Usually when I am in Chicago, I don't eat down in The Loop area but I was taking a client out for lunch, so I asked him what was near the Sears Tower for a quick lunch. He had mentioned that the W Hotel was a short 2 blocks away and frequented by many of his colleagues for lunch, so that was an easy enough decision for me. I usually am not a huge fan of hotel restaurants but given that I couldn't think of anything else around there, I kept my mouth shut and hoped for the best.
Surprisingly, it turned out to be pretty decent lunch. It was indeed a 5 minute walk from the Sears Tower and pretty spacious and not to loud so that you can have an actual conversation. The decor isn't super high end or impressive but it was totally functional. The menu is a variety of salads, sandwiches and sides and they were all fairly reasonably priced. Despite my general policy of not ordering crab cakes outside of the MD area, I ended up getting the open faced crab cake sandwich ($16) as did my client. When the sandwich came out, I was pleasantly surprised by not only the large size of it but the fact that it looked like it had actual chunks of crab meat. In a Midwestern place like Chicago you wouldn't really expect them to be big on crab. I also liked that it was an open faced sandwich, so there was not as much bread to it which really allowed you to enjoy the actual crab cake. The bread bottom was a pretzel roll and covered in an aioli and spicy tomato relish with some butter lettuce. It was a really solid crab cake - very little filling and I could really taste the crab in it. Plus it didn't taste very deep fried which was great because sometimes that another big downside of a crab cake. What was even better was that the dish was served with truffle fries. I thought that was pretty generous to have truffle fries and not just regular fries. Truffle salt is usually a very strong taste and they did a good job of not being too heavy handed with it. The fries were a bit overcooked but the sandwich was so filling that I really barely touched the fries.
All in all, it was a perfectly fine business lunch place. It's not some super fancy place, so it's not a place that I would recommend if you were trying to really impress your business partners or blow a ton of cash on your corporate card but it is a solid place to really catch up and have a real conversation in a casual environment. Total bill: $40 with tax and tip
Photo Credit: Yelp
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