Margaret Wappler

It's little wonder why customers often turn to their servers for food recommendations.

At most restaurants, servers act as guinea pigs for new dishes, refiners for entrees that may need altering based on customer feedback, and most importantly, many of them eat what the kitchen serves, day in and day out. Remarkably, many of them never get sick of it. "It may sound like tooting my own horn, but Frontera Grill and [joint restaurant] Topolobampo are among my favorite restaurants in the city," says Frontera Grill maitre'd and server Anne Gadon.

When you do ask a server for a recommendation, you might not get a clear-cut reply: "A common question I get is 'what is the best thing on the menu?' Well, there is no best thing on the menu," says Soul Kitchen server Terry Berner. "Everything is good, it just depends on your taste. One of my favorite things is the shrimp and grits, which is something that's been on the menu since we opened. The stuff is addictive; made with cream, butter, Tabasco and parmesan. These are great flavors. It's actually been mentioned in tons of articles. Our calamari is also very different and original. It's with a chick pea puree and has a corn meal crust. It's also not deep-fried."

Berner, who's been at Soul Kitchen for more than four years, thinks it's important for a server to know their menu well. "You can talk very intimately about the food if you're eating it often. It's a very good way to keep up with what's going on in the restaurant."

Victoria Vanourek, whose first waitering job was at Red Lobster, has been working at Evanston's highly praised Trio for three years. "Trio is number one for all kinds of delicacy. As far as the appetizers, we're dealing with seared foie gras, served with french lentils in a ginger-cider reduction." Among her favorite entrees, Vanourek raves about the black bass. "It's wild and served in a truffle-corn chowder with perfumed bacon. Then it's dotted with Manilla clams. The stuff is the bomb."

Vanourek eats at Trio before every shift, when the chefs cook the waitstaff a family-style meal. "We get fresh veggies, meat. Sometimes it's a Japanese spread, with miso, pork, glass noodles. Or maybe it will be a huge pot of rice, scallops and vegetables in coconut curry. We get the crème de la crème of what's left over."

At Le Colonial, server Anastasia Grieco boasts about the red snapper served by the popular French/Vietnamese fusion restaurant. "I am picky and I have to have good quality. Seared red snapper for the entree is the best. It has such explosive flavors, the most delicious spicy sour sauce. It's wonderful and comes whole. Our filet mignon also has a special sauce from France [saute], and is served with yams and long beans. It's not an easy flavor to describe, but it has something like fifteen different ingredients."

Desserts you have to have [here include] banana tapioca pudding made with coconut milk. The chef makes the pudding. It's non-dairy, very simple, made with vanilla sugar and with little bananas in it."

Grieco mentions how she and her fellow co-workers often go out together bowling, or to neighborhood restaurants, including Cru. "They have good wine and good food. You can relax there. The last thing you want to do after a stressful night is be in some other stressful restaurant."

"We're like family here," tells Bite Cafe's Steve Sostak, who has been with the restaurant for more than four years. "I live down the street and come here to eat all the time. The half-price thing is pretty tempting since I'm a musician and need to live cheap, but the food here is pretty hardy, you go away full and it's healthy. I like the eggplant sandwich and I love the orchiette pasta, with broccoli, raisins, pine nuts and garlic."

Gadon also mentions the same community feeling Sostak and Grieco touch upon. "We are really like a family. It's not uncommon to see people in the kitchen, sitting around at a table chatting and sharing food, like an informal family meal." Because Frontera changes their menu often, the chefs are perhaps more dependent on the waitstaff for feedback than other restaurants. "We have daily meetings where they are always asking us for feedback, what we hear from the customers, particularly with the wine list," Gadon says.

If one thing unites these particular waiters, it's a love for their neighborhood restaurants. Sostak laments the loss of Wishbone's Grand Avenue location and praises the pasta at nearby Privata. Berner has never been disappointed at Absinthe, describing the food as "excellent." And Gadon likes Mod for putting a similar emphasis on organics and quality as award-winning chef Rick Bayless has at Frontera. As Berner notes about Chicago, "You could eat out every night here and never get bored."

Bite Cafe, 1039 North Western, (773)395-2483
Frontera Grill/Topolobampo, 445 North Clark, (312)661-1434
Le Colonial, 937 North Rush, (312)255-0088
Soul Kitchen, 1576 North Milwaukee, (773)342-9742
Trio, 1625 Hinman, Evanston, (847)733-8746 (2000-11-16)

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