Anyone been to Asiago in South Elgin or Schaumburg? Opinions

Asiago opened in South Elgin in December on Randall just north of Silver Glen and in Streets of Woodfield at the old Dick Clark's location 4-6 weeks ago. A close family member (not immediate) is one of the few partners. Due to this, I will be discreet with my own opinions, but would like honest feedback from anyone who has been there. Good, bad, ugly, I want to know. I do not have any financial interest in this place.

For those who haven't been there, it is a mid-service place. You wait in line, get a number and go sit. They bring you your food and depending on how busy they are, they can refill your drinks, get you to-go boxes, clean the table. They have a liquor license and serve beer & wine by the glass & bottle.

Cuisine-wise they have appetizers, soups, salads, pizza, pasta and entrees as well as dessert. Prices are $2.95-3.95 for appetizers, $3.95-$10.95 for salads, pizza, soup, pasta, entrees. $1-3.95 desserts. Schaumburg is open for breakfast daily, South Elgin only on weekends for breakfast. Prices are $4.95-5.95.

They do not have a website.

I do ask for honesty...opinions may or may not be passed on, if you don't want them passed on, please say so and I will fully respect that. A majority of my request is for my own knowledge of popular opinion. I am not dead set on sharing any of what I learn here at this point with family...honestly, a lot of it is curiosity.

If it is out of line or against policy for me to post something like this, please let me know. I love this site and my intent is not to abuse my privileges here or to offend anyone.

Thanks!

Christine

Christine, I just wanted to reply to your email. My husband and I eat at Asiago about 4 times a month. We love it! My daughter is 7 and loves the buttered noodles for kids too. The atmosphere is great and the food is awesome. The pizza is also very good and very different from most pizza places. We like to sit by the fireplace when we go there. Its one of our favorite places in the area! I hope this helps.

Ate at the schaumburg location a few weeks ago. Quite good. I was very happy with it. Wouldn't say it's "Fine Eating" but it's much better than most chain stores in the mall.
Ben

christine, the South Elgin Asiago is just a mile from our home. While I hate the recent development along Randall and the drastically increased traffic, Asiago is the sole bit of light in all of this.

We're hooked on the turkey panini, but all other meals have been excellent. On these really hot days I wish they'd close the door to the open "sorta inside/sorta outside" area--let those that want that be there--but the heat and humidity coming into the inside restaurant area made it quite uncomfortable.

Haven't had their pizza yet as we're sort of low-carbing it. Wish they had small sides of coleslaw or cool stuff <$1.

The excellent interior design is very warm and comfy.

We've not gotten additional service once seated other than when they bringing the meal to the table, so I'm never sure whether to leave a tip at the table in a place like this, esp. when you can take your plates to the trash collection area.

All in all, a nice place. I'm going to have a small biz meeting with friends there this afternoon.

Hi there! Well, I have been to the So Elgin one w/friends after church on a Sunday and we enjoyed it! The employees were kind and the food was pretty good. I love the decor man - it is great! The man who does the interior decorating ROCKS! ha ha!

Alright, I am actually going to the Asiago in Schaumburg this evening after work because it is my birthday! Yeah! Okay, maybe I am a little biased for Asiago cuz i "know" people (if u know what i mean)....

but tonight will be my first time at the one in Schaumburg. I'll let ya know what I think!

~JO

________________________________________
www.myspace.com/jennieo75

This discussion about Asiago made me think of Go Roma. There are a couple in the suburbs, and I quite like them.

It is also mid-level. You order at the counter, then they bring out your food. They also serve beer and wine. Menu is limited, but what I've had has been very good: lasagna, lovely chicken limone with a side of spaghetti for around $8, fettucine, etc. Their deserts are also very good (a main criteria for me!), including a flourless chocolate cake, and an apple crostada.

I think the people who started Go Roma were previously at Lettuce Entertain You, and I think they've made a good efort to get the food right for a great price.

Go Roma
28361 Diehl Road (across from Cantera AMC 30 Theaters)
Warrenville

3061 Dundee Road
Northbrook

http://www.goroma.net

We appreciate when folks who have a relationship to a restaurant are upfront about acknowledging it.

That said, Schaumburg/Woodfield really isn't a one-restaurant area. Though the main roads are certainly bedecked with every plastic chain known to man, there are also ethnic spots popping up out there, Indian, Chinese, etc. There's some discussion of that in this thread and this one.

jennieo wrote:Yeah! Okay, maybe I am a little biased for Asiago cuz i "know" people (if u know what i mean)....

