Mon Ami Gabi-almost a great restraurant

For Valentine's Day weekend, we decided on going to Mon Ami Gabi. This is located in OakBrook Center Mall near Cheesecake Factory. Mon Ami Gabi is a Lettuce Entertain You restaurant and I'm not a big fan of them. And I finally figured out why. I'm aware that this is truly a "Chain Restaurant" but we had seen it in Las Vegas and we both wondered about it. And so I had issues when we got there because it is a Lettuce Entertain You place. So we made reservations through Open Table.

We were going to a concert that evening so we had early reservations. Now being early is both good and bad. In this case it was neither because I don't think they are ever quite ready and they are big enough to be as ready as they can be.

As I said, we had reservations and this is in the mall area. We walked in and the reservation was ready (it was 4:30, it should be). I always check out the people. There were people who came here to eat and some who just done shopping. I don't care, but the shoppers are walk in people. We were shown to a two person table right next to a wall and on the other side of it was a wait station. And the restaurant is 1/3 full. We stopped and had to ask for another table and got the next one. It was acceptable. But here is my problem. When someone comes in with a reservation, shouldn't you give them a decent table? The tables we were at should be for walk ins only.

The restaurant kind of looks like a Paris restaurant (I assume). It has the trappings etc. The menu is pretty French and was a pretty good menu. Not a fancy menu, but a nice selections of meats, seafood, sandwiches etc. Again it is a mall restaurant. The service was very good. He seemed qualified and seemed to know the menu. And overall the food and service were pretty good.

By the way, the wine menu was predominately French wines. And a pretty good selection and price. This sort of surprised me since French wines don't always sell that well in this area in my opinion and I certainly didn't expect it here. That was a nice surprise.

It finally hit me where I was. I was eating at a Photocopy of a French Restaurant. And if you take a photocopy of a photo, you get blurring around the edges. It isn't as sharp or as crisp. And that is what this and many copies of restaurants are, not as sharp or crisp as the original.

When we left, the usual question is would you go back. Both of us agreed that if we were in the Oak Brook area and were interested in spending a little more on dinner, but would like a nicer dinner, this is a good place. We would try it again, but we wouldn't go out of our way to go all the way to Oak Brook just to eat there.