Petterino's Downtown

Recently I met some friends’ downtown after work to see Book of Mormon. I’m not sure I’ve laughed so hard at a Broadway show before in my life! While planning our mid-week theater outing one of my friends suggested Petterino’s for dinner. It’s within 3 blocks of the theater, and it’s right by the blue line “El” so it’s in a nice place for everyone to meet, right across from Daley Plaza, and right next door to my favorite place to stalk, Do-Rite Donuts! (See my post on Do-Rite donuts and you’ll understand!) Actually Do-Rite is carved out of Petterino's.

Petterino’s is a Lettuce Entertain you restaurant (LEYE). LEYE owns a good selection of higher end dining establishments in Chicago, and has started to go Nationwide. One thing I love about LEYE is on their corporate site they list all their restaurants that have a gluten free menus so you can pick a place to eat, as you peruse their GF menus. Plus I’ve never had a bad experience with any of their restaurants, they are extremely professional and take the time to make sure that customers are satisfied with all dining experiences.

I checked out the menu on Petterino’s site, before heading into the city, because I was worried if my train was delayed I’d miss dinner.  I picked out a couple items and if needed I’d text my friend to order for me. I did get there, right on time, and we were seated right away. This place fills up quickly, so I do recommend having reservations if you want to eat on the weekends, or during the dinner rush.

The menu the waitress gave me was much more expansive than the menu that was posted online. They also had Two Brother’s Prairie Path beer, and Tito’s Vodka listed for gluten free drinks. They had soups, salads, appetizers, pasta, steak, fish, chicken, dessert; WOW! It was a great menu with a lot of choices, I was actually left debating what to order, I finally had to ask our waitress what to get. I ended up with the Gluten free linguine, with vodka sauce, though I was thinking of going with the asiago sauce first. OMG, it was amazing tasting, it had a bit of a kick, but wasn’t too spicy, the pasta was very slightly Al Dente, but you could tell the pasta was thoroughly cooked, and had a lot of flavor to it. 

I want to go back. Though I don’t know what I’d order yet, but they had a Midwest corn chowder soup that sounded good, and the steak Diane, as well as the Amish chicken were the top 3 choices on my list.

I give them 4 dragonflies. Our server was awesome; she took the time to talk to me about the menu when the restaurant was super busy. I emphasized gluten free, she repeated it back to me, and when she brought out the bread basket, she placed it on the opposite end of the table! It’s a must try if you want a nice, classy place to eat in the city.