Nels W.'s Profile

I'm a little scared to give this a 4-star review because it's not like a 4-star quality restaurant. But my wife and I got the Sushi Mix special for dinner and had 4 rolls of sushi (with miso soup) for $17. We brought a bottle of wine and there was no corkage fee!

The service wasn't great, but not in a traditional rude and/or slow way. The waiter was probably the owner and he was really shy and cute. The place has only been open a little while, so I'm sure he'll get better with more experience.

The sushi was very good. The avocado roll was fresh, but plain. The vegetable roll was very unique for a vegetable roll - also very fresh, and delicious. The Philadelphia roll was fine, but a little heavy on the cream cheese. The Galapagos roll (which we weren't supposed to get for the price of the special, but he let us get anyway) was excellent.

We recently went to Kamehachi (downtown) and felt that the sushi at Galapagos was more fresh and certainly a better value.

I saw some reviews with complaints about the service, so I'll have to start by saying that the service for my wife and I was fine. I'm giving it 2 stars for the food.

The decor was really nice, and actually raised my expectations, but the food was not great; really only presented well. I had the Hong Kong steak as part of a special Prix Fixe menu week for downtown Chicago restaurants. If I'd paid menu price, I'd have been very disappointed. My wife had the prawns (she shared a few with me), and we both agreed it tasted like something you could get at Panda Express for a quarter of the price.

The drinks were good, but still overprice for what they were. If I'm going to eat downtown, I'd rather pay less money for the same quality of food, or else pay more money and get really good food.

Went on a Thursday for the Fixed Price menu and it was very good. Best part was the $5 for 3 glasses of wine. They're not messing around with that!

Nachos!

Quesadillas are good too. I've had other stuff... don't remember exactly what, since I usually just get an order of nachos and quesadillas, but it's always all good.

Make sure to order ahead of time (Burt requires that for reservations) so you won't have to wait too long for delicious pizza.

Burt talked my friend into getting stuff on the pizza, which was fine, but the true star here is the sauce. As such, I'd like to try Burt's pizza without anything but cheese and sauce.

I had sausage on one half and bell peppers on the other. Both were great. Certainly better than trying to get in Uno's downtown, or some other crowded place like that.

A warning, though... I think there's only 2 (maybe 3) people working in the whole place. So the service is pretty sketchy, but if you prepare yourself for it, it's kind of fun.

How come "vegetarian friendly" places can't make actual vegetarian friendly food that's as good as normal restaurants? Seriously, if I'm going to take any of my vegetarian friends out for dinner (or my wife, who doesn't like meat), I'm going to a real restaurant, and they can just order the items that don't have meat in them. My wife (once again, she doesn't eat meat) agreed with me on this after we went to Alice N Friends.

Alice N Friends not only has bad fake meat, they throw in the fake meat in the tofu dishes. So if you're a vegetarian because you don't like meat (like my wife), I'm not sure there's much you can here. I got the BBQ Steak and the sauce was good, but the "steak" didn't taste at all like steak. It would have been fine if they'd just said it was tofu. But trying to pass it off as meat was ridiculous.

Also, the restaurant appears to be a front for a cult, which is fine, I guess, if you know what you're getting into, but it's kind of creepy if you don't know that going in. I am pretty sure the cult ideals are what led to the no alcohol, no BYOB policy. Once again, if you're okay with that, then fine. But the food wasn't good enough for me to want to limit my options like that. I just felt like this place was being too restrictive and not providing enough reward for being subject to those restrictions.

Got take out for lunch. It was good food. I'd recommend doing the buffet, though, if you're going for lunch, because otherwise it's a little price for what it is. Would have been a great deal for dinner.

It's all you can eat, so that's good. There is a great variety of rolls, and they're reasonably good. You get a lot of appetizer choices.

My issues were:
- Making a reservation for 7:30 and not getting seated until 8:15. It's a tiny place, so it's kind of understandable, and the waitress was nice about it. I'd just suggest making your reservations a little early.
- The sushi and the pieces of the rolls fell apart more than any other sushi I've had. I know you're going to have some fall apart, but these seemed a little too unstable.

Beyond that, though, if you're in the hood or looking for somewhere to go before a night out on Lincoln Ave, it's a good place to go.

It's BYOB, and they didn't charge us a corkage fee, so that was nice.

I am totally with Jess S on this one. I saw my friends play here and I will never go back.

The whole place literally smelled like a combination of vomit, crap, and old chinese food (the chinese was laying open on the bar).

I didn't want to give them any more money after paying the $8 cover to listen to my friends in the stench, but I felt bad enough for dragging some other people there to see them play, that I felt compelled to buy something.

When I was trying to figure out what to order "for the ladies" I asked the bartender (who evidently was also the sound guy - probably the reason my friend's acoustic guitar didn't work) what the martini was that I'd spotted across the bar. It was just gatorade in a martini glass. No martini suggestion were offered, despite my interest. Thanks.

The cherry on top: Lilly herself was there and we got a personal "F you" from her while she was putting empty glasses on the bar and dripping their contents on my wife.

If you're looking for a big sandwich for lunch - it's here. Make sure you take lots of extra napkins because it can get messy trying to get that big of a sandwich in your mouth. I've tried several different kinds and all of them were good.

If you're not down with the sandwiches, they also have a pretty decent array of pastas and salad-type things.

Drinks are fountain drinks, so if you eat in, you can get refills. Just a bonus.