First Look: 33 Club

Photo tour: 33 Club

For anyone else, opening a 10,000-square-foot, 160-seat restaurant like 33 Club easily could be the project of a lifetime. For Jerry Kleiner, it’s all in a day’s work.

That’s not to say that the 3-week-old Old Town restaurant, a clubby, bi-level space with mahogany-paneled walls and a grand staircase dominating the center of the dining room, wasn’t a massive undertaking—it took him nearly 16 months to complete. It’s just that he’s been here before, unleashing his signature flair at spots such as Carnivale, Marche and Opera.

Stepping into 33 Club, you have to wonder if Kleiner missed the memo about the recession. Though the design is more subdued than some of his more fantastical spots, the word lavish still only begins to describe it. From the elegant herringbone floors to the carefully arranged bottles in the floor-to-ceiling display case that separates the front bar from the main dining room, no detail is overlooked. And then there’s the art: dozens of paintings and sketches from Kleiner’s personal collection, including the huge, 10-by-12-foot “Nonsun Blob A” by Chicago artist Wesley Kimler, which dominates the south wall.

Though Kleiner hasn’t held back in indulging his design side here, he does show some restraint. It’s apparent the minute you look at the prices on chef Daniel Kelly’s menu. Most entrees are $24 or less, and only steaks hit the $30 mark. (A lighter menu that includes snacks and sandwiches, served in the 60-seat front bar, tops out at $15; lunch entrees hover around $10.) The offerings seem restrained too. A lineup of classics starts with dishes such as crab and shrimp cocktail ($10), French onion soup ($7) and Caesar salad ($8) and proceeds without much fanfare to homey plates like roasted chicken ($18) and broiled Lake Superior whitefish ($18).

Perhaps Kleiner has been following the news about the economy after all. There’s great value here, if you measure such things in terms of size. An appetizer portion of grilled baby lamb chops ($14) is big enough to serve as an entree at some restaurants; a hunk of miso-glazed Chilean sea bass ($28) was the largest piece of fish we’ve been served all year. If you factor in consistency, however, the value dips a bit. Those lamb chops were inexplicably rubbery. And while the sweet gingered glaze on the sea bass shone brightly, the fish was cooked unevenly—moist and flaky in some parts but overdone in others. (Ironically, that’s just the trouble with a piece of fish so large: It’s not easy to cook anything that big evenly throughout.)

In such a clubby setting, you might be tempted to order steak. You should. Before 33 Club, Daniel Kelly was in the kitchen at Tramanto’s Steak & Seafood in Wheeling—in other words, he knows steak. Our 12-ounce New York strip ($30) was a highlight, presented in a simple red wine sauce. A 16-ounce bone-in ribeye ($33) gets the same classic treatment; both are served a la carte, with steakhouse sides ($6 each) such as creamed spinach, garlic mashed potatoes and a mac ’n’ cheese-stuffed baked potato (not quite as off-the-hook delicious as it sounds, but a conceptual stroke of genius nonetheless). If you’re really indulging, there’s also a signature 8-ounce fillet ($28) with truffle demi-glace.

Speaking of indulgences, we rarely see such gargantuan desserts outside of rotating glass cases. We’d still be working on a slice of awesomely retro Boston cream pie ($7) if we hadn’t given up out of sheer exhaustion. But don’t let that deter you. It’s perfectly acceptable to indulge here—just look around you.

M. Kathleen Pratt is the Metromix dining producer. kpratt@tribune.com

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