Best of Chicago, New American, Restaurant Reviews

Giant Review: A space for all culinary appetites

0 comments

Neighborhood: Logan Square

Vegetarian Options Rating: ★★

Pescatarian Options Rating: ★

Affordability: ★★1/2

Ambience: ★★★★

Service: ★★★★★

Food Quality: ★★★★★

Overall Rating: ★★★★★

I was a bit weary of this place since I had heard mixed reviews from friends.  Some people love it while others deeply dislike it.  But I am on the “love this place” team.  It has been awhile where I went somewhere and I was truly impressed with literally everything I ate and that happened here at Giant.  It’s worth the wait and the prices.

I mean many restaurants in Logan Square cost this much and aren’t nearly as good so it’s important to compare prices to other restaurants in the area.  But don’t go here if you’re looking for a cheap meal that will fill you up.

We went here on a Saturday night and were sat down after we waited an hour, which was fine because we just got a drink at Best Intentions next store and walked around.  The seating is a bit tight like in Europe so it can be a bit awkward on date night when you’re squeezed in between two other couples and one of them is constantly professing their love to one another while you and your date are just obsessing over how delicious the food is.

The ambience is pretty and the bathroom was amazing, go to the bathroom!  It smelled great because of the candles they had, I really appreciate nice bathrooms in restaurants and bars.

Service was excellent between the hostess, server, bussers, and chefs bringing out the food in their aprons.  The menu itself is not very vegetarian friendly – for some reason they add bacon/pancetta in a lot of dishes.  Since we eat seafood occasionally, we ate a lot of seafood last night, but they were very accommodating with us not eating meat.

I was nervous since higher-end restaurants that are trendy tend to not be very accommodating with making changes but they were.  I do think they should have more vegetarian options though.

Sweet and sour eggplant with the pita bread like side
Tomato Sortallini

We both had glasses of rose wine (mine was from Greece) and they went perfectly with the meal.  We started off with the fried uni shooters, which were basically an explosion of heavenly flavors in my mouth for thirty seconds.  I don’t know what was all in there but there was something that had a creamy, goat cheese type of consistency and I loved it.

The cucumber soy salad was a great accompaniment to the shooters.  Then we had the sweet and sour eggplant with cashews minus the pancetta.  It was absolutely mouth-watering.  It was a mixture of Indian/Chinese flavors and their “pita” bread was so garlicky and delicious.  It was chilled over the sweet and sour sauce and I couldn’t get enough of it.

After the two smaller plates, we had a lot of delicious pasta.  We had the Tomato Sortallini minus the guanciale.  When they first brought it out, they accidentally put meat in it but then were very apologetic about it, ended up comping that order and then gave us a free dessert so I can’t really complain.  The sauce with the sortallini was amazing.  It came with unique, mini tomatoes and pine nuts.  They served it with some delicious sesame seed bread that absorbed and complimented the sauce perfectly.

 The other pasta dish we had was the Saffron Tagliatelle with king crab and chili butter.  Wow!  The king crab was made perfectly, tasted fresh, and went so well with the chili butter.  I couldn’t get enough of this either.  There was a bit of parmesan, but nothing too overwhelming since it was a very strong dish.  Even though they subtracted meat from some of the dishes, it didn’t feel like they were missing anything.  They were perfectly satisfying.

Saffron Tagliattelle

I usually don’t eat dessert, but the desserts looked so good so we ordered the S’morgasbord, which is basically their gourmet version of smores.  It was decadent, intense, and delicious!  Their graham crackers were the best I’ve ever had and it came with these cute, little oreo cookies over a chocolate souffle.  It was really wonderful but we couldn’t finish it.

As mentioned earlier, they gave us a free dessert so they gave us the Vanilla Cajetta Ice Cream.  I am not a big fan of ice cream but I absolutely loved this.  It wasn’t a heavy ice cream at all.  The ice cream was coated in this pecan strawberry crust and made into a ball.  I actually ended up liking this dessert way more than I expected.

Vanilla Cajeta Ice Cream and S’morgasbord

All in all, I had a wonderful experience here and can’t wait to go back.  I really enjoyed the environment and how the chefs came out, served the food, and described them thoroughly.  They also served the food beautifully.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.