Signature Room at the 95th

Disappointed. I had high hopes for this place & was excited to spend Valentines Day out with my boyfriend(culinary student) here. Sad to say the meal & service didn't meet the $100/plate price tag. The appetizers were well designed & tasty, those were a win, however, the soup & salad course left much to be desired. The lobster soup was luke warm and tasteless. The salad had crisp greens but I had to stop eating it half way thru because the vinegar in the dressing was overpowering & burning my tongue. The steak was excellent but dessert fell apart. Please keep in mind this was a pre-fix menu so we had limited choices. The pallet cleanser of passion fruit soup, again, was so tart that it hurt my tongue. The chocolate tart was well crafted but lacked any sort of flavor development. Not a very satisfying end to a meal. We were also disappointed that our pre-ordered chocolate covered strawberries never arrived. The server removed them from out bill & when we spoke to the manager about it he said, rather sharply, "well if you were still at your table I could do something about it." Realize that we were waiting at the elevator to leave & had not put on our coats, the table we had sat at (which was right next to the stairs, a table like this should not exist in an establishment like this) was still empty, we might as well still have been at it. All in all an overrated establishment for the price. I would say that this place is a tourist stop you can do without!

A heads up on the Hancock Building, which is one of my favorite places in Chicago. There is an entrance fee (approx $15) for the Hancock Observatory (94th floor), which lets you walk around the entire floor to see every viewpoint, take an audio tour and purchase kitschy souvenirs. My group purchased the "Sun & Stars" entrance which is approx $20 for two entries over 48 hours which is a perfect way to see both daylight and nighttime views.

However for the price of a cocktail, you can avoid the entrance fee and get a table on top of the Windy City (96th floor). Drinks are comparably priced to other venues in the city, and they serve other light fare as well. The 95th floor serves as a restaurant, with similar views although I'm unsure of the menu prices. There is a bit of a line if you go with the after dinner crowd, but it moves quickly and is worth the wait.

So save yourself the entrance fee and head upstairs to the 96th floor Signature Lounge for a drink and a stunning view. Speaking from personal experience, the best view is in fact from the women's restroom!

We followed the advice of another website and went up here for a bite to eat while we were visiting Chicago. It was late afternoon and the restaurant was no longer seating new customers, so we went to get appetizers in the lounge while we took in the view.

This place has some of the worst service that I have ever seen. First of all, we waited on line, while other people behind us in line were seated first, (we were dressed in business casual). The host seemed more like a security guard or bouncer than a traditional host. Never smiled, never welcomed us to the lounge.

After waiting, we were shown to our seats, which were at a counter next to the window. One seat was in on the end and the window was slanted, obstructing half of the view. We were not given the option of waiting for a table or asked if we wanted to wait for better seats.

The counter was not clean, the dirty dishes from the previous patrons were left there and never cleaned up. Since we were not seated at the bar, we assumed a waitress would be coming to take our order. After waiting about 10 minutes, we went to the bar and were told that we would have to order there. We ordered a Pepsi, a hot chocolate and 2 orders of chicken quesadillas. We got our drinks right away and after about 10 minutes, a waiter came out with one order of quesadillas, a knife and no fork. At that point, we were so disgusted with it, we split the order with each other and just ate the quesadillas with our fingers.