Editor Pick
Mon Ami Gabi
- December 11, 2006
- Rated 4 of 5 by
ifor_gal from Chicago, Illinois
Mon Ami Gabi is part of the famous Lettuce Entertain You restaurant enterprise. They own other popular restaurants like Ba Ba Bareeba and Petterino's. The restaurant itself is in the Belden Stratford Hotel in Lincoln Park. It serves classic French food with hearty portions - definitely come on an empty stomach.
I planned our studio's company holiday dinner at this restaurant so we had a pre-selected menu with wonderful options. It was only $45/person for an appetizer, salad, entrée, and dessert. The appetizers are simple and could definitely be shared by two or three people. The baked cheese and tomato is basically a thick tomato soup with cheese and toasted French bread. It's very good and definitely warms you up on a cold December night. I had the sea scallop gratinee which was very rich. The scallops were perfectly cooked - and it laid in a cream sauce topped with cheese.
The salad choices we had were between the Salade Maison which is basically a mixed green salad with flat bread croutons, blue, and vinaigrette and the Belgium Endive which was just wonderful. The salad came with endives, mixed greens, cubed pears, blue cheese, and vinaigrette. By the end of course two, I was getting stuffed - but I definitely had enough room for the star of the evening, filet mignon and fries.
The filet mignon was cooked to perfection and the knife literally just sank into the meat. The buttery wine sauce was the perfect topping to the steak and the fries were thin and crispy. Some of the other options for our entrée was the Dijon crusted salmon which came on top of a bed of mashed potatoes, and the lemon chicken puillard which came with wonderfully crisp snap peas and mashed potatoes.
Now, by the end of course three, if you're not stuffed to the brim, you might get yourself checked for tapeworm! As I mentioned earlier, they don't skimp on portion size. The desserts, although not spectacular in taste or presentation, came in plentiful amounts. I highly recommend sharing the profiteroles or chocolate mousse between three or four people. Both come with more than enough. The crème brûlée was decent, but not that memorable.
Overall, this is a fun place for families looking for a hearty meal that all will enjoy. It's definitely a family establishment -don't let it's location and prices fool you. I could definitely tell most of the guests in the restaurants were regulars and enjoy the family ambience.
They also offer great private rooms for parties of up to 30 - the minimum order is $1250 in a room like that, but that's easy to surpass. For the 9 people that attended our dinner party, the bill came up to $701 which I thought was extremely reasonable. We ordered a nice Pinot Gris for our white and Beaujolais for our red - the servers made sure our glasses never reached empty.
From journal Chicago's Yummy Treasures