If you ever thought about eating good food inside of a sauna, this is the place. Last Monday, I and a lady friend of mine went to Avec for dinner. Located in the west loop at 615 Randolph Street, the kitchen stays open until midnight so we got there around 9:30.
The place does not take reservations and when we got there it was a 45 minute wait. The outside waiting area was open, so we had some drinks to wait for a table. However, there were no chairs and no bartender, so we had to go to the bar get drinks and go back outside. Kind of awkward because of how small the place was but no big deal.
Inside the space was nicely used, for being a small place there were a lot of people there eating. It’s a long somewhat narrow space with one half being a bar and the other half being 1 long table that extends the entire restaurant.
The wine list was decent sized with selections from Spain, Portugal, France, and Italy. Around 10 bottle selections from each for reds and whites, and 5 of each for sparkling and digestif. Bottle prices ranged from around 25-100, and glasses went from 8-15. Glasses were actually around 1 and ¾ of a glass. They were served in this mini decanter with a seamless wine glass over the top, neat little piece of flair, kind of unnecessary but it looked chic and kind of went along with what the all around atmosphere of the place.
The actual menu was very cool with a selection of small and large plates, also a choice of cheeses. We chose three cheeses for 15 dollars as a starter. They were all very nice and had great explanations from the server. Then we went on to have the chicken sausage and the chorizo stuffed bacon wrapped dates both small plates which were really cool. The chicken sausage I thought was standard, like exactly what you would expect it to be. But the dates were fantastic. Main course I got the braised pork shoulder which was good, but not exactly what I expected it had a Dijon sauces that I may have mis read because all I could taste was Dijon overpowered everything else on the plate. The other main we got was a oriental style steak that was good, but nothing great. The meat was tender but the sauce was not enough for me, I thought it was almost missing something. In all honesty I think because the dates were so amazing I felt like nothing could hold a candle to them.
Over all I had a great time, the food was either good or great. Wine was moderately priced with good selection. Our total bill was around 160 with starter, small plates, mains, and almost 2 bottles of wine. I recommend it highly
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