Shaw’s Crab House, Near North

Shaw’s Crab House
21 E Hubbard St
Chicago

Date of Last Visit: Thursday, December 9

The Victim: Gideon

The Damage: More than it should have been. $220 for two including one bottle of white.

The  Background: One of the guys I work with in Israel (Hi Gideon!) was in Chicago last month and I took him out to Shaw’s. He knows about my restaurant blog and keeps asking me when I’m going to write about our meal or if maybe I wrote about it and he missed it. Honestly, I totally forgot about this meal, that’s how forgettable it was. (I’m talking about the food, not the company!) The one thing I have kept thinking about, however, is how expensive it was for a normal amount of food and a decently priced bottle of white.

We started out with a HALF order of scallops with lemon and garlic butter, rice and spinach. It was all fine really, although I remember that neither of the butters boasted much in the way of flavor. I believe we accidentally ordered the Nantucket Cape scallops because I remember thinking $42.99 for scallops? We’re going to get a half portion.”

One thing I did really like about Shaw’s is they were happy to have me create my own dish. (God bless America, Land of Options huh?) Having split the order of scallops to start, I had no interest in more scallops for my main. So I edited down one of the combo platters and got a 6 oz filet and four garlic shrimp.

I’ve probably been eating too many frozen shrimp from Vietnam lately. In comparison, these buggers just weren’t very hefty. And the rice pilaf that accompanied the dish just seemed like such a cop-out. The filet itself was fine. Nothing spectacular. I liked its cute size though. Very petite.

I neglected to take a picture of the HUGE side of spinach that was delivered to our table. $10 worth of spinach. WOW. I took the leftovers home and enjoyed spinach for lunch and for dinner and for the lunch again over the course of the next 48 hours.

The Service: Our waitress was AWESOME. She was very friendly, very attentive (but not overly so) and offered me options like half portions and creating my own entree when I seemed to be hesitating. The world needs more servers like her.

The Verdict: Shaw’s seems to be doing something right–the place was packed when we where there–so I’d like to give this another shot. If I get around to doing this again, I’ll skip the Nantucket Cape Scallops–even though we SPLIT a half-order, this dish was just to pricey. We were paying for rarity more than anything else.  And I probably would order a crab cake or three instead of the shrimp. You know I like my crab cakes. I hear the oyster bar at Shaw’s is quite good so that alone is reason enough for a second visit.