Chicago is well known as one of the big beef capitals for the US and everyone recommended eating a steak. As a result we ended up at the Chicago Chop House, one of Chicago’s oldest steak places. We turned up without a reservation and had to wait at the bar for a while. It’s small interior on the ground floor made that pretty difficult not to mention more complicated with a number of patrons just eating dinner at the bar. You end up pretty much awkwardly in the path of many of the waiters and the narrow passage way that leads to the restrooms.

The interior looks grandiose and old with plenty of pictures of people who apparently ate here and all of it easily fitting into the scene of some move set for gangster times. They had a couple of TVs near the bar to keep those solo dining entertained, much like many other places in North America seem to have. Talking to the hostess they apparently have three floors of dining so there was plenty of space for all.

When we were seated they had two menus, one the normal one and the other listing the daily specials. I asked a few questions about different sauces, cuts and unfortunately I have to say that it felt like we were constantly being up-sold. In the end I had a 16oz Fillet Mignon although I probably should have gone for the only other smaller one on there since apparently that’s a pound. I didn’t realise it at the time but there were plenty of bigger cuts including a 24oz, a 32oz and a whopping 64oz (4 pound!) steak.

We ordered a couple of sides as well – the asparagus was well overcooked and the hollandaise sauce pretty average. The onion rings were fantastic, massive, crisp and stayed crunchy for the entire dinner and the truffle “mac ‘n’ cheese” was absolutely divine. The steak was pretty good and even though I struggled towards the end, I was pretty happy to have ordered the steak. I enjoyed the dinner at this place although I will say that it seemed overpriced (a combination of being an upscale steak house and one of the more popular ones).

Name: Chicago Chop House
Found at:
Website: http://www.chicagochophouse.com/
The Damage: My portion of the bill came to US$£120 including the steak, sides, a beer, a couple of glasses of wine, tax and tip