The line between dining and entertainment rarely blurs so satisfactorily as it does at the Charles Dickens Buffet, an annual holiday event at The Drake Hotel.
Set in the Oak Terrace Restaurant, appropriately festooned with wreaths, poinsettias and other holiday decorations, the buffet includes enough traditional English dishes to justify its moniker — although a lavish feast of this sort is something most Dickens heroes experience only in their story’s final, triumphant chapters.
Scrooge may have sent the Cratchits a fine Christmas goose, but the Cratchits could have survived for a month on the goodies they would encounter here.
Smoked trout and oysters. Poached salmon. Indulgently rich Russian eggs, glazed ham with sweet mustard, chicken with cranberry sauce, assorted salads and roasted potatoes. A pastry buffet with plum pudding, bread pudding, creme caramel, pecan pie, pumpkin pie and assorted tarts and pastries.
Food, glorious food indeed.
The olde English touch can be seen in the pleasingly musty steak and kidney pie, the earthy potted pheasant, the cold roasted duck with fruit chutney, the Scotch eggs, the excellent carved rib roast with Yorkshire pudding and horseradish cream and the English trifle.
Less than traditional is the calamari salad (too rubbery by far), cold Asian noodles with peapods and halves of plum tomato filled with sesame-flavored chicken salad.
And the buffet’s kitschy highlight is the Boar’s Head parade, which wends its way through the dining room three times each day. Heralded by a trumpeter playing Christmas carols, the parade consists of kitchen staffers hoisting aloft an enormous Yule log, a microwave-sized plum pudding and — the star of the parade — a boar’s head carved out of tallow.
(The sight of 15 pounds of rendered fat has a special resonance for those of us on our fourth trip through the buffet line.)
Bringing up the rear of the parade is Santa Claus, who visits customers and hands out candy.
“And what would you like for Christmas?” Santa asked me.
“A pony,” I lied.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he lied.
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The Charles Dickens Buffet is served from 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m. through Dec. 23, and from noon-7 p.m. Dec. 24, at the Drake Hotel, 140 E. Walton Pl. Price is $33.50 adults, $17 ages 6-12, under 6 free. Reservations recommended: 312-787-2200.
