The Avenue

Went there on January 3^rd. We had not been to Avenue in about 6 months. Had the worst Chicken Parmesan ever. The tasteless filet was lukewarm. The red sauce only resembled marinara by color. It had a very unusual taste.
The prices used to be very reasonable. Not the case any longer. Used to be able to get a glass of wine for $ 8.00. Now $ 11.00. The higher prices would be alright if the food was still excellent.
We will not be going back.

We came here to celebrate my hubby’s 66^th birthday. The atmosphere and ambiance is wonderful. The food, not so much… We ordered the calamari appetizer and were given *maybe* 6 calamari rings, grilled. Not what we expected for $ 12. We each ordered the chicken parmesan. The chicken portion was enormous & delicious, but, I personally, didn’t care for the over-​thick spaghetti. The management was kind enough to bring out a small birthday dessert for sharing… server and manager ever-​present. Will return but won’t order the calamari again.

This used to be my family’s favorite restaurant. Great food, great prices, and great atmosphere, all right near our house. It has really gone downhill recently though. All our favorite items were removed from the menu, and our backup options have been changed and no longer have any flavor. I know they are trying to get more local food in there, but they need to include flavor too! Most recently we tried going with relatives visiting from out of town. They got the exact same thing they normally do, while my wife and I got our backup options, and all 4 items were flavorless and bad. We are very sad since we would go here regularly, and now see no reason to return.
Anyone know where their old chef and management went? I want to go eat wherever they went!

Let’s start with the pros:
Good service
Nice atmosphere
Love the lively music in bar area
Great wines
It would nice just to go for drinks & music
Cons:
The food is just OK! Seems to be good quality but NO flavor :(
I ordered the NY strip it was sliced in half!
Who does that to a steak! If I knew that then I would have never ordered it.
So it was kinda dry. I had to use the garlic butter that was for the bread to give the steak flavor!
My 2 other friends ordered the chicken vesuvio which was bland & one was under cooked.
We ordered salad too & those were very good but again it’s just salad.
Sorry but cooking really needs help!
I wish I listened to my fellow Unilocalers! You were all right about this place. The reviews are spot on.

A clean, friendly, upscale restaurant with pretty good food. The wine list was rather short, but still had a very good selection and depth. We had a couple appetizers in place of a meal– it was a first date, did not want to commit to too much! The food was very good, even if the servings were very much on the small side. We decided to split a piece of the chocolate cake for dessert. It was amazingly small, it made a cupcake look big. But the flavor was spectacular! We both highly recommend the cake! The staff was top notch. We wound up completely closing down the bar and the restaurant. The staff never pushed us to hurry up of close out. They stayed open for us, until we were done.
We will be going back, for another date, and have a full meal.

Had dinner at the Avenue Friday night w friends. New chef new menu. We shared a pasta dish as a starter that was excellent. For my entrée – the white fish over risotto – again exceptional! As we were finishing up Chef Will came out introduced himself. This is someone that enjoys what he does — every one in our group had only compliments. Bravo! Will be back soon!

The management and menu have changed over the last month or so and the result is not good. We visited twice in the space of three weeks (and many times prior) and the level of quality was very diminished. Much smaller menu which might be ok but all of what the four of us ordered ended up being mediocre to inedible. Watery ceaser salad, hockey puck meatballs, impersonal service — not ok. Too bad as the area has a number of good restaurants opening and it’s sad to cross one we have liked off of the list. I really hope they regroup and relaunch.

Two items carry out dinner last night. Order was ready as promised. Pasta with crab cake and shrimp; also orzo with shrimp; plus two soups. Was a little disappointed with the orzo shrimp dish, and very pleased with the pasta and crab/​shrimp dish. Did not try the soups, because we were so full from the entrees. I left them for our host to enjoy as leftovers today.
This is one of our favorite places to order from in Wilmette. Previous time ordered many different items, and they were at least as good as the ones last night. We will keep ordering from Avenue whenever we are in Wilmette for a few dinners. Have not eaten yet in the restaurant.

