Last Saturday at my Fox Valley Mall meet up, I had a young woman come up and introduce herself to me.  Her name is Julia.  Her husband Paul came with her because he was like “you want to go meet some stranger at a mall for a meet up?!”

She’s so sweet and I love that were it not for Instagram, our paths likely would have never crossed.  She lives in the far western suburb and I am the far NW suburbs.  Luckily we work pretty close, so we decided to meet up yesterday for happy hour/dinner.

We had every intention of going to Beatnik on the River – um, turns out you need to make a reservation DAYS in advance of that place, so we quickly settled on River Roast.

We scored a table on the river – which was gorgeous until it started raining at about 8 and then we had to come inside.  

We shared everything – these shishito peppers were probably the best I’ve ever had – they had a harissa lemon seasoning on them and they were addicting.

These were called Chicken Gobbets – crispy fried chicken with local honey for a drizzle – swoon!

Then we split the burger – so good!  While I prefer a bigger patty to medium rare, this thin patty double cheese burger was pretty delicious – with fried egg (which I kindly gave to Julia) bacon and avocado.

I didn’t mind at all spending all my weekly points on dinner.  It was so fun and even though we literally just “met” it was like old friends that hadn’t seen each other in a while.  Looking forward to hanging out with her again.

We both have long commutes and even though we left the restaurant at 8:15, we both didn’t get home until nearly 10.  Totally worth staying out on a school night!

Seeing the city at night though, never gets old.

To recap:  The food was delicious – can’t wait to go back for the whole chicken (to compare it to The Publican!) and the table side roast beef.

Service was a bit slow.  We asked for our check, then realized we wouldn’t make our trains until the next hour, so when we ordered another drink he seemed a bit . . . bothered about it.  Not sure if his shift was almost up, but it was only like 7:30.

Great beer/cocktail/wine list too.  We lucked out on getting a table last minute, but since it’s on the river, you should probably make reservations.

Happy Wednesday!