Un-chained Food

About 5 years ago I discovered this restaurant, thought it was cool, and then could not find it again.  Now, I've rediscovered it - it's at 71 West Monroe in downtown Chicago, about a block and half west of the Palmer House Hilton.

This restaurant serves great italian food in architecture that needs to be seen to be appreciated.  From the street it just looks like a small narrow local restaurant, but in reality it's Chicago's oldest italian restaurant.  It's actually 3 restaurants, now, with the upper story being sort of an 1001 Nights mediteranean village theme serving more traditional italian, the middle story is all cool copper/brass curves serving modern italian, and the basement is the grotto I didn't get to see.

If you get a chance, at least see the middle level - it's superb.

Edit: aha - they have a website: www.italianvillage-chicago.com

OK, not counting the fondue party I attended at Mark and Mary's, the interesting places to eat at the Twin Cities are:

• The Egg & I, great breakfast place in Uptown (2828 Lyndale Avenue S., Minneapolis) - this one is called the Little Egg - when it's busy go to the Big Egg on University
• Just north at 2610 Lyndale is the French Meadow Bakery & Cafe, all things organic
• Chino Latino, party place with food interwoven from Mexico, Thailand, Jamaica, Polynesia, and Korea; and luscious drinks in Uptown (2916 Hennepin Ave, Minneapolis)
• Arezo Ristorante, excellent Italian in Edina (5057 France Avenue South, Minneapolis)
• and across the street from A.R. is an interesting retaurant with a sort of french-twist on american cuisine with lots of seafood, but darned if I can remember its name...

While visiting the Toledo Area Chamber of Commerce, I was looking for a different place to eat dinner and spotted an office building with a sign outside and a number of cars - the sign said "Byblos Lebanese and Italian Dining".  That sounded different enough for me!

Upon entering the front door it looked like an office with a stairway leading upstairs - but once I got up it looked like a nice (slightly older) restaurant.

Looked at the menu and ordered beef kibbe (I've seen this spelled various ways) as an appetizer - this is basically raw meat with onions and other goodies, ground to a paste (sort of looks like liverwurst and hamburger mixed together).  The waitress said that their might be half-orders available but was unsure of the price but the price was cheap so I ordered it as an appetizer, and the kebab combo for my meal.

I was served a basket of flatbread - actually quite a few of them, and then the kibbe arrived and it was HUGE - it was an inch thick and covered an entire serving dish - smeared some on the bread and it was GREAT!

When the kebab arrived, I was pretty full from the trying to make a dent on the kibbe (only ended up eating maybe 1/3 of the kibbe).  The kebab had lamb, chicken, and beef kebabs on rice with onions and spices - all excellent - my favorite was the beef.  The lamb was a bit too spiced-up for my taste - coriander or cumin or something.

Overall, an excellent experience.

• Byblos
• 1050 S. Reynolds Rd.
• Toledo, Ohio 43615
• (419) 382-1600