The Early Bird Review

How We Select and Review Early Dining Restaurants

We will be eating, writing and recommending early dinner experiences, not just a price special.

What is early bird dining?

• Early bird dinners will start when the brunch/lunch places close by 3 PM

• The early bird diner will be seated from 4 PM to 6 PM.

• Early can be flexible. We’ve a 3:30 late lunch/early dinner of BBQ ribs, brisket, cornbread, and fries. There’s no way to eat anymore after that meal. And that’s fine.

There are the early bird price specials and just plain early bird eaters.

Today, the trend is that many people are having dinner earlier, and restaurants have adjusted with their own marketing twists.

• There may or may not be special value menus, but the restaurant is open early.

• The new special: restaurants offering “pre-theater menus”, “sunset menus”, and fixed price dinners, and the regular menu is also available.

Our goal is to find places we like and can recommend and look forward to returning, not writing negative reviews of places we don’t plan to visit again.

• We’ll be honest about what we like and what we did not like.

• We want good value, good service, acceptable or hopefully better food.

• We like a little ambiance or an eclectic or attractive atmosphere.

We are starting in the Chicago suburbs and city.

We do a reasonable amount of traveling,. So we will always try to include early bird dinners wherever we are.

And we will be adding “correspondents” to cover other cities .

Dinner Budgets

EarlyBird diners can’t avoid food inflation, and we try to stay in the range of $40 -$100.

Sometimes it’s a non-chain fast food meal at the local hot dog or gyros emporium. Two sandwiches, split a salad, one iced tea and water, and a small fries; We can still do that for under $40.

Earlybird is visiting only eat-in restaurants.

Dining out is one segment of an enormous and growing market with many access options today. Popular alternatives are:

o Customer carryout

o Low cost or free delivery

o Higher price door DoorDash/Uber Eats, etc.

We’ve established an early bird checklist.

These are the items we talk about after dinner and will cover in our reviews.

• The MENU- type of cuisine and variety

• Quality and preparation of the food

• Price/value

• Service

• Ambiance/experience

• Type and size of crowd.

• Noise level!

• Sharing charge ( annoying)

• Parking, other access amenities

• That all-important service when you go out with other people, “we’d like two checks, please”.

• Will we go back?