| rev:text
| - This is my review #300. Ditka's was open Thanksgiving Day -- a very good reason to give thanks. I called ahead of time and made my reservation for 6:45pm. I was a little worried since there were so many people waiting and we were 45 minutes early to dinner. As I heard the hostess tell people their wait time, my worry turned to fear that I would be waiting quite a while. When I spoke to the hostess, she told me that there would be a long wait since they were the only restaurant in the area that was open. I told her that I would wait until my reservation time. It was at that point that her demeanor changed. "Did you say reservation? Well, sir, right this way. No one else waiting made reservations." the hostess exclaimed.
We were immediately seated in a circular booth overlooking the rest of the dining room and handed our prix-fixe menus with additional, select items from the normal menu. My friend didn't even have to look at the menu, he already new what he was getting: the prix-fixe Turkey Dinner. I, on the other hand was not going to eat turkey and so had to look through the rest of the a la carte menu to see what I was going to have for my dinner. To help me along, I ordered our drinks:
Montoya Pinot Noir
Absolute and Sierra Mist with a lime
The drinks came as I was looking through the menu. There were, unfortunately, no substitutions allowed to the prix-fixe menu item under any circumstance. With this new knowledge, I looked through and we ordered our entrees:
Turkey dinner (Turkey, Italian wedding soup, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans, Mike's salad, and cranberry sauce)
Filet mignon {medium} with butternut squash soup and mashed sweet potatoes
I decided to enjoy my surroundings while tasting my wine. It was slightly spicy with some darker undertones and was enjoyable. The dining room reminded me of a Members Only Club (or my imaginary conception of one) with its pillars, curtains that draw and separate different areas, and faux-ashlar stone walls. It was a mix of rustic and demure done in a way that was not overtly offensive to my eyes.
Our server was quick to bring our soups and the salad. Since my friend doesn't eat salads, I co-opted his for my own purposes. It was filled with leafy greans, craisins, goat cheese (not feta), walnuts, apples and topped with a proper amount of balsamic vinaigrette. The flavors were good and the sweet, tart, crunchy, and earthy flavors all melded together in a nice composition. It wasn't the best balsamic I have ever had, but it was better than most places serve.
The wedding soup didn't taste bad, but it tasted more of a really good chicken soup with meatballs added as an afterthought. There was nothing that truly made it an Italian Wedding soup. The butternut squash soup had a very heavy butternut squash flavor -- this was a good thing. I just wish that it transcended being pureed butternut squash to being more of a soup. Don't get me wrong, it was good it just didn't taste or feel like a soup.
Our entrees arrived as I finished my soup. The Turkey dinner was piled high on the plate on top of the mashed potatoes and the stuffing with green beans on one side and cranberry sauce on the other. My filet came in the center of my plate with a gargantuan side of the mashed sweet potatoes. I tried my filet to find that it was cooked perfectly with a nice, spicy flavor to the seared exterior. I really enjoyed this filet. The mashed sweet potato did not taste like sweet potato; it tasted like mashed yam. Again, the flavor didn't bother me; it had good flavor and it wasn't stringy or lumpy. It just wasn't what I was expecting because of the name.
I looked over to the turkey dinner and was pleased to see that it was all-white, breast meat. I tried the turkey (just because I don't eat a lot of it doesn't mean I don't like the flavor) and found that it wasn't dry and that the gravy complimented the turkey flavor without covering it. I tried some of the mashed potatoes and they also had a very good, simple, potato flavor to them and the green beans also had a very good flavor while being perfectly cooked. I didn't much care for the cranberry nor the stuffing and I am a stuffing maniac. We finished off the meal with ice cream and pumpkin pie. Again, they tasted good, but I felt as though I could have purchased comparable at Giant Eagle or Publix. While the food was good, the execution was not the best. I give Ditka's 3-stars plus 1 for being open on Thanksgiving. The service was spectacular, but the price on the non-prix-fixe items is steep.
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