The Park Grill

Location: The Park Grill, 11 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago (under The Bean in Millennium Park).

What's On The Menu: The Park Grill has an impressive number of vegetarian options, all designated on the menu with a small leaf icon. On the lunch menu, these include 2 appetizers (Garlic and Tomato Hummus; Mushroom Flatbread), 3 salads (Market House Salad, Apple and Fennel Salad, and Roasted Beet Salad), a soup (Hill Valley Pumpkin), 2 pastas (Mushroom Risotto and Penne Puttanesca), and 3 sandwiches (Grilled Eggplant Wrap, Black Bean Farro Burger, and Falafel). The kid's menu featured both a grilled cheese sandwich and spaghetti with butter or marinara sauce.

What I Had: Hill Valley Pumpkin Soup with Michigan apple chutney and Indiana syrup, and the Black Bean Farro Burger with horseradish cheddar, smoked pepper aioli, onion crisp, and potato bun.

The Review: The Park Grill's website proudly proclaims that they serve the "Best Non-Beef Burger," as chosen by Chicago Magazine in 2009. The "burger" in question is the restaurant's turkey burger. It is most assuredly NOT the Black Bean Farro burger, which was a total mess. The first thing you taste when you bite into it is the smoked pepper aioli, which is overwhelmingly smoky. It tasted like I had bitten into something burnt, and completely overwhelmed all of the other flavors in the sandwich. I couldn't even taste the horseradish in the cheddar until I tried a small bite of the cheese on its own. The second major issue was the bun, which was both overly thick and covered with a more-than-healthy dusting of flour. It was exceedingly dry and, well, dusty. "Dusty" is not a word I like to have spring to mind in connection with anything I am eating. The crispy onions added a pleasant crunch, but the black bean patty itself was mushy and had no discernible flavor. It also did nothing to combat the overall dryness of the sandwich. The fries that came with the sandwich were nicely cooked and well-seasoned.

The pumpkin soup was reasonably well-executed, with a nice, fresh pumpkin flavor. In the "cup" size, the "apple chutney" consisted of two chunks of some sort of stewed apple, and the Indiana syrup was...some kind of sweet, brownish syrup. Presumably from Indiana. A little more information on that front would have been nice.

I did appreciate the fact that there were a large number of vegetarian choices, and that they were clearly designated on the menu...it saves me from having to ask a waiter (who often has no clue) if something that looks like it MIGHT be vegetarian actually has hidden chicken stock or bacon in it. You certainly can't beat the location if you are visiting Millennium Park or The Art Institute. The service was very pleasant and attentive, and I would certainly be willing to give some of the other items on the menu a try, but the black bean burger is definitely not going to be a repeat order.