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| - Well, after all the good reviews, I was really looking forward to eating at Chicago Joe's. I am from Chicago and was married to an Italian. I love Italian food, and am considered quite a good cook. The place is cute, and packed to the gills by 6:00, which we considered a good sign, even tho you would hardly recognize it as a restaurant from the outside.
There was only one waiter for the back half of the restaurant where we were sitting, and he worked his buns off. While overall we were there 1-1/2 hours, we never felt ignored. I started off with the snails in mushrooms, which were plentiful and pretty good. A few too many crumbs in the sauce for my taste, but overall, good. My husband had the roasted peppers for appetizer, and they were just that. A plate of roasted green and red bell peppers with a little cheese on top. Good, but better as an accompaniment for something else. We were served warm bread, which we did use to sop up the sauces from the snails and peppers.
I had the pasta fagioli soup next, and it was a thick as library paste. I ate a couple of bites, and that was all I could take. My husband had a salad, which was nothing special altho fresh, and he said the vinegar and oil dressing was very good. I tasted the little container of garlic dressing they gave him, and it was delicious.
I ordered meat lasagna for my entrée, which should be a safe bet in an Italian restaurant. However, it was the poorest excuse for lasagna I have ever eaten. There was almost no ricotta in the dish, over baked and dry, a couple of lasagna noodles with some kind of cheese between them and tons of overcooked, dry ground beef. It was also very bland. I didn't eat it.
My husband got one of the nightly specials, Chicken pepperoncini, with pasta on the side. He ate it and said it was okay, but not spectacular.
I was really glad that we went there with a coupon from Restaurant.com, so we got a decent discount. It is not an inexpensive restaurant. There were 4-5 veal dishes on the menu, and they were all $32.95. They added 18% tip to our bill because of the coupon, and I didn't begrudge that at all, because the waiter did a great job with all the people he had to serve.
We may try it again sometime, because with so many people eating there, there must be a reason. So maybe we just ordered the wrong things. However, as I said, you have to wonder about an Italian restaurant that can't make lasagna.
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