Weber Grill Restaurant

Fairly new to the downtown scene (open less than a month), we had a bit of a challenge finding it our dining destination, although we finally located it at its Washington & Illinois home. Whew! We had a brief wait, but it just gave us a chance to peruse the menu.

A rare weekend lunch for the dining duo, we discovered that they do not serve from the lunch menu on Saturdays, so the sandwiches we’d spotted on the menu posted outside were quickly ruled out. There are a couple of sandwich specials on offer, and some burgers so we were able to find something to fit our mood.

Jennifer started the meal off with an adult beverage – taking advantage of not having to return to work like so often is the case! Generously, she even shared a sip of her red sangria with Sheila, who was trying to restrain herself from ordering anything alcoholic. The former bartender gave the drink a thumbs-up!

We each went for burgers, Jennifer the Wisconsin (with cheese and bacon); Sheila the Weber melt (grilled onions, melted Gruyère cheese on grilled rye bread), and we both ordered our burgers medium-well. Time spent waiting on our meals was well spent watching the cooks at the grills – the open kitchen and our table location gave us a great view of the action. It also gave us a great opportunity to drool over all of the food being served. The onion soup was especially tempting, even on a hot day, with all of its melty-cheesy-goodness.

Burgers are extremely generously sized – neither of us could finish them, and we’d both been very hungry. Sheila’s melt was undercooked at more of a medium than medium well, but not so pink that she couldn’t deal. The grilled onions made the burger – sweet and flavorful, they complimented the burger and cheese beautifully. The burger itself was very tasty; she just adored the onions. The bread was too much and a just a little stale. Jennifer’s burger was even more undercooked than She’s – very very pink – but she soldiered on and made it through. French fries were a little cold – the heat lamps they’re kept under before plating weren’t keeping them hot and crispy enough. Disappointing, because they surely would have been fabulous if they’d been hot and fresh – they were nicely seasoned and a good size – fat enough to provide a good ratio of creamy potato interior to crispy exterior. If, you know, the exterior had actually been crispy.

Service was very disappointing. Perhaps because of their newness their servers are still working out the kinks. We were left waiting quite awhile before eventually having someone come over to us, with an extensive story about why he hadn’t been by sooner (dude, we don’t care, just bring us drinks). Sheila was nagged about not keeping Jennifer company by ordering a drink. The breadbasket was oddly enough pulled by our server in expectation of our meals arriving, although since we weren’t necessarily done with it we thought that was strange. Even worse, he stopped by our table after bussing another table and put a stack of dirty dishes on our table in order to pick up the bread basket and plates, scraping the plates and stacking them on top of the other dishes. We didn’t appreciate seeing dirty dishes from other diners. He seemed disappointed that we were unable to finish our meals, although he did box our leftover for us very nicely. Extremely leisurely service was suddenly turned into a mad rush to get us out – dropping the check without asking if we wanted dessert (which we did, but decided against it when we weren’t offered it). Overall, the service was extremely disappointing and unworthy of the food and prices.

Food ***
Atmosphere **
Service *1/2
Overall **

http://www.webergrillrestaurant.com/index.html