EJ's Place

Excellent food and service.

EJ's is a perfectly fine casual dining family steak kind of place, which is priced like it a fancy high end steak place.  High end it ain't, and I don't need to pay these kind of prices to eat dinner with families with screaming kids and TVs with sports on all over the dining room.  For that kind of experience I should be paying a lot less.  But then again, plenty of people seemed to be willing to pay these kind of prices for an average restaurant experience when we were there.  I am continually surprised at how the mediocre get ahead, but then again it looks like EJ's is laughing all the way to the bank, so what do I know?

The food and service are all fine.  Not great, but certainly very good.  Food is well prepared, if familiar Italian steak house classics.  I had a Veal Chop which was tender and well grilled.  Cottage fries were also crispy and good.  Broccolli Rabe was very nice.  Garabge Salad to start was, once again, fine.  Nothing special but it did everything it was supposed to.

Big fail on the cocktail - my Manhattan was weak and lacking in flavor.  If you are serving big steaks you better know how to mix a cocktail.

Service was prompt and attentive, and they even handled the typical high maintenance requests for special food/drinks with aplomb.

So the food is fine and the service fine. So why don't I rate it higher?  It's boring - you've been to this kind of restaurant a million times and EJ's executes it well but is undistinguished.  The room is awful - this is a casual dining place with TVs playing sports, no décor or ambiance, plenty of screaming kids, and an awful '70s paneling kind of thing going on.  It's just bad.  Finally, it's the prices.  At Chicago Cut I'd pay these prices, but that's a real restaurant.  EJ's is a restaurant where you take your cousin Phyllis when she is in town from Boca.  For that, I should pay less.

Last time I ate here in Dec 2012, someone stole my credit card number and charged a $1000 in Jan - EJ's was the last place I let my card out of my sight!