Hog Haven serves up the best pork chops and ribs in the area, hands down. The pork chops are known in the area as being among the thickest in town. With nearly an inch and a quarter of thickness, you better place an order ahead of time and let these pork chops cook while your appetite grows! A pork chop that thick typically takes about 30 minutes to make.

Hog Haven has two locations that are close to World Hyundai. Hog Haven in Dyer and Hog Haven in Steger serve up pork chops to the greater south Chicago area. Look for Hog Haven at your local summer festivals, including the annual Schererville Corn Roast and many other great summer events!

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Candlelite restaurant is a family friendly restaurant with a wide range foods, including Chicago’s best thin crust pizza, burgers, wraps, sandwiches, a long list of appetizers, and their specialty cookie skillet dessert. With a full Chicago sports bar and sports like atmosphere, this is a great place to catch a sports game. You’ll find sports memorabilia around the joint ranging from Blackhawks mirrors to other really cool items! The bar is nice, clean and comfortable and has a huge selection of domestic beer, imports, and local microbrews!

The staff at Candlelite has been great. Friendly service is standard and the owner, Pete, is hands on around the restaurant. The General Manager, Pat, also serves up beer and food and is sure to give you a welcoming experience. Candlelite is a great place to host your Chicago corporate event! Let Candlelite host your business party and all of your guests will love you forever!

While you’re visiting Candlelite, don’t forget to take a picture under their historic sign and upload it to their Facebook wall! These guys are very internet savvy and have a website on Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, Foursquare, and more! Follow Candlelite for great deals, coupons and information on upcoming events!

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For those of you who are always trying to track down the next great restaurant, especially Italian, you “southsiders” won’t have to travel far.

Roccos Little Italy in Tinley Park may not be new to all of you, but if you have not eaten there it is a must try location.

I have probably eaten just about every entree on the menu and most of everything else too, and I can say that I have never had a bad meal. Nor bad service. Under the watchful eye of the family who owns the restaurant, the service will never disappoint. I don’t think the food will either.

My favorite appetizers are the breadcrumb smothered baked clams, the stuffed artichoke (and it is truly stuffed with breadcrumbs and garlic, swimming in a pool of butter and oil), and the plump baked shrimp. For your main course I would suggest any veal dish and the chicken picatta (or chicken limone as I call it). It comes on a bed of capellini with capers in a white wine butter sauce. If you have been craving lasagna your time has come. Stacked high and firm on the plate, mom never served this so good. Get a meatball or two to top this off. And for a real pasta challenge I would recommend the Gorgonzola raviolis. These are raviolis smothered in a Gorgonzola cheese sauce that may require you to take an extra cholesterol or blood pressure pill when you are finished. If you have to “go”, and we all do, this may be one of my choices on how it happens to me (with a Belvedere up and blue cheese olives of course). If it sounds like too much to eat, order as an appetizer so you can try something else on the menu.

Visit them at www.roccoslittleitaly.net

Feel free to tell them Scott sent you…I may already be there though.

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Inside, the place is beautiful. It wreaks of class, the bar is nice, and it looks very ‘downtown Chicago-esk’. I ordered the full slab of barbecue ribs and my girlfriend ordered the Fillet Mignon. When the ribs arrived, the barbecue sauce tasted great, but the meat was flavorless. The Fillet Mignon was overcooked and flavorless as well. I’ve cooked better pieces of meat on my grill outside! It was obvious that we didn’t enjoy the food after only taking a couple of bites of each, and the waitress did take off one of the entrees from the bill and gave us a free slice of cheesecake to compensate for our displeasure with the meat. The cheesecake was fantastic, by far the best of the food we received.

Overall, while I didn’t hate the place, I would give it one more try…perhaps an Italian dish? But the meat will be out of the question.

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Cooper’s Hawk has been open just over five years and offers a large variety of wines and spirits, a full wine tasting bar, and a full restaurant offering great meals at reasonable prices! The lemon pepper chicken comes prepared just right with just the right amount of moisture and seasoning. Enjoy a party for you and your loved ones in their wine room! Sit at a beautiful table surrounded by huge stainless steel wine vats and take in the wine making experience.

Cooper’s Hawk is located at 15690 South Harlem Avenue in Orland Park, IL. Reservations are accepted, but not required. – (708) 633-0200

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Meyer’s Castle is an example of Jacobethan Revival Architecture and was built between 1929 and 1931 by Joseph E. Meyer. The castle is currently surrounded by two huge banquet canopies where wedding receptions and private events are hosted. Meyer’s Castle is home to an Argentine steakhouse restaurant called Rodizio’s and they are well known for their tasty meat! Walking around the Meyer’s Castle grounds will offer a number of different surprises! Emus and peacocks wander the properly freely. The property sits on over 10 acres of gardens on what use to be the former Lake Michigan shoreline, now presently known as the Glenwood shoreline. Meyer’s Castle sits atop one of the original sand dunes of Northwest Indiana!

