"The place to be!"
May 23, 2011
- River North
- Romantic
- Club
- Food: American, Comfort
- Decor: Very dark, Beautiful chandelier, Chic
- Service: Good service - attentive
- Cost: $$$
- Wine / Cocktails:
Overview:
One Saturday afternoon my husband and I decided we were going to try Gilt Bar for dinner. I knew a few things about this place – mostly from the Doughnut Vault – but didn’t realize that it’s not really a “bar” at all. It’s a full fledged, full menu restaurant. A restaurant where you need advance reservations unless you want to eat at 11pm (that was the soonest they could get us a table having arrived without a reservation at 7pm)
We had the good fortune of arriving just in time to snag one of the last couches in the “lounge” area. Luckily you can order from the full menu at either the bar or the lounge. The lounge was just off to the side of the main dining room and very chic and cozy. The only drawback to the lounge is that the seating is these low couches and coffee tables, which means if you want to actually eat you’ve kind of got to crouch down with your plate either on your lap or the short table in front of you. Very “eating in front of the tv in your living room” style dining. We were just happy for the opportunity to eat there so it was okay with us, and as it turns we were not uncomfortable at all (I got to eat and drink curled up on a couch with my feet tucked up under me… how could that be a bad thing?). The overall atmosphere at Gilt Bar is very intimate, and could be considered romantic if that’s what you’re looking for. The entire restaurant is very dark though, even more so in the lounge. We literally had to pick up the votives from our table to shine some light on our menus.
Perhaps because of our initial reservations about our seating situation, we didn’t go all out on the menu. We started with a bottle of wine and the foie gras & pork liver mousse with stone mustard & cornichons and the crispy kennebec fries. Both were outstanding! The foie came in a trendy little jar, but not enough bread - we had to ask for more and had to bat away several server’s hands from taking away our plate before we got it. For our entrees we had the Paris mushroom & truffle pasta and the Short Rib. Let me just tell you that that short rib is the stuff dreams are made of. It was so tender and succulent – and came with some substantial little veggies. It was cooked and seasoned so perfectly, it literally melted in my mouth. Comparatively the pasta was fine but rather bland. The table next to us had the pork meatballs and I wish we had ordered those, too… they looked sumptuous!
I was so excited to see “brownies”… PLURAL on the menu. How fun is that? The brownie is my all time favorite dessert and is rarely seen on menus outside of TGI Fridays. My only mistake here is, after our second bottle of wine, succumbing to our server’s offer to have the brownies a la mode. In my opinion, this kind of killed the dish. Killed it in the sense of “over kill”. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the vanilla ice cream and little self serve pot of chocolate sauce… it was just a little much. And for someone who was so looking forward to experiencing the brownies, this became much more about the “sundae”. But that’s my fault.
This evening I was also scoping the place out for a private event I was planning, so after dinner we took a quick trip downstairs to visit Curio. This lower level space serves as a cash-only bar most nights, and a private party room when booked. To say that this space had an “underground” vibe would be an understatement. This place was uber cool. And uber dark, I could barely see anything… but I think I made out a beautiful looking bar and maybe there was a DJ down there too. The ultimate VIP space. I couldn’t get a vibe on whether people were going down there to wait for their table before dinner or if people were just visiting this bar independent of the restaurant upstairs. Either way, this was definitely the place to be!
I can't wait to visit both places again very soon!
Recommended Dishes:
Short Rib!
