Restaurant Review: Russian Tea Time

A few weeks ago Carl and I celebrated our second anniversary downtown.  Let me just say, we had to fight the Transformers filming road closures, traffic caused by the road closures, throngs of people trying to catch a glimpse of Transformers, and a huge protest to get anywhere near Chicago.  But don't worry, we rewarded ourselves by staying at the W Chicago City Center for the evening rather than going home (which was absolutely stunning, I may note.  Stay there if you have the chance).  Obviously, after all that traffic we wanted to relax with a glass of wine, so we enjoyed the day at the Windy City Wine Festival, which was summery and fun.  Stella Artois even sponsored beer pairing classes on the hour and that was fabulous!

Then the festival ended.  And we were hungry.  And wanted to continue celebrating our anniversary.  We brainstormed several places we could go, but some were a la carte dining, tapas, small plates, etc. so naturally we settled on Russian Tea Time.  Carl is German, and I'm part Polish, so we knew we'd definitely be able to find food we loved. 

www.russianteatime.com

I'm just going to be blunt, you must eat at Russian Tea Time!  This restaurant is absolutely beautiful inside and the staff is extremely polite.  This was a late dinner (9pm) so we had the place to ourselves, which, of course we loved.  Stuffed mushrooms and dumplings served as our appetizers and their dipping sauce was different and very good.  I got the Moulard Duck Leg for my main course and it was so good I literally can't even tell you what Carl ordered as his main dish.  I was too busy either A) devouring my main dish or B) gushing to Carl about just.how.amazing.this.duck.is.  You get the picture.  [Side Note: I do know he loved his dinner, just can't remember what he ordered.]  We mentioned we were celebrating our anniversary when we ordered a bottle or champs for the table (yep, we decided to be fancy), and the next thing you know, after the dinner plates were cleared our waiter came out with a dessert and candle.  It was the owner's anniversary as well so they treated us to dessert!  Since this was a surprise I'm not entirely too sure what the name of it was, but I am strongly guessing it was a type of strudel because the dough portion tasted pretty similar to the phyllo dough used for baklava.

www.russianteatime.com

Last but not least, as if we had not already had enough to drink between the wine festival and the bottle of champs, we couldn't go to the Russian Tea Time and NOT try a flight of vodka, am.i.right?  Not sure what to chose, we settled on splitting the house flight - Coriander, Black Currant Tea, and Lime.  Pumpernickel and pickles were provided so we took each sip the 'traditional Russian way' (that we looked up on their menu).  This vodka was smooth.  I am not a vodka person.. not not not.. just not me.  But this was good.  Now that I'm looking at the menu online to write this and I know how smooth it is, I'm wishing I could've made my own flight.  I'd pick Mint, Coffee, and Cinnamon.  Yum.  These new choices coupled with the amazing food gives us an excuse to go back, because I definitely will be stopping there again.  Delicious!