E+O Food and Drink

Went to check out E+O on Mother's Day, perhaps not the best day to try a recently opened restaurant, but they should be prepared to put their best foot forward on one of the busiest days of the year. Also, our reservation was for 7:30 pm, late in the day for this occasion, but my wife had gotten a rave review from a friend so we had high expectations. Got there about 5 minutes ahead of reservation and waited about 10, maybe 15 minutes to be seated and the hostess apologized for the delay, which wasn't too bad for holiday dining.

Sat down and a busser immediately asked us for our choice of water - spakrling, bottled still or tap. We went with Lake Michigan. The server came and explained we could order family style off the limited Mother's Day Menu. We opted for the greater variety on the regular menu. I ordered a glass of the La Posta Malbec. Malbecs are noted for being bold, intense wines. This was a thin, closed-up tasting wine that could have been merlot.Perhaps I should have gone for the more expensive malbec at $15 a glass, but at $11 a glass the one I had should not be this disappointing.

They have a lot of small plates and starters so we ordered two. The first, the Bone Marrow and Carne Asada Mini Tacos were good, with the pork presented on top of the marrow in the bone, with a grilled lime to rub on the four soft taco shells provided. I don't remember seeing the pickled onion relish described on the menu and the tomato jam seemed to be just stewed tomato, no spice or chili, closer to ketchup than salsa. We also got the Disco Fries, which was a version of poutine, the Canadian dish of french fries with gravy melted cheese curds. The fresh cut fries were very good. The gravy looked and tasted like gravy from a jar in the supermarket and the cheese sauce was reminiscent of melted Cheez Whiz or Velveeta, very little flavor.

We were informed that they ran out of the Confit Pork Shank we had ordered as an entree, and after consulting the menu again, ordered the Filipino Pork Belly. We were glad we had ordered the polenta cakes as an extra side, because the Pork Belly was at most 4 oz. with a small pile of sauteed greens the menu said were Snow Pea Sprouts. The server had said we could safely split an entree after two starters but this was not the case. This was not an entree, this was a $20 appetizer, which could only be considered an entree with the addition of the $6 polenta cakes. Pork belly is not an expensive cut of meat. It was tender, and the soy-based sauce worked well with it, if only there was more of it. The polenta cakes  had an odd spongy quality about them that may have been from a fine grain instant polenta that didn't have the texture I associate with polenta. My daughter enjoyed her Gnocchi with bechamel and pesto, but again a small portion that was enough to satisfy her but not justify the $12 price tag.

Still hungry at this point we ordered three desserts but shared. At this point, it was close to 9:30, the restaurant was emptying out yet the desserts came out piecemeal. The Red Velvet Lava Cake my wife ordered was, I think, simply a bad idea. The signature of a lava cake is the deep dark chocolate flavor. Red Velvet has a very mild cocoa flavor that is mostly just sweet but gets it's distinctive look from a lot of red food coloring. Maybe they use beet juice to be more "natural" but still just sweet. I ordered the Ricotta Cheese Parfait with Blueberry Crumble which we were subsequently told was also 86'd for the evening. So I subbed the Cookie Monster, which were small cookies with a chocolate dipping sauce. The server said we would get 2 of each cookie - Chocolate Chip, Nutella, Almond Gingersnap, and Carrot-Pineapple balls.  There were no chocolate chip cookies, and we were apparently given an extra gingersnap and Nutella cookie. These were not freshly baked cookies, possibly baked earlier that day, but not the "love from our oven" advertised. The Nutella cookies did not have much Nutella flavor and the almond gingersnap likewise did not have much almond or ginger flavor. The Carrot balls were basically a carrot cake version of rum balls but with no booze. My daughter loves churros, so she wanted the Churritos with chocolate "fondue." These were heavy lumps of undercooked dough. In an interesting bit of multi-purposing ingredients, there is a Warm Chocolate Rice Pudding dessert on the menu, which apparently also doubles as the chocolate dipping sauce for the cookies and the "fondue" for the churritos. Also chocolate "fondue" should generally be warm. A bit of culinary laziness here re-purposing a single product on half your dessert menu. And now effectively having had 4 out of 6 items on the dessert menu, all characterized by a heavy cloying sweetness and not much flavor.

I was glad we had a $10 coupon printed online. At just short of $105 without the coupon, most of our meal suffered from a frustrating blandness resulting in the worst expensive meal I've ever had.

I wanted to like this place so badly after all the rave reviews but the food was just ok to me and after tasting the following dishes tonight, it definitely was NOT worth the prices we paid.  

FOOD:

Brussel sprouts and kale salad:
Before we started to dig in to the salad, the waiter poured all of the dressing in the salad I was a little scared that the salad would be salty and drenched but this was not the case at all.  It was light and delicious!  Unfortunately, I found a piece of twisted metal from those metal sponge scrubbing things (forgot what it was called) in the salad.  I understand these things happen but when I mentioned this to another friend after dinner, she also found the same thing along with a piece of plastic on separate days/occasions in her food at the restaurant.  Hmm.. I hope the restaurant is aware of this and make changes.  This could be very dangerous! I would check each dish before eating.

Chicken and rice:
The sauce these used for this was also light and not salty.  Some reviewers said it was bland but I'm not a fan of salty foods and I felt that it was seasoned perfectly.  This dish was pretty good but some of the pieces of chicken was really tough and I didn't think it was worth the price.

Linguini sweet cream corn :
Disappointing.  I've read so many rave reviews on this but it tasted almost like alfredo sauce pasta to me except without the drenching of the sauce. I may have expected something completely different (like creamed corn sauce?) but I didn't understand what was supposed to be special about this dish. Did they forget the sauce on the pasta? I didn't taste any of the sweet cream corn sauce nor see any of it. It was more like a dried up butter linguini.

Pineapple/Carrot cake:
Also disappointing.  The dish was incredibly sweet (a little too sweet) bc of the syrup and cherries and pineapples that went on top of the cake. The cream cheese frosting was very good though and I think I would have been happy just to eat the frosting with the cake part.  

Coffee: My friend got the coffee and she said it tasted burnt. :(

SERVICE:
Great staff! Our waiter was very helpful and the busboys were awesome and friendly.  Our waters were refilled promptly and we never had to flag down our waiter. Even as we were leaving, the valet guys opened the door and thanked us out the door.  So polite :D

I still can't figure out if I just picked the wrong dishes to try at the restaurant or if the food is truly not as hyped up as it's made out to be.  Perhaps I can give this place another chance but not sure what dishes are worth the prices that go along with it.

Go try this restaurant!  I love finding Chicago worthy restaurants in the suburbs!  I just wish this one was closer to me!  I would go there every day for the kale salad alone! It is crispy brussel sprouts, kale, minced shrimp in a sweet chili vinaigrette.  Other stand outs are the sea bass and the tuna poke on wantons.  The only one I didn't LOVE (but was still very good) was the bone marrow and carne asada tacos.  I got them because of the reviews, while good, didn't give me the wow factor that the other dishes did.

The ambiance is also city quality and inviting.  It is a very open space with partial partitions separating the bar area and an smaller dining area towards the back, the largest space in the center.  We were quite close to the tables next to us, but it was fun compairing dishes and ended up taking and giving recommendations.  

Service was great, almost overly attentive!  IF you can complain about that.  We were getting a kick out of every sip of water we took was quickly replaced!

Looking forward to going back and bringing friends.  Wouldn't mind he decided a location in Elmhurst was a good idea!