Sarks in the Park

I didn't grow up on the North Short, so maybe the whole Sarks thing just escapes me, but...

The wife and I decided to try the new Sarks location at Clark and Fullerton for breakfast yesterday (and by breakfast I mean our first meal of the day, eaten at 1:30pm). As the restaurant itself seemed to be a confused mess of randomness, I present my views on the restaurant in a similar manner:

- Eating inside is like eating in a dungeon. I don't know who decided where all of their overhead lights were to be placed, but positioning half of them behind the exposed duct work was not a good choice
- Apparently you have to be looking at a menu for someone to come over and take your order. Putting your menus back in the center of the table apparently means that you have already ordered and merit no further attention
- Every interaction with our waitress was inexplicably and needlessly awkward
- Charging $2.50 for "fresh squeezed orange juice" that has obviously come out of a carton is not cool
- After we ordered, someone who I presume works at the restaurant charged through the middle of the place blabbering about how there were over 100 tickets stacked up in the kitchen. We still got our food within 15 minutes
- Tables were randomly offered toast while they waited for their food. We were not one of those tables, but I'm ok with that.
- While we were waiting for our food, some guy in a suit who looked like a rejected extra from the Soprano's started working the tables. When delivering an extra side of mayo to a woman at the next table, it was presented along with a "here you go doll" and a thumbs up sign.

Anyway, the food was pretty good (had a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich which is pretty hard to really screw up). It's just stuff that's geared towards the drunk and hungover, but that is certainly something that most people have needed at one time or another. But I don't think my head can deal with this place again.

Sarks in the Park
444 W Fullerton Pkwy
(773) 404-9000

HI,

Is Sarks similar to Sarkis? If indeed it is Sarks, where is Sarks on the North Shore. Nothing is ringing a bell at the moment.

Regards,

Sarks and Sarkis are from the same people - they just changed the name for the Lincoln Park location for rhyming purposes.

I hope Sarks is just as good as I remember Sarkis -- which is as pretty much the best hangover food ever, so I guess expectations shouldn't be too high.

My wife and I had breakfast there the morning of the 19th. I've never been to the Evanston location but read a bit about it here and other sites so I had med-med high expectations.

I left shaking my head like the Aflac duck....

Boring omelet. Bone dry “toast”…really a sandwich roll that had been buttered and grilled sometime earlier. Mostly undercooked hash browns. “Disaster” sausage was decent.

Coffee was no big deal.

I’ve had way better at any number of the “Apple” places.

I’m sure the 2-3 AM crowd will love it. Maybe they can even offer a “shake” of some sort?

This may be a case of not being able to capture lightning in a bottle twice. Sarkis is good because it's been there forever and it's a known quantity. I'm guessing that if you took Wiener's Circle and tried to replicate it elsewhere (bad attitude included) it would crash and burn. Sarkis in another wrapper is indeed a middling Greek diner breakfast. Pretty good, but not a destination. As I've grown older I've taken to driving a little further to the Ridgeview Grill for breakfast. Still enjoy Sarkis but it doesn't enchant like it once used to.

Sarks In The Park Closes In Lincoln Park, Had Long Feuded With Sarkis Cafe

https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/2016091 ... arkis-cafe

Ah, Sarkis. Like Patty's...or Jack's...or even Barnum & Bagel.

If you catch a breakfast place you really like at a period in time when the coffee's good, the food's fresh and the regulars at the counter are special, enjoy it while you can, because time waits for no man and you can damn well guarantee that the 'specialness' will be gone in the blink of an eyelash.

I posted before about this, but in the mid-to-late 1980's Sarkis was truly the place to be early in the morning, when he was just opening up. At that time of the day he was not yet 'on' for the incoming New Trier high schoolers--he was just a guy running his business, hilariously profane in fractured English, more like an Armenian Rodney Dangerfield, funny and sardonic as hell to his counter audience of about six of us. A great guy, but even then he knew he was turning into a caricature of himself, I suspect.

Such a shame how the legacy disintegrated. I still make my omelettes Sark's way--hot pan, crackling oil, seared chopped vegetables, eggs, cheese, done!