Such a fun spot - especially on a sunny weekend in the summer! It makes you feel like you're on the…read morecoast somewhere. I met a friend here for a catch up brunch and it was the perfect spot. Definitely recommend a reservation for the weekend because it was busy! There was live music playing on the main level and a big uptair space + a patio. It's the perfect indoor/outdoor space and on summer day the vibes were so good. Our server was very nice! She got us started with drinks, and I went with a spicy bloody mary. It was delicious and the perfect amount of kick. We decided to share a few plates and went with the monkey bread, crab and shrimp bruschetta, and truffle parmesan fries. The monkey bread was served hot and was so yummy! The caramel glaze it's served with was absolutely delicious. We also couldn't stop eating the truffle fries - so good! They are super crispy. The bruschetta was the only dish I wasn't super crazy about. It almost tasted tuna-y, and the portions were pretty small. Not bad, just not my favorite. Can't wait to come back and explore more of the menu - I'm eyeing that french toast!

This was a cute spot to check out for a little app and yap session!…read more We ordered the monkey bread, parmesan fries, and crab and shrimp bruschetta. I really enjoyed these bites! I would recommend all of them. I tried a mocktail too. I can't remember the name, but it definitely tasted like a cocktail just without the alcohol, which really impressed me! Our server was really nice and accommodating, knowing we were there to catch up after a while. She was always checking in on us. A bonus was the live entertainment! My only downside is that they had the windows and door open, so there were flies we had to fight off. I chose to sit inside for two reasons: to avoid bugs and the heat. Having the windows and doors open defeats the purpose of indoor dining. Overall, I'd like to check out their dinner menu, and I'm down to come here again!

We dined here on a Friday night. If you're staying at the hotel, I definitely recommend making…read morereservations because you may have a hard time getting in otherwise. EJ was our server and he was such a nice young may very helpful and accommodating, and he checked on us throughout the meal to make sure we had everything we needed. I started with the calamari which EJ suggested, and it was really good! I also ordered the shrimp and scallop roll but I didn't realize it had cilantro in it. The restaurant is pretty dimly lit, so I completely missed that on the menu. Once I tasted the cilantro, I couldn't eat it and had to send it back. I also had the Classic Caesar salad which was disappointing. It was very plain, and the dressing was bland. I couldn't taste that traditional anchovy flavor that I expect from a good Caesar. One of my family members ordered the crab cake with a baked potato The crab cake was falling apart, which I've never really seen before, but she said it tasted good. Now, the mango sidecarOH MY! That drink was powerful AND delicious!** Definitely one of the highlights of the night. Overall, there were some hits and misses with the food, but the calamari and mango sidecar were great, and EJ's excellent service really stood out. The other staff was very nice and some remembered me from the night venue when I came to use my $25 credit

Came here for happy hour since we stayed at the hotel and there's daily $25 restaurant credit. I…read moreordered Old Fashioned and California roll. The drink is nice and very strong. I am a bit picky about the sushi rolls because the rice is kind of hard. Overall it's a very nice space. Decor is dark and sophisticated. The service is very attentive.

We were staying at the Kimpton Gray and grabbed dinner at Boleo on the 15th floor. Beautiful…read moreatmosphere with great live music. They have lots of vegetarian and pescatarian options. We had the vegetable saltado (made w shiitake mushrooms, tomatoes, peppers, scallions, sesame seeds, cilantro, bok choy), vegetarian empanadas, and Patagonian King salmon, and yucca fries. The empanadas and yucca fries were the star of the meal.

Cool covered rooftop. They sometimes have live music which was nice. Got pretty busy and loud…read more.. could barely hear the server. Everything we tried was good but not great. I think it is a bit overpriced overall. The lomo saltado was my least favorite. Heavier on the soy sauce taste than typical lomo saltado. The guacamole needed a little more salt/flavor. For dessert we got the mango cake. It was meh. Would not order it again. Everything was just forgettable.

I was at Remington's and our server Eddie was the greatest, he was polite, never rushed us to order…read morefood and he was very friendly.

We had an amazing experience at Remington's. We made a reservation online a few hours beforehand…read moreand when we showed up they quickly and happily seated us. All of the courses and drinks came out with perfect timing and they all tasted absolutely amazing! Our server, Janee, was exceptionally good! So very happy we came here! We will return!

