Chi Cafe — Restaurant in Chicago

I have debated on rather or not to leave a review about my experience at this restaurant. Mostly because I don’t have anything nice to say, and I hate to be the bad guy. But I do feel that travelers need to know that they may be walking into a trap...Here I go. This was one of the worst dining experiences that I’ve ever had. Me and my friend visited this place on Friday, May 28th. We were seated quickly, and everything looked clean and neat. Being travelers from OUT of STATE , we might have taken a while to order our food, being indecisive and all. My friend is vegetarian and can be picky. Apparently our sever didn’t like this and after we gave him our main dish order he took the menu out of my hands and said ”that’s it”. As in , I’m not waiting for you to order anything else. Strike one! If he didn’t like how long we took he could have KINDLY offered suggestions, but no. When or food did arrive, I ordered the Thai Pan Fried Rice Cake with seafood, the server just dropped the plate in front of me like “here you go”. No eye contact, no thank you. My food was supposed to be spicy, but it had NO flavor at all. Like none, they didn’t even try. My friend ordered a fried tofu vegetarian dish and his was tasteless and mushy. His tofu looked like scrambled eggs on his plate, very underdone. I also ordered an egg roll that came to my table almost burnt. Like seriously, the egg roll was as brown as milk chocolate, almost burnt, and super hard. I didn’t order any drinks because the waiter snatched the menu from me and said “no more”, so all I had to drink was water. I ate my food reluctantly, because we couldn’t order anything else and they didn’t even ask if everything was ok. Strike Two. At this point I was so put out with the quality of the food and service that I was just ready to go. The server did offer to box up the food for me and I accepted, but I still didn’t even eat it later. We actually went somewhere else after we left there because we were still hungry, and didn’t want to try again at this place. Oh, and I accidentally left my cloth reusable mask at the table. I literally walked to the front door, realized that I didn’t have my mask on, and walked back over to the table. It was gone, the server had thrown it away. I was like really!! Due seriously, you couldn’t even let me know as I was leaving!? You know it was mine, I didn’t go that far. A very nice older gentleman gave me a paper mask to wear, which was nice. But as he walked back towards the kitchen the servers asked him what I wanted. I could tell that he said I was looking for my mask. And they all literally bust out laughing at me because they know that they threw away my mask. Strike three!!! The only good thing about my visit was the very nice older gentleman who gave me the paper mask. Travelers be warned, this is not a tourist friendly restaurant. Like I said, I hate to leave a bad review but I feel like I need to...

We have been coming here for many years, usually after a concert, usually after 10 pm. The place has a very different vibe during the day, when the menu is small and the place is quiet, vs. the night, when the menu is huge and the place is hopping. At night it's male waiters only - and most of the them are the same guys we've been seeing for the 9 years we've been coming here. They share tables so you won't have a dedicated waiter, they all cover all tables. Service is brisk - not warm and fuzzy - and very efficient for Chintatown, which tends to have middling service overall. That huge night menu has a staggering array of dishes that will please picky eaters who won't eat much to adventurous eaters who will order the duck tongue dish (that's me). It's not a place with magnificent food, it's a solid place with reliably good food where over time you put together a list of favorites that you order again and again and still have new choices to pick from. Hong Kong chow mein features crispy fried thin noodles with lots of crunch and umami. Soy ginger fish is gingery, oniony, tender, mild, and not at all fishy. Thousand Island shrimp is my trashy, guilty favorite dish - deep fried tender shrimp doused in what tastes like Thousand Island dressing mixed with that neon orange sweet & sour sauce and I dunno, maybe some mayo thrown in. They have one of the best crab rangoons in town and a friend says that they are the only place with better orange chicken than Panda Express. Man chou is crispy tender deep fried milk bread with condensed milk for dipping. The satays are solid, we love all the veg options (pea shoots and green beans are particular favorites), anything salt & pepper is great, anything sizzling is great, the rolled noodles are slippery and fun, etc. If you prefer more subtle dishes, standouts include the egg and yellow chive, fried rice with dried scallop and egg white, and shrimp won ton soup. The mango smoothie is one of the best and my spouse often gets it despite the stiff competition across the sidewalk at Joy Yee. It's really hard to list everything we've ordered and like - just be adventurous and try it all. About the only thing I didn't care for was that duck tongue dish, mostly duck tongues are pointy and bony with not much to eat, though it tasted fine. I'm sure I failed to list a bunch of other stuff we tried, but what's life without some surprises? Highly recommended. It's one of the five places in town where we are regulars and plan to...

The only reason I'm giving one star is because they turned the music down when we asked them to (there was a speaker above our table and it was blaring) and the Mongolian Beef was edible- unlike everything else we ordered. The hot tea smelled and tasted like dirty dishwater. It doesn't come in a teapot with tea bags steeping, they pour it out of carafes, and they either don't steep the tea long enough or they don't add fresh tea bags when they refill the carafe with hot water, resulting in incredibly diluted tea. That should have been our tip off to leave and go eat next door at MinHin instead, which was packed. But we stayed. Next came the egg rolls.The dipping sauce for the egg rolls was like no dipping sauce I've ever had for egg rolls in my life. It wasn't the typical sweet chili sauce. It was bright pink, glutinous, grainy and overly sweet. Now that I think about it, it was as if they mixed sugar with corn syrup and added pink food dye. It was awful so I thought well, I'll just eat the egg roll without the sauce. But the egg roll tasted bad too, so I put it down after two bites. Next came the hot and sour soup. I had one spoonful and surprise- it was inedible. More tangy than sour, too gluey and just bad. I was really hungry because it was late at night and I was beginning to think I wouldn't be able to sate my hunger at this place. I decided to try my friend's beef broth soup, which had weird-looking slices of beef in it and noodles. But that was horrible as well. Finally, the Mongolian beef came out and it was fine, but the white rice was dry.

The service wasn't that great either. The guy who came around and refilled our water was attentive, but the waiter never came to check on us; we had to call him over whenever we needed something. After our appetizers, the waiter came to take our order for entrees and left without clearing away our appetizer plates. I actually had to wave him down and ask him to take them away.

I'm annoyed that the food was so bad. It was a last-minute birthday dinner for me and we went there because we thought it was the only place that was open late. On our way in we passed by MingHin and their posted hours said they're open until midnight, which we didn't previously know. My friend had said "We can go to MingHin instead." I wish...