Cafe 103 Review

This is a new thing i am going to do now and that is do restaurant, beer, liquor and wine reviews. Mainly because I love all of those things I think you should know when making a decision about dining and drinks a like. Daralyn and i just went out to eat tonight in celebration of life and for us being able to spend time together (for once here in Chicago). I wanted to eat some place nice and i figured we should try this place because it is in our back yard, literally a 3 min walk from our apartment, and it also gets bonus points for being BYOB, and if you don't know about BYOB it is my best friend because i am a beer and just an over all snob when it comes to consuming alcohol. any way on to the review.

So, we enter into a very nice quaint restaurant which seats 30 people(make reservations) a little noisy, but that is okay because it is people having conversation and not yelling over loud music and they are truly enjoying themselves. They have a place to hang your coats which is nice and the restaurant is a nice temperature where they are not trying to freeze you out so that they can turn out more plates. They are truly in this type of dining to cater to you at that moment, which is perfect when you are spending a moderate amount of money on dining.

We are seated and poured water and they cork our bottle of wine for $5 and they bring us some charred flat bread with a nice dusting of sea salt, which provides a good balance between the soft taste flat bread with a char. We nibble on this perfect portion of flat bread very quickly, and it's not too much to where you get too full off of bread and lose sight on the rest of the meal. 15 minutes pass and then comes the appetizer.Our appetizer was an order of Braised Short Ribs with sauteed Mushrooms(unfortunately we did not order it with the mushrooms, a rookie mistake more on that later). I wasn't exactly sure what to expect from the Braised Short Ribs so i just was like it will be okay and i will eat it. Now we get our order of Braised Short Ribs and it is way different then what i pictured. It was a nice well laid out setting of boned pork ribs with a nice braised sweet sauce on top of a potato/bean puree. mix this all with the beautiful flat bread and you have an amazing experience happening in your mouth kind of like food foreplay, i am being serious too. 15 minutes pass after we are finished and then comes our main course.

I ordered the Filet Mignon cooked rare with Broccoli Rabe, Sauteed Mushrooms (never eat), Caramelized Onions and some roasted potato fingerlings. (Now, to those of you who want to piss off a chef order a filet mignon anything other than rare, and the same goes for me. If i know you eat steak well done i will cook your ass sirloin, you do not get to eat filet mignon. lmao, and i am serious.) I wasn't sure what broccoli rabe was until i ate this dish and all i have to say is, Asparagus is officially played out with my filet mignon. The sauteed mushrooms, i was automatic with the no when i ordered it and then i talked to the waitress Christy after we finished the appetizer and she said that she hated mushrooms too, because of texture and flavor too until Rob(executive chef) prepared them for her, so i said lets add the mushrooms to the order. The flavor and the textures of every thing on the plate were perfect and absolutely amazing in my mouth. i would have been kicking myself had i not had the sauteed mushrooms involved in my meal. The mushrooms added a buttery quality that could not have been executed otherwise. everything was perfectly timed and proportioned on my plate that i was perfectly content when i finished my dinner. The meal was like pure intercourse and i was ready for a second round aka desert and coffee.

Daralyn ordered Grilled Walleye with roasted Acorn Squash, steamed Baby Spinach and a Dill Applesauce garnish. The walleye was served on top of a shredded acorn squash with the dill applesauce surrounding the main course. Daralyn let me sample a piece of walleye, spinach, squash and dill applesauce, and it was so intricately delicate and sensual that you had to take your time to absorb all the soft delicate flavors since the over all texture was soft. She said she was really full and wasn't sure if she would order desert i said, "just order the desert and we will go from there". she did and i got after dinner coffee and we talked and waited 20 mins for desert, a perfect amount of time to digest and just more time to talk about food and forget everything else going on in our lives.

I ordered the Chocolate Lava Cake with strawberry compote syrup with a fresh strawberry. It originally called for vanilla Gelato, but i am allergic to dairy, so scrap the gelato. Rob made this desert fresh for me and it was phenomenal and it was the perfect ending to the meal, the coffee was perfectly robust, dark, earthy and sensual. This was perfect to end such an amazing dinning experience, like having all night sex and so completely satisfied, where at the end of all of this food you didn't feel you cheated yourself for not eating better, everything was healthy and the cake was gluten free as well, so take that!

the wine we sipped on all night was a vintage 2001 Spanish Rioja that was so mild and soft that you almost felt like there was no body to it and that it lacked any real interesting quality, but that is where you would be wrong. The fact that a nice red could be so soft and mild is great because none of the food we had was so strongly flavored that this paired perfectly with the food, where it was just a good compliment to such nice food and wasn't a bossy wine that told you that you made the wrong choice. lmao i am such a loser. now if i was to choose beer for it, i would choose Three Floyd's Brewery Gumballhead for Daralyn's dinner and for mine i would have chosen Two Brothers Brewery- The Bitter End on English hand pull. For my desert beer i would have chosen Goose Island's-Blueberry Imperial Stout, for its sweet fermented flavors of blueberries and dark chocolate.

if you read this full thing you are amazing!!!!

All you need to know is......so i give it 5 ICY'S out of 5. i will be back soon, plus i will be taking cooking lessons next door attached to the restaurant.