REVIEW - Bistro L'Eiffel (Chicago)

First of all, you need to know that Bistro L'Eiffel isn't in San Francisco. It isn't even in Chicago proper. It's in Barrington, Illinois, a dull, overpriced and suffering from the housing market implosion suburb of Chicago.

That said, it's a perfect example of what most American suburbanites have to put up with when it comes to eating out, and an equally useful example of why it's better to save up your dining out experiences until you're lucky enough to be in New York, San Francisco, or even LA.

I know that's horribly biased, but what else do you expect from this reviewer?

Bistro L'Eiffel's failings were possibly minor, when taken individually, but when lumped together into one night out, were nevertheless impossible to overlook.

First, the restaurant suffered from the American suburban disease of being located in a mall. Not quite a strip-mall, but it was indisputably a mall.

Second, inside it was laid out like a mall property. A large featureless expanse divided into smaller attempts at Parisian coziness. Needless to say, fail #2.

Next came a high note. Because it was Monday evening, and the normally quiet suburb was about as busy as a wet night on Pluto, all wine was 50% off. This made our choice infinitely more interesting, and as I said, one high note for le restaurant. The ensuing Sancerre was nectar.

My dining companion was a vegetarian co-worker. I don't know whether the fact that he's a co-worker made his choice dull, but his vegetarian-ness certainly didn't contribute any pazazz to the menu selection. In my experience, ordering vegetarian food in a French restaurant is about as interesting as ordering tap water at a wine bar in Champagne.

I shouldn't be so critical, as I showed little imagination in ordering the slow-cooked lamb en croute (which was excellent, if a little buttery in the croute department), chef's salad (I'll never diss a California-sourced salad again), and the chef's platter (which consisted of a tired melee of duck breast, a miniscule quail, and rubbery, andouillete sausage).

All in all, the food could've come from a chef of any nationality in any strip mall in any suburb in most of America.

And that was what confined this escape-to-Paris-wanabe into an ordinary, mid-west business dinner. The middle-of-the-road-ness of it all.