Erwin

Ratings Guide:
Half handshake, half chest-bump hug – 5 stars
Chest bump – 4 stars
Fist bump – 3 stars
High five – 2 stars
Handshake – 1 star
Manly ass slap – ½ star
Fone and fone – 0 stars




Restaurant: Erwin
Location: 2925 N. Halsted


I hadn’t really heard anything about Erwin before I went there. In fact, I’d never even heard of Erwin before I went there. Some friends of ours recommended it so we headed there for dinner not too long ago. Now, when we walked in the place looked nice. Kind of felt like the type of restaurant you might find if you were on vacation in Lake Geneva or Michigan or something (I’m not sure why you’d go on vacation in Michigan either, but bear with me). But like the really nice restaurant in those vacation towns. Maybe it was the white walls, or the dark wood. Or maybe it was the fact that we were the youngest group of people in the place by at least 20 years. Now, I’ve come to expect this when my wife makes me eat at the blue-plate-special hour of the evening, but it wasn’t six o’clock. It was 8:30. And it’s located in the heart of Lakeview. I can’t remember the last time I went to a restaurant in Chicago and didn’t see one patron under 30 in the entire place (minus our table). It’s like the CBS of restaurants.

Anyway, the six of us sat down at our table. Some people will tell you that they hate it when their server comes by every three minutes to check up on them. They feel like it’s a constant interruption throughout the entire dinner. I’m not one of those people. I like not having to call Anthony LaPaglia to find my waiter. That doesn’t mean I need my waiter to be part of my conversations or to have a seat and eat dinner with us. Just a quick check-in to make sure we’re happy. Even just a slow walk by the table to see if we’re missing anything, giving us a chance to get his attention if we need him. See, what I hate is a server who never interrupts. Who assumes because you’re talking and laughing that you’re doing OK. To simply place a drink order we had to set a bear trap near our table to slow down our waiter and get him to stop. And it was like that all night. In fact, I don’t remember him ever stopping by just to check up on us. At one point we had to ask a busboy to find our server. The only time this plays into your favor (and this was one of those nights) is when you can just sit there and talk and drink for an hour or more after dinner without feeling like you’re being rushed out so they can clean your table and sit another party. That’s always nice.

At least the food was pretty good. I started off with the ravioli, which was filled with braised rib meat. Just a nice little twist on a pretty standard dish. Well done. For dinner I ordered the duck and sausage. The menu actually had a ton of things I wanted to try, which is great. Normally you can narrow down your options to one or two things, but I really did have trouble making a choice here. The deciding factor was what everyone else ordered, since I make it a point to order something no one else at the table is having. My wife got the steak. Two other people got the skate, and Matt got the liver (more on that in a moment). So, while the gourmet hamburger and the chicken both sounded good, I went with the duck and sausage. Mostly because it sounded interesting, and I was in the mood for something a little different. This dish should be named “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” The good was the duck. Good flavor, perfectly cooked, just wish there was a little more of it. The bad was the sausage. Not sure what I was expecting, but there was nothing interesting or special about it. Just a small sausage cut in half. It didn’t taste any different than if I had bought a Jimmy Dean or Hillshire Farm link from the store and threw it in the pan with a little oil. Normally I’d complain that there wasn’t enough of this as well, but since it was so disappointing I’m glad it was only a small link. And the ugly was the vegetable the two meats were served on. I have no idea what it was, but it was unpleasant to look at (for the record it was braised kale and lima bean ragout, whatever that means).

I’m pretty sure I made the only bad choice of the night. The steak was good. Not a “holy crap” steak, but also not a “wish I had a do over” steak. Just a good cut of steak cooked perfectly. The skate was also pretty good. I will say that it had a strong lemon flavor, and even though I love fish when it’s cooked with lemon, this was almost too much. It wasn’t nearly as good as the skate at West Town Tavern, but still a pretty good choice. I think the best entrée was the liver. Yeah, I said it. The liver. How many times have I tried liver? Somewhere right around zero. I love braunschweiger, which is basically speadable liver (I think my favorite sandwich in the world is braunschweiger, miracle whip, and pickles on French bread. Oh, and don’t ever eat this sandwich if you plan on making out with someone. Just trust me on this.) so I’m not sure why I’ve never actually tried liver before. Seems I was missing out. The liver was really good. I had a bite and was jealous I didn’t get it myself. Oh well, maybe next time.

I made up for my poor dinner selection with dessert. No one was really interested in getting anything, but I insisted. So many things on the dessert menu looked good I had trouble deciding. So I just ordered three of them. The sour cherry pie and the double chocolate brownie sundae were both really, really good. But they were nothing compared to the ice cream sandwich. It wasn’t your typical chocolate chip cookies with vanilla ice cream. It was chocolate chip banana cake with butter pecan ice cream topped with caramel sauce. It was even better than it sounds. I would go back for the dessert alone.

The night was capped off by the pleasant discovery of the after dinner mints sitting on the hostess stand. They were the old school root beer hard candies. You know, the ones that are shaped like a barrel. Just genius. Thankfully that restaurant was pretty empty when we left so I didn’t feel bad stuffing my pockets with the little suckers.

If it weren’t for the dessert and root beer candies I’d give this place probably a high-five, maybe a high-five with a manly ass slap. But the end of the evening gets it to a solid fist bump. Good choices, good food. Just nothing great.



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