No, actually, I don't know what you mean.

Enjoy,
Gary

Christine, Please let me know how to get hold of the owner(s) of Asiago in Schaumburg. A group of us tried to eat there on Sunday and they had to shut the restaurant down because the ONE cash register they had stopped working!
The Generation X manager and crew tried to convince us it would take an extra 30 minutes to prepare the food because the would have to write the orders on paper rather than the cooks looking at the screen above them for the orders!! Unbelievable!
Approximately a dozen or more people left within a few minutes. The staff had no ideal how to funtion with out a computer!!
I bet the owners have no knowledge about this incident or how much money they lost (Sunday & future) because of the incompetent staff.

Well Done,

Thanks for the info. Let me drop it into a conversation and see if they know about it or not...and find out who they would like people to contact in a situation like this.

Christine

Thanks Christine, I believe the owners of any business need as much feedback as possible, good or bad, so they can correct issues such as this, or build on the successful strategies that are working for them.
Please pass me email on to the owners, I am will be happy to chat with them.

In the past week or so, a manager has had a VERY visible presence here. In our previous five or six visits, we've never had as many requests to fill our soft drinks, clean the table, checking to see if all's OK as we have the two visits in the past week. There's a happy medium somewhere in the middle.

They need a simple website (nothing fancy) with meal, price and hours of service info to help spread the word, and get links to it on the SEBA, St Charles Chamber and other dinings websites. There they can solicit input, ideas, suggestions from guests, too, and have signups for menu changes, etc.

Well, a meal there last night was a little strange. There were two couples, and we'd decided to try pizzas. The floor manager informed us it would be about 30 minutes for the pizzas.

The other couple ordered a small pizza, a pop, and water. When placing our order, I decided to remove a topping after learning our large pizza with four toppings, chips and two pops was going to be >$32! Cashier couldn't figure out how to do it, had to ask a behind-the-counter for assistance, he and she both fiddled and fiddled...and the order came out... cancelled, somehow. She re-entered it without the ingredient and it was the same price. I expressed surprise, she punched at the register's screen a few times, and suddenly it was under $29. The cash register door wouldn't open and again she needed the assistance of another behind-the-counter manager. I just checked the ticket and see she removed the two pops (but gave us two glasses) and left all the ingredients on.

FWIW, the base large pizza with one ingredient is $18.95; extras for a large are $2.50 each. And it's a pan pizza.

We got our pops and sat and chatted and waited. The floor manager left around 7:45-8:00pm. No chips, no pizzas after about :25-:30. As I was getting up to inquire, the small pizza and chips arrived at the same time. We assumed (!) the other pizza would arrive within moments, but waited...and waited. I went to the register to inquire and was informed that the larger pizza took longer (D'oh!?) and would take a bit more time. It was more than 10 minutes later that the large arrived, and the other couple was already more than halfway through their pizza.

I was surprised the chips didn't arrive first, and that two pizzas--while different bake times are an understood--didn't arrive at nearly the same time. It's not like they haven't made pizza there before, they should know the timing within moments.

Good paninis, somewhat expensive (very good) pizza. Uneven service. Not a single inquiry about pop refills this visit.

There are things we like about this place, but the place just hasn't seemed to click yet--while the Village Squire just a few hundred feet south (with what we thought was quite unremarkable food and a heavy, dark Spanish-Med decor) is always packed.

The ordering method is a hybrid--select your meal items from an overhead menuboard (with sample sandwiches available to view in a glass case, while samples of more $$ meals are out in the open), walk to the cashier to place an order, get your pop glasses to fill yourself, find seating and wait for staff to deliver the meal (to tip or not to tip?). And there's always a clot of people at the register area because that's where the pop dispenser is.

Another curiosity is that on the check below the biz name, address/phone (all in normal upper/lowercase) is:
CLEMENSL
41W388 MUIRHEAD RD
ELGIN
8474641260

No idea what the heck that means or who/what it is or why it's in caps. Googling the first word, the address or the phone number yields no results.

My experience at Asiago has been wonderful. I've been to both locations a few times and everything I have tried is awesome. I have been telling all my friends and co-workers to go there. I'd eat there every single day if I could. mmmmm.

The whole atmosphere is lovely and I especially like that you can sit ouside on a nice day or cozy up to the fireplace on a chilly day...there are a lot of options here.

