Restaurant Review:
Daily Herald
December 15, 2006
StoneWood Ale House hits the mark
with American cuisine
BY LEAH A. ZELDES
Daily Herald Correspondent
Posted Thursday, December 14, 2006
A boon for late-night diners, as well as those looking for a burger, a beer and the game on TV, StoneWood Ale House - part sports bar, part bierstube, part tavern - serves up straightforward American food in huge portions, some 60 beers and multiple television screens just outside the Woodfield Shopping Center.
The place fits its environs well. Although independently owned - a 2005 makeover of the one-time Voodoo Nightclub by the same owner, Louis Gatziolis - StoneWood has the ambience of a chain restaurant, something like T.G.I. Friday's crossed with Caribou Coffee. Attractive in a slick, corporate way, the decor centers on stone walls, light wood furnishings and paneling and deeper-toned wood and tile floors. It's amazing how the designer managed to use so much natural material to achieve such a plastic look.
Two gas fireplaces burn in the multiroom space, which offers several dining rooms and a large bar area. Rimmed with beer signs and hung with flatscreen TVs, the big square bar centers one room, serving 16 beers on draft and another 50 or so in bottles and cans. Of course, there's a menu of fancy cocktails and a short list of wines. Drink specials of one sort or another figure every night, with bar-nosh deals on weekdays.
Long, narrow high tops and ranks of tables provide additional seating for smokers near the bar. An adjoining dining room offers wood-backed booths and a few round, chrome-edged tables, while square four-tops populate most of another. Beware, smoke from the bar drifts into the nearer room, and the music, even on non-DJ nights, tends to be loud.
The menu also seems reminiscent of chain food, with appetizers like spinach and artichoke dip, chicken tenders and lettuce wraps - where have we seen those before? - and entrees heavy on the chicken, steak and ribs. Yet, although there's nothing remarkable here, the kitchen does a good job with what it does, aiming squarely at the middle-American palate. If you like Bennigan's or the Cheesecake Factory, chances are StoneWood will suit you fine.
Starters (and almost everything else) come sized to share. Served in portions of 10 to 30, the wings, plump and meaty, come Buffalo-style in medium and hot, or doused with sweet barbecue sauce, Thai peanut or orange-ginger. Most of the time you get celery and blue-cheese dressing with them, but on Mondays and Tuesdays, when the wings go on special for 30 cents each, those sides cost extra. According to our waiter, hot is "really hot," but I think the medium rather tame.
A massive loaf of fried onions, crisp and not too greasy, comes with a nicely pungent horseradish cream for dipping. This certainly rivals the loaf at Hackney's, till now my gold standard for onion loaf.
Daily soup, chili and an assortment of salads provide further starter choices or light lunch options. Fifteen sandwiches, ranging from a Rueben to blackened rib-eye, figure on the menu, along with nine burgers. Other intriguing choices include the Mediterranean wrap with grilled chicken, pepperoncini, kalamata olives, feta cheese and veggies, and a pulled-pork sandwich made from pork loin roasted for 17 hours. Most sandwiches pair with house-made potato chips and coleslaw; the half-pound burgers, grilled over hardwood, come with fries.
Entrees, all amply sized, divide into three sections. "Ale House Favorites" include a 1-pound meatloaf, coated with sun-dried tomato sauce, and pot roast, both served with garlic mashed potatoes; as well as fish and chips, made from battered cod. The decadent coconut shrimp from this section, five to an order, easily span 3 inches across, crusted in long shreds of crisply fried coconut and served with thick, sugary orange-ginger sauce, fries and coleslaw. (You can also get these, sans sides, as an appetizer.)
The "Wood Fired" items are chicken, pork chops, ribs, shrimp and steaks. All the chicken dishes start with boneless chicken breasts, so dark-meat fans are out of luck. The ribs, labeled "tender," will likely not appeal to those who prefer the chewy style.
Steaks comprise a 14-ounce rib-eye, a 10-ounce New York strip and a 14-ounce marinated skirt steak, all grilled over wood and accompanied by a mound of garlic mashed potatoes and a heap of pleasantly smoky sauteed vegetables. The skirt steak comes with a tangle of onion strings, too. Stretching nearly 15 inches long across the plate, this steak provides good, buttery texture but, for me, its teriyaki marinade makes it a little too sweet.
"Seafood and Pasta" dishes mostly run to fettuccine and penne with various toppings, plus two fish options: baked, nut-crusted mahi mahi and wood-grilled Atlantic salmon. Like many other dishes here, the salmon, a good-sized fillet basted in orange-ginger-sesame sauce, has a sweet edge. Ours came cooked to medium doneness, still moist but flaky - if you like your fish rarer, be sure to specify.
The sweetness of some of the savory fare might make you fear the desserts would be cloying, but they're just fine, although enormous, like the massive slab of "Mile-High" dark-chocolate layer cake with its rich, moist, Hershey's Syrup flavor. Another highlight, strawberries Foster ranges a bit off the beaten track: a cream puff filled with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream drenched in caramelized strawberry sauce and cooked whole strawberries - a winter version of shortcake.
Late kitchen hours are a plus. StoneWood serves its full menu till midnight during the week and 2 a.m. on weekends. Given the emptiness of the dining rooms at 9 p.m. on a recent weeknight, though, I wonder how long that can last.
In a nice touch, boxes for packing the leftovers - which you'll almost certainly have - come marked with the restaurant's name and the date by the servers.
• Restaurant reviews are based on one anonymous visit. Our aim is to describe the overall dining experience while guiding the reader toward the menu's strengths. The Daily Herald does not publish reviews of restaurants it cannot recommend.
StoneWood Ale House
601 Mall Drive, Schaumburg, (847) 805-0202, www.stonewoodalehouse.com
Cuisine:
Straight-up American square meals
Setting:
Big, slick, wood-and-stone-wrapped Woodfield-area tavern
Price range:
Appetizers $2.50 to $8.45; salads and sandwiches $3.95 to $10.95; entrees $11.95 to $21.95; desserts $3.95 to $6.95; wine $5.75 to $8.25 by the glass, $18 to $70 by the bottle
Hours:
11 a.m. to midnight Sundays through Thursdays; 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays (bar open one hour later)
Accepts:
Major credit cards; reservations
Also:
Full bar; smoking section; free parking; DJs on Thursdays and Fridays; regular food and drink specials; private room available