Joe Did it Half Way.
Another day, another restaurant. This week we ventured down to Irving Park and Oakley to visit a long time favorite, Chicago Joe’s.
The weather was about as nice as it’s gotten this summer (read: no rain and temps higher than 60) so we opted to eat outside. This place has a nice outdoor dining section that runs along the entire side on Oakley, which means you don’t have to put up with all of the noisy traffic on Irving if you’re seated a few tables back.
We’re still on the restaurants.com certificate kick and therefore under pressure to hit a minimum tab so we ordered not one, but two appetizers – the nachos grande and mozzarella sticks. Both were delightful dishes void of any real nutritional value, but then again how often do you order two appetizers? Exactly. The only complaint (from Clark, of course) is that the nachos came with a healthy dollop of sour cream, which he hates. Everything else, even the surprising decision to use cheese sauce as opposed to real melted cheese on the nachos, went down just fine.
there were 6. but they were really good. No pics of the nachos, they went too fast.
Clark ordered the “Irving Park Road Trip” which is a 1/2 lb.” borger” (menu labeled Cheezborgers) topped with melted pepper jack cheese, then spread with guacamole and salsa, and a glop of sour cream. Clark politely asked for no sour cream, it’s just not his thing (refer to the nachos incident earlier in the meal). The borger was excellent. Really. It comes with all the regular fixings of a standard burger like lettuce, tomato, onions (he gets excited when they put the toppings on the side so you can control them), a long crunchy pickle, and a small cup of coleslaw, nestled in a bed of fries. It was extremely different from what he was going to order, which was a half slab of ribs (surprise, surprise).
The burger was top notch — grilled to excellence, a whole half pound of chared meat that was mouthwatering just upon inspection. Then when Clark took that first bite, he could tell why it was named after a predominately central American part of the city. The mixture of salsa, guacamole and warm grilled burger popped on his taste buds, letting him know how they do it. SPICY! It was a hot fire dance in his mouth, but not in a bad way…in a really mild and controlled kind of way. The guac contained some pepper and was made with cold fresh avocado that really did wonders in bringing out the full on flavor when mixed with the onions. Finally, the fries were long, crisp, and seasoned with a pluthera of different spices, but all were good, and they didn’t over do it with salt — really excellent when accompanied by some good old Heinz ketchup. The slaw? eh, not so much. KFC does better slaw than Joe’s.
In a lame attempt to balance out the multiple appetizers, Lois ordered the Cobb salad. She should have ordered the cheeseburger. Even now, Lois can’t put her finger on what made the Cobb salad so “ick.” Maybe it was something with the Thousand Island dressing. Maybe it was something with the over-sized slices of tomato, avacado, egg, chicken, bacon and others. Or maybe it was something with the lettuce. Because Lois has had hundreds of Cobb salads in her time and this one just didn’t do it. At all. And that’s all she has to say about the thing.
One side note about Joe’s. We could have just hit this place on an off night, but the service was kind of random. Our waitress was hard to pin down (even when we wanted to pay) and the runners weren’t all that helpful, although it didn’t seem that busy outside.
So one of us ended up happy and the other not so much, but we only paid less than $20 (minus the gift certificate) for the ordeal so we won’t argue.
