Restaurants Near The Chicago Theatre??
My fiancé and i are headed to Chicago for a short holiday next week. We arrive Thursday afternoon and currently have reservations at The Publican for that evening.
However, we're going to see Louis C.K. at the Chicago Theatre on Saturday the 18th and the show starts at 7:30pm. Any suggestions on where to grab a quick bite before the show? We tend to like to eat dinner around 8:00pm, so the time of the show cuts right in to our "dinner time."
Without knowing how long the show will last, it's hard to gauge when to eat. We're staying at the Renaissance Blackstone Hotel, if that helps at all with suggestions!
Thanks everyone!
By atticaster
on Jun 9, 2011 08:50 AM
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There are so many places in the Loop, where your hotel and the theater are both located. (They're a little over half a mile away from each other, so you can walk it in 15 minutes.)
If you want to eat around your hotel, the restaurant right inside your hotel is called Mercat a la Planxa and it is perhaps Chicago's best tapas restaurants. www.mercatchicago.com
Here are two recommendations within a block of the theater. Cibo Matto is a contemporary Italian restaurant in the Wit hotel. www.eatcibomatto.com Atwood Cafe serves contemporary American cuisine in the Burnham Hotel. www.atwoodcafe.com
All three of these restaurants are excellent.
Wherever you go, I recommend making reservations in advance, so you don't face any unexpected delays in getting seated. All three of these accept reservations on Opentable.com as well as over the phone.
For more suggestions near the theater, see these topics (which were in response to a question about the Oriental Theater which is only a block from the Chicago Theater):
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/563087
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/566875
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Ooooo....we LOVE tapas! Thank you so much for your suggestions! I've actually been following your posts regarding Chicago, and you seem like you should be a personal tour guide! Love your posts!
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Thanks! Feel free to ask more questions - you'll have the chance for more meals (such as Friday).
Oh, and one more quick recommendation - if you'd like some of our delicious local specialty of deep-dish pizza while you're here, go to Lou Malnati's at 8th and State, about four blocks walk from your hotel. www.loumalnatis.com
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I am a little bummed that a few of the restaurants I'm interested in (Avec and The Purple Pig) don't take reservations, but oh well.
We're still thinking about what we want for breakfast/lunch on Friday and Saturday!
Any Indian, Mexican, Thai, or Japanese recommendations would be appreciated, as well!
Friday is wide open for us (we'll probably check out the Art Institute and hang out in the park) as well as during the day on Saturday. We'll most likely leave late morning on Sunday (we're driving) so i'm not sure we'll be able to check out brunch anywhere! Drag!
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Purple Pig
500 N Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60611
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>> I am a little bummed that a few of the restaurants I'm interested in (Avec and The Purple Pig) don't take reservations, but oh well.
I'm not crazy about Avec. I haven't been to Purple Pig, but I know the waits for a table are a lot shorter at lunchtime, and they serve the same menu all day so you're not missing out on anything by going for lunch.
>> We're still thinking about what we want for breakfast/lunch on Friday and Saturday!
For breakfast, I recommend Bongo Room. The location at Wabash and Roosevelt (12th) is a ten-minute walk from your hotel. They specialize in unusual pancakes, such as the pretzel pancakes with white chocolate caramel sauce. The standard portion size is three GIGANTIC pancakes but you can get a one-third or two-thirds portion size at a reduced price. You could probably squeeze it in on Sunday morning; they open at 9:00 and there's usually no wait if you get there before 9:30. There's usually no wait on weekdays also.
>> Any Indian, Mexican, Thai, or Japanese recommendations would be appreciated, as well!
Our better Indian and Thai restaurants are on the north side and not all that convenient to downtown. They're not all THAT different from what you find in other cities (and neither are our Japanese places). OTOH I strongly recommend going to one of our provincial Mexican restaurants. You've probably heard of Rick Bayless's Frontera Grill and Topolobampo, but at this point it's probably too late to get a reservation, and unless you're willing to arrive 20 minutes before they open the doors, waits for a table can be horrendous (90+ minutes). You probably haven't heard of Mundial Cocina Mestiza but it's my favorite of all of our provincial Mexican restaurants. They do a great job for dinner as well as weekend brunch. It's in the Pilsen neighborhood, about two miles west and a mile and a half south from your hotel - either a short cab ride, or you can catch the CTA Pink Line at the Library elevated station on Van Buren just west of State (a couple blocks from your hotel) and take it to the 18th Street station. Mundial is a block east of the station on 18th Street. If you drive, on-street parking is plentiful; if you're in a pay spot, just make sure you follow the instructions by paying for a receipt at a pay box and putting it in your dashboard. www.mundialcocinamestiza.com
>> Friday is wide open for us (we'll probably check out the Art Institute and hang out in the park) as well as during the day on Saturday.
A few good places nearby... If you want to make this your shot at deep-dish, another good place for it is Pizano's on Madison, near the Art Institute. Like Malnati's, you can phone ahead with your pizza order to avoid waiting 30-45 minutes while you're there for it to bake. www.pizanoschicago.com If you're into gastropubs, there's a good one in that area called the Gage. www.thegagechicago.com
>> We'll most likely leave late morning on Sunday (we're driving) so i'm not sure we'll be able to check out brunch anywhere! Drag!
