Gene & Georgetti - Chicago, IL

Posted By Michael Stern on May 27, 2000 12:00 AM

When a sharp knife penetrates a sirloin’s crust and plunges into hot, pink beef, the Roadfood carnivore is rapt. Juices ooze and ruddy red-meat perfume fills the air with sure promise of satisfaction.

America has no better place to slice into prime aged steak than an old wood-frame house known as Gene & Georgetti just north of the Chicago Loop. In a city with many four-star steak houses, Gene & Georgetti wins our vote as the best.

It is a clubby restaurant with a manly mien. White-jacketed waiters with decades of experience take care of old friends and newcomers with efficiency in lieu of obsequiousness. Steaks are served without frills, unadorned and alone on an oval plate – ravishing sirloin strips, T-bones, and filets mignon with charred crust and juice-heavy insides. Thick cottage fried potato chips are the customary side dish, and the cornucopic tossed antipasto known as “garbage salad” (a local passion) is definitive: iceberg lettuce, celery, tomato, radish, slivers of cheese and salami, pepperoncini, and big pink shrimp lightly marinated in an Italian vinaigrette.

Also put Gene & Georgetti in your little black book as an opportunity to savor that curious Chicagoland specialty, shrimp de Jonghe. As prepared in this kitchen, it is a broad, deep plate that holds a golden pool of herbed garlic butter laced with bread crumbs so soft they have become supple threads of flavor. In this pool wade a spill of huge pink shrimp. You can cut the shrimp into bite-size pieces with a fork and knife, but you also need a spoon, or plenty of G&G’s stout Italian bread for mopping all that garlic butter. Also on the menu, at twice the price of a two-pound porterhouse steak, is lobster deJonghe, which is a veritable seascape of plump white hunks of sweet tail meat cosseted in the luminous pool of juice. For this dish, so rich it is dizzying, we call upon a food-writer adjective we have never once used in two decades of describing things to eat: sinful!

Overall Rating

Sirloin Steak

Shrimp de Jonghe

Garbage Salad

Chicken Vesuvio

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Posted By Ron Nemirow on October 28, 2010 9:44 AM

I was on a business trip & ate there alone while reading the Hades episode in Ulysses. It was perfect for that. The service was solicitous. The steak was fine, a sirloin, medium rare -- after all, how good do steaks get? -- but the ambience was perfect, the eavesdropping was unparalleled, & that's what Roadfood is all about, for my money. In any event, I felt that I felt the life of Chicago pulse around me (what do I know? I'm from Denver). It seemed perfectly of the moment, like no place in Denver, anyway. & they charged $40 for a steak -- and served it with A1 Sauce!

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Posted By Alex Pavin on January 11, 2008 6:33 PM

As a life-long Chicagoan who has eaten in every steak house in this city, I have to say that Gene and Georgetti ranks right up with the best of them. In fact, if you are only going to eat one steak in Chicago, make this the place you go. Understand, you are going for the steak. The service can be a little surly and, unless you are a regular (it's that kind of place), you will probably be shuffled off to a less than desirable table. That's OK, you're here for the steak.

Sporting a charred crust, with a juicy pink interior, the hefty cut of sirloin is the equal of any steak you'll taste anywhere. Choose a side of cottage fries to go with your steak. Always served hot and crispy (unlike the soft ones you often encounter), they are a perfect complement to the steaks.

Michael Stern mentioned the garbage salad, and it is terrific (a lot of people go just for this salad). G&G also has a great shrimp cocktail appetizer. The cold, plump, firm shrimp are accompanied by a tangy cocktail sauce and lemon. Gene and Georgetti also serves a full menu of Italian food, and it's pretty good, but don't be misled. Steak is the only thing to order here, either the sirloin or the big filet.

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