A Quick Getaway at Bahama Breeze

By Written by Helen Lee on July 12th, 2010

First I’m going to start off this post with a disclaimer. Bahama Breeze is a chain restaurant, from the same company that owns Olive Garden and Red Lobster. It’s not quite as widespread as those chains, but I’m sure it would like to be someday. Also, Bahama Breeze is an advertiser in the magazine that pays my bills, and I’ve written articles about the restaurant designed to tempt people inside. But they’ve never invited me to dine there, and I have never actually walked into the place, until this past Saturday for dinner with a friend. I guess you could say the propaganda I was writing for them actually worked on me (boy am I good!), and I’ve wanted to try the place for a really long time.

Bahama Breeze is located in Schaumburg, which is about halfway between my home and one of my friend’s homes. This makes it a good place for us to meet. I think we were expecting something a little more Cheeseburger in Paradise, not that I’ve ever been to one of those places, but Bahama Breeze gives off a more elegant and classy tropical vibe. It actually does remind me of the upscale resorts I’ve been to in the Bahamas with a semi-outdoor eating area, hurricane-style window shades, steel drum music you can hear from the parking lot on many nights and an extensive drink menu. I suppose I was expecting more pastels, but Bahama Breeze is really more Tommy Bahama.

I’ve heard iffy things about the service, just from online reviews and such, but we had no problems at all. We waited a few minutes for a table, but I was late anyway and my friend was seated before I arrived–and they’d given her a free appetizer of Island flatbread to boot. I’d almost say the service was too fast. We weren’t ready for our entrees when they came, because we were not even halfway through the spinach dip. The dishes are what you might call American with a touch of island flavor–the shrimp is breaded with coconut, the black bean soup is Cuban-inspired, the baby-back ribs come with a guava barbecue sauce. I had a special, scallops in a lemon cream sauce on corn cakes, and my friend had salmon with a shrimp saute. Both were cooked really excellently. I love seafood, and I have to admit I’ve been eating it lately as if it’s going out of style. Probably because I expect the BP spill to limit my access to such delicacies in the future…anyway, we also sprung for a dessert of chocolate mousse on fudge brownie island in milk chocolate sauce and vanilla bean anglaise (hey, what can I say, we were discussing the bad behavior of men at the time).

Really, I should have taken more care in ordering my drink. I got a White Russian, but that was mainly because I totally forgot I’ve always wanted to try one of Bahama Breeze’s signature pina coladas. They come with a strawberry swirl. Bahama Breeze actually presses its own spearmint and sugarcane and uses all sorts of homemade mixes and such, and if I’d not been frazzled by my day I would have remembered to try something that takes advantage of Bahama Breeze’s purported excellence at cocktails. Well, maybe next time. The White Russian was totally fine. I don’t drink a lot, so it was actually enough to get me slightly buzzed.

In any case, I liked Bahama Breeze even better than I expected. And let’s face it. When you’re home, and have a small child, you can’t eat out at uniquely local places all the time. Frankly, I’ve been needing a vacation and my friend and I were joking that this was probably as close as we were going to get to a tropical paradise anytime soon. It’s not quite the same as sunning yourself on a beach in Jamaica, but having a pleasant and casual dinner with a friend here is a really pleasant way to wind down the week.