DINING OUT SHOULD MEAN NEVER HAVING TO SAY YOU’RE HUNGRY: AN INADVERTENT REVIEW OF KEN’S ON WESTERN AVENUE

11/9/15

You should never leave a restaurant hungry.   No matter how good the food tastes or how good it looks (For some reason that defies explanation, the latter seems to be the criterion by which the culinarily sophisticated among us judge their cuisine.), if you don’t get enough of it, you shouldn’t return to that restaurant.   This would seem to be common sense, but, in this era in which the price of the fare favored by the foodies seems to display a distinctively negative correlation with its price, this lesson, seemingly as old as time, appears to have been lost on the more distinguished and trend-setting among us.   Of course, common sense seems to be sorely lacking among these types, who, in the spirit of setting trends, seem to define themselves by following trends, the goofier and more nonsensical the better, but I digress.

I bring this up because my son and I had dinner yesterday at a place that is far from the type of spot favored by trendy young professionals who will pay kings’ ransoms for enough food to fill one’s tooth as long as the cuisine is fashionable.  We ate at a neighborhood place known as Ken’s, on 105^th and Western in West Beverly.   It was my dad’s favorite restaurant and the last time I was there, I was with my dad.   Since Dad left his mortal coil more than eight years ago, it’s been awhile since I’ve been to Ken’s.   Mark and I were touring the neighborhood as part of a project he was doing for his Urban History class and I figured that eating at Ken’s would give him a feel for the neighborhood.  Though sitting at the bar at Ken’s would have been better for such purposes, that option was not available to us because I don’t drink and my son is only 17, so we sat in the dining room.

For those of you who have never been to Ken’s, I would describe it as a slightly more upscale version of Schaller’s on 37^th and Halsted.  If you’ve never been to Schaller’s, think a neighborhood bar/restaurant featuring chops, steaks, burgers, and the like.   Nothing fancy, complicated, or frou-frou, and certainly no place at which a so-called foodie would eat unless s/he were somehow trying to prove some sort of bizarre culinary street cred.   And, at least in the case of Schaller’s, nothing expensive, either.

The food at Ken’s was fine; in fact, it was very good.  Young Mark had a butt steak, a favorite at places like Ken’s and Schaller’s, and I had lake perch, which is probably my favorite food in the entire world, provided a certain fast food delicacy is left out of consideration.   Ken’s also even brings out an old fashioned relish tray; when was the last time you were at a restaurant outside Wisconsin (or that isn’t one of the two Petey’s Bungalows) that included a relish tray with your meal?   Ken’s also included some terrific pizza bread as an appetizer.   The soup, which came with the meal, was similarly terrific.  The service was pretty good…not great, but more than acceptable.   Everyone else in the place seemed to know our waitress (In these kinds of places, they still have waitresses, not “wait staffs” or “servers,” though Ken’s did provide the name of an “executive chef” on the menu, which made me nervous, thinking that I had inadvertently strayed to the north side.) and appeared to be a regular, always a good sign for both the place and the waitress.

As good as the perch was, I was still hungry after eating it, even after consuming the soup, the items on the relish tray, the pizza bread, etc.   In fact, I had to have some left-over meat loaf shortly after returning home.   While this may have something to do with the size of my appetite, there is something very wrong with being hungry after leaving a restaurant, regardless of how good the food was.  This was especially disheartening because, at least by Quinn standards, Ken’s wasn’t cheap; each of our entrées was about $20.   Schaller’s butt steak, for example, is about half the price…but includes no relish tray. The dazzling urbanites who will pay half a month’s rent for whatever was featured in the last issue of Chicago Magazine may think $20 is a reasonable price for an appetizer consisting of two strands of angel hair pasta and a leaf of something they had not heard of two weeks ago, but, in yours truly’s view of the world, $20 for an entrée borders on the outrageous, unless said price is for an all one can eat buffet…or at least for an entrée of a portion size that will leave one satisfied and perhaps asking for a doggie bag.

One would not think that one would actually have to write something like “You should never leave a restaurant hungry;” one would think that admonition to be a given.  But in today’s inane world, in which presentation, price, and pretentiousness seem to be the elements of an effective marketing plan directed toward today’s “trend setters” and “opinion leaders”  (God help this society, but, again, I digress.), such sense is not at all common.   That was meant to be the larger point of this post, but it seems to have morphed into a review of Ken’s, which is not at all the kind of place the trendy among us would favor and which is, all in all, quite good…unless, of course, you like to leave a restaurant full, satisfied, or at least with enough food in one’s system to not have to raid the fridge upon arriving home.