Room 21: Sometimes Trendy Does Mean Awful (Chicago Area Restaurant Review 20)

We really wanted to like this restaurant since it is the new "hot" restaurant in our South Loop neighborhood. That is particularly true because the room is beautiful, with an interesting pink and red color scheme, and the outdoor garden, where we sat, was almost too good to be true. It is spacious, with plenty of trees, yet few bugs, a cobblestone floor, and cast iron tables. All in all, a wonderful place to have a meal outdoors in Chicago, but the food still has to be good, which it wasn't.

The meal started well, with one of our favorite appetizers, tuna tartare. Lisa liked this dish almost as much as the tuna tartare at Vie (see our prior review), as it was fresh with a bit of a spicy flavor. Steve ordered a goat cheese and shrimp quesadilla, which he thought was quite tasty. Lisa found it a bit odd. We should also note that while the pretzel rolls themselves were good, the butter had a sour milk-like undertaste. Lisa, who normally slathers her rolls with butter, couldn't eat it.

Things went downhill. We did not have salad, which was probably a good thing. To say the main courses left something to be desired is being generous. Steve's ribeye was closer to well-done, even at the bone, than to the medium rare that he ordered. It also had absolutely no flavor, even at the bone, which is quite an accomplishment because it's difficult to make prime beef taste bad, but they did it. Lisa had a ten-ounce filet mignon, which she also ordered medium rare. Hers was pink in the center and well done at the edges. The medium-cooked center had some flavor, the rest did not.

For dessert, Lisa ordered a chocolate-raspberry tort which she thought had to be good, especially because the waiter (who managed to be unctuous, pompous and inept at the same time--and, as you all know, we are not service snobs) said the chocolate was very dark. She was very disappointed. The whole tort was overbaked and too crunchy, she tasted no raspberry at all, and while the chocolate didn't taste like milk chocolate, which she dislikes, it didn't taste like dark chocolate either. Worse, the tort had the same sour milk undertaste as the butter, causing her to leave over half her chocolate dessert -- which violates one of her personal commandments (thou shalt not waste dark chocolate). Steve was also not enthused with the peach cobbler, which would have been a total washout except for a decent vanilla ice cream scoop on top.

We did like the Reisling we ordered, and Room 21's wine list has an interesting feature. Each wine is designated light, medium, or full bodied, which helped us choose. The service was extremely slow. On a Monday night, it took us 2 and a half hours to get out of the restaurant, though we didn't even have a salad course. (We usually like to linger over dinner, but this was ridiculous.) Part of the delay was because Lisa told the waiter the meat was overcooked, and he told us dessert would be complimentary. But it took him three tries with Steve's credit card to actually get the correct bill. We were willing to leave without the dessert being taken off the bill, but he wouldn't let us, prompting Lisa to note the similarity to the Hotel California.

We both liked the bathrooms at Room 21, which were very close to 3s. Both had great decor, with stone floors, small rooms instead of stalls, no touch faucets, and no touch dispensers. However, there were a few towels on the floor in both, and Lisa's toilet seat was broken, which she didn't realize until it slipped. (She was uninjured.) Also, the towels were half the usual size, and not big enough to dry one's hands, which seemed quite odd in a trendy restaurant.

Dinner for two at Room 21, with a bottle of relatively inexpensive wine and without being charged for dessert, was $180.

Our ratings for Room 21, 2110 S. Wabash Ave., Chicago, Illinois:

4.5 of 10 Steak Knives (and dropping with each retelling); 2.5 of 3 Bathroom Brushes; 1.5 of 5 Bug Zappers (0 being the best rating)