Cultivate by Forbidden Root — Restaurant in Lake View Township

Made a reservation there for an after event dinner with family. It took me three tries to make the reservation and connect with the restaurant. I called and left a message, I sent an email—shouldn’t say you’ll return an email in 24 hours, if you’re not going to do it—and I called and spoke with someone. That was 8 days before the reservation. I was told I was all good and that I’d get a confirmation a day before. I never got that.

The folks initially made it very awkward asking me if I had made the reservation elsewhere… there is literally only one Cultivate restaurant in Chicago—the other restaurant in an hour outside the city. I was honestly offended and wondered why they were giving me such a hard time when the restaurant was empty.

Finally, they made our table and then we understood their stress—they seemed to be understaffed to accommodate our party… they had 1 person working the tables other than a manager like person pitching in and another guy bringing out food and stuff.

The food came out pretty quickly though. 8 in our party got the burger and we thought that we’d have the special honored, but you have to get a beer to get the special. So, only 2 folks received the Monday night discount. We didn’t really appreciate that because it seems unfair to penalize someone for choosing a nonalcoholic drink option… what if it’s a kid… they are drinking beer…

The mussels were sandy—they need to be rinsed more. You also shouldn’t serve unopened mussels.

The chicken sandwich and salad was good. One of the best chicken sandwiches my partner has had.

The beer bread was tasty. Only rec there is 4 not 3 slices an order. Otherwise it’s skimpy.

The roasted carrots and hummus were tasty. As was the roasted cauliflower.

The pasta dish was also pretty good! Loved the take on veggies being present via the sauce and not big chunks.

The drinks were all very good. Only struggle was getting more due to staffing.

Overall, we liked the ambience of the place and the food. I just didn’t like being gaslit and being blamed for their colleagues mistake of not logging our...

I loved everything about my experience at Cultivate by Forbidden Root. We live in L.A. and crave after Chicago's food scene and are lucky enough to be in town once a year...we typically stick to downtown but a birthday celebration brought us to Cultivate and we couldn't have been happier.

Both my wife and I have diet preferences. I'm a vegetarian, she's generally vegan and gluten-free. We love small plates, artfully prepared food both visually and taste, and equally artfully prepared drinks. We got all that here.

I was especially excited about the house shots menu...I've seen this a couple other places...not full cocktails, but shot glass sizes of special mixes...perfect for those of us who can't decide (and who might no the in town long enough to try more than one.) I had the Smoke and Flame House Shot, and the Closer House Shot. These were flat out delicious! The Smoke and Flame with it's Mezcal and Chili Liquor was the perfect blend of sweet and smokey. The Closer (which I did indeed close with) was bold and desserty. (Yea take that spell-check, I'm leaving "desserty" right where it is.)

I love a good cheese plate and the 4 we got gave a great range of cheese experiences.

The Bing Bread which I think is always vegetarian but rotates was filled with greens and was quite hearty.

The bowl of olives was delicious...the roasted cauliflower was delicious...the porcini lentil soup was delicious. I could go on. I mean usually we're lucky enough at a place like this to really love a couple things and think everything else was pretty good...We really LOVED everything they brought us. As vegetarians (and just lovers of things that taste good) we had plenty to choose from and enjoy and will DEFINITELY head out of the confines of downtown to experience this place again next time...

I’m so sad to be writing this review for one of our favorite restaurants - but Cultivate does NOT have safe food practices. I strongly advise against dining at this restaurant for safety reasons.

We experienced two incidents, both involving their cheese plate. The first time, they brought us a plate with cheeses that were extremely hard and seemed to be pretty old, the blue cheese may have even been moldy, (hard to tell with blue). They were gracious and we assumed the cheese was just dried out - even accepted a new cheese plate from them. We did not get sick in this instance but should’ve taken it as a warning.

The second time, the cheese seemed relatively normal, but room temp and possibly a little “different” than usual… but not in a way that raised red flags. We came home and my girlfriend got food poisoning so badly that we almost had to take her to the ER, I got sick as well the following morning. On some reflection, we realized the cheese is always room temperature when it arrives, and has seen a noticeable decline since we started going to this restaurant about a year ago. We strongly believe these cheese plates are being prepped at the beginning of the day (possibly earlier) and being left out for long periods before being served to patrons. It’s not hard to imagine that the rest of the food is unsafe also if these are their kitchen practices.

Cultivate has been a favorite restaurant of our since we went there the first time. I’m so sad to say that we will...