The Quest for Eating Out: Duke's Alehouse and Kitchen

I have to admit that since we started the quest we pretty much stopped eating out. It is simply impossible to know where your food is from in a restaurant. Most of the restaurants have to try and keep costs down as much as possible, and buying organic ingredients is definitely not a good low-price policy. Chain restaurants buy in bulk from big producers, who are also usually the ones using the most pesticides, exploiting their workers, injecting their livestock with anything possible, all in the name of keeping costs down and thus making a profit. 

I live in the furthest suburbs of Chicago, and there aren't many options available besides big chain restaurants. Fortunately, there are a few exceptions, and one of this is Duke's Alehouse. Located in downtown Crystal Lake, Duke's a very furnished alehouse, stocked with literally hundreds of beer from around the world, many of which are organic and local. It  is also a restaurant who specializes in American comfort food with an eye to local, sustainable and organic ingredients. They purchase most of their ingredients from within 25 miles distance, and they even have their own garden where they grow for example their own herbs, arugula and heirloom tomatoes. I tried the Pizza with pesto, arugula,heirloom tomatoes ( from their garden ) mozzarella, artichokes and olive tapenade. My husband had a bison burger, also local, with the same ingredients. The mozzarella cheese that was on both was not organic, but was very tasty, I wonder why finding organic cheese seems to be so hard. The pizza was good, small enough to be a single portion, with a nice thin crust. The bison was maybe a little less greasy than normal beef and overall really good. Only small disappointment: we ordered a small fruit salad for our son and were half expecting a seasonal medley, maybe with some of the wonderful peaches and berries that seem to be in all the farmers' markets these weeks. Instead we got grapes, pineapple and watermelon that were definitely neither local nor organic.  We also got a dessert : a blueberry and strawberry crumble with a ball of homemade ice-cream on top, the perfect summer dessert! We will definitely be going back there more, as I would like to try some of the organic beers and I am looking forward to what specials they are going to propose as the seasons change.