You do not have to tip. That's the point of not being seated and waited on.

About the previous post....why do you care what the ticket says below the biz name so much that you are typing it in google? Weird.

most italian restaurants don't serve coleslaw. all their salads are very very good though.

cheers.

I'm going to play bad cop on this one, but this thread needs to go away. I am part of a couple of other (non-food) special interest discussion boards, and nothing turns regular contributors off of a business or product more than "street teamers" shoehorning in too-great reviews of dubious origin. This one at least tries in that some of its contributors have admitted to a connection to Asiago, but in most cases, this kind of thing backfires and actually begins to reflect poorly on the restaurant or service being touted. The regulars on this board know about this place. Someone will eventually try it. If it's good, it'll get positive comments that will have more value to your organization. Be patient.

CoolerbytheLake wrote:I'm going to play bad cop on this one, but this thread needs to go away.

CoolerbytheLake wrote:I am part of a couple of other (non-food) special interest discussion boards, and nothing turns regular contributors off of a business or product more than "street teamers" shoehorning in too-great reviews of dubious origin.

Comments about the restaurant were solicited by the thread starter. There are two posters with some connection to the place and both have admitted same. What's the beef?

When a number of first-time posters only have an opinion about a single restaurant, well, it's not surprising that questions should start occurring to people about how authentic any of those opinions are, and how this site happened to be discovered by so many folks who had a burning desire to express themselves about Asiago, and NO other restaurant in the Chicago area.

Anyone who feels the implications of the above statement are unfair is free to prove them unwarranted by writing about OTHER restaurants than Asiago.

Thanks, Mike. For my part, I'm a newbie here and that was the first time I felt I could make a worthwhile contribution.

I'm new on here and have not had time to post except that once when I saw Asiago thread. And since I have been there I jumped in. Don't assume I know someone there just because I only posted once on this site so far. I hate when people assume stuff about others w/o having the facts.

Well, at least I'm not the only one who thinks something's not kosher.

jennieo wrote:Alright, I am actually going to the Asiago in Schaumburg this evening after work because it is my birthday! Yeah! Okay, maybe I am a little biased for Asiago cuz i "know" people (if u know what i mean)....

I think that's the one people were mostly talking about...

jennieo wrote: I love the decor man - it is great! The man who does the interior decorating ROCKS! ha ha!

~JO

Not to mention this part of the post, which certainly carries a bit of an "insider" suggestion that she has a relationship of some kind with the decorator.

Ann Fisher wrote:Not to mention this part of the post, which certainly carries a bit of an "insider" suggestion that she has a relationship of some kind with the decorator.

Ann,

The thread started out honestly enough, with Christine saying the owner is a family member, but most, though not all, is starting to resemble week-old fish.

Frankly, this type of thing has exactly the opposite of it's intended effect and makes people, me included, disinclined to visit the restaurant.

Enjoy,
Gary

yummypizza wrote:I'm new on here and have not had time to post except that once when I saw Asiago thread. And since I have been there I jumped in. Don't assume I know someone there just because I only posted once on this site so far. I hate when people assume stuff about others w/o having the facts.

Your post bugged me, particularly the "Why do you care...? Weird" part. It read as an attack on the post you were responding to. Why would you do that?

Let's keep this on a non-personal level, everyone. Looking forward to more posts about other restaurants from new visitors.

We tried Asiago on Randall Road in South Elgin today. I remembered that it had mixed reviews but my SO loves pasta so we chose that from many options along ths ever growing area. Neither of us was impressed. The food looked good, each of the dishes they make were displayed in deli like cases near where you order. I'm not a fan of Italian food and chose to have a bowl of minestrone, the sandwiches and pannini didn't not sound interesting. SO decided on shell pasta with brocoli and garlic. The soup was ok, a little salty but it did have a lot of vegetables and orzo. The pasta dish was bland and SO had to keep shaking more cheese and red pepper flakes to make it passable. A server did come by and refresh our water once but most of the time the 5 employees where standing behind the counter and complained about why it wasn't busy. It was noonish and there was one other table occupied. We decided that next time we will go to the nearby Village Squire where we would spend about the same for much more food.

The South Elgin Asiago is now closed, apparently around Jan. 1st.

Drove by the old Asiago location on Randall Road in South Elgin this morning and saw "Coming Soon" signs in the window, but couldn't read what was written below that. Anyone have any info?