I wrote a full review of Remington’s just about a year ago, which you can read here. We stopped in for dinner again this month, so this will be a quick update.
If you just want a really quick update: Remington’s is still a good choice for a casual dinner in the Millennium Park area.
I started with a classic Old Fashioned.
This has been a go-to cocktail for me lately and I have started to make a habit of ordering one wherever I go just to see how they handle it. It is, at its best, a simple cocktail that showcases a good whiskey. Classically made with rye whiskey, bourbon is more commonly used these days. Sweetened with a little sugar, seasoned with a couple of dashes of bitters, stirred over ice and it’s done. Buffalo Trace makes a popular, high-quality bourbon. More accurately, this Kentucky distillery produces a wide range of bourbons, ryes, and other spirits, including the incredibly rare (and incredibly expensive) Van Winkle and Weller lines. With a suggested retail price of $25 (which can, of course, vary significantly with where you live and shop), it is a very good bourbon to sip neat or to use as a base in any bourbon-based cocktail.
The fact that the Old Fashioned is a simple cocktail often tempts bartenders to add some bells and whistles to make it “fancy.” Some of these “improvements” are delicious, others are duds. Fortunately, Remington’s plays it straight with just bourbon, sugar, bitters, and some house-made essential oils. They vary the bourbon from time-to-time, but the rest has been the same on each of my visits. Demerara sugar is a pale brown color, slightly paler than light brown sugar, and has large, dry crystals. It adds subtle molasses notes to the cocktail. Neither the specific type of bitters nor the makeup of the essential oils was listed, but I’d guess Angostura bitters were used. Bourbon and orange play very nicely together, and the orange peel completed the drink. To my taste, the orange zest (and not a muddled orange slice, which is sometimes used in an Old Fashioned) is an essential garnish.
We once again ordered the Lobster Deviled Eggs as an appetizer.
Topped with a generous dollop of lobster and lobster oil over the deviled yolks, if you like lobster and you like deviled eggs, this is for you.
We decided to try the guacamole this time.
This was a good guac with plenty of flavor and just enough kick from the jalapeño. However, it was not quite up to the standards of our personal favorite place for creative guacamoles, Mercadito. The chips were thin, crisp and tasty.
Valeria chose pan-seared salmon for her entrée.
Valeria loves salmon, but is often disappointed in restaurants because it come out, in her words, “cooked to death.” This was perfectly cooked with a caper-butter sauce that complemented the fish nicely. The asparagus were charred to tender-crisp and also benefitted from a dip in the butter sauce.
I opted for the same All-American burger I had on the last visit.
The result was: the same as last time, and that’s a good thing. As I said in the previous review, “this was a very good burger: beefy with a nice slice of cheddar, pickles, lettuce onions and ketchup all held by a sturdy bun that soaked up the beef juices and stayed together.” And, to quote me again, “I also loved the fries. Relatively thin, soft on the inside, crisp on the outside and sufficiently salted.”
So things were had tried before were consistent (and good) and we also enjoyed the new selections. Remington’s remains on our recommended list for a casual meal if you find yourself around Millennium Park and looking for a meal.
Remington’s
Address: 20 N Michigan Ave Chicago, IL 60602
Phone: (312) 782-6000
Reservations: opentable.com
Website: http://www.remingtonschicago.com
Dress Code: Smart Casual
Price Range: $31-50
Hours: Lunch: Monday – Friday: 11:30 am – 4:00 pm
Dinner: Monday – Thursday 4:00pm – 10:00pm
Dinner: Saturday: 3:00 pm – 11:00pm
Dinner: Sunday: 3:00 pm – 10:00 pm
Brunch: Saturday-Sunday 10:00 am – 3:00 pm
Credit Cards: AMEX, Diners Club, Discover, MasterCard, Visa
Chicago, IL 60602
All images were taken with an iPhone X. Post-processing in Adobe Lightroom® and Adobe Photoshop® with Nik/Google and Skylum® Luminar® plugins.
