Restaurant #13 – Roots

Restaurant #13 – Roots

Heather, Cindy, Kevin & Julie

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Hockey night!!!   Wigs was going to the Hawks game at 7:00 (well, actually picking up his brother at 4 and going to Beer Palace.  Or is it Beer Bistro?  Don’t know why I can’t remember this...).  Kevin had a Stinger hockey game at 11:00 PM - talk about poor timing! 

So we decided to head down to Cindy’s hood and go to Roots.  She’d been there with Kristen & Heather earlier this year and had a good time.  I thought it would be a good spot for Kevin to go for a little bit before he headed to his game.  He plays at Johnny’s Ice House, which is just east of the stadium, and he figured it would be a mad-house trying to get there around 10:00 when the Hawks game could be letting out.  They do have a bar at the rink (called The Stanley Club), and we toyed with the idea of going there to watch game.  Good thing we didn’t’, as Kev said it was mobbed with all the hockey team guys watching Hawks before/after their games.   And probably smelling like feet (as Heather said when we went to rink a couple years ago to surprise Kevin to watch one of his games).    

Cindy got there around 5 and scored us some seats at the bar to watch the game, which was perfect.  Way to hold people off Cindy!! We picked up Heather and navigated through the Puerto Rican celebrators at Humboldt Park and surrounding areas.  Crazy – people hanging out car windows sitting on car doors and flying flags.  Chicago culture – catch it!! 

Roots has a ton of different beers on tap and in bottles, so that was fun to try different things.  We started with a couple salads (Greek and Asian Chicken) which were really, really yummy.  For pizza, we ordered ½ my fav (broccoli and sausage) and ½ pepperoni and red peppers.  Sadly, I didn’t like my fav there!  The sausage was a bunch of crumbles scattered over entire pizza vs. big chunks of sausage.  So bleh on that.  The pepperoni and red pepper was good.  They call it Quad City style, which had huge rectangle pieces.  Overall, I thought it a little cheesy (on the pizza, not the place). 

It was crowded, but not crazy crowded.  You could tell it was a good neighborhood place with beer seekers comingling with families, hockey fans, etc. The problem:  service was terrible.  Between period 2 and 3, our server didn’t come down to our end of bar once, even though our glasses were clearly empty. At one point, we all ordered drinks, and she didn’t bring mine.  When she finally came back, I said I never got the beer I ordered.  And he waitress said “I put it down”.  I’m like “Um, I’ve been sitting here and you didn’t bring it.”  Really – you’re arguing whether or not I got the beer??   And our dirty plates and half-eaten pizza was sitting on the bar for probably 2 hours.  I think it was still sitting there when we left.  Awful.  I’m glad we went, but don’t think I’ll make any effort to go back again.  Don’t worry Cindy – there are still a ton of other places in your hood we still need to conquer!!   

Cindy headed home and Wigs & Michael picked Heather & I up to drive us home.  They were angry and dejected after the Hawks loss. I don’t blame them - terrible game.  Their power play seriously sucks.  Ugh.  I went home and watched Magic Mike.  Ha ha J