Polletto - loop lunch

Here's a quick take on Polletto World Chicken & Salad, a newish, upper-end-of-fast-food option downtown.

On the one hand, like so many new chain concepts with upscale aspirations, everything exists in a culinarily rootless haze of focus-tested adjectives signifying nothing particular. On the other hand, they turn out a nice piece of chicken with relative efficiency, so who cares if the concept has intellectual/ethnic/regional integrity?

The only thing Italian about Polletto is the name. The menu comes right off the food industry branding and concept consultant assembly line---an unfocused grab-bag of sandwiches, salads, wraps, marinades/glazes, etc.

You want generic? Try this sampling of menu vocabulary on for size: boneless, skinless, breast, Vesuvio, Mesquite BBQ, Honey-Thai-Chili glaze, rancho, pesto, French dip, Caesar, garlic-herb, buffalo wings. . .you get the idea. No cliche left unturned.

But as an operation dedicated to providing a reasonably tasty, hassle-free lunch for well under $10, they pretty much succeed. Unfortunately, several weeks have passed between my one visit and this writing, but I jotted down some quick impressions at the time.

For a operation, they handled long lines and order taking pretty well. The staff managed to seem friendly and in command of the system at the same time. There was some small confusion as they called out completed orders by customers' first names, and there happened to be at least 2 Joels and 2 Davids there that day, but things were sorted out pretty quickly.

I ordered a half bird (dark meat), and while it wasn't crispy, it was moist and flavorful. Way more like real chicken than the standard dried out treatments of boneless breast one finds everywhere else. One can order either a quarter bird, front or back, or a half bird,left or right.

The sides are a small cut above average. The Chinois slaw had a bit of real flavor. The fire-grilled antipasti were diagonally cut veggies that still had a bit of crunch left to them. I am over 90% certain that these come completely pre-grilled from a supplier, but they do that sort of thing pretty well nowadays, and the taste was OK. They also offer shoestring fries with sea salt, cracked pepper and herbs, though I haven't tried them.

Coffee is Seattle's best and they have Tazo teas.

Not a destination place, but worth a visit for anyone looking for one more loop lunch option.

Polletto
171 W. Washington

mrbarolo wrote:One can order either a 'quarter bird' front or back' or a 'half bird' left or right.'

Left-meat or right-meat? That's a new one.

eatchicago wrote:

mrbarolo wrote:One can order either a 'quarter bird'front or back' or a 'half bird' left or right.'

Left-meat or right-meat? That's a new one.

It's a political issue.

A

I was bemused as well. Perhaps it's tongue-in-cheek. Fortunately, the staff ignore the menu wording and just ask if you want light or dark.

When you walk in, it kind of has the feel of the upscale(ish) fast food chain, Chipotle. I was expecting to be underwhelmed, but walked away feeling happy to have a very good loop lunch option. They bill themselves as a "world chicken and salad" restaurant, which doesn't really give very much insight into what they do.

The heart of their business is fire grilled chicken. Today when I was there they had about 30 chickens roasting away on top of an open grill. You can either order the chicken as is with some promising sides, or in a salad, sandwich or chili. The as-is chickens can be finished with a variety of sauces that include: Vesuvio, Honey-Thai-Chile or Cuban Mojo Criollo.

I ordered the Mekong Sub - which while far from a traditional Bahn Mi - was really good due to excellent ingredients. The most important part, the chicken, was juicy and tasted like it was grilled. It was served with cilantro, radish, carrots, chives, mayo and chile oil. Very nice. I was going back and forth between this and the chicken french dip (chicken and gruyere w/ chicken jus).

I didn't order anything else, but while I was waiting for my sandwich to be made, I saw the above mentioned (delicious looking) shoestring french fries come out, which they describe as frites seasoned with sea salt, cracked pepper and herbs.

The side dish selection is kind of intriguing--fire roasted corn on the cob with sour cream-lime-chile-vinaigrette--a corporate take on elotes? I'll concur with Mr. Barolo that the focus-group inspired menu-speak is contrived and tiring--but still, a good lunch in the loop is hard to find. So I'll look past the fact that they have sun-dried blueberries in their wild rice salad, and use low-carb pita for their "wraps", and call their gumbo "kickin' gumbo."

Spurred on by the above posts, and with Polletto just a block from my office, I tried it today as a take-out. I wasn't quite as pleased with it as the above posters, maybe because I've worked in the loop more than 30 years, and I could name a number of places at about the same price point, but a whole lot better.

