We came here for brunch for restaurant week so we got a nice deal for our meal! The food was mostly good, although some of it was hit or miss. The setting of this restaurant is open and modern and I really liked the glass ceiling. To start we got to choose between a chocolate coffee banana smoothie or a green apple avocado smoothie. I got the green apple and avocado smoothie and it was pretty good but I was a bit surprised with the heavy celery flavor. I tasted the chocolate coffee banana smoothie and I liked this one a lot better. For food I got the west town sticky bun and crab cake Benedict. The west town sticky bun was delicious!! It was huge, but the pastry and the cream cheese frosting was delicate in flavor so I was able to eat the whole thing. The crab cake Benedict was also good but I was a little disappointed at how small the crab cakes were since they were smaller than the size of the eggs. I was also expecting an English muffin on the bottom. Overall this was a nice place to come to for the restaurant week. I'm not sure if I would be willing to pay the full price for all of the menu items but I would come back for the west town sticky bun!

I was going to walk downtown a little to see what I could find for dinner while in Chicago but upon checking Yelp, I noticed that the restaurant that was below the hotel I was staying at had some pretty great reviews so I decided to give it a shot and I am glad I did. First off, Portsmith is a seafood restuarant so I was game on right from the start, I love me some great seafood. I decided to try an appetizer and a few shared plates to get a good sampling of the menu. I decided to take a unique turn and try their Papaya Salad first. This can be tricky to get because you either do this salad great or greatly disappoint, especially with such a pungent ingredient such as fish sauce. Their salad was actually pretty good, it was light, tangy, and crisp. The salad included Thai basil, spearmint, peanuts, and was thrown in a great tasting Pad Thai Vinaigrette. Next in line was the Prawn Stuffed Poblano. The Poblano was stuffed with pearl onions, prawns, and golden raisins. It was then covered in a walnut cream sauce and sprinkled with pomegranates pieces. It was such a unique dish. You got the pop of the nuttiness first, followed by the sweetness from the filling, and then finally a small burn from the pepper. It was really unique and the flavors all melded together well. Finally, the crab cake. It wasn't meager not the crab which is good when crab is in the title. Some cakes are very starchy or full of filler but this cake was almost all crab with a little bit of a binding agent to hold it together. It was then topped with a chopped avocado salad and occompanied with Aioli Nero (which was a salty umami sauce). Each dish showed a lot of passion and care in it's presentation, taste complexities, and ingredient pairings. Each dish was such a work of art and an explosion of flavor. Hats off to the culinary delights at Portsmith, great place to find right off of State Street in Chicago.

I didn't realize this is a hotel restaurant until after we stepped in lol. However, the food and service were beyond expectation. Food was visually appealing, creative, and most importantly, delicious! The Yellowtail Snapper might be my first deep-fried decapitated whole fish in an American restaurant. The spicy sauce on top of the fish added a kick to the dish. With the tenderness of the fish itself and a slight buttery taste to it, the dish was just amazing. They spent some efforts in making their version of Fish & Chips healthier. I personally like the texture and taste, but naming it Fish & Chips may create some misunderstanding for those who are huge fans of the traditional version. All dishes tasted good, but the meal was a little pricey given the portion. I'd still go back and try different seafood when they are in season.

Restaurant is located inside the Dana Hotel and Spa. Dined here during Chicago's Restaurant week 2019.

YUMMY! My friend and I decided to go here for Sunday brunch. We had no reservations, but were seated right away around 11am. I LOVED how they took care of us. There was a little bit of confusion at first since our table was smack dab in the middle of two sections. They apologized for the wait (which wasn't long at all) and gave us mimosa's on the house. Now that's what I call excellent customer service! From there our experience just kept getting better. For my meal I had the Fried fish and waffles. I thought it was a really interesting dish. The fish is halibut, so it's a little bland, but the combination with the waffles, maple syrup, and tartar sauce is DELICIOUS! Only thing I wish is they gave you a little more Fried fish. My friend had the Traditional entree and also enjoyed her meal, but was hoping for a little bit more fish as well. We both shared an order of the sweet potato pancakes. This to me qualified as dessert. It reminded me of sweet potato pie and was amazing! We were surprised with a couple of pastries to go! I cannot remember what the name of mine was (raspberry type danish thing?), but OMG...AMAZING. I will definitely be going back here! Awesome experience and great food.

It's always amazing to me when a restaurant that has only been open a few days is running smoothly, because it's such a huge task to get the food, service, and ambiance right. But that was the case when we visited Portsmith during its first week. The theme here is fish, and it is carried out in almost every course. Even the sourdough bread has bonito flakes in it. That bread was a bit chewy for my taste, but the flavor was good and the accompanying black garlic butter was delicious. I preferred the Parker House Roll, which looked more like a pita and tasted like cheese bread. Its companion old bay butter was also very tasty. We tried both the fancy and the fried oysters. Fancy oysters include a bit of foie gras, but the primary flavors are yuzu and green apple. They were delicious, but pricey at $5 each. Fried oysters coated in squid ink panko and topped with trout roe looked more interesting, but were just okay. The crispy octopus was indeed crispy, as it was completely coated in crunchy flakes. The accompanying citrus mayo and jam offset each other very nicely. One of the best octopus preparations in town. The best thing we had was the Cacio e Pepe, a pasta dish traditionally combining cheese and pepper, but here it was Uni butter and pepper. The fettucini was perfectly cooked, and the sauce was rich and delicious (although it needed additional salt and pepper to bring out the flavor). Charred shrimp cocktail was fairly conventional. The charring made the shrimp a bit too sturdy, but the cocktail sauce was excellent. The least successful dish was the Foie gras and donut, which sounded really fun, but wasn't. It was a generous serving of perfectly seared foie gras, crisp and caramelized on the surface, and runny on the inside. But the other ingredients on the plate didn't really work. The donut was small, tough, and flavorless, and was no substitute for a more traditional brioche or even pear or apple slice. And the strawberry "jam" was really bits of marinated strawberry, too chunky to provide the needed sweetness in each bite. It was also nearly impossible to combine the disparate ingredients into a composed bite, something essential with foie gras. The dessert list is very interesting, with each one accompanied by a different ice cream or sorbet. I opted instead for a sampling of those accompaniments. The chocolate sorbet was excellent, and the black rice ice cream exotic and intriguing. Tobacco ice cream was the most exciting idea, but just tasted like vanilla. There is an interesting wine list, with a small selection of nicely varietal wines by the glass. Service was almost too attentive. Three waiters, two bus boys and a manager kept clearing away every dish and glass, even when we wanted to hang onto them, and often while someone else was still eating. The restaurant wasn't very busy yet, so perhaps they just needed something to do, but it became funny after a while. It's commendable that they want to provide good service, but I think they need to relax just a tad! About half the tables are round and half are rectangular, and they're pretty small. This works okay for the rectangular ones, but the round ones don't work well for sharing plates. They don't take up any less space, and I think should be jettisoned in favor of the rectangular ones. One pet peeve is that at the beginning of the meal we were told that "Chef wants you to order everything at once." That's simply not acceptable in a sharing plates restaurant. You don't know everything you're going to want at the start of the meal, or what order you'll want it in. I've played this game before and ended up with a table full of food that the chef was supposedly going to course out for us. I'd rather do that myself.