LÝRA — Restaurant in West Chicago Township

During my 3rd visit to LÝRA I experienced a situation which means I’ll probably never return and requires a 1 star review. I’ll start by describing less crucial details.

I personally think their food is excellent and the chef must be very good. The person that joined me felt that most of their dishes were too sour, but I chalk that up to a cultural preference -Greek and Mediterranean food tends to be acidic in comparison with other cuisines.

Atmosphere I’m ranking LÝRA as mediocre. This is to average out the atmosphere indoors which must be great, with the atmosphere we experienced outdoors on a Saturday night, which was horrible -but not totally LÝRA’s fault. What was so bad? We and the other outdoor patrons were harassed around 20 times by a family of immigrant beggars trying to sell us candy and flowers. The restaurant staff didn’t seem to do anything about that. Also, the valet service at the restaurant was parking cars right outside where we were sitting and some of these cars were extremely noisy.

As other reviewers have noted, the service is spotty. They have too many staff that hardly speak English and are too eager to refill your water or take a plate off the table before you’re ready. The server who brought the whole Branzino over and offered to filet and debone it, basically had no idea what he was doing. It was clear looking back that he wasn’t really serious when he offered to filet. That being said, the waitress was really great and I don’t blame her for the problem which I’ll describe next.

So now we get to the heart of the matter. My friend and I both suffered the same catastrophe the night after the dinner, so I’m very confident we’re not imagining it. We arrived for dinner at 6. We were asked if we had any food sensitivities and we said that we didn’t. Looking back, we may have been able to avoid this fiasco if we said “caffeine”. It didn’t occur to mention this as a sensitivity because we drink coffee semi regularly in the mornings without serious problems. But we do try to avoid coffee at night so as not to disturb our sleep. We ordered the Chocolate Tart. The ingredients did not list that coffee/espresso/caffeine was included and the waitress did not apprise us of this. The chocolate tart was excellent. However, after dinner, both my friend and I were extremely and unusually wound up for that time of night. Furthermore, we both had extreme difficulty falling asleep. I was only able to finally fall asleep at 6am!!! My friend only succeeded falling asleep at 5am. Thankfully the next day was a Sunday so we didn’t lose a day of work- but we did feel listless and tired due to lack of sleep. But imagine one of us was a surgeon or had some other life impacting job and then came into work the day after needing to perform surgery. The impact could very well be devastating.

UPSHOT: LÝRA needs to be totally upfront with customers about coffee/caffeine in...

As a native Greek, I had my eye on Lyra (Λύρα) since the location was branded in the fall. The restaurant is the newest addition to DineAmic Hospitality's West Loop properties. The restaurant group brought one of Greece's most renowned Chefs, Athinagoras Kostakos, to share his modern Greek cuisine with Chicago. If you're looking for a place that lights cheese on fire in the midst of thousands of Corinthian columns, this isn't for you. But don't worry, there's still a cheeky play on the cheesy eccentricities of the cousin restaurants down the street.

Best known for his work at Skorpios Restaurant in Mykonos and for winning Top Chef Greece, Athinagoras' menu is innovative and whimsical. At first glance, it seems almost typically Greek, featuring items like: spanakopita, saganaki, and moussaka. All dishes one could find at any taverna. But when they start coming out of the kitchen, they are anything but expected.

I enjoyed the "olive-oil washed" vodka martini, which was appropriately briny and rich. We ordered the dips with pita, which included the Big 4 of Greek spreads: tzatziki, htipiti (spicy feta spread), melitzanosalata, and taramasalata (fish roe spread). They were all classic, executed as well as you can find outside the homeland. That's as far as tradition got. The sea bass carpaccio was perfectly balanced in flavor and texture between the citrus of the kumquat and the crunchy nuttiness of the crisped buckwheat.

This was followed by the feta stuffed sausage (loukaniko), a humble Greek dish featuring unexpected ingredients like shishito peppers. It's spicy, acidic, and full of flavor with the rich sausage. We finished with the moussaka, which is served in a personal cast iron pot. While this stayed quite close to what you may find at Yiayia's house, it was layered with potato which gave it nice body next to the eggplant, and topped with a perfect bechamel. Pure comfort, and perfect for the frigid temperatures outside. For dessert, the kataifi napoleon was light and delicious with a crispy spun filo and creamy, decadent fig ice cream.

From top to bottom, the experience at Lyra redefined what Greek food can be in America. It has a clear point of view: high quality ingredients inspired by the classics, but with a modern Greek voice. The staff, some of whom were brought from Athinagoras' restaurants in Greece, are passionate and knowledgeable; we immediately felt at home. The ambience is fresh and organic, with a very social bar area. Needless to say, I will be returning to try every dish on the menu, and I'm keen to see how the menu and approach change...

I used to love it here, but the last experience for our table of 9 (the eve of Labor day) will be my last one. Hands down, the worse service all of us have ever had. From the server to the poor excuse of a “manager” Alexa. Our table sat at 9:15. We were the last table to leave at close to 1 AM. The server didn’t write down our order even though we asked if he would remember them all & he said he would. We were missing appetizers & had wrong drinks come out. The server disappeared for a while, when he came back, we told him about the errors & that we still hadn’t received 1/4 of our food yet. He told us that the kitchen had closed. We were celebrating a friend’s bday, the only thing she got to eat were potatoes. They offered to make it up to us by sending us desserts & a free round of cocktails. We waited for 30 min+ & still no cocktails or desserts. We asked to speak to a manager to figure out if we should just leave to eat somewhere else before their kitchen closed. No one ever came. Finally at one point, I saw a woman that kept walking by the tables & kitchen so I flagged her down. I asked her if she was the manager. She nodded. I asked if she was aware of the issue with our food. She said she was made aware. I asked her why she wouldn’t come & talk to the table. She said the server had a family emergency & was so upset she pulled him off the floor to talk to him . I asked why she wouldn’t communicate that with us, so we could be empathetic to the situation vs. being left in the dark. I asked for her name, she told me it was Alexa. She offered to “make things better” on the next visit. The guests from Canada asked before ordering if they could separate the tab, the server said yes. When the bill came, the server proceeded to separate the tabs in an erratic fashion, with all drinks on one tab, and some of the food items we didn’t receive were still on the bill . The server was visibly upset, trembling & crying. We told him we would separate it correctly for him & that we were sorry to hear about the bad news he received about his family. He kept apologizing that he “ruined our night, it was all his fault”. We told him he didn’t ruin our night, it wasn’t his fault, his manager should’ve done a better job of supporting him. I’m surprised & appalled by poor management & the lack of customer service. It’s such a shame, I used to love this place but none of us will...