Restaurant Review: Flat Top Grill

(Image taken from http://www.flattopgrill.com/)

Flat Top Grill has 14 locations in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin - I've eaten at 2 of those, one in Lombard and one in downtown Chicago.

From their website:

"Flat Top Grill started in suburban Chicago in 1995 with a vision to bring fresh, Asian style cooking to the U.S. and expanded into a 14 unit restaurant group. Flat Top Grill’s create-your-own stir-fry restaurants combine the comforts of a full-service restaurant with an interactive dining experience that has helped the group become a preferred destination in the markets it serves across the Midwest.

Flat Top Grill captures Asian-inspired tastes and preferences throughout all food and drink offerings and presents them in a lively and fun atmosphere, with restaurants often found in hip, urban neighborhoods. Guests can enjoy multiple trips through “The Fresh Food Line” and create unique dishes—all for one value-oriented price.

In 2009, Stir Crazy Fresh Asian Grill combined with Flat Top Grill to form a new parent company, Flat Out Crazy Restaurant Group, LLC. With 28 restaurants in 8 states, and the capability of opening many new restaurants over the next three years in both urban and suburban settings across the country, Flat Out Crazy is a restaurant group with growth plans designed to develop both brands to national status.

Stir Crazy Fresh Asian Grill and Flat Top Grill will retain their names as well as their individual concepts. Flat Out Crazy Restaurant Group, LLC will run these two concepts independent of one another while at the same time continuing to look to each concept for best practices, people development, efficiencies and enhancements.In 2009, Stir Crazy Fresh Asian Grill combined with Flat Top Grill to form a new parent company, Flat Out Crazy Restaurant Group, LLC. With 28 restaurants in 8 states, and the capability of opening many new restaurants over the next three years in both urban and suburban settings across the country, Flat Out Crazy is a restaurant group with growth plans designed to develop both brands to national status.Flat Top Grill captures Asian-inspired tastes and preferences throughout all food and drink offerings and presents them in a lively and fun atmosphere, with restaurants often found in hip, urban neighborhoods. Guests can enjoy multiple trips through “The Fresh Food Line” and create unique dishes—all for one value-oriented price."

Basically, they are similar to many other restaurants where each person chooses their vegetables, rice, noodles, and meat, along with sauces and extras such as nuts or what have you, takes it all up to a cook, who then sautees/stir fries the whole shebang and the food is delivered to your table.

Pros: Flat Top Grill has a decent variety of vegetables, meats, sauces, and methods of altering the meal (making it a soup, lettuce wraps, bread on the side, etc.). The two restaurants I ate in were generally clean and decent-looking places to have a meal.

Cons: Slow and not inexpensive. The Loop location was CROWDED and there is no system to the food preparation - with a group of 12, I put in my food first, yet one other person in our group got her food first, and then the rest of us had to wait about 15 minutes. The Lombard location is slow as well, yet there was no crowd any of the 3 times I ate there. Mongolian BBQs/Flat Top Grills in general are a pretty fast group of food-preparers, so I'm not sure why this chain struggles with that.

Recommended for a place where everyone can have food done their way. If you're not in a hurry, this is a decent place to try a variety of sauces/combinations, especially if you get the all-you-can-eat option.