Good Food
(Really)

I am very much the sucker for companies that name themselves after their product, say Krispey Kreme.* My all time favorite is an international security firm I used to work with, Control Risks--can you think of a better name for an international security firm? So, I knew it was only a matter of time until I would try Good Food in Broadview.

Good Food is a small soul food restaurant in a spot that was probably a hot dog stand at one time. You order at a high counter. You can just see all of the apparatus of real cooking, strainers, balloon whisks, measuring cups, etc. After you order, you sit in one of about eight small tables and they bring you the food. Did I say small tables. Well, I wanna try to make this a play on Sunset Boulevard, the tables did not get small, but I cannot quite manage it. The point: huge, huge amounts of food. Which is good, because Good Food seems slightly pricey until you get the food. My meatloaf dinner was $8.95. Yet, that was $8.95 worth of 3 slabs, dictionary example of slab, slabs, of meat, big portions of two sides, plus a rectangle of corn bread as big as the cakes in my cribbed NYTimes pic of Machine Shed, a big glass of pop, tea or lemonade. And it was the same for the other lunches on our table: fried chicken wings and a turkey leg that kept on reminding me of the food that tipped the car over at the end a Flintstones episode**.

Yes, I am a sucker for big portions, but this was exceedingly good food too. The meatloaf featured plenty of chopped onion in its mix, and while I am not a raw onion fan, in this mix it added a lot. Candied yams were candy sweet but I love 'em that way. If you like your mac and cheese gooey and peppery, you would love that, and if you liked your chicken plump and crisp-dry in the Chicago fashion, well you would have love that. Dressing had a heavy hand of sage so you have to love 'em that way, and greens were highly (if perhaps artificially smokey) from the use of smoked meats in the likker, but I still loved them that way. Oh, and that cake of corn bread, love your corn bread that way, cakey, moist, seemingly begging for butter but great without, well you'd love that too. The only thing I do not know if I love, and I wonder if I ever know if I'd love, is the desserts. Big containers of vanilla pudding and homey looking mini-sweet potato pies. I just cannot ever imagine having room for dessert.

Good Food is. While it is quite casual and lacking the over-the-top friendliness of Pricilla's down the street, I found the food better at Good Food.

1801 W. Roosevelt
Broadview, IL
708-338-0170

*I'd love to hear some other good examples

**Why was it that some Flintstone's episodes ended with the trip to the drive-in and some with Fred getting locked out of the house due to that rascally saber-tooth?

***Like Pico Rico, Good Food happens to be just as convenient to a good thrift shop. Nothing from the Kup collection, but I was got to fill up a bag with all the sports coat I could cram in, for $5.