The food here is EXQUISITE! The meat is fantastic and all of the main dishes are reasonably priced. The tapas bar has plenty of tasty selections to choose from, but their main food attraction is the meat that they bring out on long metal skewers. The service was nice and the ambiance of sitting in an old castle was pretty amazing.

Enjoy a dinner or drink at Meyer’s Castle on a Thursday evening and enjoy Reggae music from 8:30pm – 3:00am. Meyer’s Castle offers a full bar service and plenty of room for dancing!

Meyer’s Castle is definitely a hidden gem in the Chicago area. The location is a great place to have a wedding and the website is loaded with photos of the property.

Meyer’s Castle is located at 1370 Joliet St (US 30) in Dyer, IN and is only 35 minutes from downtown Chicago. For more information or to make a reservation, visit Meyer’s Castle online at www.meyerscastle.com.

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The reason why I chose such a large popular food chain was the fact that while all Subway stores are suppose to taste the same, each one is managed differently, and that is what sets one Subway apart from another. I have been eating Subway for over twenty years. I started eating it heavily when I got my first job in the mid-1990s. When I first started eating Subway as a child, I always got the meatball sandwich. At that time, I was in love with anything Italian. As I grew into a teenager, my tastes changed and so did my sandwich. My sandwich of choice was now the #2 Cold Cut Trio. I would get it with lettuce, tomato, onion, mayo and parmesan cheese. This was before toasting was an option. This sandwich reigned as champion for over ten solid years before I decided to make another switch. In 2008, I switched to the Chicken Bacon Ranch (toasted) with Pepper Jack cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, light mayo, light ranch, and parmesan cheese. Today, I have a variety of three different sandwiches that I prefer – The Chicken Bacon Ranch, the Turkey Breast, and the Turkey and Black Forest Ham.

While my sandwich choices didn’t change much over the years, the way I ate them has. I now get all of my sandwiches toasted and I now get pepper jack cheese instead of American (pepper jack wasn’t available until a few years ago). The biggest thing that has changed is not how I eat my sandwich, but what I drink with it. In staying health conscious, I have now chosen to drink water with all of my Subway sandwiches, just as I have with many of my other meals. It’s not a money thing, but purely a healthy choice that I have chosen to make. In doing that, most Subway stores that I have been to are very accommodating and offer complimentary water cups for those who choose water over soda. However, the rules behind ‘the water cup’ vary from store to store, as I found out the hard way…

WORST SUBWAY – 122 Town Center Rd # 103, Matteson, IL 60443

I chose the Subway on Cicero in Matteson as the worst Subway that I have visited in the south suburbs. The food has been satisfactory when I have gone, however, their policy on passing out cups for water is outrageous. All Subway stores offer complimentary see-through water cups, however, this particular location feels that when they run out of those cups, you have to pay for a full price soda in order to receive a regular Subway cup to fill with water. Despite the fact that the store didn’t order enough cups, or the fact that as the cups began to dwindle they didn’t get more cups from another store (which managers at other Subway franchises said they do quite often when out of supplies), regardless of any of that, you have to pay for your cup. This store actually expects you to pay for their mistake. This has happened on numerous occasions, prompting me to finally write about it. Now, I can understand keeping down costs and the fact that each of their regular Subway cups probably costs about between $0.10 and $0.20 cents, but if you are going to charge for a cup, why not charge $0.25 instead of full price? I have learned that this is not a Subway policy, but a policy created by this particular store’s management.

BEST SUBWAY – 7212 191st Street, Tinley Park, IL? 60487

I picked the Subway in Tinley Park in from of the Super Target on Harlem Ave as the best Subway in the south suburbs. During every visit, the staff has always been very pleasant and accommodating. The food has been consistently good each time, and being that this store is in a new building, the inside always appears new and clean. One thing I always look at when I go into a Subway restaurant is the quality of their tomatoes. If they are nice and red, that is a good sign that their other ingredients will be fresh as well. Also, this Subway location has no problem with giving me a regular Subway cup if they run out of their regular water cups.

So there you have it. Everyone goes to different restaurants for different reasons. Sometimes it’s the least distance traveled, and sometimes it’s something completely different. I would recommend to all of you who enjoy Subway like I do to make the drive to the Tinley Park location in front of Super Target to experience the difference.

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Appetizers

Whether you enjoy microbreweries or a perfectly cooked steak sandwich, Harrison’s menu surely won’t disappoint! Their menu includes a large variety of appetizers, perfect for eating at the bar or on the patio and it includes many restaurant standards, such as wings, stuffed mushrooms, quesadillas, and spinach and artichoke dip, but also includes tasty southwest sticks, bayou crab cakes, and steak bites garnished with roasted red pepper strips and portabella mushrooms.

