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| - I was going to rank this 2 stars, but the more I think of all the things that are off about this place, might as well just go for the gusto and make it the one star.
You don't need to bother with this place. Don't. There are better Italian places.
So this place basically seems to be a house converted into a tiny Italian restaurant. That's a cool concept but when you step inside, they don't capitalize on it. To me, I didn't know what the theme of this place is. It's in a tiny house, but it's Chicago Joe's restaurant. But what's so damn Chicago about it? I didn't get that from any of the decor or the atmosphere or anything. It was just there. There's a street sign that says "ROOSEVELT DRIVE." Maybe that's the Chicago part. Also, the bathroom is right next to the kitchen, which is just strange. Everything just seems off. If it was marketed like grandma's house or something, I could understand that. But maybe all bathrooms are L shaped in Chicago.
We had a table of about ten for a Birthday dinner and my girlfriend and I arrived a few minutes late. Still it took 15 minutes after we arrived before we had a server take our order. Again, this place isn't huge. Our server even at the end of dinner told us that we were his only table, so not sure why it took so long. The server didn't seem to know the difference between the different types of spaghetti and had trouble remembering who ordered what. Not sure why he was flustered, not like any of us were asking some hard hitting questions.
The food took even longer to come out. A few of my friends were concerned as they had a show to get to. We finally had to ask the server to expedite their orders and to bring a to go box with the meal when it came out. We had arrived an hour and a half before these friends needed to be somewhere, so you would think we would have time to eat dinner.
Dinner comes out and the server just is confused about everything. He's giving the wrong plate to the wrong people, one dish had to be remade as it was not gluten free pasta which was requested. People were getting soup when they wanted salad. There was extra spaghetti on the table. Things were just falling off the wheels. But this is Chicago Joe's! The food has to be good!
No.
I ordered meat lasagna. The restaurant isn't well lit so it was hard to see but there was just a mound of meat on top of the lasagna. At least they didn't skimp on the meat. But the lasagna was unevenly heated, as there were molten pockets of lasagna next to lukewarm patches. Figuring it was microwaved and I could only hope that it was made sometime that week. We could only hope. I ate a bit of it before it just started to hurt my stomach. Not great. Not great.
Girlfriend got spaghetti and meatballs. The meatballs were a joke. This is an Italian restaurant, the meatballs NEED to be good and they were bland as all hell. So we're paying 15 bucks for some boiled grain and bland meat. By the way, prepare to pay Chicago prices. That's what makes it so Chicago.
So everything about the night was underwhelming and the next half an hour consisted of our waiter trying to figure out how to split the bill. We were willing to do it whichever way was easiest, but he assured us that he could split the bills (and this is when he told us we were his only table). He was gone for an extended amount of time, and then when he came back he just looked at our table, made a face, and walked away without saying anything. I don't know what that was about. I was worried about him.
We finally got the bill split figured out but it just took so long. Nothing made sense as to why everything took so long. My lasagna was reheated, why did it take so long? Why did splitting the check take THAT long? Why did taking the orders take so long? Why is the bathroom an L shape? That's not something Chicago Joe could solve but it's just worth asking in general.
Overall, this was not a great experience. There are much better Italian places to go to and if you wanted mediocre food, you could just go to the OG. At least it's cheaper, and there are breadsticks.
Skip this place.
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