We had a great time here. Stayed in the hotel that the restaurant was in thru Amex. Breakfast was…read moregreat on all days. We had dinner here one night. The smoked swordfish dip with chips and plantains was a great starter. The catch of the day was also cooked very well. The passion pisco sour was not bitter and a really nice drink. Esquites mac and cheese was a great side to our dinner. The interior is nice, I like the ambiance. Our server was really great and attentive during dinner.

We had family staying at the Fairmont and were excited to try Toro as it looked very established…read morefrom the outside. We stopped by to have lunch before our family had to leave. For starters, it took about 20 minutes for us to get seated while other customers with smaller parties were getting seated right away. Second, in addition to the brunch menu being very limited, no server came by until about 30 minutes after being seated to take our order. They really push folks to do their breakfast buffet which makes sense, but that defeats the purpose of having a separate brunch menu with different items. The quality of the buffet food was very mediocre at best. I've had similar quality food served at 2-3 star hotels. Overall, unimpressed with my experience at Toro. Hopefully their lunch/dinner service and food are better.

Good food, Uni was a bit melted but it was out of season so I can't complain much. Great service…read more Bathroom hardware is falling apart but other than that pretty clean. Price is pushing it but the atmosphere is clean and enjoyable.

Must visit for Spicy Miso !!! Service Ambience everything…read moreawesome !!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Crazy on a Monday night at 630 pm the place was packed!!…read more Classic Chicago steakhouse. It's lively and fun & the food is great! So is the service, excellent without being overbearing. We had a big party and most orders were a bit different. Everyone lived the apps, drinks and their dishes! Everyone was too stuffed to have desert. I had a perfectly cooked strip steak. It was delicious and the flavor was great! Shared a baked potato and the wonderful Mac & cheese. Mrs A liked it better than Swift and Sons - but that is still #1 for me - although it's in the west loop and not walkable if staying on MI Ave. Don't like the 3.5% for "rising" costs...seems like that has been around since COvID. I always catch it after I pay the bill...

Joe's Seafood in Chicago has an unusual amount of personal history for me. It opened as a…read morepartnership between Miami Beach's iconic Joe's Stone Crab and Lettuce Entertain You, bringing South Florida to Grand and Rush. I first went when it was still a huge, buzzy Chicago spot, and one of my most memorable dinners came after my high school graduation in 2003. I even got a speeding ticket on Lake Shore Drive with my grandmother in the back seat on the way to dinner, which still makes me laugh. Chicago was an especially fun place for Joe's to arrive. Open outcry trading was still a force, and the wealth creation around it was wild: people who had dropped out of high school could become millionaires in their twenties, while math PhDs from the University of Chicago could make fortunes in the same ecosystem. It was a golden era for hustle culture, when commerce idolized Tony Montana in a way that today is more likely to idolize Jamie Dimon or David Solomon. Death Row and Bad Boy ruled the airwaves, while Michael, Shaq, Kobe, and Allen Iverson defined the NBA. Basketball was so dominant in Chicago culture during my coming of age that I still map other things, including restaurants, to NBA teams. Joe's felt like the Miami Heat coming to Chicago in much the same way Smith & Wollensky represented the New York Knicks: each brought a recognizable piece of its hometown culture into another major city. Joe's brought real South Florida sizzle to Chicago, and it landed at exactly the right moment. Going there felt like an occasion. Florida took longer for me to understand in full. My family has roots in the state going back decades, farther north along the Atlantic coast, and I didn't visit Miami until March 2007, when my sister started graduate school in Coral Gables. That trip began my love affair with Miami and helped me understand why the original Joe's was such an institution. A close family friend's father spent time around Miami in the 1960s and 1970s. He knew local fishermen who caught stone crabs, which gave me an appreciation for the older South Florida culture around the food, separate from Joe's own history. Another Joe's memory captures an entirely different moment. Looking through my OpenTable history, my July 31, 2008 reservation at Joe's in Chicago is the earliest reservation I can find at a restaurant that is still open today. I was 23, working at UBS, preparing to move to New York while the firm was already on fire from its mortgage losses, and Lehman would file for bankruptcy just weeks later. I was broke but wildly aspirational, dreaming about dinners at Balthazar, begging my way past the doors at Cain and Tenjune, hoping to drink for free, and trying to meet women comically far out of my league. Through all of those memories, the restaurant itself has been remarkably consistent. The stone crab claws are incredible, the seafood is excellent, and Joe's holds its own among Chicago's serious steakhouses. The room has traditionally felt a little more formal than Miami, with bow ties, polished service, and a darker old-school steakhouse rhythm, while still being genuinely welcoming. Finish with the key lime pie. Years later, my wife and I held our wedding reception at RPM Seafood, another Lettuce restaurant, then ate at the original Joe's during our honeymoon in Miami during COVID days later, which felt like a fitting circle back. In sheer range of venues, repeatability of quality and atmosphere, and consistency of hits, Lettuce is the gold standard in Chicago, with some of that same reach in Vegas and DC. I've been extraordinarily privileged in my exposure to hospitality, and I still repeatedly admire Rich Melman's model, taste, and execution, now carried forward by the next generation of the family. Joe's is a prime example: world-class, durable, unmistakably Chicago, and absolutely somewhere I want to return next time I'm in town with some dough to spend. While Joe's may not be French, this place still earns my highest marks: très bien!

