Bistro Monadnock

Our group returned to the Bistro last week to give it a second chance. After all, the food was excellent the first time around ... so we were hoping the service would improve. We weren't disappointed.We once again spent over two hours at the restaurant, but this time the pacing was perfect and the service was impeccable. The table was kept clean, water glasses full, wine and cocktail refills offered, wine pairings carefully selected, silverware and flatware replaced between courses, and the chef even stopped by the table a couple times to discuss the finer points of oysters and charcuterie. The ambiance is elegant without feeling stuffy -- we were dressed to attend a concert at Northerly Island after our meal and didn't feel completely out of place.I don't think you could go wrong trying anything on the menu, but this go round -- in addition to the oysters and charcuterie -- we tried the Bibb salad, escargots, dorade royale, ribeye steak frites, and lobster thermidor. Everything was prepared to perfection and our group devoured it all -- but my wife thought the thermidor was the highlight of the meal.The only lowlight of the evening was that the kitchen's freezer was broken -- so we once again weren't able to try the profiteroles. But that will just be an excuse to return soon. The crème brûlée I had instead was outstanding. Glad we decided to make a return trip!

This place is great. Food (brunch) - great, everything was perfectly done Interior - great. It's very Parisian and I especially loved all the vintage posters. The building itself is wonderfully retro too.Service - exceptional. The chef came out to get our feedback and the owner was super nice too. Prices were fair, great wine list - absolute winner for me.

Came for a weekday lunch. Old school steakhouse vibes. Burger and French Onion Soup kind of place, with decent but not exceptional execution. Big miss on the salad.Cocktails - 3.5/5. Gimlet and Sour were decent, but slightly off balanced on the sour side.French Onion Soup - 4/5. Extra cheesy. Plenty of burnt cheese if you're into that. Rich broth with hearty vinegar. Burger - 4/5. Good combination of aioli, red onion for acid, nice patty size.Farro Salad - 2/5. Beautiful plate. No seasoning or real flavor. Essentially raw vegetables.

Johnny is by far my favorite chef in the city, and this is the second restaurant we've followed him to. This has the cutest vibes and is packed full of history. Totally appropriate for a date night or a fun business dinner and packed full of fun historic facts. The food is unmatched and while most skip charcuterie in a restaurant, DO NOT SLEEP on this. It's aged to perfection. The fries are also PERFECT. The wine list is also extensive. A beautiful restaurant being run by some wonderful humans. Don't skip this.

Bistro Monadnock is located in a building that The Doctor loves called The Monadnock . He wants to rent an office in the building just because, go figure.The restaurant itself is what I refer to as a hidden gem. Located between Dearborn and Federal, I wouldn't say it is on a beaten path of foot traffic and yet it was full on a Friday night. We entered from inside the hallway, so you could see that the restaurant was made up of several store fronts based on the number of doors you could see attached to the restaurant. As we walked into the restaurant, we were greeted by a gentlemen pulling a bottle of wine down from a shelf.The restaurant itself has a lovely vibe and I loved the French music being piped in....discovered several new pieces to add to my Spotify French Cafe Jazz playlist. The bar seemed inviting and there were four individual bathrooms, each as a single serving rooms with some lovely retro tiles...I am assuming that they all have the same tiles.We started with Chicken Liver Parfait (elderflower gelée, pickles, mustards, crostini) and the Steak Tartare (dry-aged beef, farm egg variation, wholegrain mustard). Both of these were very good, however I would get this with the french baguette. The crostinis were good, but too crunchy for me. It's a texture and sound thing for me, not a criticism of the crostinis. The Doctor told that they were very good, but he loves crunchy stuff :-) I ended up taking the chicken liver back to the hotel along with a french baguette to snack on with a nightcap of bubbles.For dinner, we went to the basics: the Bistro Burger (brioche, steak, butter, dijonnaise, red onion relish, gruyere, vargo bros pickle) and my fave, the Croque Madame (baguette, mornay, smoked ham, sunny side up egg). Neither comes with fries, so we got one order to split. No complaints on either dish. For dessert, I got the ile flotation (duck egg white meringue, orange & cardamom creme anglaise, pineapples, candied hazelnuts & salted caramel). This is a wonderfully light dessert and that pineapple was so good as well as those candied hazelnuts. I ate as much as I could, but eventually the sweetness caught up with me. Again, not a criticism of the dessert, but I have a threshold on how much sweetness I can take. I would do this again but need to split with someone as I couldn't finish the whole thing. Having the bubbles to cut the sweetness helped.The Doctor got the Dark Coconut gelato. This was so interesting as the dark part was a dehydrated lime that was dark and grated over the gelato. The taste profile was strange in a good way: you could taste the zest of the lime, but it had an underlying dark flavor that hit my tongue like a cocoa flavor, but not really. Strange but delish.We are definitely going back because I saw the Steak Frites (8 oz prime flat iron and 16 oz prime, dry-aged ribeye). Both look great, but that ribeye was a huge piece of meat on the person's plate next to us. And I would love to try the Bouillabaisse. Because we had a large lunch, we were not trying to overdo it at dinner.Service was very nice. The executive chef actually brought out our appetizers and then stopped over to see how things were going. Everyone was friendly and seemed to be having a good time. There was a song playing and I started dancing in my seat. The gentlemen who initially greeted us coming into the restaurant saw me and started to dance a little as he walked by :-)Definitely want to come back here again. We heard that they will be open on Saturdays starting today, so that is good to know.

