Something New - A Review

My lovely wife has been telling me for a while now that I should start doing restaurant reviews as part of the blog.  We don't eat out often, so I kept putting it off, but I'm finally giving in and admitting that it is a good idea.  I figured the most appropriate place to start was with a review of the restaurant where we had our wedding reception just recently. 

Salutos Italian Restaurant- Gurnee

This is one of those places I'd driven past countless times, but never actually been in the restaurant.  I asked my sister to find a place for our dinner/reception after the wedding, and she chose Salutos.  I'm glad she did, as it was a great experience.

As soon as we walked in, we had several people congratulate us on our wedding. The staff seemed genuinely happy and friendly, and that always is a nice way to start an experience at a new restaurant.  The menu itself is pretty typical of what you would expect in an Italian restaurant.  While not cheap, everything was reasonably priced. The wine options were nice and reasonable too.

As our group began to order, a couple of people chose the Steak Salutos.  This dish uses their special sauce, which is not to everyone's taste, so our waitress brought out samples for everyone at the table to try.  This allowed the people who had ordered it to decide if they wanted to change their order (I couldn't tell what all was in the sauce, but I really enjoyed it personally, though I ordered something else).  No one changed their order though.

I ordered the Shrimp Alla Frankie.  This dish has shrimp (tail-on), artichokes and olives in olive oil over angel hair pasta.  The sauce had a nice bit of zip, and the pasta, while not perfectly al dente, was not soggy.  Portions were definitely on the larger side.  We also had brought along our wedding cake, and our waitress was more than happy to put the cake in the fridge while we ate our meal, and then bring it out and cut and serve for us.

Overall, we were very happy with the whole experience.  At the end of a long week, and the most important night of our life, it would have been easy for things to go badly at the restaurant and have things end on a sour note.  Everything went great though, and Salutos is definitely on our list of restaurants we will continue to go to.