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PBandFluff and the 3 little ones tried out Labriola Bakery Cafe last Friday during their soft opening after reading a post about a free meal...Hey, we sure usually do not pass up a free meal. You would agree with us after seeing how much our 2, 4, and 6 year old can put away in a meal.

We arrived at 5PM and were greeted by their marketing director who graciously welcomed us and told us to order anything on the menu and including beer and wine to drink.

The place reminded me of a Pottery Barn catalog with the large wood burning oven for their pizza's in the center of the restaurant. The music was on the louder side, but did not detract from having a conversation at normal tones. At first glance this reminded me of an upscale Corner Bakery. The Mrs. had a cup of chicken noodle soup. She liked it and it appeared to have a good mount of shredded chicken and the standard vegetables. I had a bowl of their minestrone; I thought it was good, not great, but good. I personally have a slight issue with minestrone having potatoes in it, but that is just me. Both soups came with a 6 inch slice of their bread, which was good to use in soaking up the broth.

For the main meal, I had their gnocchi in a tomato alfredo sauce. The gnocchi were surprisingly fluffy and surrounded by a generous portion of sauce, maybe a little too much. The Mrs. had one of their pizza's (Alsatian Tarte Flambe Pizza) with Fromage Blanc, Coriander, Apple Wood Smoked Bacon, and Poached Onion. It was a large pizza with a little of the tasty burnt crust thrown in...

The little ones has the kids portion of pizza, which was a generous portion for a child and could probably feed an adult, a cheese sammy (which may have needed a little more time under heat to melt the cheese and the third had buttered noodles. The cheese sammy came with some really good chips too....

Rich Labriola was on sight and insisted that we try some of their homemade gelato. They had 12 on site including a red wine, hazelnut, peanut butter and vanilla. We sampled a few flavors and thought that it competed well with our favorite, Freddy's in Cicero (I just wish I saw them baking the pepperoni bread that Freddy's does so well). On the way out, we were given a few loaves of bread to take home, which was quite generous.

While we were eating our meal, we noticed a number of people come in who were not part of the soft opening. The marketing manager greeted them at the door and asked their name to cross reference against the people who signed up for the event. When the people responded that they were not part of the event, they were advised that they were not yet opened for business, but welcomed them to stay and enjoy a meal on the house. I think that this was a GREAT gesture on the part of the Cafe and the definitely won over some customers because of that.

The pasta was around $10, pizzas in the $11-$13 range and the sammy's were all $8. I think that this is a great change of pace from the typical corner bakery type cafe.

Sorry, but we forgot the camera for pictures.

Labriola Bakery Cafe
Oak Brook Promenade (Same new mall as Kona Grill)
3021 Butterfield Road
Oak Brook, IL 60523
630.574.2008

Just adding my 2 cents in addition to the MR....

The Alsatian Tart Flambe Pizza I had was great! I am actually still thinking about it. Salty but yet slightly sweet with the onions ( I thought they were more carmelzed in my opinion than "poached").

The chicken noodle soup was also good...the right amount of saltiness, veggie amount and chicken amount. My thought however was that the chicken was too shredded for my liking..I prefer chunky and this had lots of lil' bits o'chicken in it.

The kids meals were are good and the kids ate the majority of everything. Our 4 year old loved the tomato soup (cream based ?). The grilled cheese was good except a little too done (burnt almost) on the outside and the cheese on the inside wasn't completely melted. I can't complain too much b/c this was a "practice run" night for them and I know there is a learning curve.

The gelato was very good (not Freddy's but still very good). I had the peanut butter and coffee flavors. I really enjoyed both but in retrospect would not get the combo as I sligthly prefered the PB flavor and the coffee overpowered it. The coffee flavor also is served with coffee beans....good for me but maybe overpowerful for some? If too overpowerful....just ask for without the beans (scattered on top in the freezer case and can easily be avoided while scooping).

This is a place I would go with my girlfriends after/while shopping or for a quick bite but not fast food before/ after a movie. An upscale Corner Bakery. A comfy casual place to talk.

As a side note, they also serve cookies, cakes, muffins, scones, etc.... for those of you out there that have a sweet tooth like I do. I only tried the cinnamon scone and espresso cookie..both good.

just thought I'd note a little-taken-advantage-of deal at Brasserie Jo, which gives away really nicely done Tarte Flambee for free, nightly at the bar during happy hour.

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...defended from strong temptations to social ambition by a still stronger taste for tripe and onions." Screwtape in The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis

Fuckerberg on Food

I recently ate here with my daughter. I had a salad which I thought was very good and she had soup and a sandwich.

We took home some pretzel bread rolls and some rolls with raisins and nuts. Very good.