We took a Ferris Bueller day in Chicago, and RPM Seafood is where it peaked…read more Friday afternoon, a table on the deck right over the river, boats sliding past close enough to wave at, shade sitting on the table and sunshine everywhere around it, and a breeze coming off the water that made August in Chicago feel like a personal favor. John Hughes would have approved. A little background, because the setting here is not an accident. RPM Seafood is Bill and Giuliana Rancic's partnership with Lettuce Entertain You, opened on the riverfront at Clark Street in early 2020 and designed by the Rockwell Group to feel like a seaside town somewhere between France and Italy. Two levels, floor to ceiling glass, and an outdoor patio big enough to be a real restaurant rather than an overflow section. On the right day, that deck is the best seat in the building and it is not a close call. We went with the three course lunch, and that was the correct decision. First course was the Yellowfin Tuna Crispy Rice with spicy mayo and serrano. Light, bright, and portioned exactly right, the kind of opener that wakes your palate up instead of filling you up before the good part. Second course is the reason I am writing this. The Simply Grilled Branzino with fire kissed tomatoes and Amalfi salt was some of the best fish I have eaten in Chicago, and in this city that is a high bar to clear. There is nowhere to hide on a plate like that. No sauce doing the heavy lifting, no clever garnish, just a beautiful piece of fish, live fire, good salt and a kitchen confident enough to leave it alone. One tip I will pass along: squeeze the lemon over the entire fillet before your first bite. You are welcome. Dessert kept the run going. Tara took the Dark Chocolate Gelato and I went with the Seasonal Sorbet, cherry the day we were in. Now, the service, which I want people to understand because it is the hardest thing on this list to teach. Our table was looked after all afternoon by someone who was always there and somehow never in the way. Glasses handled before we noticed, courses paced to the conversation instead of the ticket time, and not one interruption in the middle of a story. That is a real skill, and it is the reason a two hour lunch felt like it lasted twenty minutes. The rosé deserves its own paragraph. They were pouring something special from South Africa that day, and it was exactly right: cold, crisp, dry without turning austere, and nothing like the candied fruit a lot of places pour by the glass once the weather turns. Ask what they have open, because it made the meal. Two practical things. Reservations are a must here even at lunch, although we booked ours the same day and had no trouble. And the deck is entirely at the mercy of the forecast, so watch the weather and let it pick your date. This is a place worth waiting for the right afternoon. Five stars, which is all the scale allows me. We sat out there long enough to watch the light change on the water, and we will be back any chance we get.

We came like 5 minute before our reservation but wasn't seated until almost 8:20 and our…read morereservation was at 8:00pm. The ambiance inside was so nice and it was busy especially on a Wednesday night. Our waiter was great but really busy during this time. We left before we could even get a menu for desserts. We got the charcoal grilled branzino which was really good and the whole lobster. The Caesar salad was good as well but wished they would cut it up instead. I got a drink which I asked waiter if it was sweeter than other one and he said yes but it was really tangy but refreshing. Because it was a graduation celebration, I really wished the experience had felt a bit more special. After finishing our main courses, we waited a long time for a dessert menu to order a sweet treat to mark the occasion. Eventually, it took so long that we just decided to leave before we could even get one. Great atmosphere and good food, but the long wait times at the door and between courses made the night feel a bit rushed at the end.