Polletto is in a former Burger King space. They've kept the same layout, just changing the wall coverings, as well as a few other facade changes. It looks like what it is, a fast food chicken joint. You order at the counter, get a plastic card number that you carry to an empty table, stick the number card on a metal stand, and a counter person brings over the food. For take-out, they give you a numbered card from the same stack, but you wait around the counter until your order is ready, in our case, between five and ten minutes.

Now, in fairness, I didn't try more than a bird and fries. My business partner likes white, I like dark, so we ordered a whole bird vesuvio style, and two orders of the fries. We saw the two orders of fries come out to an unheated counter almost immediately. We watched our fries sitting out in a plastic container, getting cold for the nearly 10 minutes we waited for the chicken to come out. As they were bagging everything, I asked for fresh fries, pointing out the obvious. To say that their attitude toward my request was less than friendly would be an understatement.

The chicken was certainly no better than the spit-roasted, cooked birds available at any major grocery chain, and not as good as most I've had. The meat was drier than it should have been, surprising especially for the dark meat. Calling the coating "vesuvio" was, at best, arbitrary. It was just salty, without even a hint of garlic. And I do mean salty.

I generally expect shoestring fries to have a bit of crunch to them, and these had none. Limp, cooked just beyond raw, I tried several and disposed of the rest. I do think that if my partner was a poster here, he would have been somewhat kinder. He agreed there was nothing that would get us back there, but he thought his white meat was OK, and he ate more of the fries than I did (I'm also convinced he was hungrier than I was).

One of my favorite spots for tasty, well-prepared lunch options in the loop is Petros, at the northwest corner of LaSalle and Randolph. Typical of their value is a generous portion of broiled whitefish, perfectly cooked to a moist, golden brown, and including one of the homemade soups or a cold, crisp salad, all for $9.95. There are any number of other good options, many of which I've seen on other loop restaurant threads, but my point is that you can do better for a quick loop lunch than Polleto's.

I went back today for lunch with Pigmon--and this time ordered a whole bird with garlic rice and asian slaw. The sides we're pretty good--if skimpy. But, I'm going to defend the chicken as being pretty good. Maybe it was because we ordered it whole, (and yesterday it was slathered in chili oil and mayo)--but it was juicy, even the white meat. And the skin was crispy. We got our bird with mojo--which was nothing special. But overall, it is a nice lunch.

And by nice lunch, I mean for me (who doesn't have time to sit down in a real restaurant or walk more than 2 blocks) it's a way better option than say Panda Express or Au Bon Pain, or PotBelly's, etc., ad nauseum.

I've only been once, but my snap judgement too was that it was over-priced for a fairly mediocre bird. I was particularly put off by their attempt to satisfy all tastes by taking one generic bird and giving you a "vesuvio" or "pesto" chicken by putting some sauce on the side. I admit the sandwiches sound tasty, though. And although my usual lunch price point is $5, I too can think of lots of places I'd be able to get terrific lunches under $10--starting with
Siam Rice

For my chicken-on-the-bone in the northwest corner of the loop, I much prefer Chickadilly's Charhouse.

Nice to see my snap judgements verified. As usual, the Tribune has compared only mediocre chain birds (where's Pico Rico?), but even in that context Poletto sinks to the bottom. Below even the wretched Boston Market, Jewel, and Dominick's. See Checking out Roasted Chickens

And, for any of you near west suburbanites looking for a good supermarket chicken, let me recommend Ultra Foods.

Ann Fisher wrote: I admit the sandwiches sound tasty, though..

But sounding and being aren't the same thing...

I thought I'd give Polleto a try last week, and went with the Mekong Sub - "French roll with grilled chicken, mayo, chili oil, Napa cabbage, cilantro, radish, carrots, chives" Sounded fairly tasty to me, but the sandwich ending up being remarkably bland. Perhaps they forgot some ingredients (I don't remember any radishes or mayo - and I couldn't recall what was suppossed to be on the sandwich after I ordered it), but there really wasn't any flavor or spice to it, it was just chicken and veggies on some bread. Edible, but disappointing.

I did like the shoestring fries, though that may have been because I haven't had any such fries in a long time and they were simply a nice change-up.

I'll probably make a second visit though...the other sandwiches do sound fairly good and like they'd be guaranteed to have at least some flavor thanks to the pesto or cheese. I'm also a bit curious about the wings...anybody give those a shot?