My husband and I just came back from Taco Tuesday and got 3 delicious tacos for $ 13. Not Happy Hour prices but these were quite tasty and fresh tasting. Previously we have come at 10:30 pm on weekend nights and it was empty but the bartender Ryan and the very friendly manager Mike did not rush out to finish our drinks and leave. We have always been impressed with their friendly customer oriented service. I hope they are here to stay! Can’t wait to try their $ 5 burgers on Mondays. I heard they are awesome, using fresh ground beef from Al’s meats across the street.
We will definitely be regulars.

This relatively new restaurant in town is really great to have. The owner is super friendly and so are the servers. The food is good. We are just really happy to have a new choice in town. You will get a good meal at a fair price. I also feel like this restaurant is still evolving into something that will be even better over time. Love the huge booths for my large family!

Service is nice, interior is «interesting» but spacious and comfortable, and food should be better. Hire a real chef!
My main concern sounds so petty, but here it is: the wait staff needs to stop saying every single item on the menu is «amazing». .. it is not! They even said that about my kids’ mac ‘n cheese, and it sure looked and tasted like Velveeta from a box!
Still a fan but would love for the food to improve.

This evening we arrived for Burger night which is advertised online for Monday and Wednesdays but were told it’s now just on Monday. The website should be updated!
We started with the grilled Caesar salad — loved the lightly grilled flavor and abundance of Parmesan; however, a little too much olive oil. The pork chop with mission fig and herbs was delicious — perfectly cooked and a wonderful blend of herbs. The entrée was marred however with very tough, almost in edible rappini. Our waiter was great, very friendly. One of the best kids menus we’ve seen.

Two stars, one for the décor and another one for having live music. Have gone 3 times
and every time the food is a big disappointment I’m sad to say. Had a pasta dish one time that was bland. The last time had a burger that was big but not tasty enough to even eat, and the fries which two of us had were barely warm and tasted as though they were sitting around in the back for hours. I think they need to hire a new chef. I wish they would because I like the ambiance and wish I could go there but not until they figure out how to serve better food.

For 12.50 for a glass of Chardonnay, I expect a better pour!!!

I wanted to like this place because the service was friendly but the food was mediocre to sub-​par, and with the high prices it tasted even worse. Veggie burger was blah and overdone, and came with a bizarre tomato sauce that seemed repurposed from leftover pasta. Not a good combo. Fries were meh– and it’s hard to mess up fries. Fish order came out wrong so I can’t comment other than being unimpressed.
I enjoyed the live jazz and the bar design. This place is always crowded, it seems, but I think it’s because there are very few dinner options in downtown wilmette.

Food was ok. Everyone liked it. Meatball appetizer was a winner. I ordered the Memphis burger. It lacked taste though. It came with ketchup. I would have preferred bbq sauce. I should have asked for it. The problem I have is … that burger was $ 12. My wife ordered a salmon burger with bacon and avocado. Much better choice. Mac and cheese was a big loser with my son. The rigatoni, butter and parm was huge hit with my youngest. (How can you go wrong though) My father asked for the salt while eating the burger he ordered…
Service was ok. We sat at these long booths that sat 7 of us. It makes it difficult for the staff to reach the people sitting far in. It wasn’t that busy for the service to be just ok.
Nothing really impressed me to give this restaurant better than average.

Well, we did return with more family members on a recent Saturday afternoon to celebrate Mother T’s birthday. The food (salmon sandwich, BBQ salmon, tomato bisque, a burger, a shrimp dish) and wines and beer were again very good as was our server and all the service.
We ate in the larger pub area near the bar this time and learned the experience is indeed entirely different than that of the more formal west dining room. For one, good live jazz!
Long, dark wooden booths comfortably accommodate parties of seven or eight and so easily our group of five. (Bussers have some difficulty reaching the far end of the table, so expect to be part of the process.) A table of impressively voiced parents and rowdy, active children and everyone’s de rigueur electronic devices and full length Disney was right behind me and sharing a long, flexible wooden plank seat back, so most of my meal was accompanied by jarring and constant boymovement bouncing padded wood against my own back, rollicking and shouting boyvoices in my ears. Must every public space be a child’s game room? Parents: control your kids. I know, I know, but it deserves repeating. For me it’s the other room for dignified, adult dining enjoyment.
Our attentive and friendly server very kindly gifted Mother T with a delicious birthday celebratory ice cream and hot brownie confection we all enjoyed. We will continue happily to return and fully expect to have wonderful experiences. We hope they extend dining to out of doors and Sunday brunch, too.
Next will be just S and me and we’ll sit at the bar. YAY child-​free adulthood!
~Peter O. and S.

