Uno Chicago Grill

Update 5/16/16: Uno is closed.

In a word: Imagine if Olive Garden served tasty and healthy food.

The specs: #0695  
Address, hours & details via Isthmus; reviews at The Culinary Adventures of Jahboh and Tossy, Trip Advisor, Foodie, Yelp, Pop Will Eat Me, Eat Drink Madison; official web site,

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Aaron ate the Romano crusted chicken parmesan.
JM ate the Numero Uno works pizza with a lemonade.
Marissa ate the roasted eggplant, spinach and feta thin-crust pizza.
Nichole ate the warm walnut-crusted goat cheese salad with a mango-tequila cocktail.
We split a spanakopita pie (thanks to Marissa and her email club savvy!)
The bill was about $12/person, plus tip.
Marissa gave Uno Chicago Grill an A-; Nichole gave Uno Chicago Grill a B+; JM gave Uno Chicago Grill a B (see our grading rubric).

Uno Chicago Grill surprised us. First of all, there was an amuse bouche.

It was a sample of a special, some sort of deep-dish twice-baked potato/cheese/bacon pizza with a side of sour cream. It presaged what we expected was going to be a very starchy meal; nothing about Uno Chicago Grill screams to us, "light summer eating!"

But the second surprise was that the rest of the menu had many, many non-deep-dish pizza choices, some of which were even healthful-looking. Farro salad, lemon-basil salmon, and lobster sliders jumped out at us. They even have steak, shrimp, or chicken tikka masala, for crying out loud. And the pizza crusts come in gluten-free and five grain (whole wheat, wheat germ, oat bran, sesame and flax seed) versions.

While the menu is probably too long for its own good, we think Uno ought to get the message out that they are more than a nicer version of Rocky's.

We started with a typical appetizer, their take on spanakopita. It was cooked in a deep pan, but and the crust was flakier and less oily than the potato pizza's had been. It was loaded with sauteed, but again not too oily, spinach and lightly broiled feta.

JM's pizza, a deep dish "Numero Uno," was loaded with vegetables that made each slice wet and runny. Rather than a coherent "works" pizza, this was a jumble.  If anything, it was too standard to be their "named" item.

Aaron went for chicken Parmesan, which he called a good solid option - "not too sexy but satisfying." The portion was big and the Romano-crusted fillets were good.

Marissa and Nichole were probably happiest with their meals. Marissa got the thin-crust eggplant pesto pizza, which had more spinach (luckily she's a fan of all things Florentine), discs of dark purple eggplant very lightly breaded and fried, sun-dried tomatoes, and a balanced amount of cheese holding it together. The pesto and toppings reached to the very edge of the crust, leaving no cornicione to speak of.

Finally, the warm goat cheese salad was good fresh spinach in a blueberry vinaigrette, but it was heavy for a salad. This was entirely due to the probably 6 ounces of walnut-crusted soft cheese set in the middle. We finished it anyway (but some crackers would have been good - it resembled nothing so much as a party cheese ball).

They also have a wide range of desserts, from a humongo-brownie-monster thing to the weensie kind you see at P.F. Chang's (our third surprise was learning Uno is a brand-mate of theirs). Utterly full and with doggie bags in tow, we passed on the sweets, all fueled up for a couple hours of feeding our Dominion addiction.

Comments

[julie]

That appetizer is the "pizza skins", and delish. Unfortunately it's also consistently on the "the unhealthiest foods at restaurants" list.

[Maggie]

Pizza skins ARE great. And I recently discovered that a take-n-bake version can be purchased at SuperTarget. As long as you have some sour cream to go with, they're just as good as fresh from Uno.