be be closing. Saturday November 6, 2010 will be their last day in operation.

We'd more or less written this place off because several people in the office thought it was way too expensive. In any case, the book is now officially closing on Lincolnshire Gourmet.

=R=