Dinner between Palatine and Park Ridge

Well, Chicago, actually, but I'm such a sucker for alliteration.

I'm having dinner with a friend I haven't seen in several years, and she lives in Palatine. I'm looking for something affordable and toothsome somewhere between Palatine and O'Hare.

I hate it when people ask for recommendations without doing any browsing; so far Retro Bistro, Joe and Giuseppe's, and Yummy Gourmet have popped up to fill the bill, but I wanted to ask if I was missing something else good. Japanese is the only cuisine that's out.

Thanks!

Giovanna

I would also suggest you check into Giacomos in Des Plaines. Here's a link to a previous post. http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=38&highlight=giacomos

I like Sonny's in Park Ridge for Red Sauce Italian. Its on Devon at Cumberland in the same shopping center as Morningfields.

This gives me an excuse to reposte the following, which appeared elsewhere in March.

For some odd reason, we just wound up at two places in Arlington Heights whose names start with Y. Y not?

Yanni's

We paid our first visit to Yanni's, which is in the parking lot of Mitsuwa Market. This may be the most beautiful Greek restaurant in the Chicago area. The lovely multi-level dining room filled with plants, a central fireplace, and a vine-laced colonnade give the effect of a Grecian courtyard, which is enhanced by large windows overlooking a pond that ought to be great in the summer. It looked like they might have some outdoor dining when the weather's better. A good place to take somebody you wanted to impress.

The excellent starters include kolokithakia scharas, potent skordalia -- garlic spread -- served with long slices of grilled zucchini, and tiroflogeres, kasseri cheese, rolled in a thin crispy coating of phyllo, served with a wedge of lemon. The avgolemeno, egg-lemon soup, has plenty of chicken but suffers from a lack of lemon flavor and the addition of gummy orzo pasta.

We had the combination, on which the nicest item was plump, lemony dolmades avgolemeno, grape leaves filled with lamb and a little rice -- it also included leg of lamb and pastitsio -- and an order of moussaka. The moussaka was decent, though with a higher meat to eggplant ratio than I prefer, and a little crisp around the edges. We were there late on a Sunday and the waiter told us we got the last order; it would likely be better earlier. There are also chef's specials that feature daily, plus fresh fish and the usual Greek standards.

There's a dessert tray with a number of delicious-looking options. We took the lightest of the bunch -- a crisp roll of fried dough, drenched in Greek honey. When it came, it turned out to be two rolls. There was decent Greek coffee too.

The waiter was reasonably attentive, but dour in that way Greek waiters so often are, and inaccurate to boot. He put two cocktails on our tab that had been ordered by the adjoining table and we heard another table send back their food because he'd brought the wrong dishes. However, he fixed the problems with a minimum of fuss and so I wouldn't downgrade it too much over that -- just check your bill closely.

It cost us a little under $40 a person, after the bill was adjusted, which I thought was a tad high for what we had. That included charges for refills on soft drinks, which meant the Cokes added up to $9. The entree prices ranged up to $29 for lamb.


Yummy Gourmet

When Yummy Gourmet opened four years ago, their menu concentrated on Hong Kong specialties, making them very different from most of the other suburban Chinese restaurants. However, reviews of the place concentrated on some of the more exotic items, like the pigeon and tripe, and customers stayed away in droves.

So they have revamped the main menu to make it more like what suburbanites expect. Not to worry, they don't seem to have actually done away with most of the unusual dishes. When you come into the restaurant, check out the board in the foyer for the specials. Then, as you enter past the long counter, snag one of the paper carry-out menus stacked there. Between that and the regular menu, which is presented as a scroll, you'll have the bulk of what they offer. (The problem, they explained, is that the fancy scroll limits the size the menu can be, so they had to leave things out. Most of the noodle dishes, for example, are on the carry-out menu.)

If you're determined to see everything they have to offer, ask for the Chinese menu, which is a laminated card (they're at the far end of the counter, along with Japanese-language menus). The menu is in English as well as Chinese, and as far as I could tell with a quick look mostly duplicated the other menus with just a few extras like deep-fried pork intestine.

We had gingery Shanghai-style dumplings in broth (now called "Shanghai wontons") -- one order is enough for two to share -- and crisp, savory, slightly greasy spring rolls to start with. Salt & pepper shrimp was the best of our entrees on this visit, with extra thin, shattery shells coated in flavorful spice. The twice-cooked pork was meaty but lacked the nuances I associate with this dish -- it was pretty much like barbecued pork with cabbage in brown sauce -- I won't order it again. We also had an order of excellent pea shoots sauteed in garlic sauce. Many of their other dishes are better. (But I forgot to check on whether a favorite dish from the old menu was still available -- chicken stuffed with ham with Portuguese sauce, a dish that's apparently the chef's riff on a Macau specialty.)

Yummy is a large, attractive storefront in the Prospect Crossing strip mall, which is anchored by a Dominick's that's about to close. A great deal of attention seems to have been paid to design elements that look as if they may have been arranged according by feng shui principles, such as the placement of the chairs at an angle to the tables, but that may just be my ignorance.

The service is friendly and attentive. You'll have to ask for chopsticks if you want them. Our meal ran under $20 each.

I'd say that with careful ordering, Yummy Gourmet has the potential to be a destination restaurant. There are often large Asian groups eating there. Yanni's food is less distinct from other Greek restaurants, but it's certainly worth stopping in if you're nearby.