Well, you could eat at 9 a.m. at Bongo Room, as noted above, and still leave late morning. There are some other early places too, but that would be my top pick.
Feel free to ask more questions!
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Wow!! Thanks! The Bongo Room sounds great, as well as Gage! I checked in on Topolobampo, and you're right...totally booked. However, Mundial Cocina Mestiza sounds truly amazing.
Any thoughts on The Paris Club or Maude's Liquor Room?
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>> Any thoughts on The Paris Club or Maude's Liquor Room?
I haven't been to either one - sorry! Maybe someone else here can provide input.
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Paris Club is just fair. Was not wowed by the place at all.
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Sorry...Maude's Liquor Bar.
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I haven't been to either but I've only heard so-so things about Paris Club but really good things about Maude's. Maude's is on my list of places to go to before I move.
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Moving out of town? Sorry to hear that - but hope it's good news for you!
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94% chance of moving to Toronto in the fall/winter. Good news but I'll miss my city! Luckily Toronto has a really good food scene too.
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Yes, they have some great food up there, and a nice variety too. I was up there a year and a half ago, and while I was there, I tried out a bunch of their pastry shops, and Le Cigogne was my fave. I posted the results in the big pastry topic on the Ontario forum, at http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/5228...
Hope it works out well for you - thanks for your contributions here!
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Thank you Nsxtasy! I don't want to derail this thread but it means a lot.
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Recommend Mercat as well, it can get pricey if you aren't careful, but very good food and lively atmosphere. If the upstairs is too noisy there is a smaller bar downstairs that might be nice. The Blackstone is a GREAT hotel.
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Oh, I'm so glad to hear nice things about The Blackstone. We got it on Priceline's "Name Your Own Price" and I wasn't aware of the name of the hotel until the price was confirmed, so I couldn't make a judgement.
Thanks for the rec for Mercat...I read a little about that place after nsxtasy pointed out that it's in the hotel.
Also, I just realized that Taste of Randoph Street is happening while we're in town! Maybe we'll spend a few hours checking that out!
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Mercat trivia - Jose Garces is the owner of Mercat a la Planxa. He made his name with his restaurants in Philadelphia (Amada, Tinto, Distrito, Chifa, Village Whiskey, Garces Trading Company, and JG Domestic), for which he won the James Beard Award for Best Chef - Mid-Atlantic in 2009. However, he is actually a Chicagoan, raised here by his Ecuadorian parents. Mercat is his first restaurant in the city where he was born.
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If I can ask, how much did you pay on Priceline for the Blackstone?
Also, I know its late, but The Gage is a wonderful pub and serves my favorite dish in Chicago - Mussels Vindaloo. A magnficent combination of Indian vindaloo flavoring and beautifully steamed Mussels.
Also, fwiw, Wishbone, west of the Loop, is my goto brunch place in Chicago.
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We tried the "name your own price" thing on Priceline. I set parameters like, "4 star, downtown, etc" and set a price at $190/night. I got a reply saying that my parameters had been met, but that I wouldn't be able to know the name of the hotel until I agreed and paid. I was hoping we got lucky.
Thanks for the tip on The Gage. I read about it and it looks lovely.
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Without getting too far off on this tangent, you probably could have gotten it for MUCH less. The biggest mistake people make on Priceline is bidding too high, and I think you probably did this. Remember, if you bid too low for the bid to be accepted, you can raise it and try again after 24 hours. So to get the best price, you can start really low, and raise it gradually, a day at a time. Also, you can judge bidding prices by checking Hotwire's rates, and also by looking up Priceline hotel bids in Chicago that were accepted at www.betterbidding.com/index.php?showf... You'll find that people got four-star hotels in Chicago in the $60-90 range.
Let us know how your meals go and how you liked everything. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask!
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I started my bidding out at $75 and went up incrementally until a hotel "took my bait." Sounds like I didn't do as well as I thought! Ugh! Oh well.
I'll be sure to check back in with all of you to let you know what we did and how it was!
Thanks again for all of your advice!
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It is always hard to say what's a good price on Priceline because it depends so much on the weekend that you want to be in Chicago. With Bluesfest here this weekend, hotels on the Mag Mile and in the Loop were probably booked heavily and the Priceline prices were probably higher than the 60-90 that are sometimes possible.
The Yankee-Cubs series at Wrigley this weekend will probably make it one of the most popular weekends of the year. So the price may have been "good."
For a hotel like the Blackstone, which runs very high at rack rate, $190 isn't bad... in addition to BetterBidding.com, you can also look at Bidding4Trafel or Biddingfortravel.com can't remember which is the right spelling. Both of these sites have great information on how to best work with Priceline and Hotwire, and you can usually get a good feel for which hotel you might be getting. Its important to read the site help files carefully because they will give you some amazing tips on how to make the sites work for you.
For priceline, there are ways to bid multiple times on the same day, by expanding the search to areas in the city where you know there are no hotels of the same quality that you're looking for. For example... if you're trying to get a 4 star hotel, and you know that there are none at Midway Airport, you can add Midway to your search area knowing that it will not have any hotels that qualify. Still, you get another free bid. So if you were low the first time, you can raise your bid a little, as you expand the search to zones that don't have hotels that quality.
The instructions/help files tell you how to do that without a lot of risk of getting something you don't want.
Also, there are ways to tell what hotels are likely to be the listed hotel in your search by looking at zones and amenities
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