-- Room 21 menu
2110 S. Wabash Chicago,60616
Phone: (312) 328-1198
Cuisine: Contemporary American
Parking: Yes
Serving: Dinner LateDinner PHOTO GALLERY
• Room 21
The big room that was once a liquor warehouse is now a dining room as big as a liquor warehouse. "Colorful" is not a strong enough word to describe the atmosphere at Room 21. Early bordello?
So is Room 21 all about dazzle-them-with-the-decor-so-they-don't-give-a-damn-about-what's-being-dished-out?
A few things occurred that might suggest this could be the case. However, my point is that I enjoyed Room 21 as much for its scene (and scenery) as I did for its sizzle.
The menu follows a new trend that gives diners the option of eating light or eating heavy (I am referring to price here).
A meal can be made out of the Prime Steak Sliders, three hefty steak sandwiches with sturdy buns, for $12. Add a side of fries for $7, and you are home free for around $20.
Similarly, the crab risotto cake appetizer is a two-cake affair, both substantial in size, nicely crisped on the outside and fairly priced at $12. These cakes are as much about the risotto "filler" as the crab itself, but enjoyment was found in this hybrid.
Twelve seems to be the magic price on the light side because there's also a 12-ounce "hand-formed" burger for $12 (I did not try it). Room 21 will attract a late-night crowd, so the light eating idea will fit right in.
Room 21 is working with a seeming imbalance right now (the joint is new, so I suspect a bit of menu tinkering will be going on). An appetizer called "chicken confit" was a bit of nine-dollar nonsense in my book. A couple of deboned chicken legs that had been cooked to (almost) the confit stage (cooked in its own fat is what confit is all about), meaning falling apart, the chicken was arranged with a piddling amount of frisee so small it wouldn't serve as a toupee for a canary. Is frisee that expensive that you can't come up with a nicer portion?
Other little matters make you wonder why nobody picked up on this during the trial runs that new restaurants go through. Two-tops are too tiny to hold two entree-portion plates and one side dish. The order: steak Diane, jumbo pork chop, side dish of creamy Parmesan corn.
When everything arrived, the plate under the dish holding the corn had to be removed because it was impossible to fit all three plates on the table. The server tried, moving this and that to the point of absurdity, so I took hold of the smaller plate, the one holding the corn, and plopped it on the table. The server got the message.
Steak Diane was not a steak Diane at all -- classic steak Diane is flamed tableside, but that was not the problem. This steak Diane was simply a grilled steak (tenderloin, I believe) that was sliced and arranged on the plate with hand-cut fries (excellent fries). OK, so where was the all-important sauce? Steak Diane is as much about the sauce, which includes shallots, Worcestershire, butter, cream, brandy and more, as about the meat. After a while, it was determined that the kitchen forgot the Diane sauce, so some was brought in a little pitcher. Would that it had been part of the dish at the outset, since it was a well-made sauce and would have done the meat proud. Wines by the glass here are precious few (bottle choices, though, number in the hundreds), so a wine to go with this dish would be either the Hahn Syrah or Cabernet Sauvignon.
The "jumbo" pork chop was truly jumbo (but then it should be for $26). Excellent pork, cooked just right, moist, flavorful. Paired with a mustardy mangle of spaetzle, diced apples and cuttings of fresh fennel, this is a chop with chops. A Rebenhof Riesling (dry, mineral infused) works well with the pork and spaetzle.
I was expecting more from the creamy Parmesan corn. Not enough Parmesan for one thing, so the dish was inherently bland. And considering the $7 price, not one of the better side dishes.
Dessert choices had me wondering if the kitchen was tinkering, still trying to come up with some ideas. Not much to destroy a diet with these three: blood orange sorbet, red velvet cake and a chocolate mousse with beignets. The red velvet cake was round (think jumbo cupcake) with a snowcap of cream (our server early on said it was marzipan, but that's not even close). This red velvet cake rendition falls somewhere between fair and decent.
The aura at Room 21 also involves red and velvet, so make of that what you will.
Pat Bruno is a free-lance writer, critic and author. E-mail brunoeats@aol.com.
