EWP Review: Girl & The Goat

A couple weeks ago I dined at Girl & The Goat. You know I love my Top Chef restaurants, so I had to go. I had been back in November, but was on a ridiculously restricted diet because of my pregnancy and evil gallstones. I basically had soup and that's about it. Not the best way to experience a restaurant. I was dying to get back and actually be able to eat this time around.

Being the in demand restaurant that it is, we booked 3 months in advance to get a weekend reservation. Finally the day of the ressie rolled around, so we packed ourselves and BabyWP up and met my good friend Laura and her husband at Girl & The Goat.

We showed up and the first thing we were smacked with was a giant haze of smoke. And, no, it was not the patrons. There's a smoking ban in Chicago, but no one told the kitchen it seems. The smoke was coming from the cooking, and y'all, it was thick.

The second thing we were smacked with was attitude. The host station was not pleased about the presence of BabyWP. Mind you this is a casual restaurant where it wouldn't be weird to bring a baby, they have high chairs for pete's sake, and there were other children there! And we had an early Sunday evening reservation on purpose, as that's a more appropriate time to bring your kid to a restaurant, at least in my opinion. But the host was super upset that we made a reservation for 4 people when we were in fact, in his opinion, five people because we had a baby. I told him that BabyWP wasn't going to sit in a high chair and we were just going to hold her through dinner. That didn't seem to mean anything to the host. He then told me we couldn't sit at the four-top they had set up for us, and we had to wait for a bigger table. He assured me it would only be a few minutes.

I was annoyed because I did not understand how we still couldn't sit at a four top, and especially worried about the delay. When you go out with a baby, careful planning of naptimes and bedtimes and feedings happen in preperation so dinner works out. We could handle a bit of delay, but not a giant one. But we were assured it'd just be a few minutes.

FORTY-FIVE minutes later, we were finally led to a table..... a four-top. Umm..... so we couldn't sit at a four-top because we had a baby, so you made us wait forty-five minutes ... for another four-top???? It defied explanation.

We sat down and tried to shrug off the wait, breathe through the smoke, and not think about the meltdown that was sure to happen mid-dinner as the delay would put us into bedtime before we got the check. There was food to eat, and great food can cure all ills.

Except this wasn't good food. It was mediocre. I mean, it was fine, but it wasn't anything I would go out of my way to eat again. Like Pirennial Virant, it was shared small plates. Unlike Pirennial Virant, I was not excited about anything I ate. There was goat, there was pasta, there was flatbread, there were scallops. And, frankly, it was all over-salted. The sugo was so salty it was inedible. No real restaurant should make such a glaring salting mistake.

And by the end of the meal, I could not see. The smokiness had made my, and my friend's, eyes sting very badly. As soon as I had my last bite, I told Mr. EWP I was going outside, with the baby, and get some air and would wait for him out there while he got the check. It was just that bad. My eyes literally stung for hours and hours after we left. It was bad.

So after a very lackluster evening, full of salty food and rude service, I give Girl & The Goat a Nine West rating of 2 out of 4 stars. It'd be fine for a random Tuesday night at the last minute when you didn't have anything else, but definitely not something worth waiting three months for.