Possibly the most disappointing restaurant experience my husband and I have experienced since moving to Chicago 5 years ago. We dine out regularly.
In general, the food, service and general management of the restaurant were well below average.
There were more than 4 people in my party and we ordered a variety of appetizers including Tuna Tartare, the Tenpura and the Republic Salads. As for the Entrees, some of us had the Hong Kong Steak while others went for the American Kobe Shoulder Loin.
The appetizers were acceptable in both presentation and tastiness. Nothing special.
The entrees were all overdone. For example, both Loins which were ordered Medium rare arrved well done. It took us more than 10 minutes to get the attention of a server who offered to take our steaks back to the kitchen to "cook further". Some of us returned our steaks after the first bite and declined the server's offer to replace the steaks. The reason for this was that the service had been so poor and slow for our evenign that we did not wish for further delay to our meal.
When the check came, we were charged for all of our entrees, despite our having alerted our server of our dislike for our food and some of us not having touched more than a small fraction of the food. To add further insult to injury, each of the entrees were described correctly (i.e. medium rare, rare etc)
Without wishing to ruin our evening further, we did not dispute the bill and we paid and made our exit as fast as possible.
Finally, a word about the service. There was a distinct shortage of both bus-boys and servers.
Our server was not familiar with the menu and unable to answer most questions about the items satisfactorily. We hardly saw him throughout the evening.
We all highly recommend you do not try this restaurant.
What made this the worst dining experience was that is was obvious that Republic do not value their customers in the slightest.
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