Thanksgiving in Galena -- which restaurant would you choose?

Well, 007 and I are headed to Galena for a couple of days to celebrate 20 years of marriage as well as Thanksgiving. I have scoured the interwebs to see which restaurants are serving meals on Thanksgiving Day proper in the greater Galena area, and came up with three; as the organizer of this adventure, I vetoed one because they are only offering pumpkin cheesecake for dessert -- call me unAmerican, but I actually don't like pumpkin!

Anyway, seems like the two remaining choices are a buffet at the Woodlands Restaurant inside the Eagle Ridge resort:

http://bit.ly/vA3NNg

or a special menu at the restaurant inside the DeSoto Hotel in downtown Galena:

http://bit.ly/uZlJvY

Tell me, LTHers, which do you think would be better? Or is there some place further afield we should consider? I've only been to Galena once, for work, and that was probably back in '96; I didn't see much besides the resort (Eagle Ridge, as it happens) and the conference center. My husband has never been there, so we're really not familiar with either of these choices.

Thanks, as always, for any input and advice!

Sharon

p.s. The reason I posted this message is because I am hopeful that we can have a Thanksgiving meal that is not, basically, from a can. While the buffet obviously offers fancier descriptions of the food on offer, I don't know enough about the restaurant to know if the food is any good; same for the meal offered at the De Soto Hotel.

Just in case anyone is interested, and also to bring this post full-circle, I thought I'd share the outcome of choosing the DeSoto Hotel for Thanksgiving dinner out in Galena: Boy did I make the wrong decision! As my husband said, "this meets the bare minimum requirements for food."

I would be hard-pressed to try and determine exactly when the processed turkey breast was actually attached to a carcass. The so-called "giblet" gravy for the OK mashed potatoes was most certainly not. And the "brandied" carrots tasted OK but were quite mushy.

All in all, a meal quite like what you might find at a cafeteria, and that might be insulting to cafeterias.

I don't know if the food served here is any better on other days of the year, but should we find ourselves in Galena again on a holiday, we'll be giving this place a big miss!

On the other hand, we had a delightful anniversary dinner at Perry Street Brasserie Wednesday evening, which more than made up for the mediocre food on Thursday.

DeSoto Hotel
230 S. Main St.
Galena, Illinois

Perry Street Brasserie
Corner of Perry and Commerce streets
Galena, Illinois

sdbond wrote:Well, 007 and I are headed to Galena for a couple of days to celebrate 20 years of marriage as well as Thanksgiving. I have scoured the interwebs to see which restaurants are serving meals on Thanksgiving Day proper in the greater Galena area, and came up with three; as the organizer of this adventure, I vetoed one because they are only offering pumpkin cheesecake for dessert -- call me unAmerican, but I actually don't like pumpkin!

Anyway, seems like the two remaining choices are a buffet at the Woodlands Restaurant inside the Eagle Ridge resort:

http://bit.ly/vA3NNg

or a special menu at the restaurant inside the DeSoto Hotel in downtown Galena:

http://bit.ly/uZlJvY

Tell me, LTHers, which do you think would be better? Or is there some place further afield we should consider? I've only been to Galena once, for work, and that was probably back in '96; I didn't see much besides the resort (Eagle Ridge, as it happens) and the conference center. My husband has never been there, so we're really not familiar with either of these choices.

Thanks, as always, for any input and advice!

Sharon

p.s. The reason I posted this message is because I am hopeful that we can have a Thanksgiving meal that is not, basically, from a can. While the buffet obviously offers fancier descriptions of the food on offer, I don't know enough about the restaurant to know if the food is any good; same for the meal offered at the De Soto Hotel.

Thanks for taking one for the team, sdbond!

The GP wrote:Thanks for taking one for the team, sdbond!

Well, I figured =someone= had too! For some unknown reason, I brought back the leftovers, but I don't have the heart to eat them.

Sharon