Sensational Salads

Trying to eat lean? Try one of Harrison’s HUGE Sensational Salads! The site of their salad coming towards you might be overwhelming, but it surely won’t be disappointing! Harrison’s has every standard salad that you can imagine, but we recommend the Seared Goat Cheese and Portabella Mushroom Salad with sun-dried tomatoes and roasted pine nuts over baby field greens in a citrus vinaigrette. If goat cheese doesn’t sound appealing, we also recommend the Grilled Steak Salad, loaded with grilled steak, romaine, baby field greens, portabella mushroom, crumbled blue cheese, tomatoes, red onion, tossed in a balsamic vinaigrette dressing.

Sandwiches

No matter what your taste buds desire, Harrison’s has quite a decent menu of sandwiches to choose from! Harrison’s has chicken breast, veggie sandwiches, a delicious brewhouse reuben, and even blackened fish tacos, but above all, we recommend the New York Strip Steak Sandwich. This sandwich is hard-wood grilled with Mozzarella cheese, caramelized onion, mushrooms and herb mayo on french bread. This sandwich is best eaten medium rare to medium and comes served with french fries and a pickle. You won’t be disappointed! Harrison’s also has a few wraps on their menu, including a Chipotle Chicken Wrap, Buffalo Shrimp Wrap, and Harrison’s own wrap that includes zesty chicken, mandarin oranges, Thai peanut sauce, rice, veggies and oriental salad rolled in a flour tortilla.

Entrees

Harrison’s has a large variety of entrees for those who enjoy seafood! From Shrimp Scampi and Pan Seared Tuna to Jambalaya and Parmesan Crusted Tilapia, Harrison’s will settle your seafood appetite! We recommend the Pan Seared Tuna (when in season) and the Wild Mushroom Marsala. All Entrees are served with soup or salad with a baked French onion soup (which is delicious) as an additional upgrade.

Microbrew Beers

You can’t come to Harrison’s without trying one of their home brewed beers! While Harrison’s only has a limited number of home brewed beers, the ones that they do make are made right. Try Harrison’s Oktoberfest beer in the fall, or enjoy one of Harrison’s year round favorites, like the Harrison’s Wheat, Rasberry Wheat, or Harrison’s Red! Harrison’s also offers a Brew of the Month sure to tickle your taste buds.

Harrison’s Restaurant and Brewery is located at 15845 S LaGrange Road in Orland Park, just north of US 6 (159th St).

Sunday-Thursday: 11am-1am (kitchen closes at 10pm)

Friday & Saturday: 11am-2am (kitchen closes at 11pm)

Brought to you by World Hyundai Matteson.

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Schoop’s began at a modest site in Hammond, IN. The first burgers were sold for 14 cents a piece and the company brought in about $2,000 in it’s first month of operation. The original menu had hamburgers, french fries, chili, soup, and pie.

In 1959, Schoop’s opened it’s second restaurant in Munster, IN. Customers found out about the tasty burger and began to form lines alone Ridge Road for a chance at one of the 36 seats in the restaurant. Schoop’s doubled the size of it’s restaurant in 1969 and people still stood in line to get a Schoop’s burger. Today, Schoop’s operates 19 locations within the Chicago metropolitan area, including one in Chicago Heights, Monee, Orland Park, Bourbonnais, Calumet City, and many other Northwest Indiana locations.

Schoop’s hamburger is top notch. With it’s over-sized patty, the hamburger meat looks as if it is being squeezed out of the bun. The gristled edges of the burger give it the distinct taste and texture that Schoop’s is known for. For most of my life, I ordered the “Mickey”, which is a big cheeseburger with two slices of cheese and one slice of meat. I’ve now grown accustomed to the double cheeseburger topped with cheese, ketchup, mustard, and grilled onions. Schoop’s is consistent with it’s flavor throughout all of it’s Chicago area restaurants. I personally have had the opportunity to eat at half of them, all of which I would give rave reviews to.

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As a tourist, it’s difficult to come across those little places around the city that you just ‘have to know about’. While the restaurants on Ontario are likely crowded with shoppers and tourists, most don’t realize that they can have an appetizer and a drink in one of Chicago’s premiere locations.

The Signature Lounge

The Signature Lounge is located on the 96th floor of the John Hancock building, located along Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. With 360° views, it is the highest elevation that one could eat at in the City of Chicago. With astonishing views overlooking four Midwestern states, this local gem is the perfect place to get away from the hustle and bustle 1000 feet below. The Signature Lounge is known for their margaritas, cosmos, and daiquiris, so be sure to try one! The drinks are a bit pricey, but the view is fantastic and FREE. The observatory is just one floor above the Signature Lounge, however, the entrance fee is almost equal to one drink below, so I recommend sacrificing 20 feet of unnoticeable elevation for a relaxing drink below. They are also known for their appetizers, so if you have the time, stop up on the 96th floor. You won’t be disappointed!

Please tell us about the hidden gems that you have found in the Chicago area and maybe we will feature it in our Chicago Restaurant Review.

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