Erie Cafe

Being the gourmand that I am I just love my business trips to Chicago. Not only do I get to see members of my family (daughter Motherrocker, son-in-law Armenian Deal Hound, and granddaughter Ms. Dukes), not only do I get to spend time with my partners and friends Lakeview Coffee Joe and Ricardo, but I get to sample from the incredible variety of quality eating experiences that make up Chicago. I love living in Albuquerque and wouldn't move but from an eating perspective it is strictly minor league.

Joe and Ricardo took me for dinner to a place called the Erie Cafe located downtown oddly enough on Erie Street (go figure).

My partners (as usual) browbeat me until I agreed to order a cocktail with them

Hey! Who put that picture of adorable granddaughter Ms. D riding her bike into a bush here?

LCJ has written twice about the food and service at Erie and I totally concur. He particularly expounded on the grilled calamarie appetizer with a sherry (I think) reduction sauce. Bread sopping up good!

Going to a classic steak house such as Erie Cafe is never going to be cheap. You expect great ingredients, well prepared and great service. Got all those. I was a little disappointed with the wine list. It was limited in selection and very pricey even for the steakhouse genre. However, there were a couple of relatively inexpensive wines. The first we tried, this malbec from Argentina, was very nice.
I had my salad with blue cheese dressing - very good.

It's hard to see but this is a classic dish called Chicken Vesuvio. It's hard to find a lot of times these days. The chicken and potatoes are roasted together. Very yummy.
Joe had shrimp de Jonghe. Excellent. A lot of time jumbo shrimp are tough, chewy and not flavorful. These had great flavor.
Ricardo was in the mood for restraint so he order the lamb chops. Ok in reality he ate two, gave me one, and took two home. They were the best of our dishes in my opinion.
We ended up ordering a second bottle of wine (and all you smarty pants out there we brought about 2/3rds of it home so no Joe is not a lush). Santa Cristina is a widely distributed, popularly priced Tuscan wine and the price on the menu was where it should be for a reasonable but not exhorbitant mark-up.
It was a very enjoyable meal. The typical steak and fish entrees are definitely not cheap. However, my chicken was about 40% less than the steaks and other chops as were the other chicken entrees. There was also a wide variety of pastas which were even less. If the pastas are as good as my chicken, one could definitely go here and enjoy the service and not break the bank.