Las Tablas - West Lakeview - Chicago
Rub, soy sauce and oil: that’s all that goes on the famous skirt steak – and other flame-broiled meats – at Las Tablas Columbian Steakhouse, because with meat this good, you really don’t need, or want, anything more.
Columbia is a meat-loving country, and although you can get fish, seafood, and perhaps surprisingly, outstanding veggie dishes at Lakeview’s Las Tablas Columbian Steakhouse, most of us go there for one thing: beef char-grilled to perfection. While you’re there, get into the mood with live music that creates an atmosphere that piques your appetite.
Read MoreFour steaks are the all-stars at las Tablas Columbian Steakhouse. Entraña is the specialty of the house, a strip steak scored to absorb the rub and cooked over fire; carne asada is the rib eye steak, our favorite cut of beef; churrasco is a butterfly cut New York strip, and it comes in a smaller version called the churrasquito. Chicago Magazine placed Las Tablas in the top twenty best steakhouses in Chicago.
For seafood, shrimp mixed with white wine and garlic and the char-broiled is a perennial favorite. There’s also flame-cooked red snapper, salmon and baby octopus. If chicken is what you’re looking for, you can have your bird cooked over an open fire and stuffed with spinach and cheese or served boneless.
With many of these entrées, you receive sides of plantain, yucca and/or potato. A starch is “required” with meat entrees, of course, but you can also get these sides with the vegetarian dishes, including vegetarian empanadas, house salad with avocado and soy meat, and the vegetarian paella (beans, broccoli, mushroom, and yucca atop rice flavored with criollas sauce). USA Today voted Las Tablas one of the country’s ten best Latin restaurants for vegetarian dishes.
To drink, there’s a good range of Latin American wines as well as cocktails such as mojitos, piña coladas and sangria.
A visit to Las Tablas is like a visit to Columbia, with all the flavors, sounds and good vibes of that country.