This is a hidden gem. This place should be packed 24/7, but it's in an alley way next to a parking garage, so you'd never know it was there unless you knew to look for it. We started off with soups, then we had some sandwiches and fries. Classic French Onion - $15 - This is the best French onion soup you'll ever taste. The wine has a little sweetness to it, the onions are cooked down perfectly, and there's plenty of melted cheese. 5/5 stars.Clam Chowder was the Soup Du Jour - $13 - I got the large bowl size, because the French are the best at making soups, so I wasn't worried about it. Everything was fantastic. The clams were fresh and delicious, and the most important part, they were cleaned!!! I love seafood, and I can't tell you how many times I get sad when seafood isn't cleaned well. No grit/sand in my clams here! You get some New England crackers to go with it, which is a nice contrast. It doesn't fall apart in your soup either, so feel free to dump a bag in while you eat. I devoured every last drop, and I was a happy camper. 5/5 stars.Croque Madame - $19 - Every ingredient was fantastic. The bread had a good crunch, but it won't hurt the roof of your mouth. The ham is fresh, the mornay cheese wasn't greasy, and the egg was cooked perfectly with some spices on top. This is the best croque madame I've ever tasted. 5/5 stars.Le Rachel - $20 - Homemade pastrami sandwich. The bread was good, the meat wasn't overly salty, and the sauce was plentiful and tasty. 5/5 stars.Frites - $6 - Cooked in beef fat, like how McDonald's used to do. This reminded me of the good old McDonald's days, but done even better than McDonald's. This is a must have dish. The ketchup and the garlic aioli were delicious dipping sauces. The fries were hot and perfectly cooked, nice and thin, and not greasy at all. You couldn't make a more perfect french fry. 5/5 stars.Profiteroles with Dulce De Leche Gelato and Hot Fudge - $13 - C'est parfait! It's perfect! The creme puffs were perfectly cooked with a soft crunch. The gelato was fantastic. The hot fudge sauce has a little alcohol taste to it, but if you eat it with the gelato, then you won't notice it. 5/5 stars.This place needs to be a must try. The server told us that there is usually room on weekdays if we wanted to come back for dinner. We make reservations everywhere we go, but there was plenty of room when we went for lunch on a Wednesday. Which is a travesty, cause this place should have a line out the door.The server was very nice, and even gave us some suggestions of where else we should visit while in town. I didn't know about water taxis, and that we could take a water taxi to different areas of Chicago. Really nice waiter. He made us feel so welcomed. Highly, highly recommend.

What a cool restaurant! Servers were super attentive and nice. We ordered a ton of food, I had the New England Clam Chowder, Bahn Mi Club and we started with the frites. The frites were delicious with the garlic aioli - so crispy - perfectly fried. The soup and sandwich were delicious and then we shared the creme brulee. Such great food, we will be back soon!

Saw the high reviews and had to try it ... glad we did. This little French Bistro has only been here since March 2023 or so - so it has but a half-year in business. To compound the short history, it is stuck on a little street off Jackson Blvd. on the southern edge of the Loop. It is on Federal Street, a short north-south half-street jammed between Clark and Dearborn. So even though the restaurant front door is only a 100 feet or so from the Union League Club, you probably won't just happen upon the Bistro ... you only get here if you were aiming for it. But that said, do make an effort. Its location only adds to the ambiance. Speaking of ambiance, it is wonderful with dim lighting and nice appointments. The smallish interior is split into two rooms by the main entrance foyer on the west façade, with an open kitchen on the south end and the lavs on the north. Of the two primary rooms, the one on the south end - conveniently facing the open kitchen - is the main dining area with a dozen or so tables, and to its north is the bar area room with a few additional tables and a handsome bar lining the west wall. The entire east side of the restaurant space fronts the main hallway down the center of the Monadnock Building in which it is located ... hence the name. The menu selections fit on a single sheet but are nicely curated, as are the wines and cocktails. For appetizers our table of three shared the Bread and Fat (a 5-star French baguette with their customized soft butter), the Shrimp Cocktail (a 5-star offering of six perfectly-done shrimp laid on a bed of ice with two nice dipping sauces), and the Moules Marinière ("sailor mussels" ... a 5-star offering of mussels steamed in a bit of wine and herbs, perfectly steamed to tenderness leaving a wonderful juice on the bottom to soak up with the included crusty baguette). For mains, two in our group had the French onion soup (5-star delish), and one of them added the Beef Fat Fries to try (4-star stuff your arteries can only take every so often; while they could have been just a bit crispier, they were excellent). The last in our group added the Bistro Burger (a 5-star offering that came with gruyere cheese). For dessert we shared the Profiteroles (a 5-star plate with three small portions of ice cream and puff pastry). As an aside, I think the next time we visit we'll indulge in drinks and appetizers with maybe the French onion soup added on, but that's all. The mains that are offered are really very nice, but seem a bit overkill. While you can come for one of the mains alone, having worked through the appetizers and drink selections, we had "an elegant sufficiency." Overall service here is impeccable, and there is very little to quibble about. Recommended.

Such a great spot for happy hour. HIGHLY recommend. We just stopped by for some bubbles and oysters (east coast, of course) but the full menu looked to die for. Will be back

Delicious food, excellent service, great atmosphere, beautiful decor‼ Highly recommend the Saturday Brunch, I ordered the French omelette, which was superb ‼,I will definitely dine here again!