Ventured out to the suburbs on Sunday to hit up Yorktown for a little while. Had a return to make, didn't want to go downtown or up to Old Orchard in the heat. Met up with a friend and we did a little shopping during the heat of the afternoon.

The food options in Yorktown are very typical, especially now that Boudin SF has closed.

We were this close to grabbing something quick at Potbelly's and I rememberd that the Labriola was somewhere nearby and my friend was happy to oblige.

We decided to split a few things to go, then grabbed some items from the bakery counter to sample afterwards.

For lunch, we shared the chopped salad and the turkey burger on the pretzel roll. The turkey burger was really tasty, nice flavour and very moist. The sandwich came with fries, which didn't hold up well after a short drive, and were of the less crispy variety to begin with......still ate a bunch, though. The chopped salad was fine, nothing to write home about it, but it was a good way to share a few things and lighten up the meal. Nice touch on the salad were over-roasted portabella mushrooms, as well as the blue cheese and bacon.

All of the items we sampled from the counter were great: the small fig cookies, the apple fritter, and the brownie which was very dense and rich. The apple fritter really stood out, light and airy, nice compliment to the rich chocolate brownie.

The gelato looked great and many were tasting over the very hot weekend.

If in the area, this is a great alternative to the horrendous mall options: Taco Bell, McD's, etc.

Not to mention, plenty of pretzel rolls to take home. In many shapes & sizes!

enjoy,
miss ellen

Went for dinner tonight. Ordered the Richie burger ($10) and the foot-long grilled cheese ($7). Every table receives a generous portion of baguette with salted Plugra butter. Nice!

I had a craving for grilled cheese, so I devoured my foot-long. Golden brown, perfectly crispy, gooey, deliciously cheesy lol I had fun revisiting my childhood days with this sandwich. Bf could only handle a few bites b/c it was pretty rich/heavy with the cheddar, swiss, and provolone cheeses haha I normally prefer fries over chips, but here, I thought the chips that came with the grilled cheese were better than the fries that came with the burger.

As others have said, the highlight of the Richie burger is the pretzel roll. The beef was pretty good, but I would put the burger at David Burke's Primehouse ahead of it.

For dessert-- gelato ($4 for one or two flavors)! Hazelnut, coconut, pistachio, and dreamsicle. Some of the other flavors we sampled before purchasing were kinda mehhh, but the ones we chose in the end were great! I think if I were blindfolded, I wouldn't be able to distinguish between Labriola's gelato and the gelato at Caffe Gelato (for the flavors we got). My stomach was quite pleased.

We went to Labriola a few weeks ago for our first time, it worked well for a meeting spot for a diverse group including two very picky eaters. I had the Boar's Head Ham and Swiss on brioche and my partner had Labriola Grilled Bread salad. Both were excellent though I think I liked the thick salty homemade potato chips best of all. The picky eaters had the Foot Long Grilled Cheese and a bowl of tomato soup each, neither finished the grilled cheese. We might have gone for something more but we were eating another meal with other friends in less than 4 hours.

Although we liked what we had and saw many other things we'd like to try, I'm not in a hurry to go back. I find the place kind of noisy and chaotic with everyone on top of one another. I also look at things differently since I have mobility issues and avoid places where I can't move about easily.

Went here for a burger for the second time, and for the second time in a row they turned my requested medium burger into a lump of crunchy coal with absolutely no pink inside of it. I was in a rush and didn't have time to send it back, so i glumly ate the dense product. Here's the worst part - it had very little taste. I purposely only asked for cheese and onions in order to let the beef steal the show and was sorely disappointed.

Never again.

I will not make excuses for LaBriola nor will i doubt the truthfulness of your experience, but my experience ( based on approximately 10 visits ) has been that the burger has always been cooked "spot-on" medium rare, as requested.

I happen to think that LaBriola serves one of the tastiest burgers in Chicagoland and I am sorry to hear of your disappointing meal. Believe me, I have been to a number of "board favorites" where I just shake my head after the meal and wonder what the hype is about---You have the right to feel this way about LaBriola.

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"Goldie, how many times have I told you guys that I don't want no horsin' around on the airplane?" Maj. Kong

I went for lunch last week and had the Richie Burger with bacon add-on. I kind of have to agree with those that have said the burger is lacking in flavor. The pretzel roll and bacon are very good. The burger was cooked to the proper temp, but was bland. Not really beefy at all. Fries are good though. It's not terrible, but I don't think I would put it up to the top of the list with places like Kuma's, Paradise Pup or the Bad Apple.

After trying the Richie Burger and coming to the same conclusion that the bun and bacon are the only remarkable things about it, I now just buy some buns from there and make my own. Twice the taste for 1/2 the price.