Yanni's Greek Restaurant
847/952-1111
www.yannisrestaurant.com
10 E. Algonquin Road
Arlington Heights, IL 60005
11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. M-Th; -11 p.m. F; 4-11 p.m. Sa; 12-9:30 p.m. Su

Yummy Gourmet Restaurant
847/253-0319
847/253-0326
Prospect Crossing Shopping Center
1255 N. Rand Road
Arlington Heights, IL 60004
11:30 a.m.-9 p.m. Su-Th; -10 p.m. F-Sa
BYOB

Some other good options are:

Chutney Janet in Des Plaines.

Pappadeaux in Arlington Heights.

Pita Inn in Glenview or Wheeling.

Sabor in Schaumburg.

Johnnie's Beef
1935 S. Arlington Heights Road
Arlington Heights
(847) 357-8100

LAZ wrote:Yummy Gourmet Restaurant
847/253-0319
847/253-0326
Prospect Crossing Shopping Center
1255 N. Rand Road
Arlington Heights, IL 60004

We walked into Yummy Gourmet the other day, for the first time in some months, and noticed a few changes. Among other things, the chairs no longer slanted in the way the manager once told me was good feng shui.

Then the menu had changed. No more Shanghai dumplings. No curry pockets. We arrived about 40 minutes before closing time and they weren't busy, which isn't unusual, but none of the customers were Asian, which is. The service seemed much more brusque than we've been used to. Yes, there are new owners.

The menu is now a typically vast hodgepodge of Cantonese and mixed this and that. Our food was all pretty well prepared. Himself was in an egg roll mood and ordered the "Hong Kong Style Crispy Egg Roll" which tasted to me like Chicago-style, complete with peanut butter, but it was a good rendition of that type. The potstickers were a bit doughy. They now offer a pu pu platter.

Overall, it's a kind of an odd mix of sterotypical suburban Chinese and more Chinatownlike items. For example, we ordered the house chow fun and received a plate of nicely chewy thick noodles (next time I will ask for extra crisp) topped with chicken, shrimp, pork and vegetables in brown sauce ... with canned mushrooms.

We ordered diced pork with string beans in X.O. sauce and received, as expected, string beans with hardly any pork. This was a nice rendition of Szechwan string beans, although I think there may have been some mixup because it seemed like we got the version with no sauce. They were crisp, tasty beans nonetheless, maybe a bit less spicy than I hoped. The winner was a bubbling casserole of savory eggplant and shrimp in garlic sauce.

Items of interest for future visits include steamed stuffed tofu with shrimp paste, salt and pepper shell-on shrimp, curried crab, rock cod in creamy corn sauce, crispy fried chicken, Peking duck in one, two or three courses. I saw no sign of a Chinese-language-only menu, although there is a separate English/Chinese menu of set dinners for two or more that is different from the list of family dinners in the regular menu.

At the end of the meal, we spoke to another server, and learned that the taciturn guy is the new owner. He's owned the restaurant for a month or so, and apparently had worked at other suburban Chinese places. The previous owner went back to Hong Kong. The friendlier man was his brother, an investment banker, helping out on the weekend. They are from Fujian, although that's not much reflected on the menu. He also said they plan to add sushi.

So, at first glance, this is now a place worth stopping in if you happen to be in the neighborhood and don't feel like continuing west to Lao Sze Chuan in Palatine. It's better than other nearby Chinese options but not as interesting as it used to be.

Laz,
A few years ago, my relatives and I use to go to Yummy Gourmet every other month. We finally ordered Peking Duck and it was a horrible mess of shredded duck, vegetables, and sauce. We went back to give it one more try after explaining to the waiter and the manager that we knew what Peking Duck was suppose to taste like...we had it in San Francisco, Los Angeles and yes, in Beijing in one of the larger restaurants by Tiananmen Square. They assured us they would get it right that time. It was the same crap. As we left, they gave us $15 coupons. We haven't been back since.
Some Chinese restaurants serve regular Chinese roast duck as "Peking Duck" but we were not that lucky. It's a shame. Some of their other items were decent like their bbq squab. I'd be interested in your experience with the new management.
btw, I believe Chutney Janet has closed since.

stevez wrote:I would also suggest you check into Giacomos in Des Plaines. Here's a link to a previous post. http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=38&highlight=giacomos

What kind of place is Giacomos? That whole thread is a discussion about the picture quality of whatever the original poster attached to his message.

rdstoll wrote:

stevez wrote:I would also suggest you check into Giacomos in Des Plaines. Here's a link to a previous post. http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=38&highlight=giacomos

What kind of place is Giacomos? That whole thread is a discussion about the picture quality of whatever the original poster attached to his message.

Giacomo's is a mom & pop owned Italian restaurant. I'm a big fan of any dish wih red sauce, which Giacomo prepares several different ways. His "picky packy" sauce is particularly good as is the meat sauce.

P.S. I have fixed the picture link in the original thread so you can now see a picture of the braciole, which is one of my favorite dishes at Giacomo's

Sonny's in Park Ridge was sold a couple years ago. It's now MJ2 Bistro.

Sabor in Schaumburg closed months ago, breaking my heart as I loved the Nuevo Latino cuisine there.

Wow! That looks really good. Thanks for fixin' the picture!

You must visit Wonton Gourmet in Des Plaines .. we would frequently go there for lunch when I worked in Rosemont, and I miss it terribly since I changed jobs!

http://www.wontongourmet.com/

Cameron.