Bravo! - Evanston

OK, so I'm going to Bravo! after a movie at the Evanston Century later this week. Any tips on how to make the best of a not necessarily promising situation? Something along the lines of "stick with the pastas," "avoid the fish," or whatever? Or should I abandon all hope?

Bravo! Cucina Italiana
1701 Maple Ave
(between Church St & Clark St)
Evanston, IL 60201
847-733-0917
http://www.bravoitalian.com

Walk across Church Street to Chef's Station.

From the Openings and Closings thread:

LabRat wrote:

Mhays wrote:

tarte tatin wrote:The Evanston Roundtable (2/20) reports that the Bravo chain of Italian restaurants may be opening a restaurant in the space vacated by Wolfgang Puck at Church and Maple in downtown Evanston. Bravo currently has one Illinois location--in the Glen at Glenview.

I apologize if I missed this elsewhere, and am repeating information, but this location is apparently opened on the 25th.

I stopped by a few days ago for lunch (I work in the area). Had a decent chicken sandwich, although the grilled chicken breast was just a tad bit over done IMO. Service was good. Nothing terribly exciting, but I'll probably go back.

nr706 wrote:Walk across Church Street to Chef's Station.

Having been dragged to a Cheesecake Factory a few weeks ago, I can relate to the OP's dilemma. Sometimes, we have to go to places that we don't want to. In those instances, "go somewhere else" really isn't very helpful advice.

I've only been to Bravo once -- and I had a lousy meal. A veal chop, IIRC. Another member of my party had some kinda of pasta with a braised meat sauce. Seemed like a much better choice. Sorry these are fuzzy memories. I guess I've tried to forget the experience. Good luck.

--Rich

The fried calamari isn't bad. Last time I was there, last year, they had a new mushroom bruschetta app that was very tasty. I once had a ravioli with a "diablo" sauce, made from a spicy tomato marinara with cream added, that i liked a lot. That was several years ago, don't know if they still have it. The eggplant parmesan is pretty good.

I attended a birthday party there a few months ago. It's very solidly mediocre--sort of a Lettuce Entertain You wannabe. Can't recommend anything there, I'm afraid. Good luck!

Ditto on Chef's Station. There's a pleasant al fresco patio (was that always there?) and we had some excellent walleye and lamb a couple of weeks ago. Not cheap, but still a good value with most entrees priced between $20-$30

EvA wrote:I attended a birthday party there a few months ago. It's very solidly mediocre--sort of a Lettuce Entertain You wannabe. Can't recommend anything there, I'm afraid. Good luck!

"very solidly mediocre" is a good way to describe Bravo!

I've dined there for business lunches a few times at the Glen location, living in Evanston I've never had the urge to pay for a meal out of my own wallet though.

The Stained Glass is another good choice in the area.

Thanks for all the varied responses. After we've done whatever we're going to do, I will report back on what we did and how we liked it.

My friend and I ended up going to The Stained Glass. (Thanks, EvanstonFoodGuy.) And we were glad we did. Started by sharing an appetizer that was basically a foie gras, bacon and sprouts sandwich on toast. Since the sandwich arrived cut into two triangular pieces, sharing was easy, and also enough. It was delicious. The bacon was not too salty, and proportioned to the foie gras so as to complement and not overwhelm it.

We followed that by splitting the roasted apple and watercress salad with blue cheese and glazed pecans, also tasty, and different from anything I've had before.

My main dish was the Alaskan halibut with mussels. No complaints there, either--the halibut might have been cooked a scoche less than it was, but only a scoche, and was not overdone by any means, and was fresh-tasting, and the broth at the bottom of the bowl was so delicious that drinking it with a spoon and sopping it up with bread was mandatory.

In the potables department, we started with martinis (this is why we wanted a place with a full bar), and the bartender knew how to make them well. With dinner I had the flight of white wines from the Loire Valley. I really like the wine-by-the-glass system. They have many good ones, and you can choose from any of several groupings of three half-glasses if you wish, which is what I did.

The room is handsome, not too feminine which for some reason I had been slightly concerned about (I guess the name of the place and the picture on the website suggested "tea room" to me or something, but the reality was manlier), and the staff was friendly. It's a very handy place to have so close to the movie theater; my friend and I are glad to have it in our rotation now for our semi-regular afternoon-movie-followed-by-drinks-and-dinner mandates, when a movie (in this case "The Hurt Locker") takes us up Evanston way.

The Stained Glass
1735 Benson Ave.
Evanston, IL 60201
847 864 8600
http://www.thestainedglass.com/index.html

My friend took me there today. I'd never been before. Very nice looking place, very clean rest room, and above average service.

The food was not good. The pasta was over cooked and the red sauce was VERY sweet. I did like the bread and their own dipping sauce. Definitely not going back.

They told me they don't make their own pasta. I've never figured out why Italian restaurants don't. Is it that hard?

D.

Making consistently good fresh pasta requires a certain amount of finesse and attention to detail that corporate chain restaurant kitchen systems aren't necessarily built for. Also, fresh pasta is not necessarily always preferable to dried pasta, it depends on what type of texture you're looking for. There are high quality packaged dried pastas available to buy. I've seen the process of making extruded dried pasta in-house in a restaurant kitchen-it didn't seem to require as much skill as homemade fresh pasta, but looked really time consuming.

Bravo has a good shaved brussel sprout salad with candied pecans and a homemade dressing. There is also a pretty good mushroom bruschetta appetizer with Boursin cheese. Their grilled chicken doesn't taste like it's been injected with saline or whatever it is that gives chain restaurant chicken that weird flavor and texture it usually has, so that's something.