Greek luck

I couldn't decide what I wanted for lunch today. Or, rather, I knew right away what I wanted (a chicken flatbread wrap similar to the one I had at Sandella's) but couldn't think where I might find one. I ended up wandering in and out of three places before I ended up at Greek Fire Grill. It'd always looked to me like a guaranteed case of heartburn, so I'd never wanted to stop in except to ask the owner what he was thinking when he named it. But I was hot, sweaty, and hungry and ready to take a chance.

I was struck with how clean the kitchen area was. This was just after I was struck with how totally hot the middle-aged presumably Greek man standing in the kitchen area was. At he wasn't alone; as I waited for my food, it dawned on me that if you were looking to cruise working-class hotties at lunchtime in Evanston, this is exactly the sort of place you would come. And--to my surprise--the meat is cooked to order, so I had several minutes to really drink in the room. I spent most of them watching my sandwich being made.

I specified no tomatoes, so it came with feta, onions, tzatziki, and romaine (another pleasant surprise). Now I'm not a big feta fan, but this wasn't as salty as some, which is good because there was a generous amount in the wrap--almost more than the amount of chicken. The meat could've been a bit more seasoned, but all in all it was pretty close to what I'd been looking for and didn't expect I'd get. Assuming it doesn't make me sick, I plan to be back again for another.

Faux and Awful

It's too early to pull the plug on my experiment with reducing my omeprazole consumption, but so far it seems I was too optimistic about how difficult this would be. Both Friday and Saturday night, I got to sleep about an hour later than I'd attempted to, and then only because in both cases I reached for my last resort after taking a maximum dosage of TUMS--Pepto Bismal. I basically spent all of Saturday with heartburn, which combined with the lack of sleep to really sour my mood.

So my initial reaction to monshu's suggestion that I accompany him to the North Michigan Art Fair was pretty negative. But I reminded myself that the Old Man hardly ever proposes outings, so when he does, he should be encouraged. Unfortunately, by the time I'd come around, it was already after noon. Getting lunch initially would've been the smart choice, but monshu was interested in visiting Fox & Obel to pick up something for dinner and we couldn't carry around raw meat in the hot sun. That meant delaying lunch until nearly three o'clock.

Frankly, I was surprised he suggested F&O given my lackluster memories of our previous trip there. But it's definitely a mistake we'll never make again. For starters, they've made their in store café full service. Doesn't sound like a bad idea, but one of the things I'd most liked about visiting it before was that it was quick. Not any more. Getting a simple steak sandwich and a pear salad took half an hour. They seemed to have only one server taking orders for the whole room. The ice tea we ordered arrived incredibly diluted, so we were told they would "brew some more"; this took more than twenty minutes. They never refiled our water once.

It's a change made even more inexplicable by the fact that--as we discovered--there are two other service areas in the restaurant, both of which are full service: the patio café and the bistro. Due to poor directions, we got these confused and went to the bistro only to find it was no longer seating for lunch. (You'd think they could post them somewhere at the entrance to the long ramp leading to the bistro; you would be wrong.) In general, signage in the place ranged from bad to nonexistent. For instance, they'd moved the cookies to the other side of the store while leaving the sign indicating their old abode in place.

So, yeah, our overall impression from this visit was of complete incompetence. When I showed our server the half a french fry I found in my salad, there was no apology, just a sort of embarrassed grin. When monshu was waiting to buy fish, the butcher kept saying, "Where is everyone?" They were visible in the glassed in room in back, clearly able to observe people waiting up front but apparently uninterested in helping them. The manager of the café was apologetic about the misdirection, but he vanished for long stretches; we even saw a group of customers hang around and finally leave because there was no one in the front of the house to attend to them.

We did get a couple nice pieces of fish, which the Old Man served with a cream sauce. (It was supposed to be sorrel sauce, but apparently our sorrel has lost its mojo.) And some decent sweets, like the rugalach that formed my dessert since the server dropped the check on our table without even asking if we wanted anything (I was eyeing the strawberry rhubarb pie) and I took this as a sign to abandon ship. Such a shame: It feels like that place simply never found the niche it was built for and is now aiming itself squarely at the Navy Pier crowd.