Review: RB Grille

By Chuck Sudo in Food on Jan 11, 2010 5:00PM

Bright neon in the middle of the afternoon

RB Grille\'s beer selection

A Shot of RB Grille\'s burger and sandwich menu

RB Grille\'s main menu

Soup of the Day Friday was cream of potato soup. Very rich

RB Grille\'s onion rings showed promise, until they fell apart.

RB Grille\'s complimentary cornbread, served with honey whipped butter.

RB Grille\'s steak and fries. The steak was served a perfectly cooked medium rare, while the fries suffered from overseasoning, which made them soggy.

Dessert was a decadent mini peanut butter pie, with crumbled peanut butter cups and a cookie crust.

How do you screw up a perfectly functioning brewpub? If you're the folks at Rock Bottom Brewery, you convert a portion of it into a bland 118-seat bistro.

RB Grille opened in the fall and, as a stand-alone restaurant, is fairly innocuous. The room itself is spacious but not eye-catching in a "Did you see how they renovated this room?" way. The booths and tables are interchangeable from many other bistros and casual restaurants with their dark woods and butcher paper, while the wall art could have been purchased at a Crate & Barrel or Pier 1 Imports.Track lighting, evenly spaced candle vases and a benign soundtrack of Jorge Ben, Thievery Corporation slow jams and smooth jazz further solidify the middle of the road approach. In a nod to modern restaurant trends there is one private communal table that seats eight. But even that is sullied by a flat screen television capable of supporting Powerpoint presentations. It's a communal table for the working lunch crowd.

The décor is more than able to match the "meh" of the menu from Executive Chef and Rock Bottom vet Christopher McCoy. RB Grille's food leans toward the sort of fare one would find at a Rosebud or Phil Stefani restaurant. Our steak and fries was a sirloin that was cooked a perfect medium rare, given flavor with a thick au poivre sauce, served with soggy julienne fries seasoned with Parmesan. Onion rings were heavily breaded and fell apart on the fork and in our hands. All tables are served a complimentary house corn bread that had a very good texture and thick brushing of honey. Salads and cocktails are prepared tableside and RB Grille has a very good, but not ambitious, wine list available by glass, bottle or carafe.

We question why Rock Bottom had to earmark a good amount of its space for RB Grille. With more bars around town embracing upscale pub fare, it could have been easy for them to have McCoy implement the changes to the food menu and save the construction costs. As it stands, RB Grille would have been one of the more mediocre bistro openings of 2003, let alone 2k9-10. It's like dining in a model restaurant designed by the Bluth Company.

RB Grille: 1 W. Grand Ave. (at State St.), 312-755-0890.