The folks at Milwood Pizza, Burgers & More are friendly and accommodating. They seem genuinely eager to please, but they have set a task for themselves. The trouble with Milwood isn’t that it’s awful; few things here are particularly offputting. It’s just that it’s boring. There is nothing to get excited about.
Some artwork on the walls would help. The space is sterile, almost clinical. A blank brick wall gives way to floor-to-ceiling windows at the front. The opposite wall is unadorned. A blonde hardwood floor is furnished with reddish-brown tables and chairs. And that’s about it. I would call it fast-food-esque, except that fast food restaurants typically have more charm. It’s more like a mall food court, not a place you’d care to linger long, unless you’re a 14 year old with nothing better to do.
And like other places with zero atmosphere, there’s a weakness for TV’s. Few things annoy me more in a sit down restaurant than noisy televisions, especially when they’re showing nothing of interest, like endless loops of “breaking news” or music videos or cartoons. We got treated to a good half hour of some half-assed cartoon cranked up so loud that we couldn’t hold a conversation.
To her everlasting credit, the proprietor saw that we were wincing and turned down the volume after some other diners left; and she asked if we were uncomfortable from the ceiling fans that were spinning away on a sub-zero day and turned them down too. A man was extremely quick and thorough when it came to wiping down tables, and they were attentive and helpful in taking our order. The people running Milwood aim to please which makes it that much harder to savage the place, but savage it I must.
The food is mostly unremarkable. The burger was okay, not unlike a good tavern burger you could get at a half dozen other places within a two block radius of here, but the pizza was a real let down. I must say, I have had better pizzas out of the frozen food case at Jewel. Again, it’s not that the pizza was bad, just that it was boring. I can’t imagine why anyone would go to the trouble of having someone drive out on a chilly winter night to deliver something so uninteresting – or indeed why you would go out yourself.
Milwood is open late to attract the post party crowd and does this pretty well considering the accolades it receives from the drunk, weary and famished set, not usually the most discerning of diners. Even among that group, however, there are those who object to processed cheese food on their nachos and give it the thumbs down. To my eye, much of what’s served here is only a little better than what you’d get at Wrigley Field, which is to say, bad fast food.
Milwood could be forgiven a lot of its flaws if it actually was fast food. It presents itself as fast food; the ambiance certainly communicates that. But it’s not fast. You may have to order your food at the counter, but like any other restaurant you have to sit down and wait. In the interim you can watch cartoons. Not for me. No thanks. At least at Wrigley there's a ball game going on.
I visited my old neighborhood in Andersonville last week and saw that a charmless, characterless restaurant that used to reside on the corner at the end of our street was out of business. It had been open less than two years. From the beginning we had predicted its demise. We’d always wondered how anyone could open a restaurant with zero character in a neighborhood as vibrant and edgy as Andersonville and expect to survive, especially when a dozen lively and compelling competitors lay within walking distance.
Sadly, I feel the same way about Milwood. This is a restaurant that might do well in Franklin Park or Edgebrook but in Wicker Park it’s sure to be eclipsed unless it does something to distinguish itself. Loud cartoons and music videos are not the answer.
Milwood Pizza, Burgers & More
1360 N. Milwaukee
773-772-6000 / Reservations Not Accepted
Hours: Su-Th 11am-2am; F-Sa 11am-3am
Features: Late Night Dining, Carryout, Delivery, No Alcohol
Avg. Price of a Meal for Two Including Drinks and Tax $28
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