As I continue to write reviews, I am quite aware that I give many of them 4 or 5 stars. I think it’s because, in general, I make sure to only go to places I’ve heard good things about! This was another one.
First caveat — I’m in my late 30’s, but went with a couple who is… older. This is not a young crowd kind of place. It is definitely geared toward the senior set, at least in the back dining room. The bar area, with less formal tables and live music, has a younger vibe.
Nevertheless, I had a great meal! We started by splitting the special mussels dish, which was a simple but tasty overflowing platter of mussels and tomatoes. We savored every bite! I continued the seafood trend for my entrée, going with the grilled wild salmon. It was very flavorful, with very simple seasoning, and served on a bed of lentils and a huge grilled fennel bulb. The fennel was a little overwhelming, but everything went well together.
Check this place out!

This could really be a great restaurant if they could solve the problem of trying too hard in some areas and not trying hard enough in others. For example, the printed menu is riddled with errors, really embarrassing ones. The menu might be the second impression that a person gets of a place after walking in the doors. Or the first, if one starts online.
Overall, I do appreciate the look of the place. The front reminds me of an upscale hotel lobby in the Pacific Northwest circa 1965. The giant hybrid booth-​tables are luxurious, and the poster of classic Canadian beer labels near the hostess stand is charming and intriguing. I even enjoyed the obituary of Eugene Polley, native son and cultural hero (i.e. inventor of the remote control), above the men’s room urinal.
I felt that the service was awkward, but I can’t say that they weren’t trying. Three owner/​manager types hovering around the hostess stand seems like overkill, and I counted three bussers/​food runners who served our table supplementing our actual waiter. Inevitably, there was a mistake, as when my wife’s entrée leftovers were discarded instead of boxed. Then chaos reigned as several persons made different offers for how to compensate us. Just take the check away, have a conference if you need to, then come back and tell us what you did. While they were apologetic, they were certainly not graceful.
The food was up and down. The Norwegian salmon appetizer and brownie/​ice cream dessert were both pedestrian but satisfying. The classic caesar salad was college dorm quality, with about 50% of the lettuce either wilted or brown or hard white spines. However, my entrée was fabulous – the rigatoni calabrese, with fennel sausage, smoked mozzarella, red onions, and roasted tomato sauce
Overall, I feel that the menus need work too. The draft beer list is lazy and boring, adequate for 2004 and but certainly not for 2013 when craft brewing is so fervently established. But even more importantly, on the food side, it seems really meat-​obsessed, and even the vegetarian dishes are rife with cheese or oil. It’s all heavy, high-​fat options. I wonder whether they intend for this to change seasonally.
All in all, this place has potential, but they need to tweak the menus, smooth out the service, and establish consistency in the kitchen.

Oops.
Someone quadrupled the brownie batter and then tried to pass off a four inch tall cake-​brownie hybrid as a single serving! Yummy mistake, but a little warning next time? Especially when three out of four people at a table order them, and a single could have easily been shared?
Oops!
Someone forgot to box an entire leftover chicken breast as requested (entrée came with two). It’s always a shame to waste food like that, so it hurts my heart when that happens. And it was a well-​prepared dish, too. But it was addressed and our bill was adjusted for the error.
OOPS!
Someone forgot to proofread the menu. Why is this the most serious issue? Because unlike decadent serving size and oversights during a busy night, a menu is a foundation. It would have been thought out, reviewed, and crafted with care. Which it may have been. But before it went to press, it needed another set of eyes, or however many it would take to make it perfect. The implication of a sloppy menu is that other aspects (service, food, pricing, sanitation) may be careless as well, and who would want to project that to customers? There are very few things for which I feel there is no excuse, and printed material with spelling, grammar and punctuation errors is one of them. There is too much hard work in getting a restaurant up and running to sell it short with a shoddy menu.
Since our food was good and the atmosphere was somewhat unique in Wilmette, I imagine we would give it another try. I just hope they straighten up a bit. Okay, done, now I can stop feeling like